Five Minute Friday: Open

Another Friday, another time to sit down and kick back and write a few words into existence. Link on up to Gypsy Mama to join in!

Open
Other than Immanuel, I think open might be one of the best words out there. Open doors, open hearts, open eyes. It's fodder for worship and a new oppurtunity beckoning. It's the perfect word to start out this new year. Full of promise of new oppurtunity, new doors flung wide and new lessons learned and leaving the crap of the year 2011. Open is a word looking forwards to how God will shock us now.

I've found a love for Isaiah recently, especially
Isaiah 43:16-21

This is what the Lord says—

he who made a way through the sea,

a path through the mighty waters,

who drew out the chariots and horses,

the army and reinforcements together,

and they lay there, never to rise again,

extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:

“Forget the former things;

do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert

and streams in the wasteland.

The wild animals honor me,

the jackals and the owls,

because I provide water in the desert

and streams in the wasteland,

to give drink to my people, my chosen,

the people I formed for myself

that they may proclaim my praise.

He's not done yet! Happy Friday everyone! I love this whole idea of Five Minute Friday and I want to close with a line from the Gypsy Mama herself that I think sums up our hope and our God's hope in this new year

May we dream new dreams.
May we ask and not be surprised when we receive.
May we dance with abandon before you and be willing to become much more foolish than we’re comfortable with.

Treasure trove

My grandma has recently taken it into her head to buy my sister and I each a subscription to one of those sappy magazines with names like Guide Posts and Angels. I was paging through the angels one this morning and came to one that stuck out among all of the soppy ones as real. One guy, called to war in Afghanistan had prepared a chest for his wife to open each day, with 365 slips of paper saying I love you in sundry fonts and handwritings. Every day she would open it to yet another reminder of her husband's love, even though they were oceans apart. As much as that appeals to me as a budding romantic, it also shows me that's how His love is. It's there every morning whether I'm aware of it or not. On my birthday I love you. One Christmas, I love you. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I love you, I love you, I love you. His love is written across my life, our lives, in permanent black Sharpie. His love is big enough to span two thousand years and counting, to hold the outcasts, the insecure, the hurting and those who just wake up in  a bad mood. And maybe, our heavenly Daddy intended Jesus to be those 365 slips of paper with I love you tattooed across every single day of our lives.

Five Minute Friday; Connected

Celebrating words and Fridays and honesty over at Gypsy Mama. Link on up.

Connected
 It never takes more than ten minutes in my high school to see all the flaws of humanity, and so I think all the people I would ever want or need to know. My high school is huge. I always joke that I'm going to walk across the stage at graduation and look at the person next to me and realize I have no idea who the heck he or she is. Sure enough, every new class I take brings new faces, new stories, new freshmen into my life and in twelve weeks the whole cycle repeats all over again but with more people I know. I don't think a time will ever come where I know every single person in the class on any given trimester. I'd love to, but I don't think that's how God intended my high school experience to work. I think he chose to put me here, among people whom I am learning to love, but at the same time drive me up a wall with their sheer wrongness. But at the same time, I guess I'm learning that they have different types of wisdom then I do. One girl I sit with at lunch knows what it's like to struggle with homosexual impulses and still claim her faith in Christ. Another is in a wheelchair full time, but is probably the most cheerful person I will ever meet. Yet another struggles with her relationship with her mom and her body image, but writes ingenious, elaborate stories that leave me breathless just hearing about them. Never mind that she also talks a mile a minute :) Maybe godliness shows up in those who don't actually know him in ways they never could have faked on their own. It could be that they just don't see God in themselves and thus don't believe he exists. It could be that Christianity is deeper and more involved than anything humans could dream up. God can be seen in people who don't even know him, shaping and sculpting their lives as well as our own. What if we're putting up barriers that aren't actually there? In saying that God created us in our inmost being and planned our salvation from day one, where do we leave people who don't currently and may never believe in him? God has a way of showing us up over and over again. Maybe this is just another one of those things we just will never understand. All I know is God, and I'm positive He loves the Hindu girl sitting next to me just as much as he loves me.

Five Minute Friday:Color

Celebrating words and language and honesty with everyone over at Gypsy Mama for Five Minute Friday. Link up :)

My family makes it a point whenever we can to drive by the Wow House, a house so splashed with lights in every nook and cranny that you can see it halfway down the street. Like anything else, it shines most brightly at night, when there's no other light then them and maybe, on nights like tonight, a full moon. Maybe that was the real meaning of being light in the darkness. To be a glimmer of hope and beauty and Jesus to a world that desperately needs to see it. Maybe it doesn't always come on during the day, during the ho hum of everyday life (where God is still working anyway0 but when we're about to lose it or have already lost it, that's when we shine. When we're transparent and real and aren't afraid to let people see us cry. No one sees a light that walls itself in for self preservation. That's what's so amazing about Him is that he can turn our crap into treasure. Even when things are bad and dark and scary, that's when he does his best work. I think it's amazing how painted this world is. Blood that is blue, but turns red when it hits the oxygen in the air, pinpricks of startrs in the sky and lights that turn up a few days after Thanksigiving. The vibrant colors of fall and the freshness of spring and summer. Even the snow, white as it is, covers the grouns with sparkles, lighting up every corner. Pretty amazing. I wonder when I see things things---really see them, not just see them amidst the cloud of a thousand other things going on--I wonder at how cool God really is. Just think of the inside of our body. Colors and shapes and details, that nobody else seems to know but those who look, languages and words and people all woven together by the forgotten Artist. That's what everything seems to come down to.Him whose names rarely if ever leak out of our mouths when surrounded by unbelievers. Him who we run from and hide behind out own ideas of who he is and what he can do.  Him who created this whole messy, beautful, colorful earth in the first place and brigs us back to himself every day, every hour, every minute. Him who keeps me sane, even when I'm insane and somehow brings my bad ideas around full circle and turns them into something beautiful.

