[p11] initial thoughts

So this is a week late, but I really just need to sit myself down and record my thoughts/experiences from my first Passion conference, otherwise I will forget everything I haven't already...here were my initial thoughts from last Sunday night; I'll post this for now and then keep going in shorter posts. Whee!

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[Warning...this will likely be very long, harking back to my I-need-to-record-every-single-detail Xanga days. But it's okay. Hopefully, it will serve me in the future, near or far, when I might not be feeling as close to Jesus as I'd like. Here goes!]

Well. Suffice it to say that I haven't posted on this thing in quite a while...and if my thoughts that I want to blog could take visual form, there would be a major backup, akin to Houston or Dallas traffic, sigh...Breakthrough, Wall of Brokenness, feeding the homeless and walking over a mile to where they live, a birthday surprise fitting to start off my 20th year of life, discipleship with Joyce, IV in general, Spring Break (!)--with Apeksha and her family, Durga Mandir, Indian food and movies, plus NYC with Derek and his dad--and now Passion. Hopefully I can cross off at least that last one by the end of this post.

I still remember signing up for Passion. It was during the snow break back in February, and I realized it was the last day to sign up for early registration cost (though it was only a ten-dollar difference in the end), since I'd heard about it from Daniel and how it never really came out to Fort Worth, so close to Dallas. I remember texting a bunch of people I thought would know about Passion, and the general reply was to go if I got the chance. Daniel told me not to worry about lodging and transportation, and God has blessed me with so many financial resources, so I decided to sign up. Whee!
I then kinda forgot about it for a while, since it was still a few months away, and school/IV took over my thoughts. A couple of weeks ago, we started discussing lodging and transportation (and food, haha) issues, which finally got figured out--the day before, it seems!--praise God. We went to buy towels and socks, printed tickets and maps/directions, Facebook-messaged a lot within 48 hours (mostly about food) and suddenly it was Friday afternoon and time to go to Fort Worth!
To be honest, I came into this weekend with almost no expectations/not knowing what to expect. The Passion website was not very descriptive, and all I knew was that it was an annual, huge, well-known Christian conference for college kids. I also hadn't given myself much time to prepare my heart, since I'd been out of town the two days prior to leaving, too. Whew. I feel like I have a (bad?) tendency to not really mentally/spiritually prepare myself for big events (conferences or otherwise). I guess it's good in the sense that I don't set unrealistic or super-high standards and won't get disappointed, but I need to become more regular at expecting great things from my great God. He doesn't deserve any less. But praise Him! that He always blows me away, despite my unpreparedness and unfaithfulness.

The ride there wasn't too eventful; I played role of backseat navigator, we hit some traffic, passed our hotel, but we finally found it. We dumped all our stuff into the two rooms and rushed off to the conference center, since we were a little late. We dropped off three of the passengers, took the closest $10 parking, walked down six flights of stairs, saw a TON of people still walking around and registering--in addition to all the (awesome!) doorholders in orange--went inside, got our GOLD wristbands, then headed to the arena.

Man...walking into a room filled with 10,000+ other worshipers during Chris Tomlin's "Our God" is really something else. I just looked around the room in awe. The lyrics rang so true in my ears--truly, only our God, who is greater than ANY other, could call so many university students to His name, to fall at His feet and worship Him! God is so good. :) We took our seats, worshiped some more, did a three-way (well, ours was four) prayer for a little bit, then Louie Giglio came out for our first main session talk.



Overall:
The music was/is AMAZING. Live or not. Still listening to some of Chris Tomlin's songs on loop right now. [still true!]