stress

The Sophomore Slump

What is up my people?! It has been quite a while since the last time I posted something here.

What’s new with me you ask? {Ha you are SO kind!}

hmmmmmm… let’s see…

Oh! The sophomore slump? Heard of it? Well, let me tell you, IT IS A REAL THING.

Haha sorry that was a tad aggressive… I was just shouting to make sure you heard me in the back.

For those of you who are not familiar with the terminology of the cool kids these days, the sophomore slump is basically just as it sounds: a low point during your sophomore year.

In some ways, it’s just like the freshman 15: everyone jokes about it but does not actually warn you that IT IS REAL.

Haha now that we have established I am 15 pounds heavier than when I first entered college, I believe this is the perfect moment for one of my favorite sayings of all time:

“It’s always Sugar Honey Iced TeaS and giggles until someone giggles and Sugar Honey Iced TeaS.” {Haha figured I probably shouldn’t curse here}

Translation –> the sophomore slump hit me really hard.

I have come to the conclusion that there are several factors that create a sophomore slump:

  1. All of the magical glitter surrounding college has been blown away by a strong gust of less-exciting reality. (Don’t get me wrong, college is awesome, and I am super thankful to be here. However, nothing can sustain super awesome forever.)
  2. If you now live in an apartment, you are no longer surrounded by 50+ amigos to constantly do fun stuff with = you spend more time by yourself.
  3. You have pretty much no motivation to further your education at the time when your course load becomes significantly harder. You have to grind.
  4. You begin the year thinking that you’ve got this all under control because YOU survived freshman year – Ha! Nice one, Cat.
  5. You feel way more alone no matter how many amazing friends surround you.

I am going to focus the rest of my tangent on the last two.

I don’t know about you, but I have the tendency to rely heavily on God in uncertain situations (ex. going off to college freshman year). As time goes on and I feel like I have a better grasp on the situation at hand, I rely less and less on God. This is not a conscious decision, but I begin to feel like I have this whole thing called life under control. Then, without knowing it, I begin to rely entirely on my own strength and will.

I forget that God constantly gave me the strength and will to make it to where I am in the first place. Therefore when I am weak and have no motivation (because I am no longer relying on God), I do not know what is going on or why I cannot seem to fix anything.

I do not realize the mistake I am making until I hit a really low point. This time it was my sophomore slump.

I felt empty, alone, anxious, unprepared, and far from God for months.

Every time I reach a point like this in my life, I realize now, I am quick to distract myself with social media, watching Netflix, hanging out with friends, etc. I subconsciously do not give myself a moment of silence – assuming that what is going on will pass.

I was still going to church and campus Christian organizations on the reg hoping that doing this would change what was happening. {Unfortunately, Christian things cannot fill a God-sized hole}

 

Fake it till I make it right?

Wrong.

There is no faking it with God because He is, ya know, God.

 

Do you know what did help a ton?

Silence.

Stillness.

 

Why?

Oftentimes, these are the conditions in which God is the most present.

 

Why?

This is where God has your attention the most.

 

This whole relationship with God thing does not work if you do not hold up your end of the deal. You have to pursue Him as much as He pursues you.

Satan uses “noise” (everyday struggles, goals, social media, work, school, music, Netflix, To-Do lists, chores, projects, homework, even going to church/Christian things out of habit, etc.) to get us so utterly wrapped up in everything around us that we forget to stop… and look up to God. We stop relying on Him because we are so consumed with filling the void within us – thinking that we can accomplish this with our own strength and determination. We only find Him again when we have nothing else left.

Learn from me, and do not let your subconscious rule your life. Make a conscious effort to pursue God in every moment. Fight for silence. Fight for time with God.

Silence the noise. Be still. Wait on God.

 

“Be still, and know that I am God! I will be honored by every nation. I will be honored throughout the world.”

-Psalm 46:10 (NLT)

“Cease striving and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

-Psalm 46:10 (NASB)

 

Group prayer time!

Please take a moment to pray for every person who is stuck in a slump right now and sees no way out. Pray that they stop fighting this battle on their own, get on their knees, and look up to God.

XOXO,

Cat

 

 

 

Midterms.

Who out there feels overwhelmed by life right now? I know I do.

It is the week before spring break, and midterm season has arrived.

If you know me, you know that I have a tendency to procrastinate. However when I procrastinate, I don’t push the stress out of my mind and do something actually enjoyable like take a nap worry free. No, I stressfully watch Netflix or procrastinate in some other useless way holding on tight to my anxiety.

{Hahaha if you follow me on Instagram, you will find how I turned my procrastination into a very therapeutic way of dealing with stress this week. Thanks Christine! 😹}

The stress builds up to the point that it becomes paralyzing. I know I should be studying and doing the thousand other time sensitive things on my list…

…but I just can’t.

My stress level was reaching a really high point yesterday when God put things in perspective.

