Here I am again. It seems like the only time I blog is to say "oh hey! I would really like to start blogging again and keep up with it". This is indeed what I am blogging about right now. Maybe I should set myself some goals. I am refusing to use the term "New Year's resolution". I wish I knew what people want to read about, or what really would reach people. I feel as if my words on here mean nothing but maybe there really are people out there who will somehow come across my blog and be touched in some way. I have a burden and a love for people, especially broken, hurting people. We've all been there. I've been there. I probably will be there again sometime in my life. I want people to see hope. Maybe even if I don't say a single profound thing, my passion can touch someone. I guess it won't if I don't write though huh? So…maybe it's time to revamp and get this thing going.

Quick, easy and gluten free!

Today I needed a quick snack so I went and through some rice noodles on to cook. Once your water boils, which we all know takes a long time if you are waiting on it, it only takes 2-3 minutes. Once cooked and drained, I through on a little coconut milk, sesame oil, soy sauce and some asian ginger garlic seasoning I picked up at the store yesterday. There are lots of good seasonings in the Asian section of Kroger. If you have a little more time, this noodle dish would be great as a bed for stir fry. Enjoy!

Today I'm being productive and healthy.

Lunch:
Avacado, tomato, bacon, fresh mozzarella and mayo on Ezekiel bread.

Next task...clean my room and start getting things ready for school.

A new life...

Here, I sit in a hotel room in the beautiful Charleston, SC. My family is engrossed in the the reality cooking show, Chopped. To be perfectly honest, I am rather absorbed in it as well. We are taking a "vacationette". However, come Saturday I will be starting a new life. It is...daunting. I have quite a conglomeration of emotions. Earlier this year God allowed me to walk through a valley that was very painful. When I wanted to get out. I wanted to get out of my hometown, out of TN, out of my painfully familiar surroundings, out of that valley. I had previously considered attending the Evangelical Institute of Greenville, SC. I made my decision and in March I received my acceptance letter. Filled with excitement, I had my chance to get out. Over the past few months my emotions have gone up and down. My heart went from wanting to run away, to being truly excited about being at EI, where I would spend two years surrounded by Christian brothers and sisters, studying the bible and creating a great foundation for the rest of my life. I was nothing but excited for several months. As the start of the school grew nearer, it started to sink in a little and the excitement turned to fear and anxiety. The past couple of days have been hard. I am in this thing now, no turning back. I know God will meet me and as hard as it will be for me when my family leaves me, I know that these two years can be the most instrumental years of my life. I believe that they will be challenging and hard at times but I also believe that I will make wonderful friends and have lots of good memories. I need to take a deep breath and go at it full force! Hopefully I will be able to keep you updated and prayers are accepted and appreciated!!!

Love

The Beatles had it about right with their song titled "Love is all you need". Ok, so ultimately we need Jesus but is said that He IS love. He is the prime example of love and sacrifice. He sacrificed His own life out of love. That is the most loving act possible. Now we also need faith to believe that. We need faith hope and love but the greatest among those is love. It's so cliche but really, if everyone loved each other we would all get along and our world as we know it would be a MUCH different place. Now I realize that there will always be hate in this world that is a far cry from perfect. However, I think Christians need to step it up in this love game. Actually that might be the issue, it's treated like a game. Christians should take it seriously and take action. We should make love an action, because it is a verb, not a feeling. We do get a feeling from love. We get different types of feelings from different types of love. Agape love a and phileo love are different and produce different feelings. I truly believe that if Christians would stop with the hate and pointing fingers and would focus time and energy on loving people then we could totally change the world. Let's start a love movement! Let's start a revolution. Love on people who openly do things you disagree with. Love on the ones who you think are below you. Love on the poor and the sick and the broken hearted. Love on those who dont seem needy at all, everyone is. Love on your friends and your family and your fellow church members. Love on strangers. Love on your enemies. Don't get me wrong here, I am NOT saying to tolerate sin. There is so much sin within the church and even our lives though, that we can not stand around pointing fingers and dropping hate.
“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her"


"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 ESV) love is where it's at. I am resolving I am resolving right now to love God and love people.

