The Zone of Comfort: My Dream(s)

I was thrown out of my comfort zone a while ago. Landed right on my butt.

Reminds me of the time I was in Port A for summer camp and one of the counselors ideas for "an awesome game" was putting a bunch of sun burned girls in a circle on the beach and said "fight".  Well, females are vicious.  I remember being grabbed by 4 girls and thrown out of the circle onto the sand.

Pardon my digression, but that was basically the way I exited my "zone of comfort".  I have vowed never to return.  I know that if I do, I'll become comfortable again and I can't have that.   Comfort is not key.  Unless you're sleeping or taking the PSAT.

I realized that there I things I want to accomplish, dreams I want to see become reality, adventures I want to create and a life I want to explore.  I can't do that if I'm afraid to walk out of my house.

If I had it my way, I'd still be at Geneva.  I'd still be quiet, awkward and would much rather prefer to be in places that are familiar rather than not.  But I gave myself one of those harsh self talks and I concluded that quiet, awkward people never get anywhere in life.  I had to walk outside that door and keep walking, while promising myself to never look back.  It's been a journey, but seeing where I am now.. I wouldn't trade the trials I faced and discomfort I experienced for anything in the world.  They challenged and grew me in certain areas making me who I am now.

So here are my dreams, it is my hope that I can accomplish most of these someday:

~To learn at least 3 foreign languages by the time I graduate highschool.  (Spanish, French and Italian)
~ Graduate college by 23
~Live in England for half a year while Attending L'abri (Francis Schaeffer Academy)
~Attend Summit Academy this summer for two weeks
~Become an intern for Teen Pact.
~Work with the Heritage Foundation
~Live in New York for a year while working at a large journalism company.
~Travel the world.
~Go sky diving and scuba diving
~Go to Nationals in NCFCA
~Become a professional barrel racer
~Start my own company
~Work with escaped/rescued sex trafficking victims.
~Live in Ireland
~Marry someone completely amazing, who's love for God far surpasses his love for me and have him come on some of my adventures with me and most of all be my best friend.


So that's what my list looks like now.  I could do none of these if the Lord and my family had prodded me out of my comfort zone.  Well, more like cattle prodded me out.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. 

Who's first? God or football?

Kids really do say the darndest things.  While sometimes it's just plain funny, other times it conveys a sort of thought provoking meaning without the realization of it.

For example,

In our family it is our goal and our duty to feed a love and a fear of God, above all else.  As humans, our selfish desires can sometimes become a barrier between us and this goal. But we must keep forward, fighting back these desires with the word of God.  Remember that he comes first and foremost in all things. Jordan is sometimes my biggest reminder of this.  There have been a few times where I have approached my sister with an "I love you" and in turn, she replies with, "I love God more".  At these specific moments I always find myself laughing at her sheer innocence and again replying to her with, "good, I'm glad, but I still love you." I didn't really think much about it until yesterday when the underlying meaning of this statement popped out at me.  Why was I randomly thinking of this? I'm not entirely sure; thoughts buzz through my head at high speeds everyday.  But this is what came to mind.. Do we really always put God first? 

I often have to remind myself of my priorities, mainly because life has it's own special way of..well.. getting in the way.  God is always first, my duty to him as a servant and a fisher of men.  Next comes my undying duty to my family, always loving, serving and defending them.  Then comes my friends.  Next, my education and so on.  While all these things rate high on my list of importance, nothing should come higher than God.  Keeping God first all the time is certainly not an easy task; it requires perseverance, faith and trust.  The world will barge in and try to convince you of it's necessity or it's importance.  What will you do?  Give in and give it the highest spot?  Or push it aside?  Because Christ died for us, it is our duty to in turn, give our lives to him.  And we don't do this by disregarding him for other things that only seem more important at the time. We do this with the realization that He is the Lord our God, above him there is no other.   While we can't be perfect, we must try.  We are called to be like Jesus. 

Remind yourself daily, and even numerous times throughout the day that God comes first. 

We praise Him when we win, and we praise Him when we lose.

Small side note before we begin: This is my second year of Speech and Debate.  Now, moving on.

