So yes, I’ve graduated high school!!! It feels really cool and it was nice to see all my hard work pay off. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop working haha, it just means I’m going to get to work even harder. However, that is life so I’m not really worried about it. People always say don’t you want to stay a high schooler forever? My answer is two-fold: Yes, I probably would like to be a high schooler for awhile longer just because it gives you time to have fun with your friends before you start working and go off to college. On the other hand, I can’t really answer that question because IT’S IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE! So much has happened this last year that I’m still trying to grasp everything that happened. It’s a difficult task lol 🙂 I’m just gonna throw a few (of many lol) random thoughts out there that God has brought on my mind and you guys can see what you think of them.
One of the first points is that you simply have to be self-motivated in order to reach your greatest potential in life. You can be really successful based on natural ability or talent alone but you’ll never be the best you can be. I can personally say that I am not naturally a person to be self-motivated. If I stuck to my nature I would play and train for soccer then sit around and do nothing most of the day, no joke! I just naturally don’t feel like putting in that much effort. However, I’ve learned that you have to work hard in life (finally got what my dad had been teaching me all these years lol). In jr high and my freshman year of high school things always came easy to me. I never had to really work hard at school because I relied on my natural ability and pretty much got straight A’s. I didn’t have to work on growing up because I wanted to just be like everyone else and society allowed for that pretty easily. Plus at that age it is so easy to duck responsibility… much too easy that it should’ve been (once again based on society’s stereotype). The only times I had to work hard was when I was playing sports or when I was doing chores at home. For those of you that know my dad, he seems like a pretty cool guy but a little quiet sometimes. Sometimes he tells really good jokes and sometimes they just fall flat (we share that quality X) ) What I most admire about him is that he always works his tail off. ALL THE TIME. Whatever he is doing he puts everything that he can into that activity and is honestly like a head hunter- he NEVER quits until a job is done. He finally helped me see that motivation comes from inside you; deep inside your soul. So in my sophomore year, I realized that I was getting harder homework and that I needed to work harder. I figured out that self-motivation is the key and 3 years later I can say that I got out of high school with a 3.8ish GPA. One class this senior year that I needed a lot of self-motivation for was my physics class this year. Everyone who knows me (and has taken the class) knows how bad this class was; it was the freakin’ class of death. 1/5 of the class dropped and ½ of the people left completely failed the course. I really wanted to drop the course… I wasn’t getting really good grades (in my opinion C’s are the lowest you should go and I got a few D+’s) and high school soccer was just around the corner. I wanted to just ditch physics and have fun playing soccer, but my parents wouldn’t allow me to drop physics. That’s when God helped me realize that he put me in the situation that I was in for a reason. He wanted me to learn self-motivation and so I decided not to play high school ball in order to work on the class. I’m not whining or trying to put myself up on a pedestal- I’m just trying to show people what can happen when you get self-motivated. I spent an average of 5 hours A DAY on that class. I ended up finishing with a 79 (4th highest grade in the class) and pulled some people through with me. And I’m not saying that I’m always motivated these days. There are some things that I’m not motivated for and fail. However, I’ve learned the lesson that self-motivation will take you a long way in life and I’m going to work hard for the rest of my life 🙂
Another thing I learned about was growing up. First thing I would like to say is while I grew up a lot in high school I wish I coulda grown up even more and matured even more while I had a safety net under me. I feel like it is fair to say I’m very mature for my age yet I know I could’ve done more. There was so much time I wasted doing (this was honestly the only word I could think of) frivolous activities. Now, I’d like to explain myself a little more- IT’S ALRIGHT TO HAVE FUN!!!! I like to have fun myself. I love hanging out with my friends, being on social media, following sports etc. my point is that you have to keep these things in moderation. It’s a classic example but people who are on facebook more than 1 ½ hours a day: you have a problem lol. Most of the time you just sit there and do nothing- you’re wasting valuable time to be doing something else! If you do movies- once or twice a week during the school year is pretty chill but if you watch more: You don’t need to watch that many movies. Life moves very fast… one of the things my pastor has been preaching about lately is stewardship. Stewardship is pretty much managing something that isn’t your own… it’s been given to you. God gave us time to use for his glory. Those video games you pour so much of your life into: God didn’t make you to spend hundreds of hours playing Halo or Assassin’s Creed. Playing the games a little is fine, but putting your life into it… ridiculous. In 20 years people won’t care if you were the 200th best player in the world at World of Warcraft. People won’t care if you saw all these movies… people won’t care about how your social life went down… the list goes on and on… STAY FOCUSED on growing up. Use that time you’re wasting and not using for any good to become wiser. Dive into God’s word and study it more because he is the only thing worth living for and the more you read that the more you will grow in him. Instead of sitting on the couch… WWWWOOOOOOORRRRRRRKKKKKKKKK!!! Find a job at home or go find a part-time job somewhere else that you can make money from (to save) and gain some valuable real-life experience. Or, what a novel idea, study even harder and get better grades!!! There’s so many ways you can better use your time… it sounds simple but it’s not. You honestly just have to find the balance between having fun and having too much fun. I can honestly say that I wish someone had told me this before I was in my senior year… I could’ve done so much more. To sum that up, always be trying to grow up because high school is perfect for that and God wants you to be using that time to become who he has made you to become!
