Everyone’s mom has told them, “Happy is a choice.” Sometimes the truths we hear over and over are those hardest to accept.
 It has been one of those weeks when the panic and disappointment in my heart is fighting its way to my actions. With finals approaching, a housing placement I wasn’t expecting, and the haunting feeling of always being one step behind with schoolwork, my knuckles are white from their iron grip on my smile.
 How I have prayed, and grasped wildly for, the peace of the Spirit. Where was it?
 But then: what if I am forcing an imagined calm in the storm out of my own power of will? What if an honest pouring of my bruised and frantic heart onto the cross is more strong? What is weakness and transparency is my finest armor? What a terrifying thought.
 I wish for reality. I wish for a life not ruled by what Emily makes so.  He has plans for me, He does. And though I know mine are not better, somehow I trust them more.
 This week may be for this lesson. So I have begun finding joy in its hiding places. How a sweet girl I barely knew let me borrow the perfect dress, belly laughing at Waffle House late at night on National Waffle Day, the way spring air smells, compassionate friends I do not deserve, a boyfriend who make the perfect Taco Bell burritos for me and works too much, bragging and complaining to a Mommy who listens always, and a God who teaches me.
This is where joy lives. Cherish it.

The passions of my mind and my soul deep desire to change a world, the musings of my heart, the joy and the shock of the smallest things, these are in the swirl and bustle of my day. I feel they must be spoken.
But what am I to do? I am too busy, poor, young..
But then I had an idea. This idea became a thought, one that try as I might, I could not seem to shake. I thought, what if I started a blog?
I immediately felt inadequate. For a girl who still has so much to learn, how could I ever be the one who pours out, rather than the one being poured into?
“Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment,” (Heb. 6:1-2).
Here, in the still small voice that I find in the wind of my life, I discovered conviction. I know for whatever purpose do not yet know in my humanness, my God has put me in 2014, at Capital University, with a lot of opinions, and a heart broken for the injustice of our world for such a time as this. Who am I to not try.
Here, I will share what inspires me, what infuriates me, when I fall, and when I stand. Here, I will make whatever difference I can in the in-between that is college, and here I will learn.
Only with stomach wrenching bravery and strength to be still can I be lionhearted.