My Jesus Journal

Passion (Part 1)

God, you're so good.

God, you're so good.

God, you're so good.

You're so good to me.

The week before Passion 2018, I got a really bad cough and ended up with a sore throat. Knowing that I couldn't be sick for Passion, I took medicine, drank tea, and did everything that I could to feel better. Finally, the night before, I was feeling like my normal self. I went to a hockey game and then my parents gave me a ride to a nearby store, where my friend was going to pick me up so we could sleep in my church's youth house that night with one of our other friends. My dad talked to my friend about different driving routes. We were supposed to be getting snow that night, and if the roads were bad, we weren't supposed to take the way we originally planned on. But, at that time it wasn't snowing, so we figured we would be fine. We made it to the youth house, got everything settled, and then the 3 of us were up and ready at 4 am to start our drive to Georgia. As we made our way outside, we noticed that snow was just starting to fall, but the roads looked fine. We took the original route. It didn't take long for us to realize that the roads were only fine in our area, and they started to get worse and worse. This snow stressed our driver out and stressed me out a little bit, as tractor-trailers were speeding down the snowy/icy highway, one of them even making their own lane in order to pass us. This snow set us back at least an hour since we couldn't go the speed limit on the highway for the rest of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Finally, the snow was behind us, we were able to relax, and we continued on with our long drive. Once we made it out of Virginia, we started to hit traffic. It would be really bad in some areas, totally clear up, and then get bad again. This set us back even more and we were all getting tired of being in the car. In addition to the traffic in the south, there was also another problem. It was a lot warmer than back home. My throat does not do well with that big of a change in temperature. I started to lose my voice. But, I was trying to keep a good mindset, hoping that my voice would be back in two days, in time for Passion. In addition to traffic, and me losing my voice, one of my friends started to have negative thoughts fill his head. He forgot his anxiety medicine, and he naturally is an over-thinker. All this negativity made me think of something.

"I think all these setbacks are a good thing." He gave me a weird look. "I think that the three of us are being attacked by negative mindsets right now because the devil doesn't want us to be open to what God is going to do on this trip." He agreed, and after a couple more hours we finally arrived. I got to see my boyfriend for the first time in almost a year. We met at Passion in 2017, became best friends, and then after 9 months, we started a relationship. Since his house isn't too far from where Passion was, we stayed there for the time that we weren't staying in our Passion hotel. This also meant that we got to go to church with his family.

The next morning we went to church. We were welcomed with hugs, and as we got further into the building we jumped right into a time of worship. My voice was almost completely gone at this point, so I kept my mouth shut (it also helped that I didn't know any of the songs). After worship, they did a recap of all the things that God had done through their church that year and then talked about what they can see happening with their church in the future. They finished up by having people go up to be prayed for if there was something specific going on in their lives. In this time, they started back up with worship, so I continued to keep my mouth shut and looked around me in awe of what God was doing. After a couple of minutes, my boyfriend's father walked up to one of my friends, a friend that wasn't at Passion the year before, and talked to him about opening his expectations more and letting God change him through the week. Wow. I fought back tears, I had been praying for this friend for a long time, praying that he would let God take control of his life and that he would grow in his relationship with Christ. I wasn't able to sing at all that morning, something that I always use to worship God, but I was able to see God moving around me, through my friends and through this church.