Life Sucks, Walk In Faith

     I don't know about anyone else but for me personally life hasn't been the easiest or happiest walk in the park lately. As most of us know life, to put it rather bluntly, sucks sometimes. That's a fact. Sometimes life sucks. People hurt us, circumstances can get difficult, and life can be overwhelming and sometimes we feel stuck. We wonder why things aren't getting better, why nothing is changing, why, why, why. Sometimes one season or phase of life ends and it ends painfully and, sometimes rather reluctantly, are are forced or called to move onto something new. We have to let go of things and people and move forward in life. Letting go of things and having to move on can be difficult, confusing, and painful. When we lose something we mourn and grieve and we feel as a loss.We can feel stuck and totally unsure of what the next move is only knowing that we had better make a move soon or else. It can be hard to take that first step and move on, especially when we have no clue where we're going. However, the time of mourning for the things or people we've had cut out of our lives must come to and end. Eventually we have to get over it and move on. Then we have to exercise faith even it feels like that's the last thing we want to do. We don't know what to do next...well make a move. Sometimes we have to exercise faith before God makes a move. We have to take the first step into the deep waters of life that God is asking us to cross and as we take that step a path will become clear. God responds to people to move in faith even when it seems like God isn't around them. When we're overwhelmed and confused and scared we have to know that Christ is with us and we have to move in faith even if we can't see three feet in front of us. One time I was talking to a mentor of mine about being afraid and confused about what the next step in life was. I wanted so badly to know 100% everything that was going to happen and to have complete peace an no doubt about anything. He simply said to me when you walk in faith and do what God has asked you will always have the peace of God. However, sometimes the peace doesn't come until you're right in the thick of it. So, if you're feeling discouraged, confused, scared, or unsure about something in your life move in faith and know that God will come through.

~ Carrots

I'm Worn

     So it's Human Trafficking Awareness month and that's what this blog was supposed to be about but...it's not. Sorry, but I will do one...eventually. Okay so STORY TIME, I was supposed to start school next week, and I was really excited. Ecstatic to go. Then everything fell through, first my financial aid didn't cover all of my classes and my van died. The school is about 45 minutes away so it's not like I can just get a ride, I have to have a car in order to get to school. No car and no school. That sucks. Then in the midst of all of this I'm losing my job and it's all very frustrating because I also need a car to get a new job. Needless to say I'm not the happiest of people. I'm stressed and frustrated because I thought I was supposed to go to school, and I have to have a job, and I need a car but I don't have the money for one. I have plans for my future and I need to go to school and it's all very frustrating and trying on one's faith. I've spent a lot of time talking to God asking why, why would you ask me to do something if you knew it wasn't going to work? Why would you put these desires in my heart if they aren't going to be fulfilled? How am I going to get a new job? How am I going to pay bills if I don't have a job? How am I going to get to work? How will I get anywhere? God what is going on? Why is everything falling apart? I know you're probably thinking, chill your life isn't falling apart. But, it feels like it some days. One day my roommate sent me this passage.

 

Psalm 37:3-7 (AMP)

"Trust (lean on, rely on, and be confident) in the Lord and do good; so shall you dwell in the land and feed surely on His faithfulness, and truly you shall be fed. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord [roll and repose each care of your load on Him]; trust (lean on, rely on, and be confident) also in Him and He will bring it to pass. And He will make your uprightness and right standing with God go forth as the light, and your justice and right as [the shining sun of] the noonday. Be still and rest in the Lord; wait for Him and patiently lean yourself upon Him; fret not yourself because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked devices to pass."

 

     That my friends is an incredible verse and so I've done my best to read and meditate on this verse and apply it to my life. I started applying for tons of jobs and I had a couple interviews and none of them seemed right and I knew I should say no to them and I did and I was confused because very soon, I'll be jobless. Then out of nowhere I got a call and was offered my dream job and I jumped I said yes and I was beyond happy to say yes. I was blessed and it all started to make sense. I was given this opportunity for experience and learning and it was okay that school hadn't worked out, I could go later. Experience is often a better teacher than text books and I would be getting to do what I love and get paid to do it. It was a dream come true. That was yesterday...this morning I was listening to worship music as I made breakfast and went about my day and I started singing the lyrics, "If I let these dreams die will I find you brought me back to life. So empty my hands fill up my heart capture my mind with you." These lyrics came to be God was obviously speaking to me about school. I mean I let one dream die and God had replaced it with another. Not so, friends, not so. After I got to work today I learned that because of the situation with my vehicle and the fact that this offered position could possibly require me to have to travel at a moments notice and at inconvenient hours I was no longer eligible for the position. To say I was crushed is an understatement. I had literally called everyone I knew and told them about this job, and I was excited. I could stop the job search, I had security and would literally go zero time without a job. Now, I'm back in limbo and my last day where I currently am is in two days. I haven't cried yet but as soon as I'm alone I surely will. I'm scared, and devastated, and yes I'm sitting here in this office kind of confused by and upset with God. He's my father he's supposed to help me and nothing seems to be working out the way it should. Although, even as I sit here fighting tears and very fed up with life God has given me scriptures and songs and is speaking to me about how he's my stability. The song he gave me this morning during worship wasn't about what had happened, it was about what was going to and now is happening. He brought this scripture back to my mind and now it's time to trust and pray and seek and believe. This blog really is just me saying hey....does life honestly kind of suck? Yes, and I get it but I promise you that God is still here with us. Am I happy with the circumstances? No. Am I scared? Yes. Am I honestly frustrated even with God? Yes. BUT, I have faith that he will provide because he loves me and he will always provide for my needs. Life doesn't always make sense but God always stands firm and that's all that I need. It's when I lose sight of God that the circumstances begin to overwhelm  me and I will not let that happen. Because, Jesus Christ is bigger than my storm.