Five Minute Friday: Tired?

For whatever reason, today's word surprised me a little.Is it really possible for His people to be tired and grouchy and just had enough? Is that OK? What happens when I get sick of God? Of the obligation tied to Christianity; reading his word and praying and not doing bad things and turning to him instead of worrying. Sometimes that can be nothing more than a major pain in the butt. Guilt and the feeling of should I have done something different or handled that differently and knowing that the past is over and there's nothing anyone can do to bring it back and redo it.

I guess I've been living with the mentality of not being able to be tired or cranky when I want to be. It could be a good thing, but not when I'm so focused on that that I forget about him. Sometimes I can relate more to the Pharisees than to the disciples, how they felt like they had to do something to really be a Christian. And I kinda realized this whole week, maybe longer, I was totally focused on me and how I was acting and how I thought people saw my actions. That's why I was tired.

 That's why I didn't feel like I had time to do the things I wanted to do, because I was so focusd on what I thought was important that I forgot him and who he knew me to be. In knitting my life together, he must have known that there would be days I just didn't feel like it. He, better then anyone, knows how after nine o'clock at night, all sense goes out of the window and I become a blubbering wreck at whatever I'm trying to do. The thing I'm slowly learning on this quiet Sunday afternoon is that he's totally OK with sharing my tiredness and crap from the week. Sometimes lying on the floor and staring at the Christmas lights is the best thing in the world for this soul, and he knows that. He knows what videos I'm going to watch, what blogs and books and magazines I read before I even try to crack my eyes open, and somehow he chooses to touch me through those. Even though they're brainsuckers and time wasters, they're how the Most High chooses to touch my heart on this blustery Sunday afternoon.And I think I'm OK with that.

Cast all of your anxiety (worry,self consciousness, PMS, sleeplessness, uncertainty) on him for he cares for you.

How crazy is that?

Five Minute Friday:Grateful

I'm grareful for food and the ridiculous amount that I ate yesterday. I'm grateful for a warm bed to sleep in, even if it wasn't my own and it was probably below freezing. I'm grateful for my brother and sister who jump on my air mattress  just to show their affection. I'm thankful for parents who tease me and laugh with me, even if I'm not always laughing. I'm thankful for a family that's able to have fun and laugh together, while at the same time, able to come together under the God that we all love.  I'm grateful for the many verses that encourage me to be, even when it's not the attitude I always choose to adopt. I'm grateful fo books and lines that hit me and make me sit back and think Oh! I'm thankful for the people I don't get to see today---friends that are three and a half hours away, the precious eight year old lives I get to be a part of, probably scattered all over the States by now. I'm thankful for a God who can handle it all, even if I'm not always confident in him. I'm thankful for the promise of more fun and more food as I sit here slaving away for finals next week. I'm grateful that I can stop and remind myself that it's really not a big deal, that greater things are still to come and greater things are still to be done here. I'm thankful that even now, God is here. The same Jesus that formed seas and stars and me is sitting with me watching me type this---even if I don't usually like anyone watching me type. I'm thankful that, though I've been a little lax lately in my Christian duties, he's stilll here and he's radically in love with me, even as hard as it is to believe. Even while I'm sitting here thinking What will they think of what I'm typing? Do I sound fake or preachy or stilted? Oh crap, I just hit Caps lock AGAIN! he's saying It's OK.  Because I think it's great, I think you're perfect and that's all that matters. I'm the one who made you, I'm the one who knows you infinitely better then you know yourself. It's OK. Chill. I got this. I've got you. That's what Thanksgivng's about, is looking for God where you normally wouldn't see him, finding him in mounds of homework when all you really want to do is go back to bed or hang out with  family or watch a movie. He's in the chaos leading up to exams and the relief afterwards and the Christmas season whihc I am SO excited for. While I'm on break, I'm longing for a real break. One where I don't have to lie in bed thinking of what needs to be done or trsessing out about that dumb speech. I want to get close to God again. I want to have time to breathe and remind myself of who I am and who I belong to. But even now, in the less then ideal holiday lugging my fifty pound backpack along wth our luggage, he's here.

And right now, that's all that matters.

Happy day after Thanksgivng! What a perfect day for Friday to fall on.  After the craziness of holidays when the dust seems to settle and there's still Christmas to look forwards to. Link up here and tell us what you're thinking :)

messed up, convoluted, mulittasking worship

Happy Tuesday y'all ;) I think most of us have this holiday weekend off, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Despite the fact that I have exams next week and a speech next Monday (eep! Hate those thngs) today's been one of those
not at all productive however thoroughly enoyable day. From FCA to kick off the day to making cornbread with third graders and seeing how amazing they are at making one feel loved, even to dashing back to Saine High at least ten mnutes late to my next class as a result of that love, and ending with Drama Club and dinner with the family. So it's been a good day.

