Now that I’m graduated from MiraCosta, I am no longer a student blogger for the school. I have a xanga that I was keeping up with because I really liked my background and didn’t think wordpress’ themes were quite as lovely. But, I decided that with graduating, it was time to add a new blog site to the list of fresh starts that I’m now beginning.
Just to let you all in on the recent happenings in my life, I’m about to start several new adventures: a new job, a new school, a new home, new books, new church, a new major, and who knows what else! I just completed two years at MiraCosta, and am now a new student at Cal State University Fullerton. I’m so excited to go there! Originally, I was a music education major and chose CSUF because they have an amazing music ed program! You’re able to get a teaching credential in one year that you can use for either high school or elementary school. Unfortunately, MiraCosta doesn’t have the greatest classes for music theory and musicianship. I took two semesters of each online. So, basically I was teaching myself, and for someone with no prior formal experience with theory, it wasn’t such a good thing. So, I didn’t make it into the music program. For a few days I was devastated. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Music was the only thing I knew. It was all I had ever wanted to do for a career. Thankfully, God knew how much I could handle and didn’t make me wait too long to find a new direction for my life. I had an awesome discussion with my voice teacher who helped me wrap my mind around the picture of myself teaching elementary school and incorporating music into my classroom as well as teaching voice and piano on the side. I love kids, and she encouraged me saying that she was glad I didn’t get into the music program because this new path was going to have a lot more stability.
Even though I was changing majors, I decided to stick with CSUF. I really loved the campus, the location was great in light of where my friends are going to school: Biola, Cal Poly Pomona, Azusa, and others, and I had a place to live. My aunt and uncle live about 10 minutes away from the campus and said I could live with them. I’ll be paying $200 a month, which is a really good deal considering how much an apartment on my own or with friends would be, and even if I was commuting–train and gas prices would end up being more than that. I’m very excited to move out! Living with my parents has been cool, I mean there’s definitely things I’m going to miss about being here, but I think after two years, I’m ready to take the next step of adulthood. My aunt and uncle are currently cleaning out my room, repainting, and getting everything ready for me. They’ve been so kind to take me in. They don’t have any kids, just a sweet dog, so they’re used to being on their own. If I can manage to land an on-campus job, I won’t have to work on the weekends, and will be able to come home on the weekends and give them some more time to themselves. My aunt and uncle also told me to let them know when I get a laptop so they can buy a router (I think that’s how it’s spelled) so I can use internet in the house, they also said there’s an extra desk for me to use and I can plug in to their printer to print my papers. Seriously, God really blessed me with this.
Also, having friends close by will prove helpful for coming home too I’m hoping. Farah and I have talked about carpooling home and coming to Seven24, which we will both miss very much if we don’t! We’ve also discussed getting an apartment together with my best friend, Nicole, and our friend Andra who is a transfer student from Palomar also a liberal studies major and is going to CSUF. I’ll be moving up to Orange August 18th, although I think I’ll be coming home some that week as well as the week after when I start school because my job at the Moonlight Amphitheatre includes working shows, and the last two weeks of August are the playing weekends for Les Miserables.
My job is another way that God has proved faithful. I was planning to work Tri-City Christian School Summer Day Camp again this year because it will add to my experience working with elementary kids, which will prove helpful when I try to get into a credential program. I wanted a second job that I could work evenings and weekends to get some extra money. I’ve been freaking out about getting a job lined up for the summer because I don’t have any jobs set up for me when I get to Fullerton since all my jobs here are babysitting, teaching voice, and working for MiraCosta. I want to get some money saved up to give me some leeway to find a job to allow for rent and cell phone bills. I was praying that God would provide me with a job and was telling him that I believed he would. But, when I went to the beach last week to hang out with God and listen, I felt him challenging me that I wasn’t really acting upon that belief. So, I gave it over to him completely, and stepped out in faith, renouncing my fear of not having a job this summer. And guess what? That very day, I stopped by the Moonlight Amphitheatre just in case they had a place for me, and they hired me on the spot. God is incredible! And, it was perfect for my needs too–evenings and weekends. And, I was thinking the week before that I wanted to see some Moonlight shows this summer. Now I get to see them all!