Lord Jesus please help me to love like you love. "Show me how to love the unloveable and show me how to reach the unreachable." Lord,God, give me your eyes. Break my heart for what breaks yours. Fill me with love. May it spill over in my life. Break down my pride and help me to love the ones that are hard to love. Abba, Father, papa give me Your love and may my life be pleasing to you. Amen.


Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. (1 Corinthians 13:4-6 ESV)

Coram Deo

As Christian, our life motto should be "Coram Deo" to live before the face of God. To live in His presence. If we keep the phrase in our minds, "Coram Deo", when we are tempted to sin we can remember that we are living before God's face. We are ever in His presence and we should live holy and blameless lives before Him, instead of sneaking around and sinning. This was just something I had on my mind. Now go out and live Coram Deo!

Don't call it a comeback

Five suggestions to reaching the next generation:
1. Grab them with passion
2. Win them with love
3. Hold them with holiness
4. Challeng them with truth
5. Amaze them with God

It's not about the programs, it's not about how in tune with youth culture you can be. It's about being real, bein passionate, being loving,building relationships. It takes mature, growing Christians to produce mature growing Christians. This is what young people want. I know because I am one.

Taken from Don't call it a comeback by Kevin DeYoung and others.

Camp Barnabas

Sunday morning, bright and early...and I mean EARLY, we are leaving out (at 5:30 in the AM) for Camp Barnabas!!! Huzzah! Ashley, Naomi, Iain, Jonathan P., Jonathan H., Brian and I are going to Missouri to hang out with children with special needs. They may be physically or mentally handicapped or both. Camp Barnabas provides for them a fun summer camp experience just like any other. Kids with disabilities are generally the ones on the side lines watching everyone else. Everything at Camp Barnabas has been adapted so that they too can experience summer camp fun. Swimming, ropes course, horse back riding...these are just a few of the fun things we will do at camp. It is a Christ centered camp and organization. Every night we have a different themed party and will dress up and have some fun! We are each placed with one child for the whole week. We get to love on, bond with and devote everything to that one child:)

Please be in prayer for the campers, that they will see Christ in each of the staff members and volunteers and that they will have a memorable and fun week that will effect their lives for the better.

Please also pray for the staff and volunteers. Specifically for our group, as the nerves are riding high right now. Pray that the Lord will meet us at every challenge and that we would be willing and able to do whatever is demanded of us, even if it's hard and we don't feel that we can. This will be a very demanding, challenging and maybe even a little bit stressful week and we will have to rely on God. Pray that we will trust Him and not only make it through, have some fun along the way! Pray for our attitudes and our health. Me specifically, I get head aches quite frequently and sometimes they get really bad. I do not want them to get in the way of what I am doing. I want to be able to give my camper 101% 23 hours of the day (we get an hour a day to ourselves and of course we do get to sleep as well.) Lastly pray for us, that we would take something away from the week, that God would not only meet our physical needs, but also spiritual. Pray that we will build friendships, learn and grow.

Thank you!

"God, you are my God; I earnestly seek you; my soul thirsts for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands." Psalm 63:1-4
Good stuff....

My Identity: Christ's Identity

Self depreciation is a big struggle that I have had for many years. Over the past year or so I have gotten a little bit better about it, but I still fall into it. It is a sin rooted in a pride issue.

Every time a comment like "ugh my hair looks funny" or "I don't like the way I sound" or "I don't know why you would want to be friends with me", it just goes to show what I am looking to for my identity. Looks, talents, friends...they are all things that can be used for identity. False identity.

While at youth conference last week, I was reminded of something. As a christian, when I became saved, I died to myself. I took up Christ's righteousness. I took up Christ's identity.

In turn, I believe that as a christian, by being self depreciating, I am being Christ depreciating. When I degrade myself, I degrade Christ. It is as if I do not trust in who He is and in what He has done for me. Jesus didn't save me for my talents, looks or popularity. "If that were the case, he wouldn't have saved me!" (see it's easy to throw self depreciation into anything!) (*Joking*) Seriously though, by acting like I suck at life, it downplays what's important, The Cross.

I know I am not the only person that struggles with this. Give it some thought. Don't let people give you and identity. Find your identity in Christ and what the bible says you are as a child of Christ.

Psalm 139:13-16
"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them."

Tomorrow Eli and I are headed to Greenville South Carolina for Totally His Youth campt at Evangelical Institute of Greenville SC! It is a blast. I will have pictures to post and stories to tell when I get back!!!