Now that I’ve lost most of my teenage readers (cause I’m pretty sure that having less fun isn’t a very popular subject 😛 ) I will move on to another topic. You will have times in high school where you are confused as to “who you are”, where you’re going, and how to handle life. Every single person who is in high school or past high school knows what I’m talking about. There are very few people in this world that have everything together nearly all the time. There are trials because God wants you to grow stronger and closer to him. Trials suck at the time but they are so important to our spiritual growth. It’s like the silversmith refining the silver; God uses these trials to refine us. Always remember that you can survive any trial that you come across because God is always behind you and will give you the strength that you need. Many people automatically think of Philippians 4:13… “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” That is such a good verse and then I also like Psalm 73:26, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” God will ALWAYS give you the strength that you need, and that’s so important to remember (thus why I’m repeating myself lol)! There are times where you simply make your own trials though by bad decisions. I know that is the case for me and you know it’s happened to you. I’m gonna be candid… and why am I being candid? Most people fear other people judging them for their mistakes but I honestly don’t. People can talk about how I have messed up and so forth but I don’t care… because it’s true!!! We all make mistakes and we are all forced to really on Jesus dying the cross to save us. We’re all on the same ground and I love talking with my friends about their struggles and how to make life decisions. Working with others through life is something that I really like to do. So back to my candidness (spell-checker said it was a word haha) …mid-April through the end of May this year was horrendous for me in the department of making personal decisions. People couldn’t tell because I’ve always been a master at disguising my emotions but I put everything on my own back. I made decisions completely on my own and didn’t use sound judgment or common sense. I just made decisions in a way that made me feel good and totally was only thinking of myself. I reached for some stuff that I shouldn’t have reached for and the list goes on and on… I’ve been cleaning up the mess for awhile now but at least I learned that I can’t carry everything on my own. God had been helping me out so much I honestly forgot who was doing all the awesomeness in my life… and it wasn’t me lol. God showed me that I need to be patient (something that God is helping me to slowly improve in) and that I needed to put others before myself. God showed me that while I can be very close to him I can forget whose show it is. I was given a lesson about how I need God for every single heartbeat of my life or else I’m just living for no reason. I don’t know about you; but I want to live a life worth living. I want to follow God wherever he brings me. I said I would follow him to the death and I still hold fast to that. Anywhere he brings me I will go… even into Mordor ;D couldn’t help putting in a Lord of the Rings reference. Side trail really quick- I’m really jacked to watch the second installment of the Hobbit. That trailer was super-amazing and I’m only disappointed that we all have to wait for December to watch it!!! It’s gonna be the bomb 🙂 … anyways yes I will follow God on whatever path he leads me. I checked out this book from my church library and it’s called “The Search for Peace: Release from the torments of toxic unforgiveness” by Robert S. McGee and Donald W. Sapaugh. Actually, this book was the bomb! It helped me to release so much emotion that I had built up over the last 4-5 years and it was a great help in getting back to who I am. Another thing about this messy period was that I also was questioning who I was. Satan kept filling me with all these insecurities and I believed them. People sometimes forget… Satan is crafty in his schemes and is sooo cunning. I’m not using that as an excuse; I’m just reminding everyone that you have to be on your guard. I was caught COMPLETELY off-guard and wasn’t prepared for anything that went down. Be ready and stand firm. Satan will try to find ways to get you to drop your life principles but you have to not move an inch. The last thing… God gives you these trials to give you experience. Share that with people that are younger than you or anyone who needs it. Do you need to be specific? No, but at the same time you can speak in a general sense to help someone out. Also, just get back up. Don’t let Satan keep you on the ground… don’t let your past failures determine the future of your life. All your sin is gone 🙂 …So that’s what God has taught me about those moments of insecurities and failures… don’t be afraid because God is on your side. He will help you conquer anything that comes your way!
So yeah… those were the main points the God brought up. I’m sorry for not putting out blogs on a regular basis… my life has been moving at a speed of 300 mph the last month or so. We actually had an hour and a half of quiet time at a camp staff orientation I had this weekend… and I realized that it was the first time (besides for doing it in my bed at night haha) I had a moment like that for quite awhile. It was very refreshing… but the graduation ceremony was really awesome. A bunch of my friends whooped it up when my senior video played and I got my certificate so it sounded like I was the most popular person in my class… which I found hilarious! That is FAR from the truth because I’m not even close to being the most popular person in my class but I realized all that whooping was yet another perk of being friends with the younger people in high school. Love the classes below me… they better invite me to all their graduations 😀 I was one of the two student speakers and while I didn’t do the best job God helped me to make an impact so I was really happy! So over the last week or so I’ve thought of so many other things that God has told me to write about. I hope it impacts you like it’s impacted me… and a shout-out to all the people who helped me through high school. My family, friends, moms (because when you’re homeschooled the moms play a big role and a lot of them are actually really cool 🙂 ) teachers and everyone else that has had a role in getting me through. I really appreciate all your help so much!!! I do need to actually relax though before I start work in two weeks… enjoy my little time where I’m free 🙂 Anyways, enjoy summer all you people and have fun and connect with God!!!!
P.S. Less than two months before I head off to college… I can’t wait for this next chapter of my life!
Through the ups and downs of life 