electronicbelievertheorist

[electronicbelievertheorist]

with God, there's no such thing as coincidence.

I mentioned in my last post a devotional I'm currently reading. It's called Take Heart: 100 Devotions to Seeing God When Life's Not Okay, and it's really good I suggest you pick it up if you're looking for a new faith-based read to try. I got to work, finished all of my opening tasks, and sat down, eager to get ahead and read Day 4. I was hoping to maybe spark some inspiration for my next blog post. I go to open my book, and much to my surprise, I find a hidden bookmark on Day 45, titled: "The Start of Something Beautiful"

A few things to note here. There's no way this bookmark could've been placed and forgotten by me. I received this book as a Christmas gift from my Best Friend, and I haven't picked it up until last week. And while Robin Dance is speaking on her experience of going through menopause, we Christians know that when you walk with God, there's no such thing as coincidence. How funny is it, that I write about taking the leap and starting again with trying to create a career from social media, only to be met with a chapter titled such as this one? Like I said, no coincidence.

Robin Dance refers to Isaiah 43:16 which says:

"This is what the Lord says--

who makes a way in the sea,

and a path through raging water,

'Do not remember the past events,

pay no attention to things of old.

Look, I am about to do something new;

even now it is coming. Do you not see it?

Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness,

rivers in the desert."

Now how could that possibly be a coincidence? I write about wanting to try again with pursuing content creation, but being scared. Same day, I go to do my devotional, and this is what I'm met with? God is literally saying, "Don't focus on what happened in the past, I'm doing something new and making a way for you now." That's not coincidence, that's TESTIMONY. And I can't wait to share the amazing things that come following that with you all!

Robin said this, and while she was talking about menopause, it still resonated with me. She said: "If menopause is the ending of one thing, might it also be the beginning of something else? Could what felt like a death sentence (to my womb at least) actually be a proclamation of new life, the genesis of a fresh season?" See, I've killed off my old channel, and created a new one. I won't share it here just yet (anonymity, remember?), but I felt it was necessary for God to do something new IN me and FOR me.

Robin also says, "They remind me not to fixate on the past, but to look to my future with hope! God is always at work, and He wants me to live out my kingdom purpose in every season." I made all my old videos private, so I can still look back on myself and how far I've grown without having those memories lost from a complete wipeout. I'm ready to start something new, and I'm so excited to see where God takes this. It finally feels like the right time. I finally feel like I'm working towards fulfilling my purpose.

Finally, (and this is so, so good), she says:

"He always makes a way. And He wants me to live with eyes wide open. My experience makes me want to seek out women a few steps ahead of me to learn what might come in the future and women a few steps behind me to offer the benefit of what I've already learned. I will be intentional, bold, and brave, pursuing friendships rooted in mutual love and service to one another. What a beautiful redemption of loss--to give from my void and abundance, to help prepare others for the unexpected. Are you willing to join me?"

This, right here, is the gold. This perfectly encapsulates everything I want to be as a content creator. With all the superficiality of social media today, I want to make content that truly feels like you're just sitting on FaceTime with your bestie. I want people to see my life, in all of its mundanity, and feel like it's okay to live a "normal" lifestyle. The reality is, so many of these influencers that are popular online, pushing these lifestyles that include shopping all the time, expensive products, and travel, are living in piles and piles of debt. They can't even afford the lifestyles that they're pushing onto us. I want to show people what it's really like, to live as your "average" 23-year-old. And just like Robin said, I want to look to women a few steps ahead to envision my future, and share my experience with women a few steps behind so that they can have hope for their own futures, and maybe feel less alone.

"What you have is today, and something beautiful can be made of it."

[electronicbelievertheorist]

what is it about hate that the internet loves?

When I was around 14 years old (almost a decade ago, yikes) and making YouTube videos over the summer while my parents were at work, I made a Kylie Jenner Lip Kit review. It got about 15,000 views on it, which was far more than all of my videos combined at the time. It was the sole reason my channel was then able to become monetized. In my review, I trashed on Kylie and her Lip Kits (because let's be so for real, they sucked back then and quite literally haven't improved since). It became a WILD hate-train. I hated Kylie and her Lip Kits, and my viewers either agreed with me and added on to the dog pile, or hated on ME because I was 14, and what does a 14 year old know about makeup or celebrities? The whole time I was just pissed because I spent my allowance money on a Kylie Cosmetics Lip Kit and I was NOT satisfied with the product. It truly was a different time for the internet.

