Good Fruits

This past week attended an awesome retreat for college students called VISON. The retreat is held at Camp Gray in Reedsburg, WI, which is an awesome catholic retreat camp that my brother and sister-in-law are directors of. Anyways at this retreat I learned a lot of great things and I did a lot of thinking and writing..I need a place to put it..and I hope that by sharing this whoever reads it might be able to learn something as well.

At the retreat we focused on the Fruits of the Holy Spirit. The Fruits are:
Love
Kindness
Peace
Gentleness
Faithfulness
Patience
Self-Control
Generosity

I wrote about the things that God inspired me to write about, about the things I need to work on.

~Faithfulness~
God has faith in me?! Wow, what a crazy awesome concept that is. Hearing/knowing/learning that almost makes him more real to me, brings him closer to my level. You always hear that God’s love is endless and that we can’t do anything to mess that up but you never think that his faithfulness is the same way. He loves me but even more than that he has un-ending faith in me, in this creature he made. He knows that with him I can make it through these struggles. Seriously, I can’t get over the fact that the God of Heaven and Earth, the awesome being who created this world puts his faith in me. WOW more than ever now I want to live up to that, I want to live up to all that God has given me. I want that for myself and for all of those around me. I can’t believe it took me until I was 20 years old to get this concept. I can’t wait to share this with my Godchildren so that they can always know this and make wonderful decisions based on this knowledge.

~Patience~

“For I know the plans I have for you says the Lord”-Jeremiah

God, you always share some part of this book with me when I most need it. I always forget about Good ole’ Jeremiah until you smack me in the face with him.

“Just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t me he doesn’t care. Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. Just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he don’t care. Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers”
-Garth Brooks-Unanswered Prayers

He has it SO right! Just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. WOW Lord, you know your eternal plan for me, show me the way to go and I will follow. I just want to know the way. I love you so much; I will do whatever you ask of me. I want to be your eternally faithful servant. “Lord take my world apart” (Song by Jars of Clay) and put it together the way you want it. I know that following your plan will give me true happiness. You are beautifully selfish, you put me in this earth to have me serve you and then join you again in Heaven. I am the handmaid of the lord; let your will be done in me Lord. Make me like Mary, Eternally faithful, ever yours.

~Self Control~

I want to be more disciplined, I want to be able to fight was my brain wants and do what my heart knows is best for me. I want to live the kind of life I can be proud of, one I would not be ashamed to tell my parents, family, friends, most especially my Godchildren, about. I don’t want to wish I could hide my actions from God. If I keep these things up I know it could destroy my health on all levels. I want so much more than what I’m giving myself. I deserve so much more than what I am allowing myself to have. I want make myself and my God proud but it’s I almost like I can’t fight it sometimes. It’s eating away at me and I know the only way I can begin to get better is with God’s help. I know that I can’t do this alone. My body and mind will never make it without you Lord. I got my tattoo for a reason, Agape means selfless love; it is the opposite of Eros (Lust, sexual love). I don’t what that, I want

~Gentleness~

We talked a lot about how we need to take care of ourselves in order to be good and do good for others…here’s what I wrote after Meghan’s wonderful and inspirational talk:

I want to fight my weakness, I want to understand it. I want to work with it, use it to my advantage. [This is my glass, this is my needle, this is my drug, my longing for love and what it causes me to do.] I wish I wasn’t this way. It started with my curiosity and my imagination and grew into something so strong it is nearly impossible to fight off. So why waist my energy trying to change so much? Instead would it be better to work with what I have, with the circumstances I am in, with the situation I have been given. That’s all well and good but there is one thing missing. I want to know why. Why am I this way? Is it the reason I think it is? Did that happen to me…it would be nice to know for sure…just to have one of those two little words spoken, yes or no. I can forgive, I can make peace but I just need to know for sure…I want to know how these feelings inside me came to be – some people can blame it on genes or the way they were raised. I need to know if I can attribute this to (not blame it on) what this [person] (who we all trusted) might have done to me. My heart is racing right now…I just want to know then I could know where to take it…know why my brain works the way it does, know why I am what and who I am.