I took on this pressure this year. The pressure was birthed from the insecurity I found myself having because I was that “stay at home” college student. I would see pictures of game days, or of the latest school event and with every picture I could feel myself beginning to doubt my choice of staying home more and more.
I admit, I can throw a pretty good filter on an instagram picture and make my life look like on a day-to-day basis that I am the most adventurous person in the world. But lets be real for a second, most days you are going to find me in tennis shoes, with my hair thrown on top of my head and doing the most normal things you could do in a day. But do I ever post stuff like that? No. Because I have felt this need to make people think I wasn’t some loser (sorry can’t think of any other word) that does nothing but go to school and come home, now granted I don’t do that, but I had to prove myself.
Sometimes I wonder.
I wonder if I am living life to the fullest.
But I learned really fast that out of all the wondering I was doing, none of it was wondering about what I should have be wondering about.
Wonder: to be curious to know something.
You see, the only thing we should wonder about is Jesus. The only thing we should desire to know is Jesus.
I went on the adventure of a lifetime this year. I skipped a week of class, oops, and jumped on a plane and found myself at the Grand Canyon. It’s one of those things that you see it in movies and pictures but when you see it in person it changes you. It was so breathtaking that it almost looked fake. As we hiked, hiked, and hiked some more I remember thinking to myself, “yep I am living life to the fullest.”
There is something about creation that does something to us. You know what I am talking about. We watch a sunset and we ask ourselves how people could ever doubt there is a God. We hike the Grand Canyon and remind ourselves that God is so much bigger than it all. But so rarely do we remind ourselves that out of all things in creation, the mountains, the seas, the waterfalls, the stars, God chose to make us in His image. We are His most beautiful creation. We surpass any place we go ever go see in the world.
I got a little side tracked there.
During our hike back up the canyon I struggled, to the point where I didn’t think I was going to make it back up to the top. I went from “I am living it up” to “I think I am going to die.” You probably think I am being dramatic but it was physically and mentally the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I kept asking the girl I was with, “where do we have to get to?” and she just kept telling me the top. But you couldn’t even see the top. I would make it around a corner and only be able to see the next corner. We hiked and hiked and hiked, and even when we got to the home stretch I couldn’t tell where the top was. When I got to the top I remember thinking…
[You never know what is around the corner. It could be everything. It could be nothing. It could be the top. It could be just another hill. But you keep putting one foot in front of the other and then before you know you look back and you have climbed a mountain.]
It didn’t matter how fast I moved, which wasn’t very fast. It didn’t matter if I sprinted to the top; all that mattered was that I kept moving. Walking with Jesus can be so hard sometimes, and Jesus made it so clear to me that day that He doesn’t care how fast or how slow we move, He just wants us to keep taking steps.
I love how the Lord works sometimes. I had just got back from a place where I really was posting instagram pictures that showed the world just how much I was living it up, and a place where I wasn’t wondering about any of those question I had been asking myself, but instead was just amazed by all that the Lord was teaching me. It was when I came back to the normal everyday life, when that pressure that was so heavy was released.
For ten weeks on Tuesday nights I did a bible study for senior girls. It was the last time we were going to be meeting, and we were sitting out under the stars as I prayed over them and the fulfillment that my heart felt was like nothing it had ever felt before. I knew that God was so graciously reminding as He has so many times that I am exactly where I am suppose to be, and I knew that in a way He was gently whispering into my ear, speaking over my life, and reminding me that living life to the fullest isn’t about how cool you can make yourself out on instagram, or being adventurous, or traveling the world… living life to the fullest is surrendering ourselves to live right in the middle of what the Lord’s will for our life is, because it is there that we find the satisfaction that nothing else will give us.
Friends, let me be the first to encourage you. The life that is watching Netflix on Friday nights is just as important, and significant as the person who is preaching to a crowd on a Friday night. God just wants a willing heart, a heart that will say “yes.” It is the little things, sending someone an encouraging text, asking someone to lunch, or just showing someone you care. It is the little things that you will find out are the big things. So don’t play the comparison game with your life. If you are living right where God wants you to be than you are living life to the fullest. He doesn’t care about the extravagance, He just cares you keep taking steps towards Him.
I am that girl who finds herself watching Netflix on Friday nights sometimes, but I know I am living right where I am suppose to be, and that is enough.
Jeremiah 33:16
“the motto for this city will be “God has set things right for us.”
Today, wonder not about anything but knowing Jesus more. Wonder not about “am I doing enough?” Wonder not dear friends, because God will set things right, and He will put you right where you are suppose to be, and it is there that you will be able to truly live.
Here is to not caring about how cool my life looks to instagram, and to resting firm in the fact that all I need to do is keep taking steps, because one day I am going to look back and see that I was climbing.