Take a deep breath, my friend.

If you are like me and stressing about midterms, stop and thank God. This is the best possible stress to have in the ENTIRE WORLD. If you are worried about midterms, this means you have both the OPPORTUNITY AND ABILITY TO LEARN. If you are worried about midterms, you are not worried about your HEALTH. If you are worried about midterms, you are not worried about being HUNGRY. If you are worried about midterms, you are not worried about your SAFETY or OVERALL WELL-BEING.

If you are not literally worried about an exam, what is the figurative “midterm” in your life right now? Pray for perspective.

If you are worried about some of the things I listed, you are being tested in a different way. I absolutely HATE that you are going through this. However, I assure you that God is with you every step of the way.

Do Not Worry

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

-Matthew 6:25-34

Praise God for the midterms of life, for always being there, and for blessing us beyond what we deserve.

{Group prayer time!}

Please pray that God gives every single person who reads this peace and the knowledge that everything is going to be okay regardless of what is happening right now.

XOXO,

Cat

{Seriously, go check out my Instagram if you want to laugh 😹 @worldofcma}

Wake Up.

These last two weeks have been long.

Between my mad procrastination skills digging me into a deep hole and the fact that time with God has not been at the top of my priority list, I have been living class to class in a haze.

I woke up from my haze this morning.

Merriam-Webster.com defines complacency as, “self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.” Complacency is a state that occurs from spending all of your time seeking satisfaction in yourself, your plans, and your circumstances. Therefore, because you are not actively seeking God, you are unaware of the dangerous situation in which the devil is slowly placing you.

The devil uses busyness as one of his tools to make us complacent in our faith – to make us passive in our faith – to make us slowly set aside our faith.

Then, complacency leads to indifference.

It is SO EASY to fall into the trap of indifference. Indifference is that weird in-between where you know what you should be doing, but you lack the drive to do it. You are too busy. You are too tired. You are too…(fill in the blank). You become unconcerned. Then, you slowly become indifferent.

Our faith is the one thing in this world with which we cannot afford to be indifferent, complacent, or passive. Faith is not something we can just push down the line to figure out when we are older because we are not promised tomorrow much less, years to figure it out.

Wake up, my friend, please wake up.

“What are you going to do to fight your natural drift towards indifference?” – Samer  Massad

Fight for your faith. Seek God, seek God, and seek God again. He will lift you out of the trap of indifference that you have fallen into.

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” -Jeremiah 29:13

{Group prayer time!}

Please pray that every person who reads this will continuously look to God to rescue them from complacency and indifference. Pray that God gives us the strength to fight for faith every single day.

XOXO,

Cat

Hey guys! Many of you know that music is my soul food. If you would like for me to share my playlists, let me know in the comments! NF is an artist I found recently with lyrically some of the best songs I have heard in a long time. His rapping is straight up poetry. Check out “Wake Up”:

{Thank you Port City Community Church, Overflow, and Samer Massad for delivering a message that has been weighing heavily on my mind the past few weeks! You guys are the bomb!}

Also, If you have a second, check out my friend Imani’s blog post on complacency:

https://sojournersays.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/to-my-friends-caught-in-complacency/ 

Her post is incredible!

“Complacency.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 2 Feb. 2017.

Control.

Why do we (I) always fight God for control of our lives? We are not qualified to be in control, yet we can’t just give God the reins. I think it’s because we are afraid. We are trying to minimize the likelihood of experiencing failure, hurt, and pain. The way we accomplish this is by using control as a tool to measure the amount of strength we think we have against what we think we can handle. We measure the strength we feel we have today against what we feel we can handle tomorrow… and the next day and the next. Then, we plan our route accordingly. The problem is, first of all, we don’t know what the future holds. Secondly, the amount of strength we have today is not the amount we will be equipped with tomorrow. God gives us the strength to deal with TODAY, our “daily bread”, so we can handle TODAY not tomorrow. Yet, we use today’s allotment of strength to deal with tomorrow’s problems. Scratch that – the many possible problems we imagine could happen tomorrow.

God does not have to imagine anything because He knows. He planned our whole lives before we were even born. However, He didn’t give us a planned roadmap of our lives because He knew it would be too much. He knew we couldn’t handle it. We would be paralyzed with fear and would not get through today, much less tomorrow. Each chapter of our lives has brought varying degrees of failure, hurt, and pain – the things we work so hard to avoid. However, what we fail to realize is that God has not only been there every single time, but He also has gotten us through it every single time. So, why are we so afraid? You have survived everything in your life up to this point, this moment, reading this post on some random girl’s blog. God has brought you through so much. So, why would He abandon you now?

God has a plan (and trust me, it’s a good one). So, stop measuring your own strength when His strength is immeasurable. Do what you were made to do, grab His hand tight, and let go of control.

XOXO,

Cat