My son, if you accept my words
       and store up my commands within you,

 2 turning your ear to wisdom
       and applying your heart to understanding,

 3 and if you call out for insight
       and cry aloud for understanding,

 4 and if you look for it as for silver
       and search for it as for hidden treasure,

 5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD
       and find the knowledge of God.

 6 For the LORD gives wisdom,
       and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

This passage really touched me tonight. I've been paying attention to understanding His Word, trying to start over again and really live as He wants me to live; my brain has been there when I've been studying at night, but I haven't really been "applying [my] heart to understanding". My heart and my emotions are very special to me; they're probably the most dominant part of me - and yet I haven't been willing to give this part of me to the Lord. During worship on Sunday mornings, I cry out and scream to Him to carry my burdens, and I praise Him; in those times, my heart is there. Why, then, isn't my whole heart and my whole soul present when He has given me His "living and active" Word?

The Psalmist really caught my attention - he says that "if you look for it as silver, and search for it as hidden treasure", THEN I will know God's heart. I know that I haven't really been giving His Word the attention it deserves. I love Him, and I love knowing His heart for me, but my attention has been on other things: the clock, mostly. I'm like a child whose parents make her do something because they know it's good for her. I drudge along, but keep looking at the clock to know the earliest possible time I can "get it over with" and do more "fun" things. I know this is something I desperately need to work on, and that in time it will come. 

If I had a treasure that I needed to find, I would be tearing every inch of my room, my home, my yard apart in earnest to find it. I would search high and low to see where it could possibly be. When I found it, I would celebrate and invite every family member, friend, and neighbor I knew to share it with me. How often do I do this with a new passage of Scripture? How often do I take the opportunities that God has given me to share the Gospel with others who I know do not know the Lord, even when He presents them to me with flashing red lights and sirens? - "OPPORTUNITY HERE! SEIZE THE MOMENT!" Unfortunately, with a heavy heart, I confess to you that it is very rarely. I am too afraid to offend; so many I know do not want to hear the Word of the One who can save them, the Great I AM. But perhaps if I take this Scripture to heart, eyes will be opened and hearts prepared.   

**This satisfies the curiosity of quite a few people who have asked me why I became a Christian. It also answers (or attempts to answer) the following questions which were asked of me:

• Do you ever have doubts in your faith? Like... major doubts?
• What made you be a Born-Again Christian at such a young age?
• How hard is it to live with such a destroying disease, and how do you do it with such calmness?

Many people have asked me what inspired me to become a Christian. How could I possibly believe in a good, just, and perfect God, when I had seemingly been dealt such a bad hand in life? Surely a good God, such as the God that I professed belief in, as personified in Jesus Christ, would not allow His followers to feel suffering. A good God would allow His followers to be happy all the time, and then they would worship Him. Then and only then would He be considered good.This is what the majority of American Christians believe. Most Christians I know feel doubt because they see these bad things occur in the world and grow angry with God, because an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent God could, would, and should stop these things. This is what I grew up believing.

In the darkest times in my life, I have doubted God. I have questioned Him as to why he would allow these things to happen. You see, I suffered strokes as a baby. These strokes left me partially paralyzed on the right side of my body. Because my body is used largely unilaterally (most people use their bodies bilaterally, or equally on both sides), or more on one side than the other, I'm usually in a constant amount of pain - pain that does everything from giving me muscle cramps, to paralyzing my legs, to rendering me immobile - and it often brings me to tears. I never know what the day will bring, and yet I am still required to go to class, to complete my assignments, to live my life in spite of the pain. On days that are particularly bad, I cry out to God at the top of my lungs; I sob until I have no strength left. I wonder why God would leave me in such pain, and I want, more than anything, to give up. I have made myself sick on many occasions, crying out to Him until I am physically ill. He can heal, and it is in my heritage as a daughter of the King to receive this healing. Why then, would a just and loving God condemn me to a life of pain?

I sat in a doctor's office 2 years ago and was told that I would die. I knew, deep within me, that I could never do enough to get into heaven. I was scared. And yet He provided the answers for me. He showed me the love of God through one very special person, who happened to be a born-again Christian. And one week later, I sat in a church and confessed my sins to the Lord, sobbing and shaking more violently than I ever had. I had cursed Him, sworn to walk away from Him, denied Him. And yet that night, I knew He loved me. I knew that Jesus died for my sins, and that any work I did was not to earn my place in Heaven, but out of sheer love for my Savior.

Thankfully, I believe in His Word, the very Word that dictates how I should live my life. Though Jesus healed in His time on this earth, and we are called as His disciples to "be imitators of God" (Ephesians 5:1), this is not what He has in mind for me. Instead, He reminds me each and every day that I will suffer for the glory of God. I will suffer for my beliefs, and I will suffer in the flesh, and yet, Paul calls me to rejoice! "Rejoice?!" my dearest friends say. "How can you possibly REJOICE when you want to cry and scream and yell at God? Isn't everything you've been through enough reason to believe that there is no God? Any sane person would walk away, would spit on this idea that there is a kind and loving God when faced with what you've had to endure!" Yet rejoicing is exactly what I, as a follower of Christ Jesus, am called to do. "Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." (Romans 5:3,4) I am supposed to rejoice because it will develop perseverance - not because God will take my pain away, not because others will praise me for living with it - but because it will allow me to continue going on, because I have the strength in Christ Jesus to overcome anything and everything (Philippians 4:13). I am a follower of the Most High King.

Not only am I a follower of Christ, but I am His child, because "to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12). Paul says in Romans that "if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." (Romans 8:17) I must share in Christ's pain.Again, those who are rational would pose the question: what God would require - not only allow, but REQUIRE - His children to share in His pain? He is God, after all; couldn't He waive His own requirement? According to John, Jesus tells the tale of a blind man to His disciples, who then ask, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2) Jesus' answer is astonishing: the man was not blind because his parents were being punished for sin, rather "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." (John 9:3)

This is my life, my God, my Jesus. He has given me the strength to endure because He wants me to grow closer to Him. Everything I do, everything I am, is a part of His plan for my life. He "will never leave me nor forsake me", and this fact, this alone, is the "the peace of God, which...guard[s] [my] heart and...minds in Christ Jesus." (Phillippians 4:7). I need not work to gain entrance to Heaven because He has accomplished this for me -- "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast" (Ephesians 2:8,9)! No matter what I do, no matter how much I doubt, I am His, and He is mine. And that is worth all the suffering. ("I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." - Romans 8:18)