Hello my beautiful friends!
Wow, first semester is done! Sitting here right now in the comfort of my warm room at home, I am so darn grateful. My heart is so full. So grateful for the ways God has been working in my life and for all the blessings He’s so graciously given me, from the amazing and loving people in my life to the opportunity to go to college to this cozy room I’m sitting in right now to the ability to blog to so much more wow! I definitely will be posting an end-of-semester reflection post soon. :’)
Last night, as I went to bed later than I should have, I thought of a blog idea! Recently, I’ve been playing a lot of Wordhunt with friends (especially lots of my RCF fam). I never thought I would get so hooked on a phone game (I don’t really have games on my phone), but this game has been so fun haha! It is lowkey an intellectual game, but I think I say that more to justify my playing it oops.
Essentially you are given a four-by-four board of letters and you have 80 seconds to find as many words as you can! At first, I got like less than 10 words and got absolutely creamed by my peers. However, I kept playing (perhaps too much), and took “Wordhunt study breaks” during finals with friends, and now am happy to say I have improved! Just the other day I hit over 20,000 which was a very exciting milestone in my Wordhunt journey haha! :P
This brings me to my first cheesy Wordhunt to life connection today: through practice and hard and smart work we improve. I know, I know, perhaps an overheard idea. But I think at first I was so baffled by how people could score such high scores, but rather than get caught up or beat myself up about not being at the same level, I just trusted that by practicing more I would improve. And I had lots of fun even while I was getting creamed. :) I just wanted to learn and improve. I found tricks (look for common endings like ATE and then switch the first letter and also if there’s an S and you make words near it add it to the end to rack in more points!) and just kept at it. And now, when some of my friends new at the game are surprised at how I get so many words, I truly tell them I just played a lot (too much). (Granted, I’m not the best at it but I’ve definitely improved.) I want to apply this similarly to becoming more fit and achieving other goals (this is a similar point to my earlier “Trusting the Process” post).
Another thing I realized as I played Wordhunt was some boards are inherently tougher than others; even the “best players” get scores in the low thousands (rather than their more typical 10 or 20 thousand+ scores). I realized that similarly in life, we are sometimes in situations that are tough and circumstances we wish were different. And I think similar to accepting that I won’t always get my best score in Wordhunt, I am accepting that life has lots of unexpected turns and tough situations. I am not saying that we should just accept our circumstances, but rather that we should make the most of every situation, and it is okay and will probably be the case that some are tougher than others. The quote, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it,” by Charles R. Swindoll, comes to mind.
I think this idea applies to my life in a very tangible way recently. The last day of the semester, I found myself feeling very nauseous at night. I clocked in early, trying to sleep, but an hour later found myself throwing up in the Quad bathrooms. Throughout the night, I threw up around four times I think; it definitely was a rough night. I wanted to jog 6 miles the next day before coming home (that half-marathon training plan!), do another load of laundry, and finish packing and cleaning my room thoroughly. But in all honesty, it was tough enough to just move and lie down. I decided to focus on getting some rest and then just packing what I needed and cleaning a bit. I like wrapping things up neatly, but given the circumstances, I didn’t stress and decided that I would just have to finish some cleaning and washing my sheets in the new year (and felt grateful that I booked tickets to come back to campus a little earlier).
I think I am a bit of a perfectionist, but am grateful for the ways that I’ve grown away from these tendencies. Being home these past couple of days, I truly have not worried as much and have felt so free. Just yesterday, I woke up and was like “wow, I have nothing to do” (granted I have some things to do, but I have lots of time now and wanted to let myself decompress and not worry completely at first), and decided to play some Wordhunt. :) I watched a movie last night and did my laundry and wow, whatta life. Very grateful.
Finally, I think one more Wordhunt to life connection I’d like to end on today is the idea of self-control. As much as I sometimes want to keep playing until I improve my best score and get a fun board, I need self-control in everything I do (and things in moderation! - except God of course we can never get enough:)). Self-discipline and self-control give us the flexibility to live freely. :) So, though I was playing right before this, I stopped and decided, man Joyce, you’ve got to write that blog post now.
Saved by grace, through faith. With love,
Joyce
Bible verse connection: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Philippians 4:4. A rule a couple friends and I came up with was to always ask a question when we send a Wordhunt game so we continue to get to know each other (rather than just play Wordhunt:)). This was one of my friend’s favorite Bible verses and I really like it and found it fitting right now as I rejoice in the Lord! O yes, let us rejoice in the Lord always. :’)
P.S. I think I might start doing this thing where I have to look up one of the random words we find while playing (I don’t know what like half the words mean I feel like) to continue to learn from playing Wordhunt! Someone once asked me what a word meant and that inspired me to actually learn their meanings (even if it is unlikely I will see these words elsewhere:)).
P.P.S. One last Wordhunt to life connection! It’s good and fun to have a little wholesome fun. :)
P.P.P.S. This photo commemorates the first time I broke 20,000 haha! :P
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