Fatigue at its Finest

This morning I woke up at 7am to my phone vibrating and ringing loudly against my bed. After another 2am bedtime, studying for a midterm, you can imagine realizing my phone was going off took a couple seconds. I fumbled around a few more seconds and finally found my phone to find out that my dad was calling me. He was just hoping to get my voice-mail to leave my mom's new cell phone number on my phone. Whoops. My day continued with getting ready for class, taking a Health Dynamics midterm and then finally heading to chapel. One of the best parts of my Wednesdays. "I want to know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and share in His suffering, by becoming like Him, in death."~Phil. 3:10-11 We learned this verse in sign language today. I decided that I absolutely love the book of Philippians, or as my roomie would say, "I freakin' love this book!". He emphasized the the idea that when we say "Christ" or "Jesus" in sign language, we point to the "nail holes" on our hands, symbolizing the sacrifice on the cross. I never even thought about that before and how many years have I been singing the B-I-B-L-E? I always look forward to chapel at Hope College because of the atmosphere. Just about half of our campus shows up to chapels and the Gathering on Sunday nights. The entire place is packed! Seeing the amount of college students that will take a little time out of their day because they WANT to praise Christ, is absolutely amazing and completely indescribable. God does amazing things within this community of Hope. As my day went on, I looked forward to the day's happenings. I got ready for CASA, an after-school program where we tutor kids in the Holland area that need help in school. Today, since we are so close to Halloween, we carved pumpkins!!! My kid, Joseph was sooo excited to do this activity. I swear that is all he talked about while we finished up his math problems. I love being tutor, some days it is very stressful having to deal with kids that are not used to respecting authority. I have a hard time in my van sometimes with a few kids. It is hard to figure out the boundaries of when I need to step in and say something or whether to let a comment pass over. Most of these kids are fourth and fifth graders, they cuss, fight, talk about the opposite sex in an inappropriate manner and talk back quite often. Sometimes I have hard time seeing how I am helping them. When I say things, often I feel like it goes in one ear and out of the other. I can only hope and pray that I am in some way getting across to them in a positive way even if I cannot see it. I pray that my influence is in some small way creating a piece of them that is a decent person even though at night gunshots could be heard next door from gang violence. I do not even know what I am saying really. This is my first time trying out this blog thing so I kind of feel like I'm throwing this out there in space. I am struggs at time management, as my roommate would also say, "I ride shot gun on the struggle bus." I think many of us college students have a hard time balancing everything. There is always so much on our plates it is hard to think about what is coming even the next day with a thousand meetings and projects and homework each night. Stress=what college students are made of. Life is full and how we manage it really defines who we are. I am so appreciative of God for bringing me here to this place. 


Peace & Love,
B.