Entry Fifty Six: Summer over - A New Season.

Where do I begin. Where or how do I say what I want to say. This summer was perhaps the best summer I have ever had in my entire life, it was definitely the busiest. Now though it is over, and things are not what I quiet expected them to be. I sense a great disturbance in my spiritual life, or a chaotic echo of darkness which is slowly approaching. I can almost smell it, its a stench I remember from my past as a sinner. It is the stench of feeling worthless, like a failure. The stench is from the devils breath, made of lies, trying to take me away from God. However I think knowing this it will make me peruse God this semester fervently, more so then I have before. After having gifts rain down on me all summer with experience after experience, and then for all of that to stop with the coming of a new season is just distressful.

Where has it all gone I ask myself every night, and certain times during the day. Where has it all gone? Where has God gone? It looks like a shallow question, but I do not mean that I think God has literally left me. Nor do I believe or think he has left me because these experiences are over, as if the two are linked directly together with some kind of a "high". There is just this none describable place where he has taken a step away from me, not out of harm, but to simply observe, and it makes me very nervous. I cant really pin point what it is, or where it is, it feels so broad. Its like as if I was riding a bike with training wheels with Him closely behind, but now He has stopped following, and is simply watching from afar my little legs peddle off around the block. It is definitely a new season!

I am overwhelmingly thankful for what happened this summer. I am thankful for my choir tour, for my mission trip, for God providing the funds I needed for my mission trip, for the job God gave me before starving to death, and for the time I was able to spend with my family before starting school. I am unconditionally thankful for all the growth and life change these events created in my heart. They all have vanished though, the events have moved to the past tense. All along I was being prepared and blessed, remolded and anointed, all for this perhaps. Being strengthened to face betrayal, aggravation, a longing for emotional and physical intimacy, affirmation, and a general sense of being purely uncomfortable when starting a new season in life. For this is where I really am right now.

This new season is not a horrible place to be in though, its just nerve racking. School started today. I just had my first class about seven hours ago, it went better then I could have anticipated for a philosophy class. The professor seemed to be a little twiggy, but that might not be a bad thing in the long run. When I am tired and its the end of the semester not being challenged may be what I need. I also had my first day of chapel, and it feels good to be back in the natural rhythm of campus life. However, the bands are different, the sound is different in worship, so its just a little strange seeing things not exactly as I left them.

My room mates are awesome though, and I am so excited to have them living with me. We get along together really well so far. All of us communicate well, feel comfortable with each-other, and have quiet a lot in common. I believe we also all think the same way, which is a bonus and something I didn't have last semester! - scientific minded. Its werid being placed in the back of the village though, I sort of feel detached from the rest of campus. Where last year I was in the very front and basically on top of everyone who wandered out of the village for class or any other activity. There really isn't a lot of traffic back here, its nothing like last year, not anymore.

I don't know where God is going to bring me this semester. I sense he is on the move, with me, as darkness and other forces approach. Not depression per say, or anxiety, but a feeling of looseness. As my journey becomes more intense, with more temptations, and more questions - the truth is just harder to hold onto. I believe though that this may provide an excellent opportunity to refine my spiritual walk, and correct any faulty foot work I may normally have when running down a spiritual road. There are some big gaps that need to be filled, and there is still a lot of healing which needs to take place. I am very weary of making the same mistakes I made in the past - in the broad sense, little things, big things, things I just don't want to repeat.

However there is one thing which bothers me that I cant seem to help. I find myself wondering away from Church, actually, running. Before I guess I could say I was wondering, slowly, away. Though that has changed, its a purposeful jog now. I don't like the church, it may be because I don't feel the love, kindness, and most of all - respect I think as a human being I deserve. There seems to be more strife and hypocrisy then there is in my own life, so much its just driving me away. I was squashed my entire childhood, practically all the way until I turned 18, by every single human being inside my general environment. I always knelled, I always gave way, I always turned the other cheek or I ran. I suppose I just can't turn my cheeks any more, its not right or healthy to.

Now it seems I am running again. I don't want to run, I don't like having to run, I don't like being a coward or having to start all over, but what other options do I have? Where? I know that I am supposed to be respected, I know what it feels like and looks like to be respected as I have a few friends who do respect me still, and who are kind to me. I believe even my room mates respect me, as I respect them. Where does God want to take me in all this. These are all questions I believe darkness has cornered me into asking. Perhaps I have just made myself too vulnerable, perhaps I am being too sensitive. One way or another the Lord will guide me through all this, perhaps he will send help, or already has. He will prepare me, sustain me, as always be by my side when I walk into face the darkness and do battle.

Lord where do you want me.