Face Away from the Book

So I just finished a month long Facebook fast.  I knew I needed to seriously redefine my view of God and relationships, try and get over my comparison issues, and just focus on myself and the people I'm physically around for awhile.  So in week two of the semester (a month ago now, wow!) I asked my roommate to change my password.  I must say, it was glorious.  I didn't miss it too much to be honest.  God has given me a wonderful season of growing and being poured into.  I realized that I needed to desire Him for Himself and not for what He can give me or how I feel.  This meant laying down the idols of friendships, relationships, popularity and the like, thus I decided to cut out a major source of those battles-Facebook.  It was hard to swallow, but through it all I had some wonderful people speaking honest truth and kindness to me, and God delighted me in Himself, his unfailing love and faithful presence.
I'm living with a great group of girls this year, who all genuinely love and follow the Lord, and love me as a sister in Christ.  We laugh all the time, and this little apartment really does feel like home.  I'm in a receiving season I think- coming off of over a year of continually pouring out (camp, RA, Kenya...) I'm being loved on by my friends, community, and God.  This is all preparation for next semester... (could I go for too long without an adventure? never!) when I'll be headed to China for a semester of study abroad.  So I'm trying to squeeze as much joy out of this semester as I most possibly can.
Being off of Facebook and enjoying all these things purely for themselves has been wonderful.  I highly recommend it.  I've gotten to see how God sees ME, not anyone else, because I'm not supposed to be them... that's not who He made me.  We only post the good times in our lives on Facebook, so it makes it easy to think that everyone else's life is better than yours.  Which isn't true at all of course!  I get to focus on what I AM doing not on what I'm not doing.  Fulfilling His purpose for me here at Hope doesn't necessarily mean being popular or well known or well liked.  And His purpose is what I want to be seeking.  And this is a daily battle.  Sometimes I fail, and I just want people to like me, and it gets easy to believe the lie deep in my soul that no one likes me at all.  I am a broken human being.  But God's love never fails, never gives up, never runs out on me and never changes.  He STILL loves me even when I mess it up.  I have become more assured of this over this time.  Its so easy to get bogged down in regret, rather than saying "well, I messed up, God please forgive me, let's get going again."