About 3 years ago, after my boyfriend and I moved in together, I decided to really try and take social media as a career seriously. And I did pretty well! I was posting videos twice a week, scheduling instagram posts, even trying to figure out how to hop on TikTok trends in hopes it would gain some traction on my videos. But the single thing that got me to quit was HATE. Because though the internet now is FAR different than the internet was when I was 14, it's still similar in so many ways. One thing has stayed the same across the years, never changing, and that is hate. The internet loves hatred, and I can't seem to understand why. People have got the platform to share literally anything they'd like with the entire world, and they choose to be so hateful.

And so while I was doing great, and working consistently on my social media career, I spiraled out one day. See my channel was never huge, I gained maybe around 950 subscribers. It seemed to hit me like a Mack truck that one day, if this little channel blows up, that people I know will see it. People I don't like will see it, and people that don't like me will see it. And they'll talk about it, and form their opinions and it'll be just like I'm 14 again, getting bullied at school for my YouTube videos, and being bullied on YouTube for being 14 and not knowing anything. So I quit. And I haven't sat in front of a camera and posted for 3 years.

But lately, I've been thinking about trying again. I LOVE content creation, and truly since I was a kid, it's been the only thing I really want to do with my life. My dream job. My Best Friend (and #1 fan seriously), the day we met she told me she looks at me and she sees: CONTENT CREATOR. And a part of me is scared.

I'm reading this devotional right now, it's called Take Heart: 100 Devotions to Seeing God When Life's Not Okay. On day 3, "Holding On To God's Presence When You've Had Enough" Michelle Cushatt said something that really just resonated with me. She talked about the story of Elijah, and she shared:

"Elijah was God's prophet during a time when God wasn't all that popular with ordinary people. Righteous and hard-working, Elijah followed God with fierce determination. He wasn't afraid of rejection or resistance, and he dove into danger again and again for the sake of God's name and glory."

I'm no prophet. I just love how she said, "He wasn't afraid of rejection or resistance". That is so powerful. And it made me feel that maybe, like Elijah, I could have the courage and the strength to try again, and do something that scares me. I feel like it could be different now, as I've grown up a little bit since then, and the biggest difference now is that I walk with Christ. And Christ tells us many times in the bible, "Do not be afraid." 365 times to be exact.

With the way things have been lining up in my life, I truly feel that God is calling me to my purpose, and that maybe it IS time to try again.

[electronicbelievertheorist]

day one: i'm quitting smoking and vaping

On and off, for the past 6 years of my life, I've been vaping. Last July was the last time I seriously tried to quit, and honestly I did pretty good. I think I lasted about 3 months, before I pulled into a gas station and bought a Juul "because they don't really count" and there I was, hooked again. I tried to quit again in November, until Black Friday week came around and I couldn't seem to handle the stress of it all without my trusty Juul.

I told myself I was quitting vaping about a month ago, and I bought a pack of cigarettes to help. (You're probably wondering, "How do cigarettes help you quit vaping?") My thought process was that even if I'm smoking cigarettes, I'm forced to go outside to smoke them, which means at least I'm only smoking one every few hours as opposed to sitting around and puffing on my vape all day. Plus, they're gross, so at some point, I'm gonna either become disgusted and want to quit, or I'm going to make myself sick and want to quit. Either way, I'm quitting, and that has to be a good thing, right? Until I was buying a pack of cigarettes every other day, going through them at the same rate I was going through my Juul pods. I wasn't getting anywhere with quitting. Yesterday, I smoked my last cigarette in the pack, and right now, March 10, 2024, I am quitting and I am quitting for good.

I opened my Bible for a little morning study before work, and currently I'm in the book of Romans (which if you don't know is a VERY straightforward book about the role God plays in our life and it's really good for those of you that haven't read it). I felt God really wanted to speak to me through the word today.

Romans 6:14 says, "For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace." I think this is just so powerful because Romans 6 teaches us that when we are baptized in Christ, and Christ is in us, we are also dying the death he did in order to set us free from sin. Sin leads to death, but as Christ died to set us free from sin, death no longer has mastery of him, and therefore, us. We don't have to remain slaves of sin, because when we give ourselves over to Christ, we become slaves to righteousness. We want to live better for Him, so that we may share in his Glory.