 

This video isn't the one that contains the lyrics I posted, but it is the one that describes how I feel. Not only that but it also says that while I feel this way, I know that God is still in control and still on my side.

~ Carrots

God Told Me To Go, Jesse Told Me To Write About It

     I'm writing this honestly because Jesse told me I should. We were sitting outside Starbuck, Carmel Brule latte in hand, gazing at the Christmas lights our town had already put up when I started telling her this story. Before I was done something along the lines of, "Why haven't you blogged about this, you need to blog about this now." Came out of her mouth. That was Monday....it's Thursday and I'm finally getting around to starting this post. At first I wanted to be selfish and keep it for me, I wanted my little story and experience to belong to me. God gave it to me. Then I started thinking about how ridiculous I was being, what if someone else needed to hear this? That's why God reveals things to us isn't it? So we can pour it into other people? Well, here's my little story and my little experience that made a big impact for me personally.
    
     Little bit of back story....I work a part time job at a local non-profit. As you can imagine this pays basically nothing and I literally have no idea how I manage to pay rent and buy groceries every month. I had been praying and felt God telling me to stay at my job a little while longer, this is frustrating. I also developed the overwhelming desire and need to start college in January, I prayed about it and felt like I should start applying but I can't afford even one class without financial aid so it felt like a big joke and fruitless endeavor. This is extremely frustrating. My life has basically been stress and penny pinching and become depressed and anxious about my future and worrying about every little thing. A couple weeks ago my sister came to stay with me for the weekend, after church on Sunday I met my parents half way and dropped her off.

     As I was starting the drive back to Missouri I realized that I would have 2 1/2 hours in the car alone so I started to pray, and sing, I turned on worship music, and I spent that time with God. When I got about 45 minutes away from home I had this overwhelming urge of, I need to go to church tonight. The thing is my church doesn't normally have Sunday night services and even if we did I wouldn't have made it back in time. Then God dropped a church I had driven past on my way out in my head. It was about 20 minutes up the road and I knew that I could make it as long as I didn't stop, I didn't even know the denomination of the church, I just knew that, that was where I needed to be that night. I pull into the parking lot at 5:59, the sign says church starts at 6:00....there are only 2 cars in the parking lot. Anyway so I go inside and the Pastor is there with a couple people from the church and low and behold on the last Sunday of the month they don't have an evening service they have an afternoon fellowship and afternoon service instead. Basically, I showed up for church and there was no church. So, I end up going into his office to speak with him. Throughout our conversation I mentioned that my dad is a Pastor.
      "Oh, where is you dad a Pastor?"
      "Kansas," I told him.
      Turns out he was from Kansas too. He had been born there, raised there, graduated high school, met his wife, and got married there. Naturally I asked him where in Kansas he was from expecting Topeka or Salina but no...he looked at me and said, "Arkansas City." I stopped....because that's where I'm from and once you leave Ark City you never run into anyone from Ark City ever again until you go back for a visit. It's just one of those towns that no one leaves...so I knew right then and there that was a total God thing, and God had my absolute undivided attention. When I told him I was from Ark City I saw the look on his face, he knew, he knew I was here for a very specific reason.

      The details of our conversation aren't too important and honestly I won't lie, this is getting to be a long post and I've probably lost most of you at this point and I'm too lazy to write the whole thing anyway. Basically, after that all I told him was that I was currently working and trying to go to school. I didn't tell him anything about my financial situation or how hard it is for me to go to school or anything.

