Thoughts from a cozy booth at Panera Bread...

(journalled this past Thursday evening)

I don't really even know where to begin writing this evening... I just know that thoughts are bubbling up inside me so rapidly I must write, or else I'll burst!

I sit here at Panera Bread for the second time today.
This morning, I met with Tara in a cozy booth where we shared kindred-spirit talks of life and Maiden's Quest planning for 2008. It was a delightful time!

Now, several book stores and shopping excursions later, I sit once more at a booth here, nibbling on a cheese pastry, desperate to get deeper with God and to make sense of this modernized, messed-up world in which I live. My thoughts are still swimming with all that I read today in the book stores on a myriad of topics pertaining to the issues girls face today. I remember thinking as I placed one particular book back on the shelf, "Why was I born in this generation?! Oh God! Such a wicked, wicked world this is! I feel helpless to do anything. The fleshly wickedness, immoral lust, and heartache in so many lives seems to be rampant."

But quickly on the heels of this thought came a peace from my Father and a reassurance from His Spirit that He has made no mistake. He planned for me to live in this generation and He will give me the grace to endure...yea, even to thrive as the light He intends me to be. I may only be one girl desperately longing to stem the tide of sin, go against the current of worldiness, and bring what change I can in the Name of Jesus, but I will give my Father everything I've got in this one life!

Oh - how I am burdened for all the young ladies and girls growing up right now at this time! They are having to face incredible peer pressure, blatant media displays, and temptations to sell their bodies and souls for cheap imitations of pleasure and fulfillment. My heart breaks when I think of the precious young women I have encountered through MQM or at the crisis pregnancy center who are yearning deep down and ever searching - often in the wrong areas - for true love, joy, and peace in life...the kind that can only be found in the person of Jesus Christ! He has something so much better than the "pleasures of sin for a season" that our world offers. Something beautiful! Something of true worth!

His plan is certainly not the popular way, though. There is a cost in following God - the cost of being different....set apart....yes, even holy. And that is so much of the issue, it seems. Many girls just aren't interested in His plan because it's not "cool" or the accepted norm in the world. But true happiness and fulfillment can only be found in God! I wish I could shout this to the world!

I feel encouraged and full of passion and zeal by knowing God and what He can do in and through my life! At the same time, I feel overwhelmed and discouraged by the knowledge that this world is so wicked, perverting all that my Father intended to be holy and good and beautiful. Jesus reminds me, "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." What a comfort this assurance is.

"In Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore." ~ Psalm 16:11

- Katrina