Simple Expectancy

This past Wednesday I attended a college youth group that has just started up in the town I go to school in. Yes, if you didn’t know, I believe in Jesus! Anyway, I went to this youth group and, though it was my first time to attend, I basically new everyone there because they are all students at my university. Never the less, I walked in and experienced maybe the most surreal feeling I have ever felt in my life.

I felt like I was in high school again. Like I had just jumped back in time five years and it was just another Wednesday night youth meeting. It wasn’t just a feeling either, it was everything. There were people playing basketball and talking and flirty before we went in the sanctuary, and the sanctuary was a light show, cement floor, and folding chairs just like the old days. It was crazy, like I said, most surreal thing ever! But anyway, to get to my point…

I realized something, sitting there feeling like I was back in time, church used to be so much different for me back then. There was this feeling of excitement and expectancy that I just haven’t felt in awhile. A feeling of standing in a room full of people but it still just being me and God, accompanied with the feeling that He was fully there in that room with me.

I don’t know what it was about being a teenager in a place like that. I think it was what I said earlier, expectancy. You just walked in expecting God to do something because there was nothing else to expect, He was going to do something. And for me, I was there to worship and connect with Him and not there to prove myself or tell anyone who I was but somehow being that way was showing them all who I was.

This may sound backwards, believe me it does to me too as I type it. I mean, high school is when we are supposed to be unsure of who we are and how to be that around other people and have a hard time, say, just worshipping in public, because we are afraid of what others might think.

But really it was easier then. Life hadn’t gotten in the way. And for all the crying I did over how “hard” my life was back then, it wasn’t. It was just me and God and I really didn’t have that much that had messed that up. I hadn’t chosen to run away from who He was in my life or just let everything around me distract me from what He was trying to do in me.

It was just simple. Simple expectancy.

That is something I miss, and need to get back, because God will still move and meet me wherever I am.

Story Starter

Sarah’s alarm went off early that morning, 6:00am. She stretched one hand out from under the covers shivering as the cold air rushed into her previously snuggly warm blankets. She slammed her hand down on the alarm clock to stop the incessant, if not completely depressing, beeping sound and pulled her arm back under the covers. It was near the end of fall when the air gets crisp and cold overnight but warms just enough by mid morning to be comfortable in a sweater. But being that it was so early, her room was filled with the sweet cold air that comes just before winter and Sarah revealed in it.

She lay in her bed blinking her sleepy eyes and trying to get her mind around the day ahead. It was early yes, but she was eagerly awaiting her day and could scarcely contain the excitement she felt. “Lord,” she prayed barely out loud, “I give you this day and all it has in it, may it go as You have designed. Amen.”

After just a few seconds of enjoying the peace and chilled stillness she popped out of bed and quickly ran across the room to the adjoining bathroom that waited with space heater and a hot shower. She showered quickly, dressed for the day and was out of the house just before seven with a bagel between her teeth and two thermoses of hot coffee.

When life gives you a problem, consult Jane Austen

Problem: You just started dating this boy, I mean just. You walked from the front porch where he asked you out into your mom’s room and she practically has you married to him and moved off to Ray, Wyoming.

Problem #2: One of my friends comes to me the other day with a story: So this boy walks into my class, and I’ve never seen him before in my life, and he’s cute and he starts asking me questions and stuff, and he’s cute, and I just wanted to marry him right then and there. I mean I wanted to text someone and say, “I think I just fell in love.” And I don’t even know his name.

Answer: “A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, love to matrimony, in a moment.”

- Pride and Prejudice

Problem: Horrid English assignment in which there is a requirement of eight full length novels, this means over 100 pages each – oh no!

Answer: “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid!"

- Northanger Abbey

Problem: Your best friend likes a boy who is the sweetest thing ever one day, and makes her cry for hours the next. (I hope you are in high school if this is happening, if you’re out, RUN AWAY!)

Answer: "I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman’s feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of."

- Mansfield Park

Year 2010-2011 Begins

Well, it's the start of a new year and a new set of mandatory blog posts! This may sound like protest, put it's a facade, I really do like blogging, though I generally forget I have to do it!

This year I hope to turn this blog into...well, I don't know really. The novel is out - at least for the time being - so I'm sort of at a loss as to what to do. I know that I want to keep the name RossRoads, though the blog is no longer about my journey through a novel.

My friends say I like the name because one day when I marry a man my best friend has picked out for me - who happens to have a last name resembling roads - it will fit perfectly. But, just so you know, that isn't going to happen, but they like to laugh about it.

Anyway, the point is, new year, new blog and what that will bring I'm not sure at this point. I would like to build a readership, even if it is a small one, but who wants to read my random ramblings really? Also, I think a blog should be useful for something, and by that I mean more than just getting a grade in class.

For now I'm still at a stalemate, but be ready for some random!