Kayla

Almost 7 years ago, Kayla Anne Taylor entered my life. My dad was dating a woman named Brenda, who had 2 daughters, Amanda and Kayla. At first, I didn't like her very much...she annoyed me. Almost 2 years after she entered my life as my dad's girlfriend's daughter, she became my step-sister on May 6, 2006. After having my own room for 2 weeks short of 16 years, I was suddenly forced to share a room with this girl. The first year was a rough one...I was used to my privacy & I wasn't sure how to get over not having it anymore. There weren't too many things about Kayla that frustrated me, but it was more my unfamiliarity to her that struck me hard. During my senior year, we began to get along better. When I went off to college, we started to get along a lot better & we were finally from step-sisters to friends.

Kayla is beautiful. She's about 5'5", blonde hair, a size 9-11, and has brownish eyes. She's so funny. Her dream is to become a nurse. Kayla is 17 years old, and she is scheduled to graduate on Friday May, 13, 2011 from Union High School. She ran away on Friday, April 22...less than a month away from graduation. While my family does not know many details, we know that she is in trouble & in a dangerous situation. Kayla doesn't do stupid things most of the time...she's usually responsible. So something is weird & not right. None of us have been able to get ahold of her...through calls or text messages. She's like my sister to me, even when she frustrates me to pieces, and I am EXTREMELY worried about my step-sister. Please pray for her safe return & for my family. They are all over the place in emotions right now.

My cousin Emily made this for us:

Give Me Faith

I'm on Spring Break. Yay! :) This break was VERY needed. This semester has been rough...classes & work have been slightly overwhelming at times. I go non-stop from 9 to 5...I know that this will be life forever...working 7 or 8 to 3ish, so I should get used to it. But it's just exhausting at times. Throw on top of that, God's convictions, and I'm just having a ball. Yes, I know, I probably shouldn't use sarcasm when it comes to God, however, it's just one simple conviction--it's several. 3 to be exact.

1. The once saved always saved debate.
2. Going to church on a consistent basis again.
3. Trusting God.

Lately, the third one has been the most prevalent in my life. I need to learn how to trust God with everything inside of me. In high school, I was able to trust my youth pastors with everything. Now, I am able to trust all of my friends with everything. But why do I never take it to God? I know that He cares about everything, however I have a hard time trusting in Him completely, especially since God isn't here physically. I know, I know...I should be able to trust Him even though I can't see Him. In the movie "A Walk to Remember," Jamie tells Landon that her faith is like the wind--she can't see it but she knows it's there because she can feel it.

One reason that it is so hard for me to trust God is because of the junk that has been in my life for such a long time. In a way, I see that everything that has been in my life is a reason for me to be ashamed because of the fact that I fail all of the time. In church, we sang a song called "Give Me Faith," and it really spoke to me.

Here are the lyrics:
I need you to soften my heart
To break me apart
I need you to open my eyes
To see that You're shaping my life
All I am,
I surrender
Give me faith to trust what you say
That you're good and your love is great
I'm broken inside, I give you my life
I need you to soften my heart
To break me apart
I need you pierce through the dark
And cleanse every part of me

And the part that really stuck with me was this part:
I may be weak
But Your spirit's strong in me
My flesh may fail
My God you never will

I feel weak & like I can't accomplish all of the tasks that have been given to me. I also feel like I fail all of the time--as a daughter, a sister (I mean, my own older brother cannot stand me at all), a friend, a student, & as a teacher in the future. But with God, I can do anything! I just have to trust Him.

But why is that SO hard?!

What Do I Believe?

So, the past few weeks, this question has come up A LOT: can someone lose their salvation? This topic has come up in different ways & it's frustrating me. You see, I have gone to a church for the past seven and a half years that believes in once saved, always saved. However, now I go to a university that believes that a person can lose their salvation.

What do I believe you ask? I DON'T KNOW. That's why it is so frustrating to me. I can so easily see both sides. What I have been taught by my pastor and multiple youth pastors makes so much sense to me on how a person cannot lose their salvation. But then you come across the issue of "that person was saved at age 12, but now they say they don't believe in God"--does that mean that they weren't really saved? On the other hand, you have the whole you can lose your salvation idea. Would God really reject someone who believes in them but hasn't been living for Him? My best friend made a point that they don't ask for forgiveness for their sins, but their are "small" sins I make daily that I do without realizing it and I don't ask for forgiveness, so what's the difference? In God's eyes, a sin is a sin...there is no small sin nor are their big sins.

