Renewed.

I feel like today was the official start of the new year.  This upcoming week will be the first full week of 2011.  Can you believe that?  It's twenty eleven.  I looked over at the column to my right on this blog, and it actually says, "2011", and has little arrows.  It's official.  I turn 24 this year!  It's 2011 and I am so excited!

I'm wide awake right now because of this excitement.  It's almost 1:00am.  I mean, it's pretty easy to get excited when you are Catie Wollard, so maybe I'm not saying much.  I get excited very, very easily.  People...puppies...cool-looking peppers at a farmer's market...kale...weird stuff...it's exciting.  I can't stop thinking about how I get to go to the library tomorrow to renew my books, and find more movies to rot my brain.  EXCITING!  (Right now I'm reading too many books, and watching too many movies.  Gulp.  Stock Investing for Dummies, The Scientists, The Four Loves, and Love Soup are the books on the menu.  Love Soup is literally on the menu because it's a cookbook.  Vegetarian soups to be exact.  I'll probably put chicken in some of them though.  Poor little chickens.  I'm not even going to list movies because I'm too embarrassed about how many I've watched in the last 48 hours.  Food, Inc. was one of them.  I've seen it three times.  Look it up if you haven't.)

Anyway.  I'm mostly excited because I feel like this excitement will not be short-lived.  My faith is stronger than it was at this time last year.  Faith is one of those words that I've always shied away from.  (Shied is a funny word too.  Shy to shied.  Weird.)  Faith is a word that is over-used in our society, in my opinion.  Like, "just have faith", or "Believe in yourself".  Little do you know that I'm referencing the parents that are trying to get their kids to believe in Santa Claus, even though their babysitter told them he isn't real.  I mean, watch Miracle on 34th St., and try not to believe in Santa.  "Faith" lost its meaning for me.  Belief isn't enough for me.

At this time, one year ago, I was jumping back into my student teaching experience (like, tomorrow...) and I was petrified.  I was to be faced with the end of an incredible, but extremely confusing experience called "student teaching", I was to find my "first job", and enter into "adulthood".  Everybody has been there.  I was there though.  I was there.  What did "those things" even mean?!?  And there was petrification involved.  An encouraging birth family, an encouraging house family, and a new, encouraging church family had faith in me.  My supervisor, my colleagues, my friends.  There was faithage abound.  It was leaking, like tears from the Grinch.  But I was the one with weak and little faith.

Six times Jesus "wonders" aloud why his disciples have such little faith, with questions like, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?”  Jesus asks us good questions.  This one comes during a storm.  The disciples are freaking out because Jesus is asleep, and their boat is being tossed around like olives in a salad.  I mean, I'd be scared.  I'm afraid of sharks, man!  I find it quite interesting that five of those six references are in the book of Matthew.  He and I have a lot in common.  Maybe he was finishing up his "fisherman's teaching" at that time.  Who knows.

This year I feel a sense of hope that I found myself lacking last year.  A renewed sense of peace, and real faith.  We talked about faith this morning at church.  I found myself wheeling away with so much to think about, so many things to reflect upon.  The pastor (his name is Justin), said that, "Faith is belief enough to cause appropriate response."  The sermon was centered around Romans 12.  Here is the start the chapter:

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."

What a verse.  And what a way to start 2011.

My responses do not always reflect my belief, but this is changing.  I have had little faith, but this is changing.  I say (think sing) things like: "Where you lead me, I will follow", "I will go where you want me to", or "Jesus, you are my King", and then when the rubber hits the road, I shrink back like a Lord of the Rings Orc encountering Aragorn and his glowing, crazylong Elfish sword.  But this is changing.

You see, I'm still learning the "in view of God's mercy part."  I am still learning what it means & looks like & feels like & smells like to follow Jesus.  But I am being transformed.  Renewed.  My mind needs renewal everyday.  It receives renewal every day when I choose to live as Jesus lived: completely reliant on the Father.  It's a daily choice.  I live and breathe by his words, and I long to to be a living sacrifice (even if that does sound kind of creepy.  Don't think Indiana Jones & the ripping out of a certain beating heart sacrifice.  Maybe not floating flowers with candles in Asian countries sacrifice either...  Think: something valuable & beautiful, and given in an open, honest love.  Sacrificially.)

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? -Jesus