Texas was fun! I made it through the airport by myself. YAY! I am home for a few and today is my birthday:) I am headed out on Monday to SC for camp!

TEXAS!

I am now in Texas (got here yesterday, after having arrived home the previous day from NC). Just got back from swimming, which I plan to do every day that I am here. We did lots and lots and LOTS of laundry, and a little grocery shopping. All in all a good day. I do not have a ton planned for this trip, mostly just chillin and doing whatever my cousins do. Should be a good time but I will miss my family a lot!

Trip #1

I am sitting here in NC about to go to bed. So far the conference has been really good and opened my mind to some new thinking. I believe I will learn a lot! Pretty good drive up. My aunt has developed pink eye:/ My eyes are just dry and itchy:/ but other than that it's going to be good. I am going to try not to let anything bother me:) With the Lord's help. Just a quick update!

Summer time!

I decided to quit my wonderful full time job:'( To do a few things over the summer before getting a part time job and going to school. Notice I said to do a few things. Actually I think that when I first concidered quitting, it was just a couple of things. Lets just say my summer has REALLY filled up. I believe I will be gone more than I will be here. Let's see...





This weekend my fabulous TX family, Tia Pantelones, Uncle Pi and cousins Amy, Tyler and Adam are coming into town. Our two families will be headed to North Carolina for a family camp (I have no details on that) for a few days. We will come back here and then I will be headed to TX with them for about a week and then fly home (by myself)

I will then be home for about 4 days one of which happenes to be my birthday *wink* *wink* and then I will turn around and head to South Carolina for E.I.G. Totally HiS Youth Conference. I went last year and it was an incredible experience!

After that I will be home for about a week and then I will head to Florida for a full week:) with my aunt Becky and uncle Chris and my wonderfull best friend/cousin/sister Sarah:)

As soon as I get back some of the people from my church, myself included, are going to Clarksville TN to host a back yard bible club at our church plant. SOOO exciting!

And lastly...

I will be home for a couple of weeks before heading to Missouri to Camp Barnabas. It will be such an incredible camp. It is a camp that provides an opportunity for disabled and mentally handicapped children (and adults I think) to go to a summer camp just like anyone else. It is Christ centered and fun filled. It will be new to me but I beleive that God will really use it!

I hope and plan to provide pictures and stories after everyone of these trips so keep me accountable!

As I sit here in Starbucks on my new MacBook I feel...so full. So full of something...words. Words that I can not get out. My heart is so full of love, yet hurt at the same time. I watch youtube video after video of orphans in Africa. Why are there so many? Why are there so many orphans God?! Why?! Tears prick my eyes over and over. My heart aches so very deeply and I feel that the love and passion I have for those children is about to burst from me. However, I feel stuck. Here I am sitting in Starbucks, sipping my green tea lemonade. I do not feel the Lord moving me over seas. Not right now anyway. Not without a husband to be my head. However, these feelings are overwhelming and I know they must be coming for someone more loving and compassionate than I. Love is a powerful thing and I can feel that power. It's the power that causes me to itch and ache inside. I must act, not speak. True love can only come from a powerful God and if this is truly coming from Him then I will show me in His good time what He would have me do with it. I must learn to trust Him.

I sit here staring at a blank page...I want to write something so bad but know not what to say:/

He is jealous for me,Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.When all of a sudden,I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,And I realise just how beautiful You are,And how great Your affections are for me.

Pre-Chorus:And oh, how He loves us so,Oh how He loves us,How He loves us all

Chorus 1:Yeah, He loves us,Whoa! how He loves us,Whoa! how He loves us,Whoa! how He loves.Yeah, He loves us,Whoa! how He loves us,Whoa! how He loves us,Whoa! how He loves.

Verse 2:We are His portion and He is our prize,Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,I don’t have time to maintain these regrets, When I think about, the way…

Chorus 2:He loves us,Whoa! how He loves us,Whoa! how He loves us,Oh how He loves.Yeah, He loves us,Whoa! how He loves us,Whoa! how He loves us,Whoa! how He loves.

The Emerald Isle

The story begins...


Okay so the story didn't actually begin here but this is the first picture I am posting. Enjoy! More to come...hmmm maybe one a day?