The Very Thing I Hate.

"Every day the choices you make say

What you are and Who your heart beats for"

I am a sinner. After so many years of going to church and being saved I forget that. Not that I think I am perfect, but I consider myself to be somewhat mature. I've studied God's Word, not like I know everything, but I know how to study it. I struggle with things, but it always seems to be inside of me, personal. I guess I kind of pride myself with being able to hide my emotions well. Pastor Randy once told me to have a few close friends and only break down among those few. I think I do that. I struggle with things, but they are never really evident outside things. Except this...
The other day I realized what an unproductive day I had. I talk to people and tell them that I am busy all the time. A good busy. Then I realized any free time I had was mostly wasted. I have a problem. I was reading 2 Peter 1. This chapter contains a list of fruits or evident things in a believer's life that would show they are walking with the Lord. I read them and evaluated myself on each one.
Fail: Self control aka impulse mastery. It's the 5th one on the list. Because I choose to waste time or lie around, I am hurting myself. I need to be decisive and make a choice that glorifies God. So at the end of the day I can say, Lord I spent this amount of time talking to You or I told someone else about You or I spent this time in Your Word. I will have to answer for it all. Every second that God gave me. And with that in mind, there is an urgency to settle this issue and be the light that I need to be in this dark world.
Romans 7 verses 15 and 19 have been on my mind a lot. This is exactly how I feel. The good I want to do is not what I do. Which means...I am a sinner through and through. It is only by Christ's death and resurrection that I am able to be fully accepted.
*Lord, give me the strength to do what You have called me to do. Let it ALL bring glory to You.*

Our Recent Adventure

My family and I made it to PA on Sunday, around 3 in the afternoon. What does that mean and why should you care? Well, we left on early Saturday morning at 1:30. Normally the trip takes about 21 hours or so, but this trip was like any other we have ever taken. Let me set the scene up for you and then go into the details.

Picture this: 2 parents. One is driving and only slept a little on Friday night to "get him going" on our straight through no stopping to sleep trip. 4 kids. They all get along, quite well, but after awhile can get restless. 1 Yukon. Exactly like a suburban holds 9, but with all of our stuff, it felt like more. 1 trailer. Weighs the car down and holds all of our luggage and presents. No visibility out the back window.

Alright so here is what happened: Most of us slept through the morning, dad drove and we were on our way. We reached South Carolina in 8 hours, making pretty good time. We stop to eat. Get back on the road and sit in stop and go traffic for an hour. Then we hit snow. Lots and lots of snow. North Carolina was beautiful. Then we hit VIRGINIA! This is our most hated state, sorry Lindsey. It takes 5 hours or so to pass through. The scenery was lovely, but the roads were getting bad. After dinner, around 5:30, we get back on the road. We were in stop and go traffic for 4 hours.

*At this point you are probably saying, man that sounds awful, poor Eshelmans. WRONG!!!! There is so much more.*

We called our grandparents and said, we are about 5 hours away, expect us around 3 in the morning. O that we were so lucky. At around 11 the roads got exceptionally awful. I was texting Shaheen and asking her to pray because with a trailer and precious cargo, it was getting a little scary. Then we stopped. Complete stop in the middle of the interstate. Apparently a tractor trailer had jack-knifed about 1/4 mile in front of us. So, everyone, including us, turned off the cars and waited. Then as time wore on, people started to go to sleep. It was late so it's understandable.

Me, being the kind person that I am. I volunteered to be the look-out. I had slept ALL day so I said I would let my dad know when we started moving. He slept along with everyone else in the car. We turned on the car every hour or so, to let the heat run and thus warm our freezing little Florida bodies.

1 o'clock, no movement. 3 o'clock, nothing. 5:30, nothing. Okay, we've got to start moving soon. We've been sitting there for about 6 hours. 7 o'clock. Sunrise, someone comes to our door and says, try to make it on the shoulder of the road. The roads are CLEAR but all the truck drivers have fallen asleep and have been sleeping all night! Are you kidding me! We were stuck for so long. Almost 9 hours to be exact and everyone just didn't wake up. Come on.

So, we left. The roads were still awful and we found a place to eat breakfast around 10. Still in Virginia, the worst state ever in my humble opinion. Then we got back on the road and arrived around 3 in the afternoon.

What a trip! My family has now survived blizzard/snowy conditions. Yuck.

Sorry this is so long and I hoped you enjoyed my summary of our adventure. We will be telling this story for months to come. Ha. :)

Just a few statistics from our trip.

My mom figured out that we went 71 miles in 11 hours.

The average temperature was around 30 degrees, and we were sitting in the car...freezing. God bless heating in a car.

Number of layers I had on during the night: 1 shirt, 2 jackets, one blanket, gloves, socks and shoes. Lovely.

All in all though, praise God that we made it here safely and that we had fun doing it. I don't know if I could have made this trip with anyone else. Ask Shane about our "Let us move" song at 5:30 in the morning. (It's a variation of "Let it snow") He loved it.

Faith

Tonight, I was listening to my brother's iPod. Along came the song, I will rise by Chris Tomlin. I love this song. I really liked it when it first came out, but it recently took on a sad connotation. This song was the final song played at my Pap's funeral in July. It was a really appropriate song though.

