Last night after meeting with Jooho and Calvin to prepare for Bible study, Jooho told me about Gilbert Arenas. In particular, he told me about this one game winning shot he made at the buzzer (which apparently he does a lot) when after shooting the ball, Gilbert Arenas turned around and put his arms in the air in celebration even before the ball hit the rim. Before even seeing the ball go through the hoop, he was confident enough in his shot that he started celebrating.

Two thoughts went through my head: (well more than two, but these are the pertinent ones) 1. if he had actually missed, he would have looked like such a fool; 2. he has amazing confidence.

I cannot name one area of my life where I am that confident. Once at a high school retreat (i think it was a high school retreat...) someone was talking about how the disciples locked themselves in an attic after Jesus was crucified. Talking about they had devoted years to Jesus and put everything on the line by following him... and now they looked like the biggest fools in the world. The question was: could I live with such faith and surrender and devotion that IF this all turned out to be false, I would be the biggest fool?

What an idiot I am. I have the infallible and amazing Gospel with the irretrievable and unfailing work of Christ available to me, and yet I still live with so much fear of failure. I could learn a thing or two from Gilbert Arenas about confidence.

and then today I had my mid-term evaluation. An advisor came out to my agency and met with me and my supervisors. My supervisors were telling the advisor about how early on I started doing things on my own and going and doing meetings on my own. The advisor looked at me and said that I must have a great passion for adoptions to be so proactive and involved. My response: Yes, I have a passion; I love adoptions and it's what I've wanted to do. But also, I knew that if it was too much I could say so and if I had questions I could go to my supervisors and ask. And if it was difficult, then I had their support. So with this kind of back up and support, why wouldn't I go out and take those experiences? That kind of support and back up is all I need to have confidence.

Why can't I be like this in my spiritual life? When I have the support and the safety net of God's promises, and I have God (the Father, the Son, AND the Holy Spirit) behind me, and God sees me as a success no matter what b/c he sees Christ when he looks at me... Why wouldn't I go out and live confidently? As confident as I am in working adoptions I need to be that much more confident in living Gospel life.

Finally, the last big thing of my day: I'm not sure if I'll be able to work at this agency next year. As much as I LOVE this agency, and as much as they love me, the agency is too poor and the program is too small to be able to afford to hire me. And with the restrictions on adoptions by law, and the nature of private adoptions, expanding our program is almost impossible. Now, God is a god of the impossible, so maybe he'll move mountains and give me a job with this agency for next year. But... it may be that I will not be able to stay with them (and that seems most likely, though God doesn' always work under the constraints of "likely"). So... that also means that me staying on campus next year is just as slim.

this is a lot for one day. i'm exhausted.