Finding God’s presence in life… you know, just regular old life.

So, how's everybody doing? I decided to take a quick breather from studying right now. Between trigonometry, world issue research papers, the Constitution, chemistry, Spanish verb conjugations, Haiti relief projects and new piano songs, my brain is scattered everywhere today! Oh, and did I mention that tomorrow is a Friday, the day with all the tests at school? Well, I didn't write today to complain or vent (although sometimes that does feel pretty good, I will admit). I wrote to give you some updates and talk a little about God's presence.

Let's start with the updates. As many of you all know, there was a major earthquake in Haiti recently. It killed and displaced many, many people. I strongly encourage you to pray for the people there and look into sponsoring Catholic Relief Services with donations if possible. At my school, our NJHS project for this month is working with "Project Cure", which is an organization that helps with disaster relief. Try to take the time to look into an organization and keep the people there in your prayers. They are going through things that you and I can't even imagine. Our church's mission trip was actually scheduled for next week to Haiti, so I'm sure that we'll be sending relief. However, 15 people are not going to solve the problems without some more help. Churches may have special collections this week for Haiti relief, and I encourage you to at least offer prayers if you can't provide donations for these people.

Also, you may already know about the exciting opportunity I am looking forward to working on. My first "Teen Moments" segment aired today on Catholic Moments podcast with Lisa Hendey, and I am so excited to be on the show and look forward to working more on segments for the show.

So you may be wondering what all of this has to do with God's presence (and I apologize for rambling a bit… let's just say it has been a really, really long week). Well, despite the stress of schoolwork and such, I have found joy the last couple of days in trying to find God's presence in my life always. You know, when you are sitting in Church looking up at a huge crucifix and down on your knees praying, you can't help but feel God's presence. But I am talking a little more about the "outside world"… the everyday life when we don't always feel the way we do in Church. Sometimes life is random. We have absolutely no idea whatsoever what to say to something. That's when we have to turn to God, the creator, and our savior and say "God, it's up to you. Use me." And trust me, that's not always and easy thing to do. But it's the right thing to do. Now say you're not in a terrible situation. Like no one is telling you to cheat, steal, do drugs, that kind of thing. It's just the negative attitude of the people around you or the pushing and shoving and stuff in the hallway. One thing I used to do to remind myself of Christ's presence was pretend it was "shadow student day". Our school does that a lot, where people have their friends from other schools come and see our school. I would do the same with Jesus. When people were trying to get me to engage in negative conversations, copy homework, gossip, or do something that I knew was not in any way building up God's kingdom, I mentally said a little prayer. I pretended that Jesus was right there with me (which He was, God's always with us, I'm just making a point here.) Whenever you don't know what to do, whenever you feel alone, whenever you feel like no one at all could possibly understand what you're going through (and yes, we all have those moments), just remember God. Remember that nothing is too big for him. Nothing. Remember, He did make us all. He made us all the beautiful, wonderful, intricate people that we are. He gave us these emotions and totally understands us. He also made all the trees, and the birds, and the ocean. All that great stuff- that was God. So try today and every day to remember that and remember what's important. Not that your trigonometry test isn't important (look up Proverbs 4:13) but just remember that the events of today, the choices we make to draw closer to Christ today, that's what's really important. Find God's presence and you can do anything. You just have to be open to the call. Our plans aren't always His, but trust me, He's got greater plans than we can even imagine.