Overcoming My Struggles (2017 year reflection)

Backstory: This year I want to start journaling and praying more to God. I started doing the journal challenge started by Heather Lindsey. Basically what you do is pray. After praying start journaling your prayer in a notebook and reflecting on your prayer.

     My prayer today was my annual year reflection prayer. I started out the prayer by talking about my day and some of my fears for 2018. Then I confessed my sins from 2017 and asked for a fresh start. By doing that I was able to clear out any shame leftover from sins and really just give all of them to God.
     The reason why I’m writing this blog is to talk about trying to overcome my struggles. 2017 for me was a year full of losses in all aspects of my life. When God said that humans were going to face trails in their lives he was not playing because I was going through it. 2017 hands down was the worst year for me post the domestic violence era. I had lost a lot of friendships; I was financially unstable, hungry, stressed with UKs tomfoolery, the whole 10 yards. I lost all hope; well at least I thought I did until I started looking up scriptures to help me with my journaling.
     I am not a bible reader, bible thumper, or church goer but when I do need some extra help through hard times I tend to look up what the bible says. I felt fear when reflecting 2017 and thinking about how this next year is going to go. I had also taken my first L of the year so I was really on edge because I didn’t want to repeat the same year over. In September I lost hope because not only was I in a spiritual rut but I wasn’t prepared for an extra semester at UK and I was also going through personal stuff. I started going to the counseling center to get help but all the guy would do is stare at me and ask me questions about my family and friends. I got no meaniful advice from him besides that a lot of people use me and that I shouldn’t be friends with certain people. Being a “newly born” Christian, all I could have was hope that everything was going to be ok.

I don’t know much about Gods love or really anything about God, so when I looked up scripture on “hope” and “fear” I was shocked to learn that God says comforting things. I always thought that God was mad at us for bringing sin into the world. I learned through bible study that the bible is the word of God so maybe I need to start reading it more when I have emotions that I can’t shake off because Isaiah 41:13 says For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you. I feared about my finances, I feared about school, I feared about being hungry, my grandfather’s health. Every day I feared about something and everyday God has helped me overcome those fears. When I couldn't afford to get food, someone from work would ask if I could cover their shift and boom free dinner. When I feared about my bills piling up, I always had just enough money to pay them. When I feared about my grandad he would give me a call. God has always been there and I’m just not noticing it.

Another struggle that I’ve faced that I am trying to fully overcome is not being quarrelsome. I was reflecting on 2017 but when I thought about my college years in general, 2015-2016 Tina were my most quarrelsome years. It seemed like to me people always had something to say about the way I looked, about my family/friends, or about my finances. I would always think why this person is picking on me when they have no room to talk about anyone. What baffled me the most were some of the friends I had back then would talk about me behind my back then come smiling in my face. So what did I do? Those years I would play along and be shady. I started treating people the way they treated me but it didn’t work. I lost a few friendships but what impacted me the most were people’s opinions of me. I found it extremely difficult to fit in on campus where one day people were cool and the next day they were shady.
I did stop being that mean eventually.  I realized that nothing on campus is worth being petty over and that I didn't want to be viewed as this mean person that some people saw me as. In 2016-2017 I started praying about me having mercy and grace. Even though I haven’t actually hurt anyone by my actions, I still felt bad about me acting mean in general. I knew that was a genuinely nice and caring person but I always kept getting hurt by my friends.
I was raised to love everyone but not everyone loved me. When people joked or picked on me I took it to heart because I would literally just be chilling and then I’ll look over and someone is pointing and snickering. I thought that going to college everyone was going to be mature and uplifting and I was hella wrong. So I started to “defend” myself by being shady, avoiding people associated with the people who wronged me, rolling my eyes, and starting dumb arguments. When looking at scripture I came upon James 1:19-21. My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Granted that I haven’t been like that since 2015-2016 and I have grown a lot since then but I still need guidance for when people try me. Just because I wasn’t physically being quarrelsome this past couple of years didn’t mean that I wouldn’t think that “dang this girl needs to get slapped” because I was. I would go home and pray about my thoughts sometimes but by me thing negatively about someone I still saw it as being quarrelsome and that is something that I wish to work on this year.

I constantly ask God to make me into the woman that he wants me to be and I do actually want to live a Christian lifestyle. To do that, I’m constantly questioning my motives and seeing how others view me. I learned in 2017 to stay out of drama, ignore foolishness, be righteous and, slow to speak. That I’m fully proud of but it doesn’t stop there. I feel like for me to become this godly woman I have to constantly grow and evolve. Like transforming from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Right now I’m most definitely in that cocoon stage. So this year in 2018 through times of adversity I now know that God is going to help me overcome it.....I didn’t mean for this to be this long. I’ll probably add pictures or gifs later to make it easier to read.