This week’s blog is the transcript from Michaela’s podcast, Strength from Grace. If you want to listen to it, visit and subscribe to her on your favorite podcast platform: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Facebook, or PodBean. Thank you.

Hello, welcome to Strength from Grace, a podcast for the young warrior. I’m Michaela Riggins, and, as always, I’m so excited to get to know each and every one of you.  Again, I’d like to say thank you to Sanctuary Family Farms and to my Nana and Pa who have supported me through every high and low.

I spent the past couple of weeks planning an episode on being in the world and not of the world. I released the sneak peek for it, and I even had all the notes prepped for it. But then I felt called to write this instead. I started college about four weeks ago, and to be very honest, it’s kicking my hinny. Growing up, I was never really challenged in school, even as valedictorian. My classes were easy for the most part, and the hardest part was just putting in the work.

Now that I’m a month into college classes, I’m really wishing that I had struggled a bit more in high school.  I took dual credit classes, but they were nothing like the classes I’m taking now. Each week, it seems like I’m constantly working on something for some class. There are no breaks, as I try to eat away at the mountain of work ahead of me. At first it was just more work than I was used to.  The content was easy enough, but as the weeks went by, the more difficult classes got.

I’m taking Anatomy and Physiology this semester, and if you know anything about me, I am getting a Bachelor of Arts for a reason. I struggle in math and science.  If I have the option, I will gladly take writing essay after essay after essay over identifying this bone and the Pythagorean Theorem. I’m not awful at either, but it does take a lot more work for me to be successful in math and science.

When I was signing up for classes, I did everything I could to avoid this class.  And what do you know?  It was literally the only other class I could sign up for.  So obviously God has put me in this course for a reason.  And at the start of the semester, it was really easy for me to reconcile with this, because my grades rocked.  But . . . it got a lot more difficult when two weeks ago, I completely bombed a test.  And it wasn’t like I kinda’ bomb it.  I got one question right.

That left me with attempting to figure out not only what went so incredibly wrong, but what I was going to do to fix it. On top of that, the week I got my grade back, I had a unit test coming up.  It turned out that there wasn’t really anything I could do to fix the bad grade except obviously make a better grade on the next test.  So I started studying my butt off.  I took practice test, after practice test, AFTER practice test, then I made study guides.  And I even worked on my anatomy coloring book.

The struggle didn’t stop with just having to study, though.  I had other classwork that had to get done, so I was having to split my time in several different directions while working a full-time job.  I felt like I was drowning.  No matter how much I got done, or how confident I was in my studying, I didn’t know what to do.  It seemed like nothing made the feeling go away.  Again, I had never really struggled in school, so this was entirely new to me.

All I could do was pray. At first, I didn’t even know what to pray for other than, “God, I really need your help here.”  But as the week went on, the thing I struggled with the most was feeling like I wasn’t going to have enough time to get everything done and make a good grade. So, I started to pray and ask Him to help me have faith that no matter how much time I had or how much I got done, that He would make it enough.

It didn’t immediately get easier, but as I grew more confident that God would make it work out, the easier it was for me to focus on studying and getting the work done without all the worry.  Let’s be real, the worry wasn’t helping me in the first place, because at the end of the day, it was in God’s hands . . . no matter what.  So holding onto it was a complete waste of time.

I for one have always struggled with this, especially when things are difficult. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, rushed, or incapable, I instantly turn to worry and anxiety instead of turning to God. It’s easier for me to just worry about everything going on than it is for me to trust that God will take care of me no matter what happens. What’s even more difficult is that whenever I choose to trust in God, sometimes the feelings of fear, anxiety, and worry don’t instantly go away. Whenever I feel like this, the best thing I can do is literally embrace the suck.

Yeah, things are difficult right now, they’re uncomfortable, and I have no idea how this is going to work out. But what I do know is that all things work together for the good.  I’m struggling in school, and you know what?  That’s okay.  Without struggle I’ll never grow.  Like I said in our last episode, we weren’t promised that everything would be easy just that He would be there with us.

Am I guaranteed to make a good grade now that I’ve given it to God?  Only if it’s in His will for me to make a good grade.  And I know that it isn’t easy to truly believe this and be content in it, especially whenever I want to make a good grade.  But when it’s in God’s hands, He isn’t going to do something that will be harmful to me.  It may be uncomfortable, but He’s using the uncomfortableness to help me grow.

Again, I’d like to say thank you to Sanctuary Family Farms, and I hope you join me again on our next episode.  Thank you and God bless.