It's been awhile

Hey everyone.

I wanted to try and write something tonight, even to just update you a bit.  It's my assumption that maybe only one or two people actually read this blog so I won't feel bad if no one mentions this post.

I want to say that a lot has changed in the past few months, but I'm not actually sure it has.  I'm still going to school.  I'm still working.  I'm still struggling with the same things (and still don't know what they are.)

School has been really hard this semester.  It's probably the hardest semester I've had since I left UNL the first time.  I'm actually taking classes in my major (accounting), but I also haven't had any classes in accounting for about 2 years and I guess I'm supposed to already know much of what is being taught (or not taught in my case) in these classes.  At least the professors think we've already learned it, but the other students don't agree with them.  I've been told these are just really hard classes though and everyone does poorly in them.  It also probably doesn't help that I have almost no motivation to ever study.

I'm back on medication now.  Not really sure how I feel about that.  I'm still trying to accept the fact that I'm back on it.  I've been having a pretty hard time adjusting to it, which doesn't make the accepting it any better.  I've been pretty sick, with no appetite.  My constant headache has gotten worse, which isn't fun.  I've had to deal with some tremors, major mood changes (and mood changes every 5 minutes some days,) and a little disorientation sometimes.  So add that to the not exactly sure how I feel about all this, and you have one of the things I've been struggling with.  I've only been on it for 3 weeks though, and it usually takes 3-6 weeks for your body to adjust to a new medication or medication change.

I'm trying really hard to be honest with my friends, but it's not always going very well.  I'm once again struggling with the feeling that I need to pull back from them, but it seems different this time.  This time I think it's more about making my friends idols in my life and always running to them in times of difficulty.  This is a problem.  It's something I've struggled with for years, but that can't be my excuse to let it go on.  I'm not really sure what to do about it right now.

One of the main problems with pulling back from my friends though is that when I'm around them I sometimes get a brief moment of happiness and that is a very rare thing in my life right now.  I'm finally having to admit to myself that I'm depressed again, and that's really hard.  I'm trying to cling to the truth that my friends love me, and God loves me, and there is a reason for this, it will be for my good in the end, but it's really hard.

I'm in a class at church where we are learning about spiritual gifts and which ones we may have.  We also send out a survey to friends/family/co-workers or anyone who knows us well.  The results were pretty interesting.  The answers I got from the test were pretty close to the answers that everyone else got, and pretty predictable, except for one major disagreement.  This was on the gift of faith.  Most people ranked me pretty high in this area, one person even said it was my 2nd strongest gift, but on my test it only ended up tied for 6th place.  I'm surprised that my friends see a faith in me that I don't see in myself, but I guess that's a good thing too.  I hope they're right.

I've also recently realized I have pretty much no short-term memory.  If I don't write down an appointment right away, or have reminders set about homework assignments I forget them.  I also have trouble remembering what I talked about with someone, even if it was only 5 or 10 minutes before.  This is not helping the whole hard semester in school thing at all, and I don't have any idea how to fix it.

Ok, I should stop now before I ramble a lot more.  I guess I just needed to write out my thoughts tonight, so thanks for reading.

-Nicole

Quick Update

Hey Friends,

This week has been an interim week in my summer.  I don't have any class, summer class is over, and fall classes start up this coming Monday.  I'm still doing a lot though.  Had to get my books for my fall classes, I'm taking two accounting courses, and had to turn in my financial aid appeal form.  Hopefully that will go through without any problems.

Overall, I'm fine.  Actually, no, that's a lie.  I'm not fine.  I'm nowhere close to fine.  I don't have words to explain how I'm doing, but it's not fine.  I'm sorry I can't be more specific, but I guess, please just pray.

Prayer requests:
 - Pray that I would know what to ask for when people ask for prayer requests.  Right now, I have no idea what to say.

 - I guess pray that I would be struggling with God this week.  To find out what's going on in my head.  To process through some things.  And to hopefully get some wisdom and guidance in a few areas of my life.

I'm Done!

With my summer class that is.  I thought I'd have plenty of time now, but I had a long to-do list today, but I only got about half of it done.  Thankfully the other half didn't have to be done today.  Other than that, there's not really anything new in my life to report.  Still talking through hard stuff with Jen, still working, but that's a little more stressful at the moment, and still trying to balance work, school, church stuff, and friends well.  Feel free to ask any questions you may have, I'm just not so great at coming up with things to say.

Prayer Requests:
 - Pray that I would prepare for my fall classes well.  I need to reteach myself lots of accounting stuff in the next two weeks.

 - Pray that I would continue to talk to Jen well, and that God would lead our meetings.

 - Pray that God would help me catch things up at work and to feel less stressed about work.

 - Pray that I would be having good time with my friends that is encouraging to all of us, instead of just running to them because I'm bored, or something like that.

 - Pray that God would show me where he wants me to start doing ministry.  I think he's telling me to do something with high school students, but so far that's not been very easy to find.

 - Pray that I would learn to manage my money how God intends me to, in a way that honors him.

