Going through Hard Times

Whatever we go through, be it good times or bad, there is nothing to fear for God is with us. God will be with us no matter what no matter the circumstances because He loves us and He won't leave us to face the situation alone. I know sometimes that it might feel like God isn't present when we need Him, but let me tell you something...that is a lie. He is always present even when we can't feel/sense Him because "he will never leave you nor forsake you" (Deuteronomy 31:6). When things get tough or hard to handle the thing you need to remember is that when you buckle down, ask for help, get your stuff together, etc something good will come out of it in the end. You might now believe it, but it is the truth because I have been there and I can honestly tell you that it will get better. Don't give up.

During my senior year of high school I was taking six classes. First semester sucked so bad because out of those six classes three of them were math related, one was an AP (advanced placement) English class, and the last two were Choir and Aerobics. I'm not that good at math and having to do three at once was horrible, but I had no choice if I wanted to graduate on time and that was going to happen no matter what. I had to do Geometry again because I failed it my sophomore year and I didn't know I had to retake it until almost the end of my junior year. During that time I was in the after school program, so I figured that I would do credit recovery during that time. I quickly realized that I wasn't going to finish on time, so I just said that I would take it as a class my senior year...Big mistake. I was the only senior in the entire class and the teacher wasn't really helpful to me. When exams at the end of the semester rolled around I passed the exam, but I had failed a midterm so I failed the class. I had to do credit recovery in order to get that credit because I needed it to graduate, so that is what I did.

The other two math classes I was taking first semester was my senior math class (Algebra 2b) and Personal Finance. Both of those were hard, but I did the best I could to try to pass them. I learned later that I needed to pass only one of those to be able to graduate, but that is beside the point now. On top of that I had an AP English class where I had to do a lot of essays. Essays are something I struggled with even in college and I was not looking forward to doing them. I got one A out of all the essays that we did and it was the last essay of the school year. On top of all this crazy Aerobics was okay and Choir just added to the crazy that was my senior year because of all the rehearsals and concerts that I had to do. I was still doing credit recovery as well and it wasn't going all that well for me because I kept on procrastinating with it even though I knew that I had to finish it to get the credit. Towards the end when the seniors' last day was approaching one of the English teachers stepped in to help me finish it on time. At my high school when it is the seniors last day there is a time that is projected on the projectors scattered around the cafeteria and when it hits zero there is a paper toss. I was working on finishing credit recovery with the English teacher and I finished when there was eight minutes left on the timer.

The only thing that had me worried was rather or not I passed the classes that I had to pass in order to graduate, so I had emailed my counselor about it, He told me to email him at the end of the week because that was when he would have the final list of who made it or not, so the day came and I emailed him. The only other person who was home was my mom because my younger siblings still had school and my dad was at work, so my mom was the first one to find out. My counselor emailed me back shortly after and said that....I was all set to graduate. I freaked out and ran out to the living room to tell my mom, but I had to wait a minute when I got out there because she was on the phone.

That year was so difficult to get through that it was hard for me to stay optimistic, but I kept on telling myself that I was going to graduate (it became my mantra after awhile) that I started to believe it and I worked really hard to it. I preserved through the hard work that I received my diploma on graduation day. I didn't give up and because I didn't give up something good came out of it. Anything that you are struggling with, whether its something simple as getting through school to an addiction of some kind, know that if you work hard while going above and beyond to overcoming that struggle without giving up something good with be waiting on the other side. Throughout that fight that you are fighting: remember that you are not alone and that God will be with you every step of the way.

The Power of Friendship

Friends are those who mean a lot to me and I will be there for them through anything that they might be going through. One such person is someone who I met three years ago during our Freshman year of College. Now this girl has been through a lot growing up all the way to now and I have been there for her when she needed someone to talk to or rant to because that is the person I am. I have learned a lot from her and I have also learned when to take a step back to give her space when she needs it.

I remember one time during college I went to go down to her room to ask her something and when I got there I noticed that the door was locked. She always has the door unlocked and allows me to just walk in when it is unlocked (the only times she actually locked it was when she had to leave campus and when she went to bed at night), but I realized that something might have happened for it to be locked during the day so I just walked away instead of trying to get her to open the door because I knew that I wasn't going to push anything till she wanted to talk.

God has been a huge part of our friendship because we both believe that He brought us together and it ended up being just that. There have been a handful of times where we would have hours of, what we called, God talks and they were always really deep when they happened. Sometimes we will be having a regular conversation and then somehow it will turn into a talk about God without either us knowing about it.

One time we were sitting in her doorway towards the end of the school year talking about things and then it turned into talking about Sin. It started to really mess with her and I ended up showing her a clip from the movie War Room when the character Elizabeth was telling Satan to leave her house and her family alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk_m7HUoaUA&t=68s

We shut the door to go in the room because she didn't want to have the conversation in the hallway anymore. After the clip ended we talked about how powerful that scene is and how it made us feel. We also discussed the analogy between God + Satan and what it "feels like" being stuck between the two. It is like the game of Tug-of-War in the sense that we want or need to follow God, but the temptation of Satan/sinning is also present and we are being pulled in two different directions.

There has been days when we weren't talking about serious stuff and we were just having fun. Like one time we were going to the movies, but we didn't want to buy popcorn there because it was expensive. We decided to go buy two big bags of Brim's popcorn instead, so we can sneak it in. The problem was how to transport it without getting caught, but it was proving difficult. Finally she just gave up, emptied her purse of everything, and then just dumped the popcorn in her purse. It worked and nobody knew what we did.

Another time I was going to go with her to her sister's basketball game with her brother and little cousin. We had to drop her sister off at the school and there was still time before we had to be at the place where the game was taking place at, so we decided to go McDonald's to eat. The McDonald's  we ended up going to had a play place in it and we played in it even though we were like nineteen at the time, but we didn't care because we just wanted to have fun.

She means a lot to me and our friendship is something I want to hold onto because we just get along so well. We can talk about anything with each other and we will listen to one another. I am blessed that God brought us together and I am sure that He has great things for us.