At the beginning of this competition season I really only had one goal, and that was to make it to Regionals in something.  With this is mind, I began preparation.  Over the summer I had read "Do Hard Things" and from this book came my inspiration for my next Persuasive speech.  I wrote the very first draft this summer in a speech and debate camp, and presented it there.  After getting a lot of good compliments and feedback on this speech I decided it was a keeper.  I competed with it in the first STOA tournament of the year in New Braunfels. I ended up placing 8th with it and this is when I knew that this.. was the speech for me. 

At the beginning of the new year we had the first NCFCA tournament.  Most commonly referred to as the Houston January Warm- Up.  Here I actually qualified for Regionals, and I was totally amazed and completely grateful.  To be honest, I thought my qualifying for Regionals would be much harder than this, so you can imagine my surprise.  Over the course of the next few tournaments I found that I continued being successful with my speech.  This is when I realized that this speech had been for a reason, the Lord had given me this initial idea for a reason.  I haven't gotten 1st place with it, 2nd place or even third place but that's not what I'm concerned with. The Lord helped me to achieve my goal, and that's all I asked for.  I know that there are people who need to hear it, and to be the person who gets to present it to them is incredible.  I feel so very blessed.

But I wasn't just gonna give up.  Yes, I had reached my goal but now I was going to try to make it in other things. More specifically,  original oratory.  I had an okay topic,  and I wanted to advance in this speech too.  Well before we continue let me just point out something to you, this will aid in understanding of the story as we continue.  I like to procrastinate.  Well I guess I shouldn't say like, because I don't like too, but I do have a terrible habit of doing so.  I would compete with my speech, and I would get a lot of great feedback and every time I would get soooo close to making it, but not quite.  I knew I needed to make some changes but I kept putting it off because, frankly, I just have a lot of stuff to do.  Now this is where it gets really stupid, I finally decided to work on it 3 days before the last qualifier of the year.  I realized that this tournament was my last chance with this speech and so I got to work.  This is the sad part.. I attempted to memorize it on the way there.  Now, let me just say that It was basically down.  Parts that I didn't know, well, I just acted like I did know them and no one suspected a thing.  But the last round,  I wanted to break so badly that I became really nervous, in turn making me totally blank out.  Fortunately I was able to get back on track and finish out strong.  But I knew that I wasn't gonna break now, there were a lot of OO's and although mine was not a bad speech there were probably other people who also had good speeches and also had them memorized!! I was upset over not breaking, but I can't say I was surprised.

Afterward, I really couldn't do anything but praise God.  This had been an amazing year and he had given me the strength and the perseverance to achieve my goal.  Not only did I qualify for Regionals, but I also qualified for STOA Nationals.  And that is amazing!  I can give no one credit but the Lord, He is awesome! And now I can't wait for regionals!

Courage in the face of the.. Itsy Bitsy Spider?

It seems as if courage is a trait more abundant in the younger years.  Before reality fully hits them and they still have their innocence.  Today I was patiently helping Jordan with her reading homework, when Sydney runs in wearing my dads shoes and holding a broom.  "Will you kill a spider for me?!" Her frightened facial expression gave me a heads up before anything came out of her mouth.  "Sydney I'm sure you're fully capable of killing that spider, how big is it?".  With hand signals, she showed me exactly how big the spider was.  Or at least, how big she wanted me to think it was.
"Sydney, you can kill that by yourself."  "No, I don't want to" "Sydney, with living in the country comes, being able to kill bugs." Or rather.. 'Arachnids'. "Will you please do it for me!!?".  Jordan, my 6 year old sister, obviously got tired of the persistent arguing and said, "I'll do it!!".  She stood up, grabbed another pair of my dad's shoes and shuffled from the room.  She's not really a big fan of spiders either but she walked confidently forward to the place where the spider was presumed to be.  She stopped, crossed her arms,  and said, "where is it?". By this point, Sydney was on the table pointing to where it was. Let's just say, we had to squint to see that thing.  Jordan raised the shoe in battle position and charged!! Just killing this spider obviously didn't suffice for this 6 year old.  She didn't stop until she had completely mutilated it.  

