It's definitely really weird to see people packing up around campus getting ready to go home, or wherever it is they're headed. I feel like I've only just gotten started here in Nashville; there's no way I'm ready to be 1/4th done with school. This year's definitely been long and winding; a month ago I thought for sure that I'd be living in Nashville with people that I've come to love and a job that would have been so easy for me to pour into***. Now nothing's certain...all I know is I'm coming home.
It's definitely hard to honestly and truly believe that God has a plan in all of these things that seem like failures, according to my own expectations. That's the funny thing about our own expectations; we write our own realities based on expectations that we've found hope for, and when things don't match up it can get really frustrating. In some sense I feel like not working for a Non=Profit Organization and successfully living away from home this summer invalidates everything I've learned at Vanderbilt this year, but that's so not true!
The attention and time that God's put into my life this year at school has taken me so far in my relationship with Him and I've been able to grow so much just from being here and sharing life with the people I've met. A part of me really thinks that if this were to be my only year at Vanderbilt, it would have been enough. It's definitely looming in the back of my head that I might be going home for good this summer, and I try to find the good in my situation all the time. Like I said, it's definitely hard to believe enough in God's sovereign power to truly have joy in my own uncertainty.
One thing that is for certain, though, is that I have to come home this summer with at least one thing in mind: a search for discipline. Living on campus and just being at Vanderbilt in general has shown me how much I need to have discipline in my life, with God and in the way I live my day-to-day life. It's amazing how far I've gotten without any form of discipline in my life before. I guess I've just never had to realize any real struggles with life before. Doing school, having intentionality in my relationship with God, none of this involved any sort of purposed effort from me to be regular about it. It's only now that I've been here that I've realized the lack of any sort of foundation in my life in that area. I know that God's taking me home this summer to be in a place where I can safely explore discipline with Him.
That's what this blog is for. I want to update this on a regular basis and just put down my thoughts on this whole idea; what does it mean to truly be "disciplined" and how does that look in my life? Hopefully this will help me to really think through my search so I can bring real thoughts and questions up with God.
This is all about me having a constantly correct view of God, and having that take apart my own sense of entitlement and expectations. This is about realizing a thirst for discipline that comes from knowing I am not my own, but am to be poured out as an offering to an amazing God. Hopefully there will be joys, struggles, and many many pictures to be shared. I don't know what my summer "plans" are, but then again maybe that's all the more helpful in getting me to disregard my own expectations.
In awe of the rain that is currently flooding Nashville outside my window,
Brian
*** When did it become easy to pour into stuff anyways? You can be passionate about stuff but the idea of "pouring yourself out" doesn't exactly paint a picture of ease. When Christ poured himself out for our salvation, and when Paul made himself a drink offering to be poured out for God's glory, there was no ease in any of that. I want to be a little more involved, and to have to really go out of my own comfort zone, to pour myself out in the outlets of my life and the work that God has planned for me.
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