I've gotten into the habit of not reading my Bible a whole lot, even during the weekends. It's like I'm at a standstill and just waiting for the right book or message or song to get me started again. So if anyne has a suggestion of a good book or how to be interested in the Word again, I'm all ears.

I've been thinking a lot about songs lately. Like thos really good ones that have lyrics that make you think that the artist knows you better then you know youself and the words just keep running through your head. One of the ones I was humming today was a Sanctus Real song, The Redeemer, especially the part
so I'd rather speak honestly
and wear a tattered heart on my sleeve
cuz in the middle of my broken dreams
redemption is here
I love the heart on your sleeve reference, because I feel like sometimes I make such an idiot of myself . Like today I was running down the hallway looking for the printer in room 112 and berating myself and getting so frustrated because I just couldn't figure out where the heck it could be. I mean, it''s a room and I've been at the high school for almost three years now, and just today figured out where it is (the lights were turned off).I was actually almost to the chin wrinkling point, pretty close to actually crying, just because of my frustration that I was five mnutes late, couldn't figure out where the printer was and no one seemed to care what was happening to me. So that was the epitome of my second hour. AND I was ten minutes late to third because I was too busy saying goodbye to my Harvest kids. But such is life. Anyway, worship. Honestly, I think it can be as simple as walking down the hallway humming. It's not one of those things where you have to be kneeling or have your eyes closed. I think God smiles a little when I try to hum Deep from VBS, because it's just such a Detroit song and it feels so weird to be in school singing something I associate so closely with summer. Maybe it's reaching to find him in everyday life.  In the shower, walking alone, running frantically through a parking lot. Along time ago, before summer ended, I copied a whole chapter of Ragamuffin Gospel into one of my notebooks, and the last part in there before I got bored got busy was how our relationship with God is like that of a child trying to help his or her dad with a chore. They may not be terribly efficient and the 'help' may be nothing more then getting in the way, but in the end, it comes down to each wanting the other to be pleased. Not that God has to answer to what I think of him, but I think that even when I forget smething, or trip or say something dumb or something doesn't go accorindg to plan or even if I just plain old sin, he smiles just because he loves me and it's all OK. No ifs ands or buts about it. God's been chasing me all these years. Through my stealing phase and lying phase and awkward phase, and a bunch of phases that I'm actually still working through. So I don't think he'll give up on me just because I can really step on some toes. And for that I am most definitely thankful.

Five Minute Friday: Growing Pains

It's Friday again. That one day of the week I get to sit down and talk to all of you, because apparently Blogger won't let me post comments anymore. Bah. Anyway, Lisa Jo over at Gypsy Mama thought up this idea a long time before I even discovered her blog about writing your heart out for five minutes, without editing, just whatever came into your head. Link up here :)
Today's theme; growing
Here goes

One thing I've learned in the past years is that growing doesn't happen all at once. For one thing, we definitely are not plants. As much as Jesus liked to compare us to plants, one can only take the metaphor so far. I, for one, grow up all crookedly.  For me growing seems to be more of figuring out where NOT to grow and growing there anyway, realizing something's wrong and turning around. Maybe that's the reason that my faith is the way it is, a fact that can't be proven otherwise. Jesus can't not be present in this whole process, otherwise where would I be? It's not fun but it's not  terrible either.
People I talk to seem to either love high school or hate hgih school, but I think it all depends on what mood they're in when talking to me. High school, and middle school for that matter, is filled with absolute crap and absolute treasure. Crap like drama and seeing peope you love suffer and go down the wrong track or have completely terrible things hppen. One of my dearest friends' little niece is in the hospital with lung cancer. She's already lost her mom and dad, a few friends and her sight, and I just wonder how she could take all of it and still be alive. Another is what I used to call boy crazy, but now I don't even know what to call her. And now several of my other friends are falling into the same kinds of traps, and I just want to fix it. I want it to work and I want them to see God. But how? How do I get them to see God when I'm tired and worried about a homework assignment or test or whatever's on my mind on that particular day?
But then there's the really cool parts of seeing the same people every day, saying hi to people in the hallways, building relationships on nothing more then just doing life together. I hope that one of these days I will get a chance to talk directly about my faith with someone, but I want to trust that even today is useful and God is still working. I have classes I love and people I get to help and a wonderful family and church and small group to see me through.
It's been an interesting journey through the last few yeats, but one I wouldn't trade for anything. November through January is going to be a season of rememberance for me, remembering my faith and  where I've been. Through the insecurity, through reading the Bible desperately trying to find something to prove that I belong, through my own cancer scare when I was fourteen and losing my voice right when I won the lead role in a play. Through freshman year and the feeling that God was leading me somewhere that I didn't really want to go. Through youth group and late nights and early mornings, God's been there and charted every single step I took. He's the reason I've made it this far, and I trust that there's definitely still more to do.

Also, I know everyone says this, but all you guys who read this are seriously the highlight of my Friday. The thought that somehow all of these random people are connected by nothing more than a keyboard, a faith and the Internet is ridiculously cool and something only God Himself could have thought up. Ya'll are the interval between homework assignments, reminding me God's still here somwehere amid this massive to- do list, and I hope somehow my ramblings do something to the same effect for you. But right now it's late and I'm tired and getting loopy, even though it's only nine o'clock. So I'll shut up now. Except for this one quote I stole off Ashley Mays' blog a while back and thought it was amazing, but forgot to write about it...

