Relentless

I just felt the need to write, just for the sake of writing. As I've been home this past week and a half, I've been renewed piece by piece. It's been very good for me to come home and I've definitely relished my time here. Despite how good my time at home has been, I've become lax in prayer, the eternal struggle of every summer. As I've distanced myself from this previous year at Benedictine, there's something that I really came to realize that attributed to why I think last year just sucked. When I looked at this past year and I was entirely honest with myself, I came to realize that I slipped into apathy in prayer, I mean, yes, I had the relationship with God, but I didn't really work at it. Just as with any friendship or relationship in general, it requires work, it requires sacrifice in order to maintain a good relationship with God, my heart was veiled from my God this past year, and I'm still not entirely sure how it happened or why it happened, but that was the fact of the matter. Why is it that my prayer always becomes so stagnant? 

The thing that really separated sophomore year for me was, honestly, the tight-knit relationship I had with the Lord. There would often be times that I would simply go to be with God, I always talked with God about everything and I withheld nothing. It was a legitimate relationship with God that I had, prayer was my world, not a  part of my world. Therein lies the major problem with my walk with the Lord this past year, my prayer was defined by my life, my life was not defined by my prayer. There is something to be said for faithfully coming before the Lord, but more often than not I perceived my prayer times this past year as irksome intrusions on my time, not the high-point of my day like it was when I was a sophomore. It was coerced, and I didn't revel in the joy of the Lord this past year as I had the year before. Aside from that I was under attack throughout the year: not having Andrew with me first semester; not doing as well as I usually do in my classes first semester; the random emotional flare-up on the retreat I helped with; the RA position and finally wrapping up the year finding out my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It was like I was being stripped of everything, and was being made low. 

The fact of the matter is, I still don't know why God allowed all of those things to happen, I do not know how to get my prayer life back on track to where it was, and I especially do not know what is in store for me this upcoming year. The simple fact remains that God is God and I am not. I remember reading this book a few years back called, "Furious Pursuit" and on the back cover was this quote that essentially summed up the entire message of the book, "You are not defined by what you've done or where you've been, you're defined by who pursues you." God is relentlessly pursuing me and trying to unite me more intimately to Himself. How? I don't know. Why? I'm not even entirely sure of that, but having that little shred of truth is what is giving me hope to make it through this next year.