Letting Your Light Shine: The Matthew 5:16 Project

When I got back from camp, there was such a light inside of me.  Everywhere I looked, there was God.  He made the beautiful desert canyon, the smiles on people's faces, and the hilariously ironic moments of my life.  Above all else, I learned and grew in the idea that God has a sense of humor.  So much so that it would cause me to laugh throughout the day at the little things that He would do to put a smile on my face.  It almost felt like a really happy dating relationship, without that getting too weird of a concept ;)

But that's the thing about coming back from camps or conferences that focus on your relationship with God.  Your heart is soaked in His message and your mind is zoned in on focusing on being more Christ-like.  While at camp, I had the opportunity to relish in prayer and conversation with Him.  He spoke to me through prayer and the dialogue we had was amazing.  It was refreshing and wonderful.  My friend, and fellow YL leader, Rhonda spoke about how she sees God in everything.  From the beauty of nature, to smiles, to babies, to everything good in life.  That mentality and the goodness of that week was so enriching for my soul.

20 Things About Myself at 23 (Part II)

6. I love to read and I'm sure many people know this from the two blogger books swaps that I've hosted in the past.  I have loved to read every since I was a little kid.  At a time when there were probably few opportunities for my parents to go out and buy things or pay for activities, the library was free entertainment.  I don't think I ever realized that as a kid, but I did know that I loved the adventures that I read in books and getting completely soaked into a story and its characters.  That love continued on as I grew older and went to student competitions, like Battle of the Books and the English Writing Festival.  Although it was slightly dampened by required reading, some of those high school and college classes introduced me to new favorite books.  I'm sure that my fellow book lovers would also like to know that our next blogger book swap will be in November with one of my great friends, Nicole :)

7. I firmly believe that developing a relationship with Christ is a journey and one that people need to go on at their own time and rate.  Although I post spiritual pictures/text on my blog and Instagram, that doesn't mean that I don't respect your needs and concerns.  For me, sometimes it's hard to identify as a Christian, in fact I still don't.  There are still so many negative connotations that go along with being a Christian, none of which I support.  I'm a follower of Christ but there are a ton of Christians that I don't necessarily like (ahem, Fox News).  I like Jesus and what he stood for and I'm doing my best to follow in his name and to be a better person.  As a follower of Christ, I think there are things that he lived for and taught that still help the world today.

8. One day when I'm a mom, I totally think I'm going to be a hipster mom.  I can totally picture myself with a pumpkin spice latte in one hand, Etsy shop diaper bag, and a little baby boy who could be a mini GQ model. I'm excited to plan birthday parties, trips to Disney World, and take a stab at sewing clothes (not that I don't do these things already). I'm excited for the opportunity and privilege to hopefully become a mom one day. I talk about it enough on my blog but I'm really excited to have kids with Ryan.

9. My dream job would be to be paid to craft and design. I would love to scrapbook, design birthday parties, or create DIY tutorials as my main source of income. I swoon at the thought of a crafting chain, like Michael's or Hobby Lobby, sending me free product to create a tutorial for them. If I could blog all day about crafting and DIY or really get my blog going, that would be amazing.

10. I think it's incredibly important to pay attention to your audience. This is kind of a broad idea, but I believe it's important to understand your privileges and what you bring to the table. My perspective and life experiences will most likely be different than the people I talk to through my blog. I try to respect that and understand that people might get it and sometimes they might not. When I first wrote about the difficulties of a young marriage, I got some backlash. But then I realized that the audience I was talking to is very diverse. One comment I received was that marriage for her was easy. All I kept thinking of was that's awesome, but my experience has been otherwise. In looking more closely at the situation, we have two very different lives. Not to get into too much detail, but at 23 (and Ryan being 22) we are very different financially than let's say a couple in their 30's who have been in their careers for some time. Whereas some people would be done with college at Ryan's age, he's just starting and that's because of his service to the military. I would also say that our experiences in the military have also fashioned a different outlook on live than other people may have. Our experiences help fashion our outlook and it's important to keep that in mind.