Anyways, so tonight I heard it and I was a little sad, but one of the lines really stood out to me. The line says, 'my faith shall be my eyes'. I love that. Faith is seeing things as God says they are, and not how I think they are. Literally taking my faith and belief in the God of the Universe and using that to see everything. Every person who I encounter, every situation that I am placed in, every thought that I have... it is all supposed to be looked at with God's view in mind. I need to see sin as sin. I need to see that person that might annoy me as a lost person who needs a Savior. I need to take my thoughts and hold them captive so that they will be pleasing to my Lord.

It is so cool to me when God speaks to my heart at a weird time. For instance, I was not so much of a happy camper this evening. My plan: just put Shane's ipod in on the ride home and sulk. That's right, I wanted to think about why I was mad and why I had the right to be. It was awesome that God had other plans though. He took that anger, which was sin, and turned it into me learning something about not only me, but about a principle that I should apply everyday.

I have noticed that I write about mainly songs or what other people say that impacted me. In the very beginning of GCBI, when I made this blog, I started out with the Word. I want to get back to that. Not that I think songs or other stuff like that is bad, but I want to have my foundation in the love letter that my Creator has for me. So, I will hopefully be putting up a blog that is about what I have been reading and studying.

More to come...Daniel 3 probably. I love that chapter. Read it. :)

Love

Bring us love, You who are love
Bring us peace, You who are peace
We need love, O divine love
We need your peace, Your merciful peace
-David Crowder Band

Tonight, as we had worship at youth group, I thought about how much God loves me. It was so nice to just stop and in the middle of my hectic schedule to recognize that God's love is all I need. I don't know exactly what my future looks like and it is scary, but at the same time I can sit here and say, yeah, God hasn't told me anything about my life other than my profession, but it's okay. I know He loves me and has a plan. That is so comforting. When I am stressed because I feel like He is being silent, I can rest in the fact that He loves me. I do not need all the answers, although I wish I had them all at times, but I know that He has a plan. And His plan is exactly the one I want to follow.
He is jealous for me, just like the song says. He loves me enough that even though I run from Him and do not always obey, He will always take me back while I have tears streaming down my face. His love is relentless, His lovingkindness lasts forever.

Chinese

Tonight Shane and I had Chinese take-out. I do not believe in the fortune cookies, but they crack me up. My favorite, hands down is the one I got tonight.

"To lower your stress level, get a cat."

How did we get here?

I work at my church's daycare. And I love it. I started about a month ago. Recently I ordered three CDs from Amazon.com. When I first get a CD, I like to listen to it everywhere I go. The perfect amount of listening is when I can sing along and know some of the words. I am not at that point yet with my new CDs. So how do these two facts coincide? I have been bringing the CDs to work. I love putting them in and watching as the little one year olds start dancing to David Crowder. As I was laughing and nodding my head along, I thought to myself...how do we get to this point? When is it in life that we just stop dancing? These little kids around me were loving life and moving along to the beat of the song. Why is it that teens or adults don't do that? What happened that made us stop being so free? It made me think of that song from Fee, I am free. One of the lines in that song says, I am free to dance. To me, dancing is just a letting go. A chance to let loose whatever is holding us back. I don't know if any of these thoughts make sense or how they go together, but I was thinking about the simplicity of these little boys and how I, at 19 years old, am missing that. All this to say, life is short. Sometimes you just have to be a little wild and not so serious. So next time when those little one year olds dance to my David Crowder CD, I think I will be dancing right along with them.

Speech Class

So, today in my speech class, we had to do a journal entry. The one question we had to answer was, Who am I? That was it. We had five minutes to answer that question. I didn't really think about what I was writing until the end when I reviewed it. Here it is:

I am the daughter of the King, I am His being loved child. I am a girl who is sometimes insecure, but is then able to recognize my identity in Him. I am stubborn and extroverted. I tend to be shy in situations that are new or uncomfortable. I am a good listener and somewhat of a hard worker. I am a good student, although I procrastinate. I love my family, but don't always act like it. I am organized in my own unorganized way. I live for my Creator, knowing that He loves me and that is all I need.

When I got done and time was up. I looked at it and all I could think about was how thankful I was that I didn't describe myself in a negative way. A few years ago and maybe even recently too, I would have put some negative things about my appearance or personality. But instead I was able to see how God views me. I was able to see that I knew my identity was in Him and that He valued me. It was so refreshing to see that. I know that I have flaws and that I am far from perfect. I have so much more to learn in my walk with God, but it is refreshing to look in the mirror and know that I am loved more then I will ever know.
A little while ago, my friend and I were talking about how some preachers have their own overall message they want to portray to people. I know that I am not a preacher, nor will I ever be, but if I had to choose something that I would talk to people about if given the chance, it would probably be self worth and identity. I write about it so much on this blog (even though know one reads it), it is so important to me. I pray that I will always be able to see who I am in Christ and in that, I will be able to help others who might struggle with that as well.

p.s. The picture up top is a painting by Norman Rockwell, that I really like.