GOD! WHY AM I STILL ALONE! WHY ARE YOU PUTTING ME THROUGH THIS! WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME SUFFER! WHY ARE YOU LETTING EVERYBODY GET MARRIED RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE!

Your heart is broken and you're wondering
What you can do to ease the hurt and pain you feel
You're letting these no ones get in closer
Than they need to cause you're lookin' for love
Oh, I've got a feeling that no one's told you
No one has bothered at all to give you what you need
And so you're out searchin' for something to hold on to
But you don't know it's right there if you'd only see

Lookin' for love in all the wrong places
Just to find someone who can erase the
Hurt you feel, if you could you'd get a potion
The love of God flows deeper than an ocean
Lookin' for love you know that I can show you
'Cause what I found goes on and on and on
And you never have to worry 'bout it bein' gone

You're on your own now, doing your own thing
Say you don't need nobody's help to make it through
(But you're really wasting you're time) You're still lonely
(And you know that you're gonna find) That you're only
Left more empty than you were before
Oh, but I'm telling you (Oh, you don't have to look around)
Let me tell you 'bout the love that I have found
Everything that your heart needs is just right here
Right here waiting
No, you don't have to look no more
Real love is knockin' on your door
Everything that your soul needs is just right here
Right here waiting for you

Oh my friend I'm telling you,
I've been there myself a time or two
When I was just running round
To find peace for my heart that was beaten down
There's something you need to see
The One who made you loves you, please believe
He's all you need to get by
You know you're somebody so tell me why you're...

{sigh} I'm being told quietly that I need to learn to rely on God as my sole foundation. Let me tell you, that is a hard lesson to learn at this age. :( I feel like I'm taking teeny tiny baby steps toward it, or not moving at all. I guess it's just like a little kid. We humans get so stuck in the now, in seeing just what's in directly front of us and nothing else. A little girl learning to read will get frustrated because she can't learn a word on a page... In her frustration, she cries, "I can't read! I'm never going to learn!" She forgets about all she's learned already--for example, maybe she can't get this particular word, but only a year or two ago, she couldn't make sense of those marks on the page they call "letters" at all.

I really feel like that little girl right now. "GOD!" I say. "I'm never going to follow You and put You first in my life. I'm always going to be pining after somebody else to fill me. I just can't learn this stuff!" In reality, I've come quite a ways, but I sure can't see that at the moment.

Someone once said that if you feel like God is distant, guess who moved? (For the answer, see Deueteronomy 31:6, 31:8, Joshua 1:5, and Hebrews 13:5.)

I think my focus has gotten totally off of God... Despite the chapel sermons, daily devotions, Time Out messages, and Sunday School lessons, despite all the times I have been reminded to keep my focus on God. I've slipped off somehow. I could blame it on NNU. I could blame it on all the girls thinking they need to get married right now, even while taking 17+ credits and paying for school themselves.

Truth is, it's no one's fault but my own. I'm letting myself get distracted by all this love and romance going on. And though it hurts, there's a way to swing your focus in the midst of everything that's going on around you. I haven't discovered the secret yet, and I'm getting frustrated.

Now, back to little kids. What's amazing is that they keep trying. Have you ever watched a baby learning to walk? As young as they may be, they never give up.

And in the face of all my failures, because I am human, I am going to keep trying to learn that lesson that it seems I need to learn. My motivation at the present is wrong... Maybe if I learn to put God first, he'll marry me?? A little kid sometimes says, "Maybe if I keep trying to learn this word, Mom'll give me a chocolate bar?" But it's a starting place.

I don't know if this has been uplifting at all. It certainly hasn't been uplifting for me; more like reprimanding. But there's a verse in Hebrews. It goes: "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful." (Hebrews 12:11a) I'm smart enough to know that discipline is good for me, no matter how much I hate it. I'll just sit here and pout about having to learn a lesson until I'm over the frustration enough to pick up where I left off and start learning again.

Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths;
guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.

-Stephanie