The first part of my spring break was spent in Tallahassee, which was busy busy busy! But, I got to spend time with my family and my friends. It is always so nice to spend time with my family especially after having gone so long without being with them. Those who know me well know that I love me some good quality family time! I spent a little more than a month away from home which is the longest I have gone without being in Tallahassee. I also got to see some of my closest friends, whose names I won't mention for privacy's sake, but they all know who they are. It was so cool to be able to catch up with my friends and see how far they have come in the past year and seeing all that they have accomplished, and getting some way overdue quality time with them. I love my friends!
One of the highlights of my Tallahassee time was going to Lincoln High School's FCA meeting on Thursday. Last year was a turning point for FCA, and God really grew the program on campus. It was so neat to see how God took the hearts of a few willing students, and grew the organization to what it was at the end of last year. To go back and see just how strong the FCA group still is on campus made me proud of my fellow former FCA leaders, and of the FCA leaders serving now. God is certainly with them, he is using them to change the campus, and it makes me so proud to see what they are doing today! I am so proud of all of them!
After going to Tallahassee, I went back to Pensacola to embark on a SROWtally awesome experience with my fellow OL's! The entire Orientation staff went to the Southern Regional Orientation Workshop to be educated in the art of Orientation Leading. I learned so much and had such a good time bonding with the staff, who I consider to be some of my closest friends! I learned so much while at SROW, but one of the things I learned that I will never forget, was actually taught to me by the University of New Orleans. The University of New Orleans had a workshop on servant leadership, which I had learned about in church multiple times, but this workshop put a different spin on it, specifically geared towards Orientation and things of that nature. The person putting on the workshop said that servant leadership was "leading so that others may lead." I had never heard it put that way before. I knew servant leadership was putting others before yourself, which is something I had always been taught, but I guess I had never thought of it in that way before. I will never forget that, and will try to apply this to many areas of my life, not just orientation.
Spending this past weekend with my Orientation family was so much fun, and I feel like I got to know each and every staff member so much better. It is so cool to see how our different talents mesh together, and see all the different things each person brings to the table. The keynote speaker at SROW said that he applied the philosophy of finding the rock star in every person that he meets, and let me just say that each person on staff has that inner rock star. They are all so amazing in different ways, and everyone is so unique! Sorry if this is getting cliche, but I can't help but love each and every one of them!
So anyways, onto the gym and fitness stuff. This past week has had it's good moments and bad moments. This week I didn't work out very much, but the amount of walking and dancing that I did at SROW was more than enough to count for daily workouts. There was only one day this week that I was actually out there running, and I made it to about half of a 5k without stopping. This makes me kind of nervous, because my 5k is only 11 days away, but it isn't going to stop me from trying. I am going to push myself to finish, but I am also going to be careful to listen to what my body may be telling me while I run at the same time. I don't want to end up hurting myself by pushing myself to hard, but I am going to try! So at some point today I am going to get out and run and see how far I make it. I have started to enjoy running outside versus inside, so it looks like some of y'all reading my be seeing me running around campus some these next few weeks!
My eating has still been not that great lately, I am allowing myself to cheat too much, and I am really going to have to focus on what I am putting in my body. I used to use my fitness pal to track what I eat so I don't overdo it, but I stopped using it when I got sick at the beginning of the semester, so it looks like I am going to start using it again because I can tell that I haven't been losing weight like I was in January. Which also means I am going to have to start running more often if I want to start losing again.
Something I want to reiterate is that I am not trying to lose weight because I don't love myself, I want to lose because I DO love myself. I was talking to my Mom recently about all of it, and I remember the night that I started to spiral out of control with my eating. I remember that one night before school, I packed my lunch and put it in my backpack, and took my back pack to my room with me. I remember being sad that night, and as I was reading my book I remember eating something out of my bag, and before I knew if, I had eaten the whole lunch I had prepared for the next day. For a long time after that, I would do that every night, and then in the mornings pack some more food for my lunch that day. I remember that when that started happening, I didn't see much value in myself, but now, I know that I have value. And that's why I am trying be healthier.
As far as my spiritual life goes, it has been going really well this past week. For those of you who know me well, you know that my faith is a big part of who I am. This past week I spent some time with one of my best friends Emily (who gave me permission to use her name in my blog) out at the green way back in Tallahassee. By the way, that is on fire for God! I learned about all of the things that she is doing around Tallahassee, and it is crazy to see what God is doing through her, and homegirl is only a junior in high school! I am so proud of how far she has come and of the person she is today! She made me realize what was keeping me from rekindling my relationship with God. I had lost sight of how much God loves me. I think as Christians it is so easy to see our relationship with God as a formula, if I do x amount of this, and y amount of this, then I can get my relationship with God back on the right track, and that's not how it works. I know for me I was trying to earn God's love, which was against everything I have ever been taught, which is why it surprised me when I realized that was what was wrong. Emily reminded me that no matter what I do God still loves me, and just because I began to stray away doesn't mean I have to earn his love back. I think that's another reason why Christians struggle in their faith too. On earth, their is no one who loves unconditionally. When we go through lulls in our spiritual life I think people think we have to climb back up the spiritual ladder. But the whole point of Christianity is that we don't have a ladder we have to climb up, God takes us as we are BECAUSE he loves us unconditionally. It took me aback when I realized I had forgotten one of the most important components of my relationship with God. I also realized that when I talked to God, I tried to bring my past with me. At Camp WorldLight this past summer, one of the thing we taught our campers was that we didn't have to carry around burdens from our past any more, and we had the campers carry around a bag that had a wooden block in it the whole night, and they weren't allowed to let go of it. Then after the activity was finished, we would take the wood block from them and give them a gift box with nothing inside of it, demonstrating that God takes our burdens and our past and our sins away so that we can be free from them, and that we don't have to carry them around anymore. And just this past week, 8 months after camp was over, here I was, carrying this bag around with me.Talk about not taking your own advice! So this past week has been all about God taking this block from me and giving me the gift of nothing in return, and it's going pretty swell so far.
So this blog was rrreeeaalllyyy long and at some parts cheesey, but I appreciate you bearing with me! See you next week!
Wait a second here, you came to Tally, but didn't come to Doggie Dayz?! For shame! Just kidding, I'm glad you had a good spring break. :)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, if you are short on time, but need to work out to lose weight, do body weight exercises instead of running. Nothing tones the body like burpees. Nothing hurts quite as acutely either, lol.
I love that wooden block illustration by the way, I'm so stealing that.