So what's the answer? Is it once saved, always saved? Or is it that a person can lose their salvation? I'm trying so hard to come up with what I believe on this issue instead of basing it off what my church believes or what my university & some of my closest friends believe, which is hard. It's not only hard, but it is EXTREMELY frustrating because when the subject gets brought up, I stay silent. I don't like to talk about stuff I'm not sure about, and this is one topic that has me so confused.

Late Night Reflections

Luke 7:44-47

"44 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”"

Sometimes I just need to fall flat on my face before God. I'm finding myself getting to that place. I have been with holding so much of my heart from God over the past year and a half that I feel that I am about to blow. If this Bible verse is true, then I have probably been loving very little because I have been forgiven little.... You see, it's hard to be forgiven when you do not ask for the forgiveness. But I'm getting there.

This week, I have been overwhelmed with a thirst that only reading my Bible & praying to my God can quench. If I am going to be 100% honest, which I am, since this is my blog (haha), I cannot remember the last time that I had this thirst. Through this process, I know that I am going to be on my knees asking for God to forgive me and to renew me and to come back into every area of my life. What makes it so easy to do is knowing that God will be there and He will give me the desires of my heart and exactly what I need from Him.

How great is that?! So great.

Late Night Drive

The other night, Brittany and I were both doing homework, and we had been working on it for HOURS. So she decided that we (mostly her) needed a break, so we took a break and went for a drive. She told me about something that included someone who I have a grudge against. This opened up a can of worms. We talked about this person for awhile, and why I still hold the grudge despite it happening over 2 years ago. After we were done talking about it, I started to go into myself and started thinking of all the stuff that had happened that school year, with a bunch of people. I realized how many grudges I was holding, and I began to wonder why I still held them so close to my heart--even though I didn't realize it. It didn't take long for me to figure it out. While I had prayed about the situations, I have yet to forgive them all and to forgive myself for my part in it all. I also realized that I have not invited God into those areas of my heart. But why? Why would I block God out of an area in my life and heart that I need Him in so badly? I don't want to hold grudges; I don't want to hide my heart from God. The crazy thing is is that God already knows all of this stuff, so why should it be so hard for me to talk to him about it?

God wants to be a part of my every day life, and He wants me to talk to him and to trust him as much as I do a lot of the people He has blessed me with. He doesn't want me to hide certain parts of my heart from Him--He wants ALL of my heart. I need to let go of my pride, and hand it to him. I say that I can do it all myself, but if I've been struggling with this stuff for 2-3 years, then why do I still refuse to give him what has hurt me and scarred me so much?

1 Peter 5:7- "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."

Which to Bury; Us or the Hatchet?

For anyone who knows me, then you know that my older brother, Patrick, and I barely talk. Throughout my whole life, Patrick has been my hero--he's always been the one that I aspire to be like. He got good grades & I was always determined to beat him, although I rarely did. I loved his friends, and I got a lot of them to like me too. I liked the music he listened to, the tv shows he watched, and some of the movies he liked. After my parents' divorce, all I wanted was to get closer to my brother & to become more than brother & sister and to actually become friends. This happened during my freshman year of high school--him & I talked about EVERYTHING. I considered him one of my closest friends. However, life does not always go my way, and a semester after he graduated high school, he left for Oklahoma State University. Like I do now, he did not come home often, which made me sad. I LOVED when he came home, but then he started to change. When he came home, he would barely talk to me. Eventually, he let his new political and religious beliefs become known to all of us. And honestly, I don't care if he's a democrat & I'm a republican--he's family. I say, let's agree to disagree and keep politics out of our relationship. His religious views weren't that crazy, so I just chose to ignore them. The more & more he changed, the less & less he came home from school. Then, 2008 hit and it was my turn to graduate. So the night of graduation, we went out for dinner & had cake afterwards. Less than a week later, it was my 18th birthday! Because my mom and step-mom do not always get along at birthday dinners, my mom decided to take me out to a separate dinner. I also had a birthday party, which really consisted of my friends and I going out to dinner, to a movie, and back to my house for a sleepover. All in all, I had 4 celebrations in one week, and I'm not going to lie, I LOVED the attention. What newly graduated, 18 year old girl wouldn't?! It was at my birthday party that I first realized Patrick's growing resentment towards me, and I didn't understand it. I still don't. My freshman year of college came and went, and I began to understand why Patrick didn't come home often--it's hard to go home. You feel like you have 2 homes, but it's different at home with your family because they have to adjust to having you there again. The summer after my freshman year was hard. Just the adjustment from school to home was hard, especially since all of my close friends live out of Oklahoma, so when school is out, I feel like I have NO ONE. But that summer, Patrick and I barely talked...we actually completely avoided each other. I could just feel the awkwardness between us, and I didn't know what to think of it. Then last year, towards the end of my sophomore year, what had started as his growing resentment towards me came out directly to me. I made a status about politics, which he commented on. A bunch of drama happened, and I deleted him. Honestly, I know I should not have done that, however, I just wanted to make his comments on my facebook disappear. About a week later, he friend requested me again, and I accepted it. For awhile, we didn't interact on facebook AT ALL, but then the NBA finals happened. Because of my best friend, I am a Portland Trail Blazers fan, and of course, being from Oklahoma, he is not. I made a status about the refs needing to let the boys play, and somehow, all hell broke loose. It ended with him telling me that when I stop doing stuff to make other people like me, call him. And then he deleted me & blocked me. To this day, I am still so confused on why he commented on that status and chose to make me feel more hated than I had ever felt in my ENTIRE life. :( Because of my reaction to all of that, my friend Elena messaged him and chewed him out. I wish that she hadn't because I feel like it made things worse between me and Patrick, but at the same time, I'm glad she did because it gave me an insight on to why he doesn't like me. 1. I'm selfish and I don't even know it. 2. My political beliefs are naive and those of my parents. and 3. My religious beliefs are innocent and ignorant and those of my parents. In my mind, I cannot possibly comprehend why those are reasons to completely disregard your little sister and to your best to alienate her from your life. The fact that Patrick does not talk to me and does not like me BREAKS MY HEART. I just want my older brother to love me, to like me, and to be friends with me like we once were.