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the question themselves, as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
Letters to a Young Poet

Five Minute Friday...A Day Late...Again: Unexpected

Sheesh. I used to have a perfect schedule of when I would get stuff done...Friday-FMF, Saturday homework and Sunday Sabbath, but that seems to be shifting as we work to wrap up this trimester. Anyone else with me? My organization is starting to slip, my planner died an unfortunate death, only resusiciated by my dad, and seeing as every single teacher wants their class policies back from the beginning of the trimester, I think I have some scrambling to do.
Jon Acuff's post hearing your name for the first time was playing in my head this morning. After a night of craziness, following five sophomore girls all over a church building, singing with women who truly loved God with everything they were and eating the equivalent of my body weight in chocolate, I woke up this morning feeling completely disillusioned with hearing Jesus' name over and over again, but not being focused on Him at all. So maybe atmospheres like that don't always guarantee a brush of God. And in all of this week's craziness, my Bible appears to be off and on---I ended up in Malachi last night with no idea as of how in the world I got there. I think I was trying to prelude the beginning of Matthew and Luke as the Christmas season approaches, but that is one weird book. It's four chapters of God getting really, really mad with his people because they're getting jealous of what they think the other people around them have. I think it's the closest God ever gets to smacking His people upside the head and yelling Listen to me! I am the answer. You don't need people to love you or think well of you. You don't need success at what you do. Heck, you don't even need life. You need ME. I am yours, so what the heck do you think you're doing looking elsewhere? And then four hundred years later, he sends the ultimate gift to prove that everything he had been trying to say was true. We are his. That's who we are. Mine, says the Lord. Mine.
That's how God appears.
When one doesn't expect him
When one believes all hope is lost
When there's no possible chance of anything happening apart from him.
All I can say is Lord, hurry.

Five Minute Friday; Remember

It's Friday. The day of the week to look back and reflect and pour out words without thinking about how you sound. As always, if you want to join in, link up at Gypsy Mama with your own thoughts on rememberance.

Savior I come
Quiet my soul
Remember
Redemption's hill
Where yout blood was spilled
For my ransom

And everything I once held dear
I count it all as loss


I wanted to write about my testimony tonight, but I'm finding it hard to type more then a few words right now. This has been one heck of a week and right now I'm fixing to forget everything. The nasty email I sent on Friday to a teacher and the discussion that resulted on Monday and the tears that ensued. The hurt feelings on both sides and the exasperation of thinking what now? The episode of Wednesday where this same teacher told me my presentation was 'unprofessional' and made this whole half of the week thoroughly unenjoyable, at least in that hour. God has been faithful, but right now, I'm beginning to wonder what he'll make out of this week. I'm tired and run down but somehow I still believe he's there. That's the one amazing thing about faith is that I can never seem to shake what I believe about Jesus. And for that, at least, I'm thankful.

He's here.

He's alive

And he's working all things for our good.

Five Minute Friday:Beyond

It's that time again:the heavenly end of the week, and I've got the day off school. :) So I'm in a pretty good mood today. Today is the day I get to refresh and reload anf reflect about the week in the midst of homework and Tim Horton runs, and just kcik off my shoes and write for five minutes...or more. Today's theme is beyond

It's strange to think about God when I really sit down and think about him. The fact that he's beyond time, and space and the craziness that enfolds my daily life, but somehow he's more a part of it then I could possibly know. He's more present and involved in my getting up and lying down and gorging myself on delicious chocolate chip muffins then I could possibly know. He's better, more loving, more accepting then anything I could wrap my head around. Which must be why there are times where I look at a particularily woeful or harsh passage and think Huh? That's how God chose to reveal himself? Of course later, in Jesus, God really got to show off who he was, but some of the books of th Bible really don't have to be there, the ones that deal with people dying and the 'holy destructuion' of cities, but again, that's God being God. All I have to do to believe that is take a big whiff of Jesus, and I know there's a reason for doing what he does. It's just something otherworldly and goosebumpy and beyond anything I could understand. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact of Jesus, and it's already tangling my head in a good way, and I haven't even started the Old Testament. The main point I get from the Bible is that God and life and death or so much more then what I could possibly fathom. I was venting to God last night about how sometimes he feels like just another thing to check off, homework, family time, eating, hygiene, quiet time, praying continually, check, check, check. There's always going to be another assignment, a day where the only break I get is going to the bathrooom---ONCE, but again, He is, he was, and he always will be, even after hjigh school and college and the ridiculous amount of things that have to get done during this three day weekend. Somehow, I need to larn that He'll take care of it, whatever it is, whenever it happenes. There's always more, always that one thing I still have to do, and he's promised he'll never leave me or forsake me through all of it. And that's more then enough. Just remind me of that on Monday :)

So how are you all doing? Anything fun happeneing over where you are? Favorite books/ book reccommendations? I think I'm running out again.

Another thought: Could you guys be praying for m little Compassion girl, Karla? I haven't got a chance since Spetember to do much more then think about her, and I keep meaning to write her, but in the meantime, would you guys help me in surrounding her with God?

Have a fantastic weekend y'all

Snippets of God

 I'm taking a little hiatus from my Spanish project now to just write down my thoughts. This is a sort of piggyback blog on Stacy's pretty little blog called Heartprints of God. If you feel like joining in here's where you can

I felt God's touch mostly at night this week. The days are so crazy and full of absolutely normal, wonderful chaos, so it's only when I wind down, take my warm shower and spend the five minutes before my eyes are too heavy to keep open paging through the Word and just letting God share my tiredness. I've been going back to Psalm 25 a lot lately just echoing what is says and trusting God to keep the world spinning without me. Maybe not the greatest way to do quiet time, but it's where I am right now.