When we are younger, we're almost fearless. As we get older we are exposed to more and more of the world causing us to become more afraid.  I watched Jordan smash that spider with every inch of strength she possessed.  She seemed fearless.  As she gets older, she will take in more of the world, giving her more things to fear.  While killing a spider is a measly example of courage for some, it was a moment of panic for Sydney and moment of courage for Jordan.  As she gets older, there will be more things that will cause her to fear. I pray she will approach them with the same attitude of fearless innocence, and a mindset that will empower her to conquer the world.

The only difference is, when we get older we become more aware, this makes us more or less afraid depending on the attitude we possess.  If you let the world scare you, it will.  But if you choose to enter this world like it's the spider and you're carrying a shoe, there is almost nothing that can stop you.  Let God be your shoe.  With God, what do we possibly have to fear?  Yes, as humans we will still become afraid at times, but there is a difference between being afraid and being in constant fear.  Remember, there is a God who is watching out for you no matter what!  You can feel safe and secure because he loves you too much and he will never present you with something you can't handle.  Be strong! And be fearless in the Lord!

Quote of the Day:

Regret looks behind, Worry looks around and Faith looks upward. 

Yes, I know this sounds somewhat philosophical, and for the sake of intelligence, I will say it is.  But if you really stop to ponder what this means you will realize how truly simply it is to comprehend.  Let me be the first to say this quote does an outstanding job of pointing out my humanly flaws.  First, I am one of those people who likes to cling to the past, although I shouldn't, I tend to find myself regretting one thing or another.  And when I regret things in the past, it normally changes my attitude for the future.  I also have a habit or worrying, OR maybe I just over think about things way to much? Anyway, the point is, worrying does not add a single day to your life.  The only thing it really does to you is either make you 1) really paranoid or 2) Mr. or Mrs. Negative.  And neither of these are very attractive character qualities.  But what about the last part of this quote?  Faith looks upward.  Notice, faith doesn't worry, faith doesn't regret, faith doesn't try to make something from nothing; faith simply looks upward.  I think there are two realizations that we need to come to. First, the past is called the past for a reason, the past is to help you learn from mistakes, not make you constantly regret them.  Instead of worrying about and regretting the past, we should be living in the present and anticipating the future.  Also, we need to remember that GOD holds the present and the future. . . why worry?

"Who of you, by worrying, can add a single hour to your life?  Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you. . ."

God is in control.  So what do we have to worry about?  Now, that we have canceled regret and worry, we are left with the last.. Faith looks upward.  Let us look upward with faith!


On Saturday I had a really close friend of mine come over and we sat on the trampoline talking about "Just girl stuff"  And as we kept talking, the conversation began to evolve into something more deep.  We talked about the past, and how we both have serious issues with 'Just letting go'.  The past is an awesome thing.. but it's the past for a reason.  We can't do it over, so why spend time thinking about it constantly?  We both agreed that we needed to let it go and anticipate the future as a field for accomplishing God's will.  Don't regret.  Don't worry.  Simply. . . Look upward.

Everything Happens for a Reason.

      A little longer than a year ago I was on vacation, and my father and I were swimming.  'I'll race you' He says. Oh dad, you and your competitiveness.  But of course, I agree, and off we swim. Well, The edge of that pool came a little quicker than I had intentionally planned and *BAM* I crash mouth first into the concrete side of the swimming area. Well this is when  I felt my mouth and realized that half of my front tooth was missing,  and we hurriedly went up to the room. For the remainder of the evening I found it hard to even look at myself in mirror and I repeatedly told myself 'I can't believe this happened' 'This has to be a dream'. Well now a year later my tooth has been fixed and we can go living our happy lives. Well, at least until Jordan smashes her finger in the door. Our lives are of course still happy but at that moment we were only thinking about Jordan. Unfortunately, this was not just another 'smashed finger' that all kids get at sometime or another, this was just a little more serious. Her nail and little of her finger came off.  Don't worry, i'll spare you the rest of the gruesome details. She's fine now, and we are livin life again.


I suppose the point of these two short stories was that everything does happen for a reason, God engineers it that way. The other day my mom read me something from her one of many books. It says that God allows these things to happen in hopes of 'breaking' us, so we will become more dependent on him. These shouldn't be time's to forsake God, but come closer to him.