Friday……..

Tonight, I underestimated the attacks of Satan and this very real war we are in the middle of…. whether we acknowledge it or not. There is a God who loves us deeply, intimately, passionately… a God who is pursuing after His Bride… and there is an enemy- Satan who will stop at nothing to divert the attention of His Bride… to cause us to chase after other lovers… to distract… to attack us… tonight, the demonic attacked me. Within the course of ONE hour. Satan openly attacked with his demonic forces. I felt the attack. And within that very hour, my God pursued me. He sought after me. He chased me. I may have underestimated the attacks of Satan.. but tonight, he underestimated me. The warrior in me arose. Her strength is not to the level I desire… but my spirit rose up and I took action. And you want to know what else, I looked amazing doing it. It's kind of a really fun and beautiful combination of feeling the warrior rise up, even in small ways, and feeling beautiful at the same time. Oh… Oh my future husband missed out. I was alone…. besides my Jesus, and the sweet apartment worker man, I was alone. And yet…. and yet I wasn't…. my beautiful Mindy Lorene best friend was texting with me, my bestest guy friend, Chad, was centralized in his thinking giving me advice over the phone and then following up to make sure I was alright…. I got a package from my Meagan Louise best friend and my Kentucky momma, Chris…. and ALL of this literally in an hour. Whew….. John and Stasi Eldredge were not kidding…. and that play from my church when I was a little girl- "The Bride"…. I'm not reading this or watching this… I'm living it. This is real life. I'm not learning anymore… I'm walking it out… failing-succeeding-failing-failing-failing-conquering. This. Is. Real. Life. This life is oh so short and I want to know that I went after Kingdom. With my whole heart, my whole life. I want to pass out at the finish line of eternity, knowing that I gave it all I had. When I'm exhausted, instead of checking out, I want to dig deep, breathe deeply, set my face on HIS, gaze into His eyes and keep going. In a little over than three weeks, I graduate. I. Graduate. Oh how the reality of that has not set in yet. And yet, it has… and in so many ways, it hasn't. I had been working at this, enduring, persevering, making the difficult choices, saying no to so many somethings to go after this goal. And it is drawing nearer and nearer…..

I'm excited and yet so curious what the next chapter will look like. I don't know. I have peace. But, I don't know. I don't. And if I am completely honest, I want to punch every person who asks me what the next step and who, after I say that I don't know proceeds to give me ideas or input into what they think I should or could do. Yes, Yes I know they care…. blah-blah-blah…. I just want to punch them. Truly. And I'm not a violent person. It's not me. It's not my personality, and every time this happens, I want to punch them. To this point, I have not really punched anyone. We'll see what happens in the next three-ish weeks. This week was oh so emotional- EVERY.DAY. I wrote a list and there were HIGH emotional moments in EVERY. DAY. That's emotional enough and add to it the emotional culmination of my forth coming college graduation. Oh. My. I just want to curl up in my Jesus' arms and have Him take care of it all. I'm spent emotionally. and yet…… ** "….my strength in life is that I am yours…."

On a really fun, and yet again, high emotional moment, I saw that my grade for my LAST college paper was graded, and this professor grades hard…she's amazing, but she's an intense grader….. I look at my grade- 100%. I got a 100% on my LAST COLLEGE PAPER!!!! *giggle*…. That's one way to exit my MTSU undergraduate career! *smile*…. I celebrated after this emotional evening with cooking a grilled cheese and sauerkraut sandwich *smile*… I'm simple. It was delicious. If I would have chosen, it would have been with people…. but you know, that's okay. It's okay. All or most of all of my people are coming to either my graduation and/or my graduation party… and that's pretty amazing!!! *smile*…. #honored #loved

AND I get to graduate with this dear sweet Shannon Renee best friend of mine…..

(and yes, I have more than one best friend…I only have a few, but they each bring a different side of me and challenge me…. this one, I am oh so thankful for!!!)