-Exhausted-

In the past 60 hours, I've had 4.5 hours of sleep.

sick. why do college profs schedule half your tests and make almost every paper due in the same week? theology mid-term, LD test, CAC paper, LD paper, another LD paper, HJC test...all in one week. plus trying to do everything that I'll miss next week.

MISERY.

-Where I'm At-

I am stressed.
I am excited.
I am exhausted.
I am blessed.
I am ready to quit.
I am restored.
I am broken.
I am beautiful.
I am hurting.
I am held.
I am afraid.
I am secure.
I am nervous.
I am protected.
I am weak.
I am strengthened.
I am persecuted.
I am safe.
I am alone.
I am loved.
I am loved,
I am loved,
I am loved.

-So Close-

12 days.

I can't wait.

We're still over $7,000 short. I can't wait to see how the Lord is going to provide. This is such a challenging, heart-wrenching, stretching, growing, faith-building experience.

Satan does not want us on this trip. He's tried (and succeeded) to discourage my heart and my team's hearts so many times. He's thrown up countless road blocks. But my God has knocked all of them down. THROWN them down.

I can't wait to see the wait He provides this time.

-Provision-

My team is leaving for Italy in 15 days (wahoo!!). As of Friday, we still needed $13,000 for our trip. Rather scary. We were starting to feel a little more confident, though, because we had 2 fundraisers planned for this past weekend: Krispy Kremes and a can/bottle drive.

Saturday morning, I left school at 5:30 with three of my teammates. We followed our mapquest directions to a T and they sent us completely the wrong way. Lame.

We finally got to Krispy Kreme about 20 minutes late (good thing they give you a 1 hour window!). I walked up to the counter and explained that we were there to pick up our 150 dozen fundraising doughnuts. The lady disappeared to the back room, came back out and said "I'm sorry, we don't have an order for this morning."

Great.

After some communication with the general manager and the fundraising department, they told us they would make our doughnuts - but it would take about 2 hours. We said okay because we had no choice, but, in truth, we were a little disappointed because it meant we would lose out on our two biggest selling hours - 8 to 10am.

We got the doughnuts (which barely fit in my car) and drove back here. We get to our location and it's dumping rain. Here in Oregon, the rain has to be rather crazy for us natives to say that it's truly dumping. But we got set up anyway. We didn't sell anything for the first hour. By noon we'd only sold about 20 dozen doughnuts. Discouragement was setting in pretty heavy.

We came together as a team and prayed and when we said "Amen" there was a line of 4 cars waiting for doughnuts from us AND the rain had stopped.

Throughout the rest of the day, the rain pounded, the wind blew like crazy, we had hail, thunder, everything. The last 2 hours were sunny. We had 2 dozen doughnuts left so we decided to pack up and we'd try to sell the last 2 dozen here at school. One of the girls prayed right then and there that God would help us sell that last 2 dozen. No less than a minute later, someone pulls up and asks for 2 dozen doughnuts, if we have any left. Praise GOD! We made $600 from the sales and $300 in donations. $900 in 12 hours. Praise God!

Then Sunday we spent the day doing a can/bottle drive. I honestly didn't think we'd make much. At our meeting Sunday night, my treasurer and I counted the money and we made almost $400. Wow!

Then we gathered up everyone's support checks that they'd gotten throughout the past week and we had another $2,200.

So...in 2 days...God gave my team $3,500.

It was just so amazing to see all of the road blocks that Satan was throwing up in front of us (the doughnuts, getting lost, the horrible weather, discouragement) and watching our great God tear every one of them down.

SO COOL.

And then we had a meeting Sunday night and I had each of my teammates share something that God has taught them since starting the preparations for this trip. It was so cool to see how He is working in their hearts.

-Keep me Off-

I've been riding a roller coaster of misery for the past five years of my life.

I hate roller coasters. I throw up. I get horrible headaches. I cry. I'm miserable. The ups and downs and twists and turns ruin any ounce of joy I may have been feeling before climbing on the ride. The smart thing for me to do is to stay off the roller coaster completely. But say I get on it...when the car comes to the station at the end of the ride, I'm not going to say "that was terrible!! let's do it again!!", am I? No, I'm going to jump out of that car as fast as I can!

Why don't do I do that with my life? I hate a lot of the way my life looks. I want to throw up when I look at it. It gives me a headache. I cry. I'm miserable. The ups and downs and twists and turns ruin any ounce of joy that I have. And yet I stay on the ride. I get to the station feeling miserable, and I have every opportunity to jump off that roller coaster, and yet I stay on for another ride. I get even more miserable. I come to the station. I say "let's go again!". The ride is worse every time. I get to the station feeling worse and worse every time. Through every ride I say "this is the time I'll get off!". I get to the station and I stay in the car. Every once in a while I'll jump out of the car...but I'll get right back in before the ride starts. I can't stay away. The Station Master watches with sad eyes as He sees my misery deepen. He asks me on every trip around if I'm ready to get off yet, and I just shake my head. No, Station Master, let me go again. He lets me.

I'm back at the station and I'm getting off the ride.

This time it's going to be different. I'm begging the Station Master to not let me get back on. Whatever it takes, Station Master, restrain me. Keep me off. No matter how much I scream and cry and kick and fight to get back on, keep me off. I know it's going to hurt and it's going to be uncomfortable, Station Master, but it's what I need. I'm tired of feeling sick and miserable. I'm tired of crying. So keep me off.