I saw God's love when I was completely frustrated yesterday with my computer and sitting on the floor pouting and crying because the stupid thing just was not doing what I needed it to do...and my dog curled up next to me and put her head under my hand. Once again, my baby girl helps calm me down when no one else can. God working through the small, dumb things to show his love to a sixteen year old girl.



I heard God's leading when I took the PSAT today. There was a section in which to choose a major I was most interested in. I've shied away from the whole college thing lately, but today I bubbled in the Special Ed bubble. It wasn't a huge deal, but it was the first time I had filled that thing out seriously. Maybe something will come of it? I also made a list of colleges to look into so maybe I should get on that, come to think of it...



I tasted God's goodness when we were outside standing in the crushing wind, praying, requests coming out of our lips all at the same time, together, but not. My small group went outside to try waterfall prayer yesterday. I didn't say anything, but just stood there, and felt His presence there with my sisters in Christ. I don't always feel close to these girls. They're a year younger then me and are together constantly, but there's always days like yesterday when we all just stand in His presence together. And it is good.


I experienced God's power on Wednesday when my youth pastor came back to church. He was in a bike accident last week and it was a complete freak accident. He was riding across a crosswalk and a car didn't stop and he flipped OVER the can. Thankfully all that was hurt was his calf and he was only in the hospital for a few hours.

Well, friends, we've lived through another week and God is still here, and we're still breathing and there's still things to do and places to see. But for now, let's rest in today and who we know ourselves to be and who we know God to be. I've been rereading Abba's Child, which I think I mentioned briefly yesterday. I stopped at a passage a few nights ago that said

Prayer is essentially the expression of our hearts longing for love. It is not so much the listing of our requests, but the breathing of our own deepest request to be united with God as fully as possible.

Enjoy the cozy book reading weather, y'all, and know that you are loved more then you could possibly understand.

Five Minute Friday; Catch...Or Not

It's Friday again. Time again for another writing binge whcih is very slowly growing on me, especially yesterday when Natalie Lloyd commented on my blog post. This is incredible beyond words, seeing as I've read her blog and been inspired since sixth grade, when I began reading Brio. So that pretty much made my week :)

Conversation sometimes feels like freshman gym. I try to focus and listen and empathize in the right way, but so often, it just falls flat. I misinterpret what they were trying to to say or I think I have the ball...and drop it. Sports are not exactly my thing. Sometimes I don't think relationships are either. Yesterday I had a conversation with one of my good friends who was talking about some people who were annoying the living daylights out of her. I tend to be kinda preachy with this particular friend. I don't know why, but I've known her for three years now and given her at least ten 'sermons' within that time span. Of course, she snapped at me saying she really didn't need any 'God preach'. I swear, every time I've tried to mention God to this girl---or anyone for that matter---that conversation gets that much more awkward and tense and unpleasant to be a part of and someone usually changes the subject. There used to be two girls who I used to take to youth group back in seventh and eightth grade, and I was always so convinced that this time would change them, that this time would melt their hearts to Christ and send them in the right direction. It never happened. I'm a junior in high school now and these girls are still sitting on my heart and squeezing the life out of my prayer life, along with the people I've met since then. I try to give them to Jesus and I try to pray but then I'm at a standstill. I don't even see these girls anymore, so how do I pray for them? And what if I don't see an answer? And this issue only seems to grow as the years go by---what the heck is God up to up there?

That's another area I 'drop the ball' is loving God. Praying, being interested in what he has to say to me, loving his people. Sometimes, all I want to do is smack His people upside the head and tell them to either shut up or... just shut up. I veer away from having hard conversations because I'm afraid of being unliked, unaccepted, seen as an idiot or overly simplistic. I know what to do but don't do it. I know that I'm not supposed to snap at my parents, my siblings, my friends, but I do anyway. I know I'm not supposed to be jealous when someone else gets attention I want or has the faith or the prayer life I wish I had, but I do anyway. I'm human. I'm an impostor. I like to blend in because I'm afraid of being looked down on. I was reading another Brennan Manning book last night. One of the chapters was called The Impostor, and it was about how the part of us that wants people to notice us, the part that blends in to please everyone, isn't real because he's not known by God and that's a dangerous place to be. Away from the love that surpasses everything, away from the eternal life that's ours in Christ, away from the promises we know will never fade or go away--all gone because we don't trust God to be enough. Just because we can't see him doesn't mean that the people we do see overpower him. No matter how many people I make mad, or offend, or step on because I'm trying to do His will, he's not shaken. He's not just going to leave because I can't figure out how to talk about him. There's a song that danced through my head today by Tenth Avenue North, encouraging me to just relax, because he's got this.  

And here's another one I really like

Five Minute Saturday:::Ordinary

Ordinary. Ordinary is  how I feel after I exit a movie theatre, with the story and characters still whirling in my head, wishing somehow I could become on of them. Ordinary is how I look at myself after hearing someone else's story. It's not bad at all. I'm not saying stories are bad. In fact they are truly amazing. But sometimes it's just the feeling of being pulled through someone's whole life in a few hours that gets me. I start wondering why I'm still sitting in a huge pile of to dos and homework and laundry that still needs to be done and worries and problems that could be solved with just a few hours or a conversation.  Sometimes I think it's amazing I can still breathe.

