Childlike Faith.

We had to write a tiny, 500 word essay in one of my classes about something we believe in. If you've ever read the book This I Believe, then you'll understand what I mean when I say it was modeled after the essays in that book. 
Obviously, I believe in God, and I could write my whole life and never stop if I wrote about Him. I certainly couldn't fit it all in five hundred words. So, I decided to write about my belief in childlike faith. If you wish to read it, here's what I wrote:

Faith Like a Child

Over the course of the last year-and-a-half of my life, the Lord has taken me on an incredible journey of faith.

After graduating high school, I attended a summer church camp with my youth group in south Texas. One of my counselors kept in touch with me the rest of the summer and constantly urged me to apply for a nine-month long discipleship program that the camp holds throughout the non-summer months. I applied for the program and went through all of the steps without even considering how I was going to pay for it – I call that childlike faith. Inevitably, I could not afford it, and I thought I would not be able to go. I prayed a lot that God would provide the money somehow, and one week before the program started, the director called me and told me that the camp would be paying for my entire tuition.

While I was still in the program, the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself to me. The director told us that a group from California was offering to let us participate in their annual trip to Israel the next summer. That was great news, and I was so excited about the trip; however, the trip cost a total of four thousand dollars. Three of my peers were the only ones who were able to afford this trip, so they were the only ones who even signed up to go besides me. I signed up without even thinking about how I would not be able to pay my way - there is that childlike faith again. I prayed fervently, asking God to somehow provide the money and send me to Israel because I just knew deep down that I was supposed to be there. Not only did I pray, but I prayed in faith because I just knew that God would come through. I felt a lot of resistance at first, but after praying and begging for several months, after having so many doors slammed in my face, and after falling on my knees and completely surrendering it all to the Lord, He finally gave me an answer: a resounding, “Yes.”

I got three large donations from some completely random sources. My parents and I collectively came up with one thousand dollars, one of my friends randomly gave me a thousand dollars, the father of one of my peers gave me a thousand dollars, and an anonymous individual in California gave me a thousand dollars! Needless to say, the Lord paid my way to Israel, and incredible, life-changing events happened there. I received freedom and healing while I was in the Lord’s land. I even got baptized in the Jordan River – the same river that my Savior was baptized in! God definitely wanted me on that trip, and He proved it to me in a million ways.

Right now, I am asking God to send me to London to study abroad this coming summer. I am asking in faith because I have learned that faith is the key to my Life.  I believe in the power and freedom of childlike faith.

My heart is too big.

Sometimes, people can be just down-right mean.

The other day in my history class, one girl was just an absolute witch. It was the last meeting before our big exam, and the teacher started the class off by saying, “We have an exam planned for Friday, but it is possible to move it to Monday. At the end of class, we will take a vote to see whether we will take the exam on Monday or Friday. Also, remember that no matter how few or how many notes we take, the exam will only cover information that we have gone over.” Now, logically, wouldn’t you want to take as few notes that day as possible so that you had less information to study for the exam? Yea, me too.

Well, there is this one guy in my class who always asks questions. Yea, sometimes it's annoying, but 99% of the time, I am so thankful that he asks questions because they are questions that I secretly want to know the answer to!

Okay, so there’s also this girl in my class who sits in the row right in front of me (we have assigned seats), and every time that the guy asks a question, she glances back at the people in my row, and she rolls her eyes and sighs very loudly. On this particular day, after the guy had asked about a thousand questions, she raised her hand and very loudly exclaims, “As lovely as these questions are, for those of us who want to take the exam on Friday, could you please stop asking questions?” She called him out, very rudely, in front of about a hundred people. Rude. I wanted to punch her in her face.

The point of this blog was not primarily to vent about her, although sometimes it does feel good to vent, but I just felt sooo bad for that guy. He immediately shut up and didn’t ask another question for the rest of class. I am afraid that this girl has squelched something oh-so valuable in him. I am afraid that he will never ask a question again. It’s because of people like her that other people have low self-esteem! Come on! Geez. I am going to find this guy and tell him that I appreciate him and his questions because I just really really don’t want him to never voice his thoughts/opinions/questions.

My heart hurts for him, and I would appreciate it if someone would slap me in my face if I am ever extremely rude to someone.