Blessed Is She
I have known Emily for several years now. We met when I was on staff at a college ministry and she was a student. We have gone on mission trips together, cried in the church nursery, had coffee and planned lots of events. She has faithfully served on the Collide team. As she ends her time in college , she chose to spend her Business Management internship with Collide. She has taken ideas and vision and given them legs that actually walk. She has streamlined things and created better structure. She has worked hard and learned lots! If the future is in hands like these, we can all breathe a sigh of relief! I am excited to see where God takes this young woman and sad if I ever have to see her go:) Read her story…- Willow
Looking back on this quarter, I am relieved. This has no doubt been one of the busiest and most difficult quarters of my college career. I constantly felt like I was forgetting something and one of these things was my internship with Collide.
In the fall I knew I needed to find an internship for winter so I could build up my resume and earn some more credits. Willow referred me to a friend who could hook me up with an internship that would look amazing on a resume. Instead, I decided I wanted to intern for Collide. I could tell that she thought I was crazy – giving up that snazzy internship for one with Collide and her but I knew it was right.
As the weeks went on, I loved what I was doing for Collide and I loved learning from Willow. I felt like my faith was being set free. Despite the challenges and the lack of sleep, I felt freed by what I was learning and the opportunities that were being opened. Collide is going places and this was a crucial quarter for that. I believe in what Collide is and what it stands for and I am so excited to see where it goes. God is changing lives through it and it is so amazing to watch. I know that God planned for me to do this internship, at this time. There were times when it felt like too much, like I’d forget everything and nothing would get done and I would be at fault. But God followed through, He carried me through.
As part of the planning team for Collide, it is easy to focus on all the people that are being reached by Collide and forget about our own. This has been a long, aching winter for many people around me, especially on our team; from death to illness to disappointment, it has been a long winter. The women on our team have been beautiful examples for me to look up to and learn from. I see their faith through the hard times and the way they continue on. They have faith that the Lord will follow through. Being a part of Collide has given me courage and strength; Courage to stand up for the God that I know to be true and strength to rely on Him when I can’t see how it could all work. I am reminded yet again of the fact that God follows through.
I think most of the time I was sitting just barely at the surface, ready to sink several times, even now that it is over. I am exhausted. Exhausted from a quarter of going, going, going and exhausted when I think about the weeks to come: I am preparing to leave for a workweek up at Young Life’s Malibu Club. I am honored to go be a part of preparing this camp for thousands of kids to hear the Good News. But I am exhausted. Thinking ahead to the hours of work when I return, and the busyness that will come with the start of spring quarter is exhausting. But if there is anything I have learned over the past few years, it is that God follows through…He will follow through in the days to come just like He has so many times before.
Going into the future I have hope. I know that God will be with me through the long days and that He will come out on the other side with me. I will look back on this and see the growth and learning and I will be overjoyed. Luke 1:45 says, “Blessed is she who has believed the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” And I do believe because He has yet to leave me stranded.