Thanks for reading friends.  Oh yeah, and I made the blog private again, at least for now, too many people were having issues reading it.  If I notice lots of odd people reading this though, it may get switched back.

-Nicole

Over halfway there!

I forgot to post last week, sorry about that.  I would remember, but be doing something else at the time, so I couldn't post, or I would be going to bed when I remembered or something like that.  So here's a quick update about what's been going on.

I only have 3 more days of my summer class, so that's good.  It's going ok.  I'm not really learning much, but I'm memorizing it for the daily quizzes and the exams.  I just can't wait to be done.

Other than that, not much has changed.  My mom and I went to Illinois this past weekend to visit my brother Pat and my nephew Landon.  We ended up helping Pat move from one small town to an apartment in another town that is closer to his work.  I didn't get much good sleep (I was sleeping on a very uncomfortable futon), so I'm still catching up.  My moods have still been weird, but I see my doctor next week and I'll ask her about it.  I don't think I'm depressed, and I don't think I need to go back on medication, but I just want to keep her informed.  She's a good friend of mine too, so it's nice to update her.

The biggest thing that is going on is with Jen my psychologist.  This evening we started to work through my most recent trauma, which would be the date rape that happened March of 2007.  According to her, I did really good tonight.  I pretty much had to re-live the whole thing in as much vivid detail as I could.  I started not doing so well emotionally and physically about halfway though, but I knew I just had to keep going.  The only problem with this is trying to stop dealing with it when I go home.  Jen said I have to learn something called "containment."  I have to learn how to access these thoughts and feelings while I'm in counseling at her house, or journaling about it for homework, but then learn how to put them away and "contain" them so they don't interfere with the rest of my life.  Since I used to stuff everything and I've really only been learning to feel things and deal with them for the last year or so, this is really hard for me to comprehend.  I have to stuff some things, but not others?  I've never been very good at this balancing act.

But, that's enough of a rant, so here's some prayer requests:
 - Pray that I would work hard to finish out my summer class and not slack off because it seems easy.

 - Pray that my moods would start to be more positive more of the time, and I that I would figure out what, if anything, is causing my funk.

 - Pray that I would keep working hard with Jen, and that I wouldn't shut down as it gets more difficult.  Pray that we would figure out a way for me to work through this trauma, and be able to keep moving on to the deeper issues in my past.

 - Pray that I would learn containment.  And also that beginning to drag up this stuff wouldn't have harmful effects for me.  I've already noticed an increase in not so good thoughts and feelings, but so far I'm doing okay with them and looking to truth.

I think that's all everyone.  Thanks again for caring.

3 summer school days down, 7 to go

After the first week and a half of my summer class, I'm not sure what to think.  The class is supposed to go from 5:30-9:30pm, but so far we haven't been there longer than 8, and I'm pretty sure the teacher wants us to be done by 7:30 at the latest each day.  He makes a powerpoint presentation, then prints it out with some blanks that we have to fill in.  Then he says to study that in order to prepare for the daily quizzes.  The 2 exams then are comprised of 70% material from the quizzes also.  So I'm having a hard time getting motivation to actually read my book or study for this class at all.  Hopefully I'll be able to do well in this class.

Prayer requests:
 - Pray for motivation to study.

 - Pray that I would not lose ground or backtrack in my walk with the LORD, that I would continually be seeking truth, telling myself the truth, and believing it.

 - Pray that I would be content where I am.  I'm still struggling with God in the fact that I know he wants me to do missions, and I want to do missions, but he keeps saying not yet.  Which is hard to hear.

 - Pray for my mood.  It's starting to be all over the map again sometimes, and that worries me.  I don't think I've become depressed again, at least not yet, but it is something I'm keeping a very close watch on.

 - Pray for time with community.  Thanks to many people, I've been able to still have Godly community even during my class, but I'm noticing more that I'm still struggling a lot with crowded loneliness (feeling lonely even when you're around people.)  And I guess this goes with the contentment thing too, because I'm trying to remind myself that God is enough, and that I don't have to feel lonely.

 - Pray that God would help me to find where I'm supposed to serve.  I definitely have a void now that the Feys are gone, and I miss them terribly, but I also want to be able to still serve, whether it be another family, or an individual, or something else.

 - Pray for my time with Jen tomorrow.  I haven't seen her for a month, due to my crazy schedule, and then she got sick last week.

Thanks for sticking with me folks.  Always feel free to ask me if you have questions about anything in my life, I'm really bad at coming up with things to post on here.

Oh yeah, and I think I'm starting to go through cupcake baking withdrawal, so I want to make some soon.  But I would need people to eat them, so if you can think of a way for me to bring you, your family, your community group, etc. cupcakes.  Please let me know.  I have a couple recipes I'm deciding between.  I think next up is either Amaretto Wedding Cupcakes, Mixed Berry Crumble Cupcakes, Chocolate Ice Cream Cupcakes, White Chocolate Devilish Cupcakes, or Cappuccino Cupcakes.