Reiterations at a Summer's End

I don't know how wordy I feel like being tonight, although it always seems to be more then I think it will be. However I thought I would give the overarching theme for the summer and make it apparent to, if no one else, at least to myself.

If one read through all the posts over the summer, one would find a variety of emotions and I am sure this is all just rehash, but I am going to say it all anyway.

I lost this summer. I lost a lot. I lost my dream. I lost my pride. I lost my love. I lost my friends. I lost myself. I wallowed in a broken heart, a broken spirit and a broken vision of all the things I thought I had going for myself; All the things I thought I wanted.

I broke down and cried in church this week. Every song talked about how Christ died for us, in humility and brokenness he gave up himself for me. I felt so broken and without anything to rely on. I had lost everything that I had placed worth in, everything that had meant something to me was gone. Even now, I feel tears well up because I am so lost in this world and in the goal and plan for my life. What do I do now?

I spent this summer so alone and with little encouragement. I have to laugh a little because now that everyone is returning to school the question of the day is, "How was your summer?" and for the most part I don't sugar coat it. "It was pretty horrible actually but at least it is over now." is usually my response.

I have always thought that God has given me a glimpse of lesson learning. I am somewhat able to recognize the lesson as it is being learned instead of being bitter and resentful and seeing the lesson after the events has passed. I am not trying to assert my pride in this matter, but over the summer I was able to see things that God was teaching me, many things I learned but mostly, I recognize now that I had to be lost and alone to know that the only thing I can rely on is God. Nothing else is lasting, nothing else is permanent, nothing else is purely good, or purely motivated by love. However the God that sees all things, knows my heart and knows me and I can truly depend on the love and the grace he gives.

"What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Romans 8: 31-39