It’s been quite an interesting summer. Some bad things have happened but I wouldn’t at all say that it has been a bad summer. This is a hard blog for me to write, I think mainly because I don’t want it to be taken the wrong way at all. At no means am I doing this for pity or for attention, I just have a lot of thoughts and I don’t know how else to get them out of my head.

This summer didn’t go as I was planning at all. It all changed when I made a choice. On May 29, 2010 I decided that I was done living. This wasn’t the first time that I have come to this decision and it wasn’t close to being the first time I tried to take my life. It was the first time that I almost succeed. All I remember is taking a lot of pills and waking up the next day in ICU with a lot of tubes and wires all over me. I was later filled in on what had happened and I came back to reality.  The important part is what happened next, on May 31 I made a choice to attend Acadia of Abilene, a mental hospital. Now at the time I didn’t see it as my choice to go, because it really wasn’t but it was my choice to get something out of it. I spent 32 days at or going to groups at Acadia. Something I got out of the experience was a book that was given to me. It was called The Lost Choice by Andy Andrews.

I have read Andrews books before and I have loved them and I got something out of them, this book and the timing just hit home. I don’t think it all came together until I finished the book tonight, and I’m still gathering all the thoughts. It talks a lot about choices and how what we choose leads to something else. Also the books describes how our choices don’t just affect our lives. When I would think about taking my life, I wasn’t in a good state of mind, because I wasn’t thinking about how it would affect everyone else, all I thought about is how I would be gone and it would be a better place for everyone. Man I was so confused.

“Everybody - every single body - makes a difference! But there is a choice that determines what kinda difference you will make. Most folks don’t see how important they are…how much they matter to all of us. So they never choose to do something special with their lives. And not making a choice that is a choice…a lost one.”

This quote hit me hard and threw me into a cement wall. Something else about me is that the other three books I have read by Andy Andrews I read them each in less than two days, this one took me about 32 days. It was hard, I struggled with this book. I was learning how to cope with my problem and this book was showing me that it was my choice and I couldn’t blame my actions on a disease even if I do suffer from Major Depression Disorder (MDD), yea I had a hard life and I had crap come towards me, but my choice was never taken away. I am the one that made a negative choice and it wasn’t a choice that was making me important. I believe the fact I was going through such a struggle with why I was important in life and why my choices make a difference made this book so much more powerful to me and my life. I have God to thank for that one, he is so very BIG.

It has almost been a full week since I was completely discharged from Acadia. Life is still hard like it always will be, but I am remembering I have choices. I’m am so grateful of having this second chance to live my life and hopefully make better choices. God has saved me and given me a new life and I hope that I can make him happy and proud. I want to make a difference. I encourage everyone to read this book and to look at their life and to wonder what choices are they making for themselves, for family, for friends, for people you don’t even know. God loves all of us and he has given us our freedom to make our own choices what will you do with them today? I challenge everyone including myself to start trying to make a choice everyday starting today that will somehow benefit someone else, and it may benefit you too but think of others first. What choices can we make?

Below is a letter that is in the book written from Alfred Vanderbilt to his boys. This letter sounds like God speaking to me. I may sound cheesy and crazy, but it does. It reminded me of why I am still here. That I am different from everyone else and God has a plan for me and it isn’t the same plan I have for myself, but God’s is much more worth it.

“I made you different from the others. On the planet Earth, there has never been one like you…and there never will be again. Your spirit, your thoughts and feelings, your ability to reason - all exist in no one else. Your eyes are a masterpiece, incomparable, and windows to a soul that is also uniquely yours. A single strand of your hair has been created especially for you. Of the multitudes who have come before you and the multitudes who may follow, not one of them duplicates the formula with which I made you. I made you different from the others. The blood that flows through your veins flows through the heart of one whom I have chosen. The rarities that make you one of a kind, my child, are no mere accident or quirk of fate. I made you different in order that you might make a difference. You have been created with the ability to change the world. Every single choice you make…every single action you take…matters. But remember, the converse is also true. Every choice you do not make…every action you do not take…matters just as much! Your actions cannot be hoarded, saved for later, or used selectively. By your hand, millions of lives will be altered, caught up in a chain of events begun by you this very day. But the opposite is true as well. Millions of lives are also altered, caught up in an entirely different chain of events - if you choose to wait. You possess the power of choice. Free will. You have been given everything you need to act, but the choice is yours alone. And beginning this very moment, you will choose wisely. Now go. And never feel inadequate again. Do not dwell in thoughts of insignificance or wander aimlessly lost, like a sheep.You are powerful. You matter. And you have been found. You are my choices.

                                               Your Father” (page 229-230)

Ever felt certain that you are the one to do this and that it is going to be awesome and that you truly feel that God is going to work great through you?
I have felt like that and the time that I think I felt the most like recently was at camp this summer. I was so certain that being a camp counselor is exactly what God had in mind for me, granted it was but I wasn’t ready and trained in God’s way first.  At camp three weeks of training went great, I was getting to know everyone and building relationships and get stoked about the kids coming.  First week of campers and I’m so excited I’m a counselor. It was a great week but a hard week. The week turned out very well but very different than I expected.  It came out God’s way. The funny thing is towards the end of the week I was getting really excited about next week and having more campers and being a counselor again.  God had different plans, I became sick and pretty much slept the whole week and when I was awake I spent the time in my cabin.  I had a lot of time to think and pray and rest but I thought I was just wasting my time and not doing anything.  Although in that week I learned that I needed to rely on God and to let him work through me, and that I wasn’t at camp to tell the kids about my life I was at camp to tell them about God and Jesus’ life.

In Exodus when Mose’s saw the oppression of his people he was certain that he needed to help them, but God sent him into the desert for forty years to wander.  Mose’s was trying to lead his people and help them with his own ways not God’s ways.  When God had sent him into the desert he became discouraged and when God came back to him and told him to go deliver his people from Egypt he started to question, “Who am I that I should go…?”(Exodus 3:10-11). 
Mose’s was certain in the begin that he needed to do that but when he started to do that God sent him away, he hasn’t done anything for forty years how can he help now? God was training and disciplining Mose’s for the job that he needed to do.  He wasn’t able to help his people at the beginning because he wasn’t one with God and he needed learned true fellowship.
We are going to have times in our lives when we feel that we are destined to do one thing or another to help out God but when we go into with our own perspective and trying to do our own things and not God’s work he is going to send us into the desert. When he comes back and gives us the call to go we shouldn’t question and be scared because that is when we know we have become one with God and know true fellowship.

“I AM WHO I AM…has sent me to you” ~ Exodus 3:14

When we go about and do things on our own without God it doesn’t show respect to him, we need to be able to go out and do things for God in the ways God will receive the glory.  Everything and anything that we do on this earth means nothing unless God is praised and known through out the world.  When we receive praise and glory from anyone but God it is meaningless when it comes down to the point.

“We are focused on the right individual perspective of things; we have the vision and can say, “I know this is what God wants me to do.” but we have not yet learned to get into God’s stride. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time of great personal growth ahead.” ~Oswald Chambers

These past couple of weeks have been a struggle for me, and coming out of the struggle I decided I needed to change somethings in my life. One of these things I am going to start changing is how I start my days.  At camp this summer I realized the days that I started off with having a quiet time with God are the days I enjoyed the most, so I figured that would be the same here at school. Today marks day one, and I write about this not only because if I blog it I can get my thoughts out and I remember what I read longer, but also as a accountability for me to keep doing it everyday.

I find it funny how God works, there is no doubt in my mind that he has a sense of humor. The book that I am going to start reading every morning is by Oswald Chambers and it is called My Utmost for His Highest.  The article today was about getting into God’s stride, and funny enough today is my first day to starting my days off with God.  Haha, good one God.  :-)

He must become greater; I must become less. ~John 3:30

Jesus needs to become the greatest thing in our lives, but for that to happen we need to lessen how we look at ourselves.  For me it is hard because I don’t have a sense of trust for people and I like to do everything on my own, because if it is only me helping myself out then when it doesn’t work there is no one that lets me down and no one to blame but myself.  This alone has proven to be one of my biggest struggles since school started.  I have been battling some battles that are WAY TOO BIG for me to handle on my own.  God has really been humbling me by offering the help I need and making it where the only way I am going to make it is if I trust in God and trust in his disciple that he sent my way to care for me and to make sure I make it through.  I can honestly say that if I wouldn’t have given in to God, he would have one tired disciple and I would have gone a complete different route.  
I had to trust God and get into his stride even though he was ready for me to take big leaps and I wanted to scoot along in a slightly different direction.  He sent his disciple my way to help push me and keep me on track. Today I can say that I am going the right direction, some days I might not be keeping up with God’s strides and I have to sprint to catch him and I get exhausted, but it will be so worth it when I can walk hand and hand with God and all his disciples.

“Don’t give up because the pain is intense right now get on with it, and before long you will find that you have a new vision and a new purpose.” ~Oswald Chambers