"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” - C.S. Lewis

You! Jonah!

"And Jonah stalked
to his shaded seat
and waited for God
to come around
to his way of thinking.
And God is still waiting for a host of Jonahs
in their comfortable houses
to come around
to His way of loving."
-Thomas Carlisle

"O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
   my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints 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.
So I will bless you as long as I live;
   in your name I will lift up my hands.

 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
   and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
when I remember you upon my bed,
   and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
for you have been my help,
   and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
   your right hand upholds me."

-Psalm 63:1-8

I applaud the radio station in it's choice to play Britney Spears' "Til the World Ends" on the supposed Dooms Day/End of the World which the preacher Harold Camping so cleverly predicted was to happen on May 21st, 2011. I guess Matthew 24:36 slipped past him?

"But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

The fact that no one but God the Father knows when the rapture will occur is all the more reason for us to prepare constantly for Christ's return. We are to look forward to the day when all will be made right, and we will glorify our God in heaven among all the redeemed. 

"Here I am. I stand with arms wide open to the One, the Son, the Everlasting God."



Ready to witness God work this summer.

Who is God to me?

Above all, He is my Savior.  My only way to salvation, the only One I seek to bring glory.  He set the path for my life, but loved me enough to let me choose whether I will follow or whether I will stray.  However, if and when I stray, He will be there right alongside me to pick me up and steer me back onto the path He has willed for me.  Throughout my life I have always known of how “God loves us and has sent His only Son to die for us so that we might have everlasting life".  Knowledge though, is much different from the feeling of this grace, the overwhelming presence that comes through having felt His hand of grace, His touch of love.  When we’re down on our knees begging for mercy, laying awake in our beds brokenhearted, or sitting in a church pew lacking desire to praise Him…He is there.  He will be merciful with us and forgive us when we fall, He will be “close to the brokenhearted and save those who are crushed in spirit”, and He will be waiting with arms wide open for us to come back to Him.

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” 

Psalm 73:26

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told.

"Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel there is something special in them. Look at the sunny side of everything. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Be too big for worry and too noble for anger."
-Christian D. Larsen

For those nights sleep doesn't come easy,



Music to sing you to sleep






This little reminder........






& a little Humor.





Sweetest Dreams.

Can I just say how much I truly love simplicity? Somedays it may seem more enjoyable to have all these extravagant amenities added to life, but in the end...when it really comes down to it, the purest form of life can be experienced when you are forced to live simply. 


Every year up until a few years ago, my family used to take week long summer vacations.  Our destinations included Lake Gaston, Florida, and Maine.  We were always lucky enough to be able to rent a boat for the week: which, without a doubt, we always had troubles with.  [From the boat breaking down and us having to get out and push it in alligator infested water, my dad having the boat float away as he filled the gas tank, a piece on the back ripping off as my brother tried to ski on a pontoon boat, or my dad being caught in a lightening storm at night in the middle of the lake.]  Our vacations were always filled with waterskiing, tubing, game nights, and just a lot of laughs. 


My absolute favorite summer vacation was the one we spent on a lake in Maine ♥.  My Aunt & Uncle found a lake house for us to rent that they said would be very nice. After a 2-day trip driving up there, we pull up to this little rinky-dink cabin. At first glance, and as I explored, I was a little bummed and kinda wished the house was nicer, but we ended up having a blast. Simplicity was the name of the game for the week. I loved it. Our days were spent swimming in the lake, jumping off this huge rock, and a very much failed attempt to use an old row boat. (My brother's friend decided to pretend to flip the boat while him & i were in it, this "pretending" quickly became reality as the boat began to sink haha). When we weren't in the lake we were playing tennis on this worn-out court or playing a little soccer in the yard. At night we would play games and watch reality tv as it was the only channels the tv got. Just running around the house and spending our time outside was so much fun. Family vacations were always such a nice break from everyday life, I greatly look forward to the day when I take my own family on summer vacations so that they can enjoy a part of what I loved the most about growing up.

"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!  I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail."

 -Henry David Thoreau

"Be still and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
Psalm 46:10

Spread the Calm

Silence & Stillness can be so refreshing after a long week of work knowing now that Spring Break is just one day away. Recently i've found it to be so hard just to sit and not do anything at all, just relax and breathe. A rainy day such as this one has come at the most perfect moment. It's almost the end of the week, I just finished my last test before break and I have no school work to worry about. It's a great afternoon to just sit back, relax, and listen to chill music as the rain beats on the window.

Voice Lesson Song

What happens when I sit at a piano and tell Nolin to "sing what she feels."

Enjoy.




It's always splendid to have a best friend who sings.

Hope.

"A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.  A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, and make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life."

-Elizabeth Gilbert

The Great Divorce

"There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself... as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.  Man! Ye see it in smaller matters.  Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them?  Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor?  It is the subtlest of all the snares." - C.S. Lewis

I just finished reading The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis on this wonderful sunny day in february that tells me spring is so close! The book deals with a man who finds himself in the midst of ghosts and spirits who are roaming through Heaven and Hell. The man meets a teacher who takes him on an adventure and lets him hear conversations between many of the supernatural beings surrounding them.  Through their conversations he learns of many of the consequences of our behavior on earth.  The ghosts represent those who are unsaved and the spirits are the ones who have made it into Heaven.  Many of the ghosts receive surprises when they see who has become one of them and who is now a spirit.  The spirits are now trying to tell the ghosts of the love of God and all the joy they will experience if they choose to accept their new knowledge and live forever in Heaven.  The more knowledge they attain the more visible they become. However, many of them choose to stay in Hell because at least there they are able to have some control. The teacher quotes Milton in explaining the reason behind their choice saying, "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." They are willing to stay miserable for this power because they just don't comprehend the joy they could experience in Heaven.  The ghosts have not "felt" or understood the nature of God, His love, and the freedom we are given.

The quote above is my favorite from the book.  I want to fall in love with God and His Son more so than I care to understand theology or the "religion" of Christianity.  It does