I'll Praise You in This Storm

Life tends suck a lot. A lot of the time

1. My Mom is divorcing my step-dad and he's making it really ugly and not easy at all. My mom is extremely stressed and I'm clueless as to how to help. I mean I'm open to picking up my brothers or taking them places whenever she can't, but once I go to camp I'm not really going to be of any help at all.

2. I'm really missing my Wayne friends. I miss not being able to just hang out whenever we wanted to or just walk down to someones room if I needed someone to talk to. I went to Kearney with some Wayne friends this weekend and it was so much fun! I don't really know what's in store for us this summer, but I have no doubts that a lot of things will change or will have changed when we all come back together next year. And I don't know if it will be for better or for worse in some cases.

3. I'm not working yet, so I don't feel very accomplished very often right now and it's not very fun. I still have over a week and a half left before camp and I'm not sure what to do with myself until then. I feel like all I do is sit around my house being lazy. I feel pretty lame to be honest.

But through our storms, God finds us and leads us.

1. The Lord has provided my family with the means to get out of that place and into a less stressful and much less abusive environment. For this, I am so so so grateful. I don't know how much more of it they could have handled and how much more helplessness I could feel. But the Lord has just begun working through our situation and miraculous things have already happened.

2. Next year may be very different, but God is showing how important the He is first in our lives and then everything else. I praise Him that he has even brought me to such great friends and even if things do change between us, each person I've met this year has impacted me in some way and for that I am so joyful. He is also providing us with times together such as our trips to the Pla Mor next weekend (along with many other friends, too!), Papillion, NE for Papillion Days, and to Southern Nebraska for some camping fun! I can't wait to see what God is going to do for us all as the summer continues. For better or for worse, He will be by our sides to walk with us.

3. I am just so joyful that the Lord actually provided me with a camp job after He brought to my attention the real reason that I should be going to camp. After applying at Timberlake and not even getting an interview, God showed me that it isn't about working with your friends and having fun in that aspect. It's about praising and glorifying Him each and everyday. It's about showing this and sharing Christ's Love for us with the campers we will be working with. After He beat it through my think human skull, He reopened that opportunity, not to the same camp, but to a different one, Camp Oasis. This one would make me less likely to fall into that same mindset. He took it away to give me something even better. I praise Him also for the time in between school and work that He has given me as well. A lot of the time I feel pretty lazy, but then I see that the time given to me to be with my family and to hang out with my friends from home that I really missed while I was away. Family is a given for everyone, but my friends Lizzy, Brittany, Morgan and Mandy and I were talking about college and being home for the summer. Lizzy said that people always talk about how they've never made friends like the ones they've made in college, but she thinks "wow, that must suck" and she's right. I've heard it, too. Many of the people around me at school always say how their high school friends could never compare to the friends they've made in college. And I think "wow, I have been really blessed with the friends I made in high school." I love my friends that I have made in college. They are all so great in their own ways and I have been blessed with them as well. But these 3 weeks are even more of a blessing as I get to hang out with all of my wonderful friends from high school. We all have changed and grown up some after coming back together after school, but it is so amazing that we can all come back together and still be just as good of friends as we were when we left. I am so joyful that God gave me such a great group of friends during my high school years and even more joyful that we continue to be, even though we've begun our separate journeys in life.

Through each storm, I am so blessed by my Father.