Memories: Lubbock SE 2010

I am lying in bed in my dorm room. The clock at the foot of my bed reads 12:26 in small green numbers that are quietly yelling "You need to be asleep!" I've been thinking over the day and all that's happened. As I come to the worship session at the end of the day, I smile. It feels good to be this happy. I know that I am ready to give God my all. I am slowly fading into sleep, but I want to dwell in the memory of an event that has just happened.

I see the Baker Center, and all the campers, the Deans, and the staff. I see Mr. Dave get up and begin to speak. He talks about worshiping, and how he wants us to get our of our comfort zone and worship in a different way tonight. There are many positions to worship God in, and they are often symbolic of where we are in our faith. He asks: are our hands lifted high? Or do we have our backs turned away?

As we go through several different positions, I feel the weight of a new knowledge settling. I know that God is there, in that room, right beside me. I know I don't have to do anything alone. I know I need to give God my all. I know I am ready. It is now that I start to cry. I feel silly, but then I feel good. I feel relief.

As my dorm room comes back into focus, I know that if anyone were to turn the light on, they would find me grinning crazy big; I don't really care. I know that I have finally experienced that something that I've been waiting for. I know that the questions that I've been dealing with for the past weeks are answered. I see that the answers were really very simple. I see how good God is.

It's all about random.

There are so many things that I really need to research. Things that probably are not life or death issues, but they do define others’ lives. Things that may not be big issues now, but will be in five years, or even twenty. Even things that are big issues, just outside of America’s bubble of common knowledge. (Does that make any sense at all?) Okay, let me make myself clear: I am not talking about global warming and the long term effects if the world does not go green. I am not talking about researching ways to get the world to understand the dire needs of all cute and fluffy animals who will soon be extinct. Those and not the types of things I want/ feel I need to research.

I am talking about being informed in areas such as the political situations in countries all over the world. Being able to have an intelligent discussion about modern-day slavery; or the January 12th earthquake that Haiti suffered, and the short and long term effects it will have on the people and economy there.

Knowing that the people in one country live on less than a dollar a day, but they are perfectly able to because prices there are a lot cheaper than in other places. Knowing that other people are dirt poor, and although they live on more than a dollar a day, they will not live through the end of the year because of the inflated prices of even the most basic necessities.

Get my point? Most people don’t seem to care, or are just too lazy to do any research. (Yes, I am guilty of this too, why do you think I am making a point to write about this now?) So, I am setting up a challenge for myself. Become more informed. I know it sounds really general, and it is, but such a broad topic allows me to go at this and come up with a much broader scope of knowledge than if I did it as a research project of people in one area of the globe. -I might become an expert on that one thing, but that’s all. That seems kind of narrow minded and limiting.

Well, what do you think? That's my two cents, and I'm sticking to them! :)

-Lauren