But sometimes maybe ordinary can be good. When the world just seems to come back together and I can see who I really am. Beloved, wrapped in a web of love spun ***excuse that bad metaphor* by the nail scarred hands of someone who truly loves me. Who thinks I'm beautiful and useful and beloved. He wants that to be who I am. Someone radically defined by his love. Maybe our God wants to prove to us that ordinary isn't so bad after all. Maybe he works through the endless Saturdays filled with homework as much as the glorious hours spent with friends and family and serving. That's what I need. I need to be excited just by the fact that my God is near on these days where I don't give him a second thought. I need to find joy in the fact that my God knows all about what I'm studying. That I am a  treasure in a jar of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.Somehow, somewhere  God will show up. It's just a matter of whether we notice or not.

Friendship

Friends have been a weird topic for me lately. Some friends I've had since eighth grade, I rarely talk to anymore and some people who I never knew existed, let alone thought of as potential friend material who have turned out to be some of the dearest people I know. One of the struggles God hears the most about is a group of friends he has carefully pried away from me since I entered high school. I'm still a little confused about everything and it's a constant struggle sometimes. Even with my closer friends, I'm always worried I don't fit in or that I did or said something wrong. In my youth group, in my small group, even in the random pockets of friends I have tucked into my school day. I'm always asking myself if I really belong and sometimes the answer confuses the heck out of me. I love the second post I posted when I officially started this blog about a makeshift herd and how I am surrounded by people who love me. I reread it today, because for a number of reasons, I needed the reminder that I was loved. And seriously guys, whoever's reading this and feels the same way, even if it's only for a hour or a day, please leave a comment so we can mingle in our loneliness and just know that we're never alone.
It's been a rough week. I actually got a (I think) unfair detention this week, that just happens to be on the same day I was supposed to lead a Bible study.Just one of those things, I guess. And then I lose my lunch bag and my binder, find my lunch bag but not my binder, find out that several of my friends hate eachother right now...yeah, it was fun. I had a Sanctus Real song stuck in my head the other day and just felt like it was singing exactly what was in my head at that point, especially the verses. The chorus I guess is all a mater of faith, holding onto Jesus through the craziness. I'll post the song somehow so you can 'see my week' :)

Again, this post was inspired by Gypsy Mama, so if you feel like joining in on FMF at 10 o'clock on a Friday night or later this weekend, link up here and join the fun. Have a great week guys!

Five Minute Friday: Peter Pan, Growing Up and Bunny Trails

In some ways, I'll never grow up. In my mind, I'll always be eight years old with awkward baby fat, baby fine hair and ridiculously thick glasses. No matter how much weight I've lost and some sense of style I've gained since then, that's just how I see myself. I'm still the little girl who's afraid of being left behind or forgotten or abandoned, who worries about every little thing and who just wants to be liked despite that stubborn pudgy belly that refuses to be left behind.
Because I remember what it was like to be eight years old,  I still laugh at myself, maybe even more so now that I'm older. I still hurt for people I see hurting and take those who look out of place under my wing--because I've been there.  I still cry at things I think are sad, and I still burst into tears whenever the slightest thing is wrong. It's still impossible for me to hide things from my parents, especially when I've done something wrong. At the same time, I'm learing God really is up to something and with Immanuel in charge, who knows what is going to happen

One of the most incredible ways God has grown me is in trusting other people. Everyone at Knox says this same thing, but Turning Point youth group  truly changed my life. These people taught me how to open up and realize that I'm not the only one who struggles with belonging and self image and handling worry, that I've never been alone. People like Pat and Kayla and Elisha and Rachel and Nicole and Kathryn and Abby and Emily and Grace and Sarah and Courtney and Clara and Wendy and Julia and Hannah and so, so ,so many more truly change the world and I swear, every time we're together, the devil cringes just a little bit more.

And then, of course, there's Jesus, who at age four I just associated with a cross and salvation but as I grew up and heard people speak and read books and had conversations, seems to jump off the page. Not to say there's not days where I get out of bed and just hate the world or lie awake at night worrying about this or that, like a stupid argument with a good friend that's bothering me right this very minute, but I'm learning that there is always hope. That no mountain is too high or no ocean's too wide for Immanuel's love to find me or the people I love. This guy is God in the flesh and is unlike anything we could ever have imagined about Him.

I want to end with this quote that really has nothing to do with any of this, but that I'm in love with and that has sunk its claws into me. I found it in a wonderful little book I read recently called Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, about how we get caught up in lists of how tos and self improvements, and self growth and suddenly a voice, in whatever form surrounds us, saying,

"'You are accepted. You are accepted by that which is greater then you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for it now: perhaps you will find it later Do not try to accomplish anything now: perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything, Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.' When we do that, we experience grace."

This post (actually this blog) is entirely indebted to the Gypsy Mama's amazing blog, and her idea for a Five Minute Friday in which you write for five minutes---or more---about a given word---or not---and don't worry about how it sounds. It's all about putting yourself on the page and not worrying about meatness or how much it makes sense...because let's admit it, today's post was bunny trailing all over the place. Link back to  http://thegypsymama.com/ and see what everyone else wrote and love on complete strangers :P

I'm not ready

Us Salinians are heading into our third week of school and already words cannot express the need I feel for a restful Sunday. I have finger and toenails that haven't been trimmed yet, a pile or books and papers and homework left over from the crazy storm of homework last night and a list of questions and needs from over the course of the past week. Not to mention the laundry sitting on my desk right now, or the new correspondence with a very special almost five year old in Bolivia. There's always more to do and see and study and understand. School resumes tomorrow and I'm still not That's why I hate trimesters. I like to think about things, and by the time I've learned something, the teachers are ready to start again with something new. Half the time, I go to bed feeling like I've only gotten half of my work done.

