Not Proud Enough.

Has there ever been a time in your life you weren't proud of?

A time that you were a person you didn't like and just the thought of looking back makes your stomach churn?

There has been a part of my life where I can look back and say that the person who I was, was a person I couldn't face in the mirror. A person who was so low on self esteem and confidence, a person who was so easily manipulated and a person who couldn't see the downward spiral my life was taking. 

I allowed myself to be controlled by others and let myself fall deeper and deeper into a hole that was leading no where. 

I put myself out there and into the situation fully and completely, I trusted the wrong people and I cared too much what others thought.

It wasn't until just recently that I've had some of the people closest to me point out that the person that I was,  has only helped make me into the person that I am.

A person who is stronger and wiser. A person who can not be easily charmed or swayed or manipulated.

A person who can look at herself in the mirror and know that there is no going back to who I was. 

I know that I was supposed to go through that low moment in my life, because it wasn't until I was feeling so numb and empty that I realized that I was normally so warm and full of life.

I learned we can't let anybody, no matter how good looking, how smart, how charming, how funny, take away our light and who we are as a person.

We don't need to fit anybody's mold. We shouldn't make anybody try to fit our mold.

Life is so precious and there are going to be times when we mess up, sometimes we mess up really big for a short period of time and other times we keep making little bad decisions that add up to a long period of time. We just have to take the mess and clean it up. 

We have to put our best self forward, we don't need to carry around the baggage of our past. Our past doesn't define us. The people who we've been in the past aren't the people that we are.

God did not give me anything I couldn't handle. God knew that the situations He put me in would all be beneficial for me one day. He knew the lessons I would learn and He knew I would get back on the right track.

Sometimes I think society makes us feel like we have to be so perfect that having a past that isn't perfect makes us flawed and damaged goods. Show me a perfect adult on the planet at this very moment...good luck. Because we are all stitched together with flaws and heartbreaks and failures. 

Its how we handle our flaws and heartbreaks and failures. Its how we learn to take the bad times and make them into good lessons. 

Be a person who you can look at in the mirror and be proud of.

No Plans.

Cal.

University of Texas.

Cal Poly.

Chico State.

Stanislaus.

University of Oregon.

Fresno State.

UOP.

UC Davis.

This is a list from my life of all the colleges I thought about going to and at one point really wanted to go there. Some of the desires sparked from things as simple as I went to a football game and had a lot of fun and wanted to be apart of the crowd some day. Some of the reasons I had was because of the AG programs they had to offer. Others were because I knew people who had went there and had a really great time. All through my life I was making these plans to go to college somewhere for whatever reason and that is what they just ended up to be plans.

I wasn't planning on ever wanting to go to the University of Nevada, Reno. When my cousin Morgan got accepted there and she said she was going I still never really gave it any thought. I never really gave it a shot, and yet its the college I chose to transfer to.

While I was walking on campus this morning I was looking at next football seasons schedule and I saw that we were going to be playing Fresno State here, which got me to thinking about how I could have been attending Fresno and how it was also a school I got accepted to. I then thought about the football game I went to at Cal which made me want to attend there when I was in probably the 7th grade. Which then led to my revelation about the reason why I'm inspired to write this blog to you.

(My mind does bounce around a lot)

See the colleges I wanted and desired and one day planned on, ended up just being that, wants, desires and plans. I didn't see myself attending Nevada really until I got my acceptance letter. And the only reason why I really applied in the first place is because my cousin told me there was still time to apply in January so on a fluke I did. I realized that the plans I had for myself weren't at all the plans that God was creating for me and has planned for me.

We spend so much time thinking about the future, and worrying about the future, why? If you were to ask me two years ago what college I would be transferring to from Merced College I probably would have said Chico State. I'm not at Chico State and I'm actually really happy that I'm not. Because I opened myself up to just applying to Nevada, and then got accepted to Nevada, I ended up finding a place that I really love to live at and a campus I love. I think we close ourselves off to too many opportunities because they don't fit in our "plan" and why do we do that?

If I would have never applied to Nevada I wouldn't be on the computer in the Knowledge Center at this very moment being so inspired by the plans God has for me.

I think we try to make our lives fit what we see to be as the perfect plan, we make check lists of houses that we want, or jobs we think we need, or significant others, and in the end those are all lists limiting opportunities.

I have a major, my major is broad and until today I never really felt as confident as I do now about picking that major. My career will be something that isn't planned, I won't have a specific place that I'm going to work or a job that I have to do. This feeling of excitement of the present and the future is overpowering me at this moment!

I am going to stop making plans about big things I have no control over. Like who God is going to place in my life as my husband one day, or what job I'm going to get when I graduate, or how long its going to take me to buy my own house.

I'll keep you updated on how this is going in my life, because it may seem to some of you pretty careless, but I call it faith. I have faith that God will provide me the opportunities and I just need to accept them! Just like I accepted coming to college in Nevada, it wasn't what I had planned, but its one of the best decisions I've ever made thanks to God providing the right time and place.

Maybe you should try it out too, with maybe not worry about one thing, like if you are single, stop making your checklists about who your boyfriend needs to be and posting those vague Facebook status updates that one of your 500 guy friends might notice. Start living! Stop worrying!