Because of the fact that I am blocked from his facebook, I find other ways to view it once in a great, great while. The other day, I creeped on him through someone else's facebook and I found something that made me want to cry. He wrote a note back in 2007, which would have made him 20 years old...the same age I am now. He wrote about how he does so much stuff to make other people like him, which is one thing he STRONGLY ridicules me for. And that is one thing that I try extremely hard to not do. Also, I am trying to grow my religious and political beliefs, so that they are my own personal beliefs. However, I do not see my religious beliefs as innocent and ignorant. Yes, I may not be as close to God as I once was, however, my knowledge of the Bible is not tiny (it's not large either). I love God, and I try my best to love people and to be pleasing to God. Also, I am 20 years old, so I can't quite grasp why I HAVE TO HAVE ALL of my political beliefs figured out when most adults my parents age don't. I also that have never voted because I do not want to vote before I am 100% sure that my beliefs are mine and not those of my parents. So why criticize me for stuff that I'm working on? Why can we not put our differences aside and be family?

I heard this song the other day. It used to be a favorite of mine and Patrick's, and I feel like it's an EXTREMELY GOOD illustration of my feelings right now. It's called "Which to Bury; Us or the Hatchet" by Relient K.

Rules, Rules, Rules

The past few days, I have been bombarded with one big issue: following the rules. Now, I have to preface this by saying that I don't agree with every rule that this school has in place. However, I am a junior and I feel like it's time that I step up & be a leader, whether it be to future freshman, my friends, the girls in my dorm, or whatever--I feel like it's time to grow up and be a leader.

At OWU, all of the rules are put in place for a reason, whether we agree with them or not. And while I don't like them all, I do know that they are made in our best interest. They're not trying to make us suffer. Plus, some of the rules are in place just because we go to a christian university. For example, no R rated movies--I wonder why that's a rule (sarcasm). Yes, I have broken that rule. I own a handful of them, and I've watched them in public lobbies, however, if I was asked to turn it off, then I did. And I respected whoever told me to turn it off. The past week or so, this particular rule has been a problem in my dorm. And tonight, it took a turn for the worse. I actually got to hear the people bash the RA who told them to turn the movie off, and this particular RA just happens to be one of my best friends. So this did not make me happy.

Even when we do not agree with the rules, we need to follow them. And this isn't me trying to lecture other people--this is something that I need to do for my sake as well as for the sake of everyone else. If we were to follow the rules and respect them, this university would be so much more pleasant. Also, we did sign a contract, and we need to uphold what we signed even if it is frustrating. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE IN A LEADERSHIP POSITION. That's all. By respecting the rules and respecting the people who are made to enforce them, then we are pleasing to God. By following rules, we are following God. He put people in our lives who are older than we are, and we need to respect our elders because they are wiser than us most of the time. Just follow the rules--they're there to help you, not to harm you.