You're mine, that's the way it is, and I won't let you give in.

I feel like math teachers are some of the people who have to explain themselves the most. So many times in class I hear students asking, "when are we ever gonna use this?"

Most of the time, I understand where the teachers are coming from, even as a hesitant student myself. I mean, it kinda is school, and I kinda do need to learn whatever is being taught, no matter how pointless it may seem. I tend to avoid these arguments because the truth is: I can either learn it without complaining, or I can simply fail. So it doesn't matter to me that I don't see a point, I do what I am asked to do because I need to get through high school and go bigger and better places. I do the homework and practice problems, even the extra credit. However,  I've been thinking a lot lately, and, sometimes you just gotta be honest-

you may just never use this stuff.

Some of us will never grow up to graph a square root function or see the face of matrices ever again. I may not ever discover the quadratic formula as something useful to me in everyday life, or need to know how to perform long division. I probably won't ever need to remember that you can't have negatives in your exponents, and that you turn them into fractions when it does happen. I may not even need my times tables. But I still gotta learn the math.

I didn't write this post to defend or challenge mathematics or the modern education system or whatever. To be honest, I don't care. I'll learn the math, and I'll do it gladly because I know it's gonna help me get somewhere someday. Cool.

But I've seen a commonality between my math class and my life.
I see that all the questions students ask can all be summed up in one word, one question, really, and that question is "why."

Just like the students in math class, I've been catching myself asking the same thing of God. "Why? Why do I have to learn this way? Why can't you just fix this? Why can't you just intervene?"

I've even been subconsciously asking, "God, why do you love me?" I just don't get it. I've never understood this love, but more recently I've felt so unworthy of it that I didn't even want it. All I sometimes hear God say when I ask all of these questions is a faint, "I love you, I love you so much. You are mine, and I've never let you go."

...and I don't get it.

I ask "why?" and I ask "what's the point?" and God says, "I love you," and "I'll see you through."
Then I ask, "why do you love me?"

I've asked and asked and asked, and I feel like God spoke it to me finally in a really unexpected way. He said, "because you're you and I'm me."

I feel like that's the equivalent of simply telling me, "because... because."

But, He's absolutely right, that's just the way it is.

He just does.

I am not lovable, really, I'm not, but He is loving, and I heard Leah say it best when she said, "He is the relentless lover."

...and He is.

As for me? Well, I am just His beloved.
He loves me because I am His. I am who I am, and I am who He's made me to be, a child of the Great I am. (funny play on words, huh?)

He's so...
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This week has been one where I've asked God "why" so many times. I must be like that annoying two-year old researchers keep track of how many questions they ask a day.

I sometimes just don't get the point and wanna give up, but He tells me, "easy come, easy go," and I just want to let it go. To just let myself quit.

I've felt like it's so attractive at times (quitting), that I just go to bed early in the day as a symbol of my giving up on that day, and, yet, He tells me His mercies are new every morning.

I know that some things I ask the "why?" question to aren't meant to be answered on this side of eternity. I simply can't know why everything in my life happens, or what God used certain situations for, especially the ones I feel are just plain dumb. I don't know what the point of some tears are, or why I have to face certain fears when I'd rather avoid them altogether, but I don't really need to know it all. His thoughts are higher than mine. He is who He is, and I am who I am, and His ways are not my ways.

There's lots I don't know, lots that I have to just leave up to God, but I know one thing is for sure. That, unlike math class, my trials and pain and situations and frustrations are never "maybe" helpful. It's not like they are something I may or may not need in my future; God doesn't just let me go through purposeless suffering. I know that as much as I go through, He is going through it all with me, so it's not pointless at all. All these problems, unlike Algebra, I will eventually need. They're building me to something.

The crazy thing is, through all this, He tries to reason with me.

Why? He is a good God, that's why. He tells me He loves me, and He tells me I'm His. He tells me I have to go through some stuff because the easier things are to obtain, the easier they are to lose. I don't see myself throwing in the towel anytime soon, but not because of me, but because He is the "relentless" lover who won't let

Why He does all this for me? Why He keeps speaking to me? Why He is patient with me?
He tells me

"Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you"
-Isaiah 43:4....


My. favorite. verse.