gimme dat fire

So I am back from DC, whoop whoop! Conference was crazy amazing...I don't even know where to begin with that action. God put a lot of things on my heart this week for sure! It mostly had to do with my family and then Ephesians 5; allow me to elaborate.

So I left Abingdon earlier this week on a really really bad note with my mom and dad. Like I said before, they're not saved, and it's really easy for me to get frustrated with our differences. And so three weeks of frustration was wearing on me; I was glad to get out of the house early and made that pretty clear. I more or less had an "I'm over this, we're never going to get along, I'm a Jesus-loving BA" attitude. Contrary to how I felt at the time, that was no bueno. Over the course of the week, I had been sharing my testimony with people, girls in my room, and I even shared about Harvard in front of 200-ish people during a seminar about academic barriers keeping us from God. I felt like I was on a roll. So anyway, one night at a very awkward dinner out in the city (they randomly split us into groups so we would meet new people from Wofford) I was talking about the situation with my parents with John Bumgardener. And I mean everything, the whole Bio-major-by-force deal, the whole atheist/agnostic thing. And then something really really really ridiculous happened. I was sitting next to a senior girl, and i guess that she had been listening, but she basically told me that an easy way to "fix this" would be to legally emancipate myself from my parents. No, I am not kidding. And I was immediately offended. Like, did not talk the rest of dinner, did not go to a Christian rap concert that night just so I could sit in the lobby and talk to Mesha and Bennett about what happened. Like, I was really upset. And then later on when I got done with my dumb emotions, I started thinking about why I was upset. This girl didn't know me, I had met her 3 days ago and had barely said 3 words to her. She didn't know the situation well...and that made me realize that I must have been discussing it in such a flippant and apathetic manner, it must have sounded like I wanted a quick fix or a way out. I got upset with her because that is the opposite of what I want with my parents...so why am I going around talking about it like I'm sick of it or like I don't care about their hearts. That just really broke me down. So later on in one of our group rallies, the speaker asked us to have a time of prayer in small groups about something that we had on our hearts, and I just walked away from all the girls that I knew, and went to the back of the room and got on my knees, literally face down on the floor. And I started just praying and praying and praying that God would give me the strength to be the daughter that he had called me to be. To love my parents well, because I had been gloriously failing at that, because this is something that I have to decide to do every single day. There's no quick fix. There's no button to push to get me through the hard part, I just have to stick with it. And I prayed that over and over and over again, asking God to please help me to love my parents the way He has called me to love them rather than the way I had been. And He can do that, I can't. Anyway, it was just a really amazing revelation and I'm pretty sure that's why God brought me to Conference. I was supposed to stay in Greenville with Steph last night and just hang out with her until it was time to go to Wofford, but I called my mom on the way home and asked if I could just come on home. And I did, I left Greenville at about 11:30, got home at about 2am, and Mom was waiting up for me (even though I told her not to) with some tea; she was so so happy. And she's just been smiley all day, it really is a blessing.

Other than that, I really worked on studying the Word all week with one of my roommates, Jennifer. She's another senior at WoCo and she's really grown in Christ through Campus Outreach, but Jesus did something cool to me through her this week. It seems like everyone at Wofford is all, "I want to know who I'm going to marry" and "I am 20, but I want to just settle down already" and it's making my head spin a lot. And for some reason I've been thinking about dating, half thanks to the fact that Mesha and I talk/debate about it all the time and half because everyone around me is getting married. And she wanted to study Ephesians 5 one morning, where it talks about a man loving a woman as Jesus loved the church. And the way she talked about it was really beautiful, and it helped me figure out that since I am content in Christ, that is sufficient for now. You know? Like...I want to be irresistible in the Spirit, because of how in love I am with Christ, not irresistible because of flirtation or manipulation or something superficial and flippant and physical. And that was just a really really really wonderous realization.

And those have been my two big struggles lately. I almost didn't want to go to Conference. The morning I was supposed to leave, I was like, "Jesus, I really just want to stay in bed." And he was like, "Amanda, get in the car." So I did, and I'm glad that happened. Other than the spiritual aspect, Conference was SO MUCH FUN. We just ran around DC all the time, but we also had the most amazing amazing amazing ballin' out of control New Year's Eve party of all time. We got in there at 10, had about 9 trillion glow sticks and glow in the dark stuff, and just sang worship music with the band until the ball dropped. It was hands down the best new year's I've ever had; 2009 started and the fist thing we did was sing praises to Jesus. In fact, the first song we sang was "Happy Day" by Tim Hughes (which I did not know I had on my iPod until after the fact). So much fun. And then we had a dance party until like 2 or 3 in the morning, which you KNOW I was all about. We listened to a lot of Christian rap music, which was amazing. And good for me, because I took all the secular rap off my iPod because it was really hurting my witness, and now I can listen to it and rep the King at the same time. Goodness.

So I am getting ready to go hang out with some girls from my discipleship group in high school and then it's off to Sparkle City in the morning! Excitement! I'll leave you with some more song recs and then a video of some rap about lovin' Jesus.


1. Gimme Dat - The Ambassador
2. Joyful Noise - Lecrae
3. Hands High - Lecrae
4. The Stand - Hillsong United
5. Majesty - Delerious