Everything is going wrong and my life is overwhelming. Praise God.

So basically here's the low-down.

I have 200 letters and emails from different colleges all asking me to apply and why their school is the best.

I have absolutely no clue as to which school is the best.

I have absolutely no idea where to go.

I have absolutely no money to go anywhere.

I have no money, no job, no car, and no license.

I have senior trips, mission trips, and other things coming up that I alone have to pay for while I'm in my current state of having no money.

My mother has been getting onto my case about how I didn't stand up to my entire senior grade and tell them we can't go on the trip we want to because it's too much money. She doesn't understand that I don't want to ruin 25 other people's fun just because I'm broke.

I've never cared about money before in my life and suddenly I have to. I have to have it, have to earn it.

I have to work extra hard to pay for things . . . and I don't even have a job yet. Not to mention the college classes I'm taking and school.

Oh and I haven't applied to any colleges . . . which is supposed to be done by now.

So basically, I'm overwhelmed. Overwhelmed to when all this started coming up at the dinner table today, I burst into tears.

I'm not exactly proud of this fact lol . . . but it is a fact. I quietly left the dinner table to go cry in my closet. I felt kinda bad, like I was being self-centered and just having a poor-me-pity-party. But I couldn't stop the tears. Then those tears turned into tears about more issues . . . and well, you catch my drift.

So I'm sitting there in my cramped closet with my leaky eyes soaking my hair and my pants because I forgot tissues. But one thing I didn't forget was my Bible. So I decided to open it up hoping that God would give me some sort of encouragement. It fell to Psalms 150: the last chapter in psalms. The whole thing just talked about praising God. I thought,
"well that's some help, I'm the one that needs the encouragement not God. I don't quite feel like praising Him for this."
Then it struck me. It struck me that I had the habit of declaring God's praises for all the wrong reasons.

I'd praise Him when I deemed He had done something praiseworthy in my life. Like when you stumble onto some good fortune and exclaim: "Praise God!" But I'd never thought to say "Praise God!" when everything was going wrong.

So I sat there and thought about it. I then proceeded to list all the crazy things going wrong in my life. Much like the list above but much longer. At the end of it all I simply took a deep breath and said: "praise God."

It had never felt so good to say those words. I started repeating them over and over because only when I said them could I stop tears. It seemed as long as I was saying them, as long as I was declaring God's praises, everything was alright.

I then looked back to Psalms 150 and read it aloud knowing that God's scripture does not return void in our lives. I read it through once, and then again, and again, and again. Repeatedly. Incessantly. I spoke it so many times I didn't even need to look at it any more. It was engrained in my heart.

My God is praise-worthy. Not becasue things are going good in our lives or we deem an action of his praise-worthy. But because He IS praise-worthy. No matter what.

Psalms 150:

Praise the LORD.

Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

Praise the LORD