That's what bugs me about this week starting again.  There's still more I have to think about and pray about before I dive headlong into tomorrow.  I still have to get my head andd heart into the right place and move past the not so pretty things that happened last week into the new. I still have to forgive myself for sending an email to my Spanish teacher when she was having a bad day---with the wrong Bible verse as my 'signiture'. And my anger at her for responding to every one of my Spanish questions but evading that one dumb email. And my fear of being alone at youth group or just not belonging, and the feeling that my small group, who have been together for almost four years now still doesn't count me as part of the group. And having no down time and my dad still wanting me to do the Big House run again this year when I have no time to prepare. And I'm just not ready to keep going. I  should and I know I will get up and get ready for school tomorrow but I'm just not ready.

I'm not ready. I'm not ready to dive into the future that I don't know. I'm not ready for God to take over despite my unreadiness. I'm not ready to watch---or be blind to--- what he does this week. I'm not ready for night after night of frantic work and extracurriculars only to fall into bed and have it all happen again the next day. And yet, the quote from yesterday is still true. I'm not expected to be the best or the smartest or the most detail oriented (thanks God!) because if I was, I wouldn't trust God to work. He promises to be stronger then my strength and his love a thousand times better then my own. There is nothing I could possibly do to faze him, no bigger idiot I can make of myself or him than what he's already made of himself on the cross. Also, I think the world would be a whole lot less full of laughter if I made no mistake than  what   it     is when I'm myself. And I think God Himself gets a chuckle or two out of my antics sometimes. In the most loving way possible, guys, God is perfectly okay with making an idiot of oneself. I am a living example.

Another Friday: In Which I Write For Five Minutes

The woods would be very silent if no bird sang except those who sang best
~ Henry Van Dyke

Happy Friday everyone! All two or three people who read this every Friday. He. Another semi successful week has come and gone and I'm still alive and breathing and believing God is good. As a celebration of this, would you guys join me in my Five Minute Friday.As a way of thinking through the week and being totally candid. Removing the masks that we can put up, even over the internet and showing ourselves as we are. Today's theme (according to Gypsy Mama---LOVE  her by the way :)) is joy. For those of you who don't know the drill, we write for five minutes about the keyowrd given. Or nor. You could be completely random if you wanted and it would be alright. And then we link back to www.thegypsymama.com and visit whoever went before you.

Joy
Is my middle name. Sometimea. By birth yes, but not always in nature. The definition of joy is being content no matter what the circumstances, trusting that even the evil and messy stuff will turn out to be for the greater good. Trusting that no matter how many people I yell at or tests I fail or tears I cry, my God is still there and He still saves. No matter the girl that I'm struggling to love or the argument I had with my parents that could have been avoided or even the movie I saw last Sunday that I should never have agreed to (Never, by the way, see Columbiana. It scared the living daylights out of me and left a horrible feeling in my gut. Not pleasant nor the thing I want to watch right before I go to bed) Joy is trusting that God has me right in the palm of his hand. Always. I think  joy is keeping the picture of Jesus in my head, memorizing his eyes, his hands, his smile and always looking forwards to the day I finally get to see them for myself. Joy is remembering where I come from and where the people around me come from. Accepting that I am accepted by him who is greater then me, by a grace that I don't need to look for or memorize in order for it to be present. Joy is watching my sister dance while doing homework, an afternoon at the orchard, a really, really, good book. It can be a pretty sunset or eight girls sitting around just talking about life. Joy can be days like today where I just wake up feeling good, but more so I find it where I wouldn't expect it. Like an encouraging email sent that never recieved a reply or a plan for my life that I still don't understand. Joy is found in all of these things while knowing at the same time that the best is still yet to come.

End

I was so wrapped up in that I totally forgot to talk about the quote at the start of the blog post. Shoot. But I really want to go read all of the other blog posts for today,so maybe I'll just talk about it next week...

Thank you so much to anyone who read this . Come back soon and invite people! I feel like a dolt saying that but I kinda like feeling like I'm actually talking to someone when I do this.

Oh Snap:5 MINUTE FRIDAY

So this week was insanity. I love my classes and my teachers, but MAN, do they think they're the only teacher in the school or what? Every night this week has been working right up from when I get up to when I go to sleep. Yeesh. But you know what? I'm OK with that. So many incredible things have happened this week. I got a class that actually grades me on spending almost an hour with third graders, and my Spanish and English teachers make me laugh so hard that if I ever drank milk in their class I'm pretty sure it would come out my nose. I'm a pretty happy camper. Most of the time.

Anyway, my SECOND Five Minute Friday! This week the theme is In Real Life

Anyone who wants to join in this week? For those of you who like step by step instructions...

