simplicity in this sea of confusion...

yeah, that pretty much describes my week. and i know it hasn't helped that...

*i can't sleep much/very long

*dining services food leaves quite a bit to be desired and my fridge is empty

*laundry and dirty dishes pile up faster than my roommate and i can keep up with

*my first test is tomorrow morning at 9:10 and i haven't started studying

*and it's a cascade of tests from there on out

*i spent 12 hours memorizing for my anatomy and physiology lab quiz today (worth only 15 points)

*and that will be the norm every week

*my parents are on a long-deserved cruise and out of email and cell phone reach

*the freshman girls' Bible study i am co-leading takes time to plan, go to leadership meeting, and then actually lead

*several of the girls in my dorm have come in my room and needed to talk

*my old friends keep asking me when we can do stuff together

*and relationships leave my head spinning and my heart confused...

i love my life. i love the craziness and the feeling of being needed and being an important part of my dorm and bible study. i love my friends and don't know what i would do without a ton of voicemails, texts, emails, and facebook messages. i love people. being with people. being there for people.

but some people are hard to figure out. they don't fit my box of what a "normal" guy or girl should do, say, or act like. and when they pop out of that mold that makes things rough.

see, i can handle a lot of things on my plate and the healthy-ish level of stress as long as i know my life is divided into little compartments which i can tackle one at a time or ignore until i need to/have the time and energy to handle it. but when things--and emotions--overflow the compartments and start leaking into other compartments and muddying those waters then i get overwhelmed.

and it's nothing in particular. it's a series of events that i couldn't even try to write out. a bunch of senarios and interactions and communications that weave the fabric of my life and are impossible to separate from each other.

thank goodness for my awesome girlie friends who know so much about me. the ones that don't let us get out of touch with each other so that when we see each other again we can ask what has happened in the last few days instead of the highlights of the entire summer or school year! the ones who get the "blow by blow" of my life. and are just as interested in it as i am! :-) the girls who tell me when to shut up and stop imagining life differently, the girls who tell me to face reality and laugh along with me at the curveballs life throws. and the girls who will silently pray and listen and understand and not try to solve anything.

that must be my main issue with the male population... and the tons of engineers that i seem to be surrounded by at school. they like to solve problems. anything in life, according to them, can be broken down into steps and be solved like a differential equation. but sometimes that's not what i want. if i could solve it i would have already!

a friend of mine who is a peer leader in the other freshman honors dorm stopped by my room monday afternoon and in the course of both of us preparing for our respective organization's bible studies she shared this with me from "My Utmost For His Highest" from September 14th. I couldn't say it better than Oswald Chambers does!

“Simplicity is the secret to seeing things clearly. A saint does not think clearly until a long time passes, but a saint ought to see clearly without any difficulty. You cannot think through spiritual confusion to make things clear; to make things clear, you must obey. In intellectual matters you can think things out, but in spiritual matters you will only think yourself into further wandering thoughts and more confusion. If there is something in your life upon which God has put His pressure, then obey Him in that matter. Bring all your arguments and "every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" regarding the matter, and everything will become as clear as daylight to you (2 Corinthians 10:5). Your reasoning capacity will come later, but reasoning is not how we see. We see like children, and when we try to be wise we see nothing (Matthew 11:25).

Even the very smallest thing that we allow in our lives that is not under the control of the Holy Spirit is completely sufficient to account for spiritual confusion, and spending all of our time thinking about it will still never make it clear. Spiritual confusion can only be conquered through obedience. As soon as we obey, we have discernment. This is humiliating, because when we are confused we know that the reason lies in the state of our mind. But when our natural power of sight is devoted and submitted in obedience to the Holy Spirit, it becomes the very power by which we perceive God’s will, and our entire life is kept in simplicity.” – My Utmost for His Highest, September 14