As far as a new church goes, that is actually something I’ve been fighting fear about. I have to find a new church to get plugged into in Orange County. I’m afraid my shyness will keep me from that. When I’m in an unfamiliar place, I start getting terribly shy. And, I’ve never gotten plugged into a church by myself, I had my family for Generation, I had Sean for North Coast, and I had Farah for New Song. I’ve tried going to other churches before and it’s just not home. I’m afraid of not finding another church to call home. Being involved in church is something that really important to me. I think that it makes church what it should be when you get plugged in to college group, small group, worship team, and child care. At least, that’s what it looks like for me. I want a place where I can do that. I was really feeling discouraged about this on Sunday. My fears of the unknown were causing me so much frustration.
That night at Seven24, Brian spoke about fighting fear. It was just what I needed to hear. I realized what a hold it has taken on me. I knew that often I would be afraid to try something new or that at points I’m feeling particularly low, it’s due to fears I’m having. Brian named some different things we might be afraid of and I realized that fear controls many aspects of my life. It contributes to my shyness, my lack of trust, my inability to try new things. Brian asked a question at the end. He asked what the fears are in our own lives and are we worshiping those fears or the God who can conquer them. Wow, that was definitely not how I had looked at it before. We had time to reflect and I wrote down the two biggest fears in my life and the subcategories for them. Here’s what I wrote:
-Relationships: messing up, getting hurt, risks, trust, being alone
-Finding a church: being too shy, not being satisfied, comparing it to my home church
There you have it–my two biggest fears at the moment. I’ve found that relationships are often something that I deal with fear about quite often. Ever since my last relationship ended–the only one I’ve ever experienced–I’ve been too afraid to try again. Maybe this is because there wasn’t really anything wrong with the relationship other than we were too young. It was godly, pure, and a blessing in so many ways. I don’t really regret that I’m not in that relationship anymore because I learned so much and God really used it to show me who I’m supposed to be and the woman that he wants me to be. I’ve become more self-confident and more aware of what I want in a guy. However, in my experience this past year of dating a little, just to see what’s out there, I find myself fearful. I hate that too, because I feel like it’s limiting me. I feel bad for the guys trying to pursue me because I feel like I can’t completely let go and jump in and try to let them. I can only give to an extent before I am overcome with fear and back away. In the past year there have been seven different guys and I haven’t been able to make it past a second date. Because I’ve been hurt, I’m afraid to trust someone to get that close to me. I’m afraid to step out and take a risk to love again. I’m afraid of messing up, especially since I didn’t necessarily mess up with the last one and it still didn’t work out. Although, since then I have seen ways that I messed up and want to do differently. I should look on this as an opportunity to try again and fix what I did wrong. But instead, I cower in the corner, wishing that by being myself I didn’t attract so many guys, wondering if I should change myself to keep my freedom of being single. Yet, when I think about it more, I realize that I also have a fear of being alone. I’m not one of those girls that constantly has to be in a relationship to get rid of that fear. No, it’s not unhealthy in that way. I just fear being alone in the long term scheme of things. I envision myself teaching at an elementary school, and getting to a time in my life where people start asking if there’s a special someone for me and when I’m going to get settled down. It hurts because it’s the one thing I want most and the one thing I can’t seem to get. The desire of my heart is to get married and have a family someday. No, I don’t want it right now, but I feel like my fears are holding me back and perhaps keeping me from finding someone that I can one day marry. I also have a fear of starting a relationship any differently than I did before. I was really good friends with my ex before we started dating. I knew him backwards and forwards and therefore knew what I was getting myself into. Because of the way people do things now, at this time in our lives, that’s not really a realistic way to start it. I’m not in a classroom five days a week with the same person. I don’t live just down the street anymore. There’s not as much time to be around the same person. If there’s a possibility in being interested, you have to just kind of jump in a get to know each other while you’re dating. That scares me too. These fears definitely are holding me back. I want to change them. I have seen what they are doing to me. They are crippling me and the life that I could have. I have felt that God has something bigger for me. A purpose for my life, and it’s something that I want to seek and desire to let nothing hold me back from getting it. Not my fears, not anything. My prayer now is that I can overcome my fears and my natural tendency to let them control my thoughts and actions. I also hope that God provides a guy for me who is willing to see past those fears, be patient with me, and help me to get past them and enter into a relationship that is honoring to the Lord.
This is really long! I don’t usually write this much when I blog, but starting a new blog usually contributes to that because it’s necessary to fill in my new readers on my life. And God has been doing a lot, bringing a lot of new things to me, so there was much to say. Thanks for reading!