Be sure to look out for Part III!

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My Experience with Water Baptism

This is my year for Opportunity and I feel like God has been reaching out to me and blessing me in so many ways.  I finally am at the point where I could experience this and by sharing it with my family, friends, and readers of my blog, maybe I can inspire you as well.

 

This Sunday I was baptized at my new church home.  It was a thrilling and surreal experience that I have been wanting to partake in for a long time.  I was baptized as a baby in the Catholic Church and went through the entire list of sacraments up through Confirmation, however, I don't follow the Catholic Church.  I spoke about my church and faith experiences in a previous post, but I wanted to truly connect to God.  I felt like I was following a set of rules because an organization of people was telling me to and I didn't necessarily feel a spiritual link to this almighty being.  I did everything they told me to, from going to mass and Wednesday CCD, but it still felt either foreign or forced.  Praying to Christ felt far more comfortable in the setting of a conversation and I would pray to him about all of this.  While in college, I developed a love and yearning to follow in the path of Christ, but I didn't know what that necessarily meant.  I did know that I wanted to proclaim my love and devotion to Christ as an adult.  I had been praying about it throughout my college experience and when I got here (Montana) and discovered the new church I now belong to, I knew the time was right.

After taking a class and speaking with Pastor Kern, I was baptized at the service following the class.  It was such a cool experience and one that I highly recommend to those who are reconnecting to their faith.  Being placed in the water was such a beautiful moment.  I felt like God was reaching out to me and telling me that He was so glad that I made this decision, that I was finally content in who I am as a person that I could publicly declare this.  The church family has been so welcoming and open, I have never felt safer in making this decision.  A couple sitting next to me offered to take these pictures for me.

Exodus 14:14 The Lord will fight for you; you need only be still.

The scripture speaks to me on so many levels and it was crazy today because as I was listening to the service, I felt like God was telling me that I needed to become a pastor.  I know, it sounds so strange but I couldn't stop thinking about it and I have never thought about that as a career path.  Right now I'm looking at graduate school programs and came across Liberty University, where pastor Jarrid Wilson attends.  He is the Tennessee pastor that I think is truly helping bring young people into the church in a safe, non-judgmental environment.  I have so many thoughts going through my head right now and I'm not entirely sure how to process it all but I'm definitely willing to learn more.  I want to go where God will lead me.  I trust Him.  

Finding a Church Home

 

I don't normally talk about faith here, but I wanted to talk about faith because on Easter Sunday I came across the most amazing church but the journey didn't just start there. I have always had a great relationship with Christ.  In times of joy, fear, or sorrow, I pray to him.  This relationship with God went through waves while I was in college.

I grew up in the Catholic church and went to CCD every Wednesday. I was a devout Catholic and went to church despite not feeling inspired. From my experience, most kids can't stand to sit through an hour long mass but that was what "going to church" was like for us. CCD was a little more tolerable, especially as we got older. One of my friends' dads became our weekly instructor for class and he was an awesome guy. Those classes were far more inspirational than any mass with instilling a sense of faith. I didn't want the Catholic church to me by sole source for the word of God, because most of us were cafeteria Catholics, picking and choosing what fit into our lives. Plus as I got older and confirmation rolled around, I found myself disagreeing with most of the religious doctrine to the point where I really didn't follow enough of it to probably be considered a devout Catholic. However, my family being Filipino-Irish were all Catholics and I went through the entire process of holy sacraments. 

When I got to college, I went to Catholic Church a few times on my own. Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite masses and Palm Sunday as a kid always meant turning the palms into crosses with my mom. I held it dear as many Catholic celebrations brought up wonderful family memories. However in college, I met other people who took me to other Christian organizations and I fell in love with their style of worship. I've always loved to sing, ever since I was little kid. That was my favorite aspect of mass, even though the music can be a bit archaic (it's just not my type). Worshipping with other Christians and singing contemporary music was so uplifting. For me, singing is like praying twice. I love it.