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

2. Link back here and invite others to join in.

3. Go a little overboard encouraging the writer who linked up before you.

In real life, I am much more awkward then in writing or online.  In real life, I don't talk how I sound in my head.. I always stutter, I forget stuff.  There are times where I really want to say something and don't. Or I forget what I want to say and ramble.  Or I rememebr it way after the conversation's over. I tend to say like. A lot. As my British Literature teacher showed me when we did impromptu speeches in class. In real life. I say the first thing that pops into my head, and let me tell you, it very rarely makes sense. In a way, I kind of remind myself of Moses, cowering away from God because I'm too squeamish to hear my own voice.  In real ife, I am crazy and fun and quirky and awkward, and insecure and blonde. In real life, there really are happy endings.  In real life, there's not always a beginning and middle and end. Sometimes when I think about how long I've lived already and how many generations of genrations I have behind me, I get dizzy. To think God's been there since the dawn of time? That somehow he knows what I'm going to say what I say before I even say it. Craziness. I cheated. Again... He.

Five Minute Friday:Rest

Two of the blogs I read- Ashleyy Mays and Gypsy Mam--do a 5 minute Friday where you write. For five minutes. It's okay if it's not perfect, but you can't go back and edit once you're done. It's just a spillage of words onto paper, for the love of writing.  So why not come join the fun?
 1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

2. Link back to Gypsy Mama and invite others to join in on your own post.

3. Go a little overboard encouraging the writer who linked up before you.

Here we go
Rest is somethng high schoolers never seem to get. Especially in the middle of the week with homework,schedules and projects pressing on on every side. Sometimes it seems like rest is impossible , just anoth task to check off tee list. But that's not what God intnded. Somehow, when he created the world, he wantedd us to set apart a whole day to just chill. That's not what I see sometimes when He talks about rest.  I don't always get to see the God that just wants me to be still in his prescence. I see God through my lenses, that of school and friends and family and all the requests they put on me, however unknowingly. I see him through my checklist. Have I spent my alloted God time today? Have I prayed for more then five minutes? And if I don't, I feel foolish. Like who let this girl become a Christian?

OK! So I edited a little there. It's my first time, give me a break:) Now you try it!

A makeshift herd

I LOVE stories. It's a firm belief of mine that God does too. Just look at the first shapter of John. Jesus was the Word before anything came to be and in the Word we were created to make more words and stories and relationships to his glory.

I'm learning that a story doesn't have to mention God's name to be to his glory. It's because of him that we're able to write and read and be a part of other worlds. Every book we lose ourselves in, any TV show we can't stop watching and all the movies that take our breath away displays some of God's truth. Because that's what we were created for. To proclaim our God as the way, the truth and the life. We were born to recognize goodness and justice when we see it.

I'm learning that it's okay to find it easier to lose myself in a book rather then the Bible, because either way, I am going to see God in a new way.I just finished a sweet book called Small as an Elephant by Jennifer Richard Jacobsen. An eleven year old boy wakes up one morming to find his mother gone and sets out to find her. By himself. In a town he barely knows. By the end of the book, I just wanted this guy to stop running and accept help already. He rejects any and all efforts to reach out to him and keeps on pressing to a goal that I think he himself doesn't even know. My favorite part is a paragraph ast the end of Jack's long journey to do it by himself and he finally gets to see Lydia the Maine elephant and his grandmother waiting for him in a zoo.

"All along the way, Jack realized ,he had never really been alone. He had been part of a makeshift herd, one that had spread out over miles.They had communicated with heart sounds that were sometimes so soft, thay weren't always discernible to the ear. But they had found one another and they had helped one another. Just like a true herd."

Even though Jack was alone in a strange town he didn't know, he was always surrounded by people who cared. The family next to him on the camping ground who shared a picnic with him the day before he left, Nina, his friend from back home who alerted his grandmother that Jack needed help, Slyvie and Wyatt, cousins who gave Jack a safe place to hide out and drove him at least part of the way, and of course, Big Jack, who Jack first meets in a restraunt and who splints up his hurt finger. And of course, the grandmother who patiently waits by Lydia for the grandson who she knows mistrusts her and loves elephants. He was never alone.Something about that resonates with me, a sixteen year old girl,  years older in wisdom and puberty, who aches to belong, to be cared for, whose heart hurts as people she loves leave her. But even now, I have friends in Germany, in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Iowa, and random places in Michigan. I have family I've never met and friends I've only had for a year that I already consider family. That's the beauty of Christ, is that we're all connected. Wherever I go I can rest in knowing that I will be cared for. By him who will never leave nor forsake me, and those he chooses to bring into my life :)

So we'll see...

Most of you probably won't see this until my first 5 minute Friday (Thank you Gyspy Mama and Ashley Mays for the debut blog post idea :))this week and then probably not too frequently after that, but none of that matters. Because I've always wanted a blog. I've always wanted to be a published author, never mind that maybe only a few people will get a taste of the whirlwind that happens in the attic of my head. So we'll see where this takes us.

So we'll see where this takes us.
Story of my summer, if not my life. It would seem I'm at another turning point where I'm not totally sure of anything, even the Hand that holds my life in his hands. It's one of those seasons where I'm thankful that there IS a God in control and I don't have to have it all figured out and at the same time panic at the thought that my life rests in someone else's hands. I start junior year next week, in a high school that is my second home and the bane of my existence all in one. With people I love but drive me crazy, with teachers that are one hundred percent homework happy and friends that literally hurt my heart to be around. Yeesh. Along with the whirlwind junior year is sure to be and the new position of leadership I'm planning to take this year, God's got his work cut out for him. But he hasn't failed me yet.