     Out of the blue, and what seemed rather off topic, he told me that the story of how he met his wife is incredible. Of course I thought he would then tell me the story of how he met his wife. Instead he said, "Let me tell you what I learned from our story. I learned to trust God. To completely let go of my life and let him take control. I learned that when I let go he works it out. He brings us amazing and better things, he brings us to new places. We have to stop trying to figure out and make it work because that's not our job, it's his. God figures out. The desires of our hearts, the things we want, our plans, and the things that God has called and asked us to do that seem impossible...we can't stress over them. We can't crunch the numbers and lay awake at night and worry about it. We can't make the move on our own and try to make it fit together and work. If God called us to do it, if he placed the desire in our heart then he'll make it work. He'll come in and bring all together but not until we set it down and let him completely have it."

     Talk about hearing exactly what I needed to hear. I didn't say much I just nodded and smiled and soaked it all in. Then before I left he asked if he could pray for me and I said yes. We started praying and it was a pretty typical, thank you for bringing her here, type of prayer. Then in the middle of praying he pauses and starts again with, "Lord, just take this time to remind Kaitlin that you are her security. Financially, physically, spiritually, emotionally...you are her security. You're her provider and her protector and she doesn't need to worry because you care for her."

     Again....right what I needed to hear. Even as I type it, I need to hear it again. Man...I really don't know how to wrap up this blog only to say maybe you needed this too. Trust God, and yeah. I leave you with a promise to work on my conclusions.

~Carrots

    

The Day I Joined A Corrupt Government and Persecuted Christians

     Now I know what you're thinking...actually okay I don't. I can guess that it's somewhere along the lines of, "What the heck is she talking about? What kind of psycho is writing this blog?" Just do me a favor and hear me out...listen to what I have to say. Don't stop reading and walk away or you'll have a very misconstrued view of who I am and what I stand for. Also, please don't report me to anybody and get me arrested, it wasn't real. I didn't actually for real persecute Christians. It was a simulated role playing event. Please, just give me a chance. Have you every done role playing? Cosplay? Hey, there Whovians...I know you have. So, it was kind of like that but we were pretending to be real people in real situations. So, while it wasn't "real" for us, it's real for several people out there in the world.
     Last year I participated in World Awareness as part of the persecuted church an it was intense. I went to "prison" and the "refugee camp" and whatnot. We had breaks during the days where we would watch movies such as Defiance and A War To End All Wars and listen to speakers from various organizations such as Voice of The Martyrs. I learned so much last year participating. I learned about sacrifice and taking a stand for what I believe. God used that year to speak to me about how he calls us to handle persecution, I learned a lot. But this post isn't about last year. It's about this year.
     This year I was part of the corrupt government. Our story is that we were a new government that believed in equality for all religions and that there wasn't only one way to Heaven. So, if you were part of a radical religion that taught your way was the only true way (Christianity, Islam, etc.) then we were there to help you and reeducate you. Very passive aggressive. We also had back stories that we were given so when we were around undergrad interns (aka the persecuted church) we would have a character to speak with them to and a story to tell them. My back story was that I had two older brother, Mark and Bentley (yep, they got names!). My older brother Bentley joined the army and went over seas to fight for the "Peace and Safety" (our "government" motto) of our Country. While he was over seas he was killed and when they sent my brother's body back home to have his funeral "Christians" came and told me that my brother had deserved to die, that God wanted my brother dead, that God was happy that my brother had been killed. As a result of this protesting and hatred towards my family my other older brother, Mark, killed himself. As a result of this I blamed Christians for his death. (Let me take a break and a moment to clarify that this was my roleplaying persona and I am a Christian and I firmly believe that the people that do these things *coughwestborosough* are not an actual representation of Christ and his love nor of the rest of Christianity...and I have no brothers that were killed. Although I did pull from real life experiences I've had with Westboro due to living in Kansas and the death of someone I went to High School with. ) So, that was my back story and my "character" was bitter.
     The purpose of this LTE (Life Transforming Event) is to make interns more aware of the persecuted church and to get them to really think about their faith and how they would handle persecution. So, as part of the government is to make the experience real. We chase after the refugee camp and we arrest people and take them to the "reeducation" facility. There we just challenge them and ask them questions about their faith. Here interns have a chance to show us the love of Christ or rebel. It's interesting...a lot of things happened that weekend and I did a lot of things but I really just want to talk about one of those things.
     On the last night we had some refugees do a raid in an attempt to rescue prisoners. They came in with air soft guns and started shooting agents and yelling at people to go. The kid leading the raid just went crazy. At the time of the raid I was on the guys side of the "prison" (AKA shower house) and I was talking to one of the guys about his faith and this kid was nailing it. I was contemplating either letting this kid go or converting. He was amazing in showing me the love of Christ and standing firm in his faith. I told this kid my back story and he apologized and told me about his faith and how Jesus really wants him to act, etc. Then one of his buddies comes in and starts shooting people so in my roleplaying mind everything he has said as just become void because his Christian buddies are not living up to what he's been claiming. Then one guy puts a gun to one of my guys' chest. I remember the "agent" looking at him and saying, "according to your belief system if you shoot me I go to Hell. Are you willing to send me to Hell?" The kid shoots him point blank. (air soft gun reminder!) and so my buddy "died". Then this kid comes over and twists my wrist until I drop my gun. He then tries to hand the gun to the guy that I had been talking to. This was the test. To my amazement the kid in the cell refused to take the gun and told him not to touch me anymore. Then he came out of his cell to protect me from all of the other raiders. He never took a gun and he never tried to run. He amazed me. Later I asked him why if they believe in this loving God why they would come in here and send to of my friends to Hell. His answer, "I don't know and I'm sorry. What they did was wrong. I don't agree with them and I wish I could have stopped them. Just know that, that wasn't God's will. God loves you...please don't hold this against God and the rest of us."
     This year I learned that people are right and wrong. But one kid in a cell humbled me and showed me the greatest act of role playing human kindness I've ever seen. But, he was sincere and I believe that had the guns been real and I been truly against him he would have acted the exact same. That kid challenged me to love everyone I come in contact with, even my enemies. That kid called me to a higher level of love.

