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

Prayer Requests

A couple of days ago I asked God to help me come up with some prayer requests to share with my community group, thinking I'd get one or two, but he gave me a lot more than that, so I thought I'd share them with all of you.  Here they are, in no particular order.

 - Pray for these next weeks as I'm taking a summer class and not going to be able to see my friends as much.

 - Pray for my memory.  I've noticed it getting worse again over the last few weeks.  I'm having a hard time remembering conversations with people, or even what I did a couple of days ago.  I'm worried this will affect my performance in my summer class.

 - Pray for my time with Jen (my psychologist.)  It's really hard for me to go, and I don't really like it, but it's good for me.

 - Pray I would keep fighting.  I think I may be depressed again, and medicine could possibly help, but I think if I went back on it, I'd stop fighting to fix things (beliefs, lies, etc.)

 - Pray I would learn to believe truth in my heart, instead of just knowing it in my head.

 - Pray that I would handle the Feys move well.  They move today, and I'm not sure it's really hit me yet.  But I'm going to have to find something else to do on Tuesday afternoon.

 - Pray for good time in the WORD, and that I would continually seek truth and believe it.

 - Pray that I would be able to see how far I've come and how much God has changed me in the past few months (and years.)

 - Pray that I would continually be overcoming fear by running to God instead.

 - Pray that I would manage my finances more wisely.  That I would learn to steward them well, the way God wants me to, and then actually do that.

 - Pray I would find out where I fit in my church, and where I should be serving.  I usually help with the children's ministry, or nursery ministry, but I have a strong sense that I'm supposed to be doing something else.  Pray that I would begin to learn what my spiritual gifts are and find a place to use them to God's glory.

 - Pray I wouldn't feel guilty asking for, and hopefully receiving love, affirmation, and especially prayer.