Growing up, I have always been a pretty paranoid person. From being concerned for the safety of my younger siblings to finding foreclosure notices on my front door after school, everything that I was surrounded by truly knew how to keep me feeling on edge. I learned what it was like to completely trust God when applying to colleges my senior year of high school. I felt on top of the world as He, so graciously, put the perfect school in front of me and visibly put each piece together allowing me to attend GCU. Everything after that went a bit south.
Freshman year was perfect…I was on cloud nine. I had met the most amazing people and I was having the time of my life. I scored a job at a coffee shop to pay for books and fun activities with my friends. The topic of money was always in the back of my mind but I had taken out a few loans that year so no immediate action was required on my part…the life.
Sophomore year was different. I knew ahead of time that I wouldn’t be able to take out as much financial aid as I did the year before. I spent the summer before working a full time job to buy a new (to me) car and to save up for the upcoming school year. When school came back around I went in full swing. Attempting to work thirty hours a week while maintaining my scholarship as a full time student, keeping healthy friendships, and even getting a second job at one point. I was trying to pay for food, books, gas, and around nine-hundred dollars in tuition monthly. Car problems arose, different fees came up, and I became a slave to money. Anxiety was no friend of mine, but he sure liked to stick around. I have never lost myself the way that I lost myself that semester, but God showed me that the way I was living my life was not living at all.
You see, when we live our life in dismay, constantly allowing anxiety and fear to overcome us and influence the decisions that we make, we are telling God that He is not good enough to support us. We are saying that the plan He has cemented together perfectly, right in front of us, brick by brick, is not strong enough to hold us up.
"but those who hope in the Lord,
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint."
-Isaiah 40:31
God changed my life by revealing to me that I have no control…that, ultimately, when we draw our own map, it leads us into black hole. But when we look to His plan we can see that none of this is our own. When we look to His plan we see that everything is in His timing. Every action that is completed, obstacle overcome, and anxiety admonished, done through true hope in the Lord, will renew our strength to continue down our road. The rest is steam on the window. I decided live my life because God decided to change it.