I Have Amnesia and Only Remember Tumblr....

    

     If you don't know I have a Tumblr account...and a horrid addiction to tumblr as well. If you want to know what tumblr is or see mine head over to my about me page (Carrots by the way) and scroll down to the bottom and somewhere in that jumbled mess is a link to my tumblr account (Crowhead has one as well at the bottom of her about page). Anyway...so there's this post going around tumblr that says "Imagine that you wake up and all you can remember is your tumblr username and password and you have to try and figure out who you based on your tumblr posts" and the comments, jokes, pictures, and gifs are added to make it funny. Some joke about not knowing anything about themselves or becoming different; just random stuff like that. Then I started looking at my tumblr as if my tumblr was teaching me who I was... I pretended that all I know about myself is what's on my tumblr and it's actually pretty scary.

 

 

     My tumblr is full of Anne Of Green Gables, Jake Abel, Boy Meets World, Supernatural, LOST, Percy Jackson, Jimmy Stewart, and puns...and if you scroll long enough you'll find the occasional Bible verse, photograph, or testimony but that's buried among pages of fandom after fandom.  If I had no memory I would be sitting there going who is that? Who is that? Why is he so important? Do I know him? Where are they? Charlie? Gilbert Blythe? Who is Adam and why is he in hell? How do I fit into this? How do they fit into my life? Then randomly I come across a Bible verse and thing how does this relate to the rest of it? Is this who I am? I start thinking....is this who I am. From looking at Tumblr I can't even tell the basics about myself. I don't know my favorite color, my name, my age, anything about my family, friends, my  favorite foods, what I like to do on rainy days....nothing. The description tells me that I love Jesus, I'm Pro-Life, I fight Sex Trafficking, I love Relient K, Jake Abel, Percy Jackson, and PBR.

 



     I love tumblr...don't get me wrong. I love my fandoms and I am one of the biggest fangirls you'll ever meet. Just ask Crowhead, she has seen two Jake Abel movies with me in theatres, and she spent all summer watching Anne Of Green Gables with me. So, yes, I like all of that stuff. It's fun. I like it. It makes me happy. I'm part of a family....trust me fandoms are like big huge crazy families that stick up for each other. Trust me....we do. But, is this how I really want to be known to the world? Do I want to be known as just someone in a fandom? I could be using my tumblr to reach people for Christ. I could us it to raise awareness about Sex Trafficking. I could use it to help people. If all someone knows about me is what's on my tumblr then they're missing who I am. Because, I am who I am because of Christ. My identity is in Christ. Is Christ being shown through my tumblr? Or facebook, twitter, or even this blog? Am I using these things to make a difference? That post on tumblr really challenged me and convicted me to start using my resources to reach people that need Jesus. To touch lives and not just blend in to a fandom. So think about it. What do you have that you could be using to change the world.

 



     P.S. I'm not going to stop fangirling or using tumblr for fun fandom things. I like it. It's fun. It's just something to think about and a personal challenge to start portraying Christ in EVERY aspect of my life. Also the pictures throughout the blog are screen shots of the first page of my tumblr  so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. I didn't hide or add anything  before taking these it is what it is. Although some of them are reblogs and not every comment is something I've written so I apologize for any cussing or anything...I try to never reblog things like that but sometimes I reblog a picture before reading the comments or people's tumblr handles.

 



~Carrots

"We ought always to try to influence others for good." - Anne Of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery