Sarah la Viajera
Sarah la Viajera

Prayer + Fasting = Breakthrough….or a WHOLE lotta temptations?

January 22, 2011SarahAdd comment
Written by Sarah
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To recap from my last post I have been fasting meat, sweet tea, chocolate and anything else sweet (or desirable for me) for the past two weeks in hopes of having some breakthroughs and getting closer to God.

Well, let’s go back and compare my hopes/goals pre-fasting and how things have really gone these past two weeks:

I hoped to start the semester off right and get into a good, productive routine.

In all honesty, I have been really lazy these past two weeks. Okay, this past week, not so much…but when you only have class 4 days a week, for 3 hours a day and no Friday classes…what ARE you supposed to do?! Do the required endless amounts of readings, research your topic and do your homework AHEAD OF TIME, DUH! So yeah, it’s been a little hard to get back into the swing of things…

I wanted to have the tutoring calls start pouring in and work to arrange that schedule.

Well, that hasn’t gone as planned either. I dropped one client because the type of tutoring and time I would have to devote to her would be too much for me to handle plus school. Also, languages are not her thing at all…so it would have been even more frustrating to tutor/teach her this time around. One of my clients dropped me because things were getting tight…and one of the others who is continuing with Spanish 102 basically needs to cut back on how much time we spend together this semester cause money is also tight. While I understand…it’s just, uh, things are tight for me too when I’m paying for most of these school expenses all on my own! I have done more advertising though, so maybe it’s just a matter of time before things pick up again. Or God just wants to teach me to be patient and reliant…again. 😛

I hoped for more internship opportunities and possible part-time job gigs to pop up.

The good news is that I have been finding more (paid) internship opportunities in the state of Florida that I can apply for…but the bad news? I can’t seem to find the right time or environment to finish them! And things are messing up as far as internet and technology for me this past week. I can’t access the network at my school this weekend (which REALLY is a bummer since I have A TON to do and internet is key.) because I changed my log on password (which we are required to do every so often) but the password is also synced with my school email and that decided not to sign me in so I changed that password! Long story short, an internship app for the Koch Summer Fellowship that is due on 1-31-11 is what I need to complete but I don’t see it being completed fully until Monday some time. :/ I really want this internship because I could possibly stay in the Southeast (Tallahassee, Atlanta and Austin, TX are some of my personal choices) this summer and get paid for writing and learning about state policies and free markets! So yeah… :/

I hoped for more opportunities to hang out with friends before things start to get busy.

This one has sort of been going as I have hoped. While I have been enjoying getting to know my German roommates and hanging out with close friends here at JU and UNF….the hanging out part has involved spending money. Now I wouldn’t mind it too much…but it’s what I have spent the money on is what has bothered me. A couple Thursdays ago my German roommates (a whole nother story in itself-hehe) and some friends went out for sushi…and I stupidly agreed to it even though I couldn’t have any of the rolls that had fish in it them. :/ Also, BCM had their Small group kick-off get together thing this past Monday (at Chickfila–which I LOVE) so I ate before (and missed out on free milk shake night :(, which may seem silly to you, but really I just went to hang out with my friends. Talk about a big sacrifice there! The other big things have been the lunches BCM does at JU (part of our weekly meetings) and one of my roommate’s birthdays. At the lunches they have had chicken (and ironically Chickfila was this week :P) and of course we had a cake for my roommate who turned 20! I didn’t eat the chicken sandwiches (which two days after I started were the first temptation) and only ate the “bread” part of the cake and not the icing. I really hope my roommates don’t think I’m weird….haha
Also, the last thing that I must mention about food temptations is the other night. Some friends and I went out for Mexican food at La Napolera (which means cactus–did you know?). Now, I LOVE Mexican and I always get something with chicken or beef. But that night I couldn’t…so I ate a little bit beforehand too. I never get things with just cheese but I did that night and had to eat around the beef in my chile relleno. To wrap this all up, I think one of the things that God has wanted to test me in was my self-control…do I really have what it takes to do this fast and control my feelings when things don’t go the way I wish? I thought I had learned this while in Spain, but I guess I need a re-test. When you put FOOD, something that everyone needs to survive and something we take for granted so much, it becomes REALLY hard to resist temptation.

And while I had also wanted to read my Bible daily and pray for all the things and people that were on the church’s prayer list…I suppose I am just human and I cannot do or be everything I want to be at this time in my life.

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