However that didn't mean that I always liked the message that was being portrayed. I found myself attending one college service for the excellent worship and going to Greek InterVarsity for the small group unity. Greek InterVarsity is a Christian organization that assists the Greek system (sororities and fraternities) in finding their way to Christ. Eric and Jen, two of our advisors, were this fantastic young married couple who were always welcoming and so filled with love. With their assistance, I went to two-three Greek conferences in Indiana and loved attending our weekly meetings to talk about God. I had a great time with them and wish I would have made more time for them in my later years at college. At one Greek IV conference they had a guest speaker who was just completely ignorant to the world around him and spoke of his mission trip to the Philippines and was mocking the culture and traditions there. I was infuriated and Jen and Eric did a phenomenal job of supporting me through that really confusing event. Although it was a poor choice in speakers and not the organization, I had a difficult time going back to group events like that. Faith journeys are already fragile as is, with people coming from so many different areas of life, to have an a-hole of a speaker like that was the last thing I needed.

I rarely went to church in college, just because of my crazy schedule, but when I did go, I loved attending a church in Madison called Blackhawk. The Evangelical church is so beautiful and I loved the community there. They were even kind enough to provide buses for the students to take them to the church and back to campus. They also created a program where church members could "adopt" a college student and I met an amazing family through that program. They were such a wonderful part of my freshman year of college and even celebrated holidays with me. 

As fun as the experience of that church provided another perspective, I still allowed excuses to fill in my everyday and I was still seeking to grow my relationship with God. 

Ryan was never truly into going to church services so we didn't really ever attend church in Oceanside while he was stationed at Camp Pendleton. While I was at training in the central coast of California, my roommate and I found a church to attend and at first it seemed right up my alley. Then the pastor started doing really weird sermons and started preaching in a way that I didn't appreciate. It got the point where my roommate and I chose not to volunteer at the church or attend services. 

I was becoming more and more frustrated because I thought that I was going to have to settle for a church that I was less than thrilled with. I would see on Instagram or through other bloggers, really fantastic church communities that really focused on love and in a way, loved like Jesus did. When we moved to Montana, my quest to find another church continued. 

Around this time I found pastor Jarrid Wilson on Instagram and he describes himself as a gospel sharing misfit. He doesn't look like a typical pastor and that in itself intrigued me. He was just another young person looking to share God's word. I spent like an hour looking over his blog and Instagram feed and he was just an inspiring person. I bought his book 30 Words and have loved his young person perspective towards the word of the Lord. I definitely want to see one of his sermons in person some day and he'll be getting married in like less than a month to his beautiful fiancee. They seem like such awesome people, couldn't be happier. Definitely check out his blog and he also has podcasts that you can download for free on iTunes. 

Jarrid sparked an interest in me to really look for a church home instead of just a place to go to church, if that makes sense? So when Easter rolled around, Ryan was attending our friends' wedding in California and I was still in Montana. I decided to attend Easter mass with a couple that we're good friends with. I was excited to open my heart to Lord, especially since we have a lot to be joyous for when it comes to Easter. I was rudely made aware of why I don't like Catholic mass as the priest was all over the place. It was the worst homily I had ever heard, and I've attended Catholic mass for 18 years. It was disappointing and left a bad taste in my mouth. I felt like God was speaking to me and was saying that the mass I attended wasn't meant for me and I needed to seek a different experience. The mass got out at 10:20 and I found out that a non-denominational church that I was interested in was having another service at 11:00. I went over there and it reminded me of a smaller version of Blackhawk. Everyone was so incredibly friendly and welcomed me with open arms. The worship was inspiring and the sermon was captivating. I wholeheartedly took in God's word that day and could not wait to go to next Sunday's service.  I couldn't wait to share this with my friends and declare this place as my new church home. I don't normally do that and this is the first church that I've felt truly connected to. The "next" service was today's and it was just as inspiring as the last. I am so excited, happy, and thrilled to grow in my relationship with God and grow with this church.