Funerals and Rude People

You know how sometimes when you wake up you think wow today is just not going to be a good day, well that was my day yesterday. I'm not going to lie yesterday was a hard day. That morning I gave a tour to what seemed to be a girl who didn't really want to be there, and if you know me I'm really key about people being present when you're with me and she wasn't. It really made me feel like a bad tour guide because I was like "if I can't keep her attention am I doing a good enough job?". I also was coming back to work after being away for two weeks to finish out the summer and I felt like there was no way I was prepared for this tour. The fact of the matter was that it doesn't matter in the end if I gave a good tour or not, my job as a Christian was to show this girl the love of God on this campus and to be there for her if she did decide to come. That was hard for me to grasp because regardless of whether I was all there or not God was going to direct the steps in her life to where He wanted her to go SO IT DIDN'T MATTER HOW I WAS INVOLVED! I think this is such a hard concept for a lot of Christians to grasp including myself because we always want it to be about us. At church today Pastor Kenny Hall said, "there is a reason why there is an i in the middle of the world sin, it's because it's all selfishly motivated". 

A friend of mine who was older than me went home to be with the Lord yesterday and it wrecked me. She had children and was perfectly fine, but one day God just decided it was time for her to come home. This is kind of a sweet way to describe death, but for the realists like myself death sucks plain and simple. I'm not good with dealing with the pain whenever people die nor am I good with consoling others when people die because I don't have a reason for why God took them. It frustrates me to no end and I honestly have screamed, cried, and punched things trying to figure this out. But what I was really thinking about was why God would take them away from me. It didn't matter how other people were feeling, it simply mattered that I was hurting. 

Now I know that some of you are like "you have the right to grieve" or "It's okay to be sad" and you'd be right, however, it was wrong of me to every question God's intentions. I was using the i in sin. Although people don't have any idea why some bad things happen we have to understand that there is a bigger plan behind it all. He has a plan for your lives and like the verse that every single girl uses for their favorite bible verse:) Jeremiah 29:11 clearly says "He has plans for you to prosper, to give you a hope and a future". Be sad but also know that the bad days are just bad His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23) and cling to the hope that He is faithful and will be with you always.

May the peace and love of God be with you always,

Leah Carpenter