Whirlwind

Well the last week and a half have flown by. I seriously am in shock that today is Friday. Crazy.

Well last week I ended up skipping the class that I wrote about last time. Kristin was visiting and I was in a good mood, and did not want that to be squelched due to class...so I didn't go. I ended up staying home and getting lots of homework done. So it was not in vain.

Then the next day I went to class and my friend told me that I had not missed anything except that a classmate had gone to talk to our prof about the frustration that is occurring in the class so they began a discussion about what we were all feeling. So that was a step in the write direction. Then yesterday I went to the class and the first hour was a survey about our feelings on the class, and a discussion about how things could change. So I am hopeful that I will soon no longer dread going to school on Thursdays.

This semester I am taking a class outside of the school of Social Work as well. As some of you know, last year especially I struggled with how the school of social work talks so much about the inclusivity of cultures/beliefs that it excludes people like monotheists. Anyways, the class that I am taking outside of the school of social work deals with the role of culture in health practices. We somehow started to talk about faith, and the role that plays in culture. I was expecting history to repeat itself and for Christianity to be generalized into "all things George W stands for" and to be portrayed as the enemy of all things loving. Thankfully however,it did not go that way. I walked away from that class excited about what I had just experienced. After our discussion the group debriefed about our conversation and what we found was that for most of us it was the first time we had all been in a conversation with people from all different faith backgrounds where no one felt attacked, no one was getting defensive,and people genuinely really wanted to gain more understanding from each other and were respectful while doing it. It was such a rewarding experience for me...I can not really put into words what it was like.

But I think that it was by far the biggest "Surprise me God" moment that I have experienced so far in my 11 day experiment.

Life is full of surprises

Yesterday my small group read the first chapter in "Surprise Me: A 30-Day Faith Experiment" by Terry Esau. The purpose of the experiement is to just be intentional in looking for God, or what God may be saying to you in every day life. I'm starting this experiement today, and part of what I will be doing is jotting down what I have been learning along the way. Now sadly I will not be able to journal/blog daily but I will do my best to write semi-regularly.

So today was day one. I must say that when I started to look back upon my day nothing was really standing out. But then it hit me. The last three weeks I have been struggling with this one class I have. It is a horrible class. I struggle to find one positive thing about it, and I find that when I talk, think, or go to this class I get a terrible unattractive attitude. I really don't like it at all. So last night I came to my small group and asked them to pray about it with me. Then today I went on with my day, and was at my internship when someone asked me about my classes. Soon I found myself going off about this horrible class, and suddenly I felt this heaviness coming over me...if I were a cartoon character there would have been a dark rain cloud directly over my head.

Anyways, it was shortly after that that I realized I needed to stop obsessing over this class (primarily because I don't like obsessive Heather). So I think what I learned from the day was another lesson on trusting God...becase last night I, along with a group of friends, casted my burden of this class to God and I need to trust that he has it all under control.

The End.