The fall quarter 2010 blog

I begin this blog by portraying a scene from halfway through the quarter that is reflective of it. I'm sitting on a curb in a deserted parking lot in a municipal park in the town of Ramona, about thirty minutes northeast of San Diego at the foothill of the mountains. There's various Little League games going on in the fields across the dry creek. But here, there's just an empty baseball field, an empty parking lot, run-down bathrooms... and nobody around. This scene happens at the end of 6th week.

Why am I here? I'm burned out and exhausted and I need to get away from things. I decide to get away from things for a day and to spend time with God in a place with no distractions. My time with God goes well.

Yes, this is a strange way to start off a quarterly blog, but I want to come back to this image later in this blog.

I already described the first part of this quarter in another blog, so I won't rehash it. I know I left some school stuff out of that one but oh well.

There was a lot of stuff going on in my life this quarter. Again, I won't repeat myself (if you missed my first blog, look for the one called "I'm Still Yours" in the archives), but basically it was school, other commitments, and various other stuff going on in my life.

The stress level remained high through 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th week. Finally, during 10th week, I finally buckled down and pulled three all-nighters in a row to finish the assignment that I had been putting off due to stress. I finished just in time to do slides for Upper Room's worship night. It's sure an experience trying to do slides on 2 hours of sleep.

I finished my final programming assignment Friday night and spent Saturday buying food and doing laundry and doing stuff that absolutely had to be done. Sunday I was burnt out and it was hard for me to study. I was physically, emotionally, and spiritually burnt out and I just wanted the quarter to be over and long gone.

But the quarter wasn't over. I still had three final exams left: advanced data structures, programming languages, and physics. For the first one I had to learn much of the material for the first time as I had been so exhausted that I couldn't pay attention in my 8 AM lecture. Studying for the second and third finals was a struggle and taking the second and third was a struggle. I somehow make it through the second final, which is basically a set of 6 or 7 fill-in-the-blank programming assignments. You ever get those days when you just want to leave and not finish the final? I definitely had that feeling. I spent the rest of the day in a daze and then forced myself to study for my Friday final on Thursday. Physics was another final that I just did not want to take because of my exhaustion. But somehow I put answers down and finished and laid low until Sunday night came and I took off to my home, just wanting to get away from everything.

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Psalm 23:6
6
Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me 
all the days of my life,
and I will live in the house of the Lord
 forever.

Psalm 105:8
He always stands by his covenant—
the commitment he made to a thousand generations.

Psalm 112:7-8
They do not fear bad news;
they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.
They are confident and fearless
and can face their foes triumphantly.

Psalm 138:8
The Lord will work out His plans for my life--for Your faithful love, O Lord, endures forever. Don't abandon me, for You made me.

As I've written in my blog before, I read through Psalms during summer and fall quarters. At this chaotic time in my life I was virtually forced to rely fully on God when I couldn't see what the next day would bring.

I relied on God throughout fall quarter and He taught me so many lessons through it. I'd like to return to the scene of the deserted parking lot in Ramona now. As I sat there all alone, away from distraction, I was able to reflect and see the ways that God was shaping me and developing me. I was able to fill an entire page in my prayer journal with all of the things that God had taught me during the course of the quarter.

I won't share all of them, but here are some that I wanted to share:
*Learning how to serve others without personal gain, even when it requires sacrifice, and even when completely burned out. This was definitely not an easy choice and it's still something I have to work on, but I'm a little better at it now.
*How to be an effective leader and confident in whatever I do.
*Giving myself away and fully trusting in God - living so on edge for Him that I need to trust in Him to come through to make everything work out for me. I read the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan over the summer and this was one of the major themes of the book. I began to learn what this truly means over the quarter as I had to trust Him so many times as I made sacrifices.
*Being honest, open, and real with others.
*Knowing that I am where God wants me to be.
*Making tough and unpopular decisions, and confronting people when necessary, yet with love.
*What it means to be passionate about God.
*The importance of having community and what it truly means to walk together as we seek to follow God. I know that God brought me to the community of Upper Room for a reason, and not just to fulfill a role in an organization but to take part in a community where I could show love to people and be given love and support in return.

So as I discovered at the end of the quarter, while I was at one of my weakest points physically and emotionally, spiritually I was at one of my strongest points ever.

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Today I was reminded of the song "Love Came Down" and this describes a lot of how I'm feeling right now.

If my heart is overwhelmed and I cannot hear your voice
I hold onto what is true, though I cannot see
If the storms of life they come, and the road ahead gets steep
I will lift these hands in faith, I will believe

I remind myself of all that you’ve done
And the life I have because of your son

Love came down and rescued me
Love came down and set me free
I am yours
I am forever yours
Mountain high or valley low
I sing out, remind my soul
I am yours
I am forever yours

When my heart is filled with hope, and every promise comes my way
When I feel your hands of grace, rest upon me
Staying desperate for you God, Staying humbled at your feet
I will lift these hands and praise, I will believe

I'll be honest. It's hard to trust God at a point where I cannot see what tomorrow will bring. But that's my only option at this point, and I know that God has come through for me in the past.

No, not everything is wonderful right now. My problems and stresses, while lesser right now, still exist. The events of fall quarter still are in my memory and still affect me. I still wonder if I could have done things differently and why God allowed all this to happen.

The only answer for the latter that comes to mind is James 1:2-4. "Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing."

I know that I have grown so much throughout this quarter, in fact, more than in the past two years of college combined. Yes, everything from the past quarter hurt and it still does. It will for a long time. I'd rather not go through it again. But in a way, it's good that it all happened because of how I grew from all these experiences and have become a better person out of all of it. I know God had His hand on this last quarter. I still struggle to understand why it all happened all at once, but I continue to trust that God is still in control and that He knows what He is doing.

If you've talked to me over the last few weeks you know that I've been reflecting a lot over the events of the last quarter quite a bit. I'm finally ready to move on from fall quarter and to winter quarter, which for some reason is always my strongest quarter spiritually for some reason and is always the most fun. Not sure why. But it is, and I hope that this year it will be the same.