I have hope because Romans 8:18 says, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." Funny enough, this makes me think of the "Jesus Glow" trend on Tiktok, where one shows pictures of them before giving their life to Christ, saying "The Jesus Glow Isn't Real" and then they show their after pictures, and they just look amazing, healthy, and alive; they say, "Explain this then." How does that relate to me? Well, I know I probably do look much better than I did YEARS ago, when I had separated myself from God and allowed myself to be slave to witchcraft and New Age Spirituality. BUT I know myself, and I know I do not have Jesus' Glow in me if I continue to poison my body with cigarettes/vapes.

I struggle with acne in my adult life worse than I ever did when i was a teenager. I have these purple dark circles that never seem to go away no matter how much rest I get. I'm insecure about my teeth as it is (a history of bad mental health = poor dental hygiene for the longest time) and I just KNOW I have bad breath all the time ESPECIALLY since I switched over from vaping to cigarettes. I'm not ugly, not by any means. How could I ever say that, when the God says we are all created in His image? BUT, I most importantly want to quit vaping/cigarettes because of my health, and because I want people to look at me and just know that Jesus Christ is in me, and that I literally SHINE because of it. And I will never get there if I don't give this sin to God and start now.

To anyone else out there that's struggled with quitting, how did you do it? What are some things you wish you knew going into it? What are some things that helped you cope with it? I'd love to hear your stories.

[electronicbelievertheorist]

my diary i'm not ready to share with the internet (that i'm sharing with the internet)

I want to be a writer. Now, I don't want to go and write a book or anything. I wouldn't even know where to start. The first thing that comes to mind is Carrie Bradshaw, sitting at the window on her laptop writing her weekly column, Sex & the City. You can tell it really comes naturally to her, the way she really spills her guts on the page and asks those hard-to-answer questions about being single in New York. Even though I definitely am more of a Charlotte, there's just so much I love about Carrie Bradshaw. She's so free-spirited, and we share the same love for having a jam-packed closet.

The reality is, I have a lot of thoughts about a lot of things. I've thought so long about starting my own column or blog of some sort, but truly, I don’t believe I’m ready to use the internet as my personal diary. And yet, here I am, doing just that. I just started this blog, and so for now I’ll write for myself. And while I'm certainly no Carrie Bradshaw, I figure I may as well share a little bit more about me.

For anonymity's sake, I won't be sharing my name, however, my hope is that someone (anyone) can come across my writing and maybe relate, have something to add, I don't know. Like I said, I've got a lot of thoughts about a lot of things.

I'm a Christian woman in her 20's, navigating life. I grew up in the church, but had drifted in my late teens. Only recently, (this past year) did I find myself coming back and trying to rebuild my relationship with God. I'm not perfect, but I'm working on it.

I work in retail. Now this isn't my life's dream, to move up the retail ladder for the rest of my life. I think I'd love to be a content creator, and to work for myself. Obviously the market is oversaturated, it's the job everyone wants. But TRULY (as cliche as it sounds) I see myself doing that. And in time I think it will happen. But the thing is, writing is raw. Art in general is just SO personal. I couldn't bear to see myself spilling my guts to the internet, only for it to fail or to go nowhere. For it to be misunderstood. Once you put something out there, it's subject to be ripped apart and dissected. I find especially with writing, when someone you know reads something you wrote, they search between the lines for the hidden meaning. Who is it that you're actually talking about? Putting together the pieces of the puzzle in their heads like they actually know anything about you. The internet is already FAR too intrusive. We feel like it's our right to know everybody's business because we feel like we "know" them, when really all we know is what they choose to share with us publicly. That's another topic for another day, I digress.

I do enjoy reading in my free time, though it feels like I've been in a book slump for quite some time now. I'm hoping to share my insights on the books I'm reading as well. I think it's so interesting to read the Goodreads reviews of different books I'm reading, to find out whether or not I'm on the same page as someone else that's read the same book. Especially for books I hated, that everyone else seemed to love.

My hope is to share my thoughts and my anecdotes with the world, in my own safe little corner of the internet. I really want to share what it's like to live as the average 23-year-old, and hopefully make others feel less alone in this crazy world we live in today. I want to make others feel like it's okay to be normal, and that we're not defined by the outrageous lifestyles being pushed onto us online in the content we see. It's really okay to take life one day at a time. I'm A.G. and it's so nice to meet you :)