[day 5]

Two pictures in hopes of making up for missing Day 3.

1. The pearls I wore yesterday. The only hint of color in my all-black outfit.
2. My dying roses. Heading to the garbage can soon.

[day 4]

Ok, I know I'm already slacking on the photo days because I missed day 3, but in my defense I worked from 10-3:30 and went straight to Providence for our amazing night of praise and worship in celebration of Elevation's 3rd Year Anniversary!!! It was amazing and even came complete with a kick-a** guitar solo, compliments of Pastor Furtick. If you missed it, that's sad.

Anyways, here are 2 pictures from yesterday.
The first one, on the left, is courtesy of Cheyenne Schultz (www.cheyenneschultzphotography.blogspot.com check it out. she's awesome, i promise). I love this picture, and not just because I love all of Cheyenne's pictures. Yesterday was so much fun, just like every other Sunday morning. Burn for You is one of my favorite songs, and I remember how I felt in this moment yesterday, so I love it.

The second picture is courtesy of...me. This is what I looked like last night at midnight when I finally crawled up to my room to get ready for bed. (Just to tell you how tired I was, I went to bed at 12-ish and at the moment I've only been awake for about an hour and 15 minutes. and it's 3pm). Yesterday I didn't stop moving from 5am to about 8pm. 4 services at Providence and then 5 hours of work. As much as I worried about how all that was going to kill me yesterday, the day turned out pretty awesome. Work wasn't too bad, and I love the girls I work with. The icing on the cake was that my favorite person in the world came to see me and watched Madagascar 2 by himself while I fell asleep on the couch haha.

There you go for Day 4. We'll see what I get for Day 5 today.


P.S. you're just lucky I didn't post a picture of the disgusting blister on my heel.
You're welcome :]

[day 2]

I cleaned my room today...somewhat.
Trust me, it looks better than it did before.
Notice the flowers that someone awesome got me :)

Copycat [day 1]

I don't have very many original ideas. But then again, I don't feel like anyone has a lot. We all just steal from other people, so I don't feel so bad.
Anyways, I'm going to copy my old friend, Stephanie, in an endeavor to take more pictures. I have a camera that I consider ballin' (yeah) and I rarely use it. So this is partly to encourage myself to take more pictures and partly to encourage myself to put something on this blog once in a while. So here we go. Feel free to verbally kick my butt if I slack.
I'll be doing this for at least 30 days. We'll see after that.

So this is rocket. After the McCarts left, I had this strange 4-person-family-sized gap in my life. And this small memento was something little I got just remind myself of how much they did for us while they were here for their short stay. It was the most tangible memory I could find and it only cost like $2 at the Disney store haha.

Stale

A couple weeks ago at work, it hit me. I'm not sure why it happened at work of all places, but I realized that I've been pretty lame lately. I've just been really stale and stagnant in terms of my walk with God. I've been kind of sitting and maybe scooching my butt up a couple inches every now and then, but for the most part I've been pretty still. The worst part is that I still haven't really made any strong efforts to change, and I had this realization at least a week and 1/2 ago.
I still pray every day. I thank God for the wonderful gifts He has given me in so many different forms. The weird thing about this phase is that I don't feel hollow or empty or hopeless like I sometimes do, I just don't feel like I'm trying very hard. And that might be even more dangerous. I don't want to be content. I don't want to just get by. I want to fight. I want to be a woman of God. I want to be so much more than what I'm allowing myself to be lately.
I don't have much to say about this except that I will try and prayers would be amazing. Part of the problem is that I'm so busy that I don't spend a lot of time with anyone anymore and I miss out on the encouragement and fellowship I used to experience so often. Maybe once I figure out how to juggle school, work, church and a boyfriend, I'll get back to that, too. So many things...

I Am Land

Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God.
Hebrews 6:7

I'm starting to think that maybe I got more out of my quiet time when I actually made an attempt to comprehend it and blog about it later, so here we are.

I am land.
I am land that receives a lot of rain. The rain that often falls on me is of God. God pours so much into my life on a daily basis. I really love being at school because I pray the most when I walk around campus outside. Even when I'm freezing cold and in seven layers (while some people still walk around with flip-flops and/or shorts ha), there is so much to thank God for. He just pours and pours and pours out blessings on me. It rains all the time on my life, in the best possible way. So that's step 1: Rain.
Step 2 belongs to me. With all that God has poured on my life, on my land, I should be producing a useful crop. There is plenty being poured upon me, so it's my job to turn around and produce good crop. What I receive in my life should be obvious to everyone around me. I should be able to remain faithful and joyful knowing that God is blessing me every second. My crop can be joy and thankfulness that really shows everyone around me (perhaps, "those for whom it is farmed") how blessed I am.
Step 3: receive the blessing of God.

So really it comes full circle.
I receive countless, wonderful blessings from God.
I live my life in a way that shows how thankful I am to a gracious, giving God.
I receive more wonderful blessings from God.



I think I'll save the opposing verse for a blog tomorrow.

I really wish I blogged more. I have a lot of thoughts in my head lately about possible blog topics but nothing ever really seems to come to fruition.

But I did want to make a small, quick post about my life lately. Things are really awesome, and God is incredibly good.
I have a bad habit of feeling ashamed of things I want to say (or write) sometimes, and I'm trying to break that. Sometimes I keep my feelings and my emotions on the inside because I think that someone or everyone will disapprove of whatever I'm thinking or feeling. I'd really like to get out of that habit. I don't have much to say, but here's what's going on lately in my life:

-Robert and I are finally officially dating, and it's the best thing I've ever experienced. God has definitely blessed me with this relationship, and I'm very excited to be learning and growing closer to God with Robert by my side.

-I'm absolutely 100% in love with what I do at Elevation. Being a part of a worship ministry like this is unreal, and I wouldn't trade it for any other role. I don't know how I even made it to this point, but I know God is good and has given me an unbelievable part of something huge.

-For the longest time, I've been struggling everyday with the concept of God's love. I just could not understand or comprehend how or why this Creator of the universe would choose to love me unconditional. I mean, I believe He does love me, but sometimes I have a hard time living like it. However, this week has been absolutely wonderful for me. I listened to 3 different Perry Noble sermons throughout the week and they all spoke directly to me about about something I very desperately needed to hear. I found this really entertaining because they were 3 completely different sermons (Can I Lose my Salvation? How Do I Know God's Will for my Life? Is It Ok for Christians to Drink Alcohol?) but they all spoke a similar thought to me and backed it up: Jesus does not love me based on my performance. Jesus loves me just because.
This week has been awesome. That's such a simple point, but knowing it and repeating it has been so great for me. This week I spent way more time reading the Bible, praying and just generally noticing His glory in the seasons changing around me. It's been fantastic. So at this point, I just need to remember that the God of the universe is in love with me and is pursuing me every day and out of love for Him, I must respond.

So those are the 3 biggest things going on in my life right now. God is teaching me a lot, but not always in the form of solid, tangible, explainable lessons.