A couple of weekends ago I found myself sitting in Charleston on a Saturday afternoon thinking to myself, “What should I do?” I had cleaned the apartment, done my laundry, and was finishing some homework. But I really wasn’t sure what to do with my afternoon. I knew it was nice out and I had been thinking about exploring some local parks and hiking trails. I love the outdoors and I really enjoy hiking. In fact I wish I did it more. I found myself at Fox Ridge just hiking around on some of their trails. This was early September, and I realized that very early signs of fall were starting to pop up and make themselves known to the general world. Well lets say these simple sights have just simply excited me. As I hiked some of the trails, almost 4 miles worth that afternoon, I found myself skipping along and signing tunes that reminded me of the approaching change in seasons! Ok, I really wasn’t skipping along and signing. I was just casually walking and taking in the beauty of what Fox Ridge State Park has to offer. Which if I may say so, it offers some pretty cool trails, and it’s close to campus. I’d suggest checking it out, it was really cool and well worth the short drive south.

I’m not really sure if I was bummed about the approaching change in season’s or excited. I love the outdoors, but I hate the heat and humidity that is provided during the summer. It was quite convenient that when I returned to my car the song Turn! Turn! Turn! was playing on the radio. I remember growing up listening to this song as a kid in the backseat of mom and dad’s old Buick we had. The words of this song may ring out as familiar elsewhere. Checkout the book Ecclesiastes. These same words (or similar depending on your selected translation) come from chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes. Verse 1 says - “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven.”

As much I as I may miss the freedom of being able to be outdoors in the summer, or maybe miss seeing the sun that can occasionally disappear for a few days during the winter, I have to remind myself, there’s a reason for the change in season, and it all serves a purpose.

Now in all honesty I can say I’m excited about the approaching change in season. I love fall weather, and I can say that I do embrace winter, so I find myself looking forward to these two seasons approaching.

If your like me you may be looking forward to the change in season. I’m curious as to what your season is and why. Feel free to comment on the blog to tell me, or let me know next time you see me.

And if you are looking for a good tune to enjoy check out this Youtube video.

When I came to EIU in the Fall of 2006 as a Freshman, I was determined to be a Journalism Major. “All The President’s Men” was my favorite movie and I wanted to be just like Woodward and Bernstein and get to the truth behind all of the corruption. But that was before I actually started working with the DEN and taking a couple Journalism classes. I quickly realized that most news writing was extremely boring and tedious to write (at least in my opinion). I found myself dreading interviews and completely uninterested in the topics I wrote about.

Now, I realized that being a freshman meant I was not going to get assigned anything “hard-hitting” like Watergate. But halfway through my first semester and four published stories later, I knew this is not what I wanted to do with my life. I found no enjoyment in it.

I was confused and scared. I had been so sure that I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I had a plan. So one Monday evening I took my Bible and went to the benches between the Science building and Buzzard. It was quiet and no one was around, so I just cried out to God.

“What am I supposed to do? Why am I here? Where am I going?” It became pretty clear to me that I had never taken the time before this moment to talk with God about my future. It had always been “my plans”...and those obviously did not work out too well. After lots of prayer over the next couple days and some tears, I called my parents to break the news...I was changing my major. I knew I liked writing and I had always loved reading, so English seemed like the natural route to take. And this later led to me taking on a Professional Writing minor which I really enjoyed and learned so much from.

God did a lot of work in me over my four years as a student. My plans never involved ministry. My plans involved staying safe and doing my own thing. I liked the idea of being a Woodward, but I never expected to break open a huge political scheme. I don’t have my whole life planned out anymore.

So do you make your plans? Or do you allow God to direct you and change you? God never audibly told me what major to switch too, but the more time I spent in prayer, the more my eyes were open to the possibilities each choice gave. But a huge part was just letting go of control and learning what it means to trust my Creator. Are you ready to trust Him?

How is your day going today? Is it going swell? Do you feel like you’re on top of the world? Everything is going your way. Maybe it’s been an ok day. Some things have been blah, but mostly they are all ok. Or has it been a crappy day. You’re stressed out, nothing is going right, even the day is grey and there’s no sunshine. Just dull, dreary clouds that make you want to stay in bed the entire day.

Unfortunately, I’ve gone through a lot of those feelings a couple of weeks ago. Things have gone wrong, things have broken, and nothing was going right. Then a day or two would be just blah, nothing was really bad, but nothing was really good. And I had one day of feeling like I was on top of the world.

I’ve talked with some people and they have also had a week like mine. It stinks, you wish that you could just stay with the feeling that you’re on top of the world, but you can’t. I remember back when I was just starting to learn more about being a Christian, that I believed that because I was a christian that everything in life would be super easy, God would always make sure that I was happy. It didn’t take too long before I became discouraged because things weren’t going my way, things in life weren’t easy; they were hard or getting harder. At first, I thought, maybe it’s because I did something wrong so God is punishing me. So I need to think real hard about all the things that I’ve done and just repent as hard as I can and then things will be easier because I’ll have God’s favor again. Well doing all those things didn’t work to make life easier on me. Then as I began to read the bible more, I came across verses that talked about how we should rejoice about being in trials, or that because we follow Jesus that men would hate us. I began to realize that God never said that he would make our life easier if we decided to follow him.

It is harder because the world is against us. But don’t get too discouraged, because God has promised us that he will never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). He is always there for us to turn to.