The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Truth

It feels like it has been forever since I wrote a blog, but it has been less than three weeks. These past three weeks have been pretty eventful.  First of all, my car completely died (as in it won't start). My dad finally figured out that it IS the fuel pump so he ordered a new one. Now, he just has to find the time to put it in. Then, hopefully I will have a car again. In the meantime I'm staying with mom and dad and borrowing their vehicles (that also seem to be falling apart lol  I'm beginning to feel like a curse to cars...;-))  I got a job working at Dollar General as a Sales Associate/Cashier. I started on Saturday. It's only like 20 hours a week, but something is better than nothing.  I have decided that I will not be going to school this fall because it didn't seem to work out. (Still haven't heard if I am accepted yet.)  I'm figuring next fall should be good. I'm going to plan on it.
I had a super exciting (?) thing happen a couple weeks ago.  I had been staying with mom and dad for a few days just to have some company. I went home really quickly to go get some clothes for a wedding that I was going to with mom and dad, and my house had been broken into. I went to go unlock the backdoor and noticed that the deadbolt had been locked and I NEVER lock it because sometimes it doesn't like to work right. I can always tell when somebody else has been in my house because of that. Anyway, as soon as I opened the door, I knew something wasn't right. There were lights on in the bathroom, kitchen and my bedroom. There was stuff in random places.  The guy that broke in stole a bunch of my food, and then we later found out that he stole a bunch of my grandma's stuff too. There was more, but it was just really creepy. He had come in through Jabin's bedroom window.  The window was still wide open and the front door was unlocked.  Needless to say this freaked me out, and it has been hard for me to go back to my house since. I think I learned a lesson from this though. The lesson is this:

If God wants me to be a missionary, I need to learn to depend entirely on Him.  Even if I'm not going to be a missionary, it's very important to trust Him.  Our security should not be in things or in people, but in Him.  When I go overseas to be a missionary, my security is not going to be "secured" or guaranteed.  God is my security.  I need to stop putting my security in people and things. I never thought somebody would break into my house, but they did.  I thank God we were not there. Security is never guaranteed no matter where you are.  Whether you have a fancy car alarm or the most state of the art security on your house. You hear about people getting shot all the time just walking down the street. Small towns are no different. We even have murders in our small area. It's scary if we don't have the right perspective and are not putting our trust in God.

 God has been showing me SO many things this summer. He has really been growing me and stretching me and humbling me. God has shown me how I have been so very prideful.  I look back at my attitude over the past year or so, and I disgust myself with how prideful I was.  I know it was at least partly due to trying to protect myself, but... ewww.  Makes me thing of the verse that says "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags".  We try to be righteous, but even if we try as hard as we can, our best will always be disgusting in God's sight.  When God revealed to me how prideful I was being, it really humbled me.  I cried because I felt so bad about how I was treating a certain person.  He may have deserved it, but I had no right to treat him and think about him the way I did.  I'm trying really hard to do what God wants me to do.  I have to keep reminding myself to forgive. In fact, I downloaded Matthew West's song "Forgiveness" just so I could have it as a ringtone for this person.  Anybody who knows me very well at all will know who I'm talking about, but I'm not going to mention names.
I cannot tell you how thankful I am that God is working so much in my life right now. It is pretty amazing.