faithful to the faithless

God really has been putting a lot of challenging things on my heart recently. There are two main things I kinda want to talk about here.

1) The "Future"
I'm at a point in my school career in which I have to start to seriously plan for my post-grad plans. Many of the "next-steps" that my degree can lead to require me to starting thinking and planning NOW, and honestly it's stressful. It's stressful because I like to be in control of my life (working on it! ;) and I know that the future isn't something that I can control. Regardless, God has been very good to me recently on this front. For the longest time I had felt kind of lost/drifting and was praying for God to give me a passion that I can form a goal around and work towards. Through the past several weeks/months, God has slowly been closing doors and also turning me back to my childhood dreams and revealing to me the passion I had tried to suppress for so long due to fear. It's still a scary time for me because for once in my life, I have no back-up plan! It really is all or nothing, and I know that if I get into my program of choice it'll be all to the glory of God; I will be unable to take an ounce of credit for it. Praise God!

2) Singleness
To be perfectly honest, I've never really thought very hard about the state of being single or having a significant other. Oh sure, I've cooed over romantic dramas/comedies on TV and sighed over stories shared by girlfriends about the sweet things their boyfriends do for them, but if I had to think long and hard about the past several years (i.e., late high school and university; my hormone-addled middle school years do not count LOL) I honestly never gave much thought to boys and future relationships. Is that strange? In the past months God has been slowly but surely revealing to me areas of my life in which I need to repent and be healed from, and I know that these things are part of the reason why I've never been in a serious relationship before. Maybe in the back of my head I've wondered whether something was wrong with me in that I never seemed to be able to like the same guy for very long. I see now that this, too, was one of God's tender mercies to me. How can I be in a Christ-centered relationship with any guy if I'm not in a right relationship with Christ first? Knowing this in my head and actually understanding this in my heart after being made aware of certain things about myself are two completely different things. With that said, I don't know how long this season of singleness will last. With this new career path I feel that God is leading me towards, this season may be even more prolonged than I had originally hoped. What I do believe is that I am the way I currently am and the things I am currently struggling through are for my good; as the psalmist says, "...the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!" (Psalm 84:11-12; emphasis mine). God is good and faithful, and I must trust in that.

I know I've been sharing this song around the Internet like no one's business, but it has truly been encouraging to me over the past several days. I hope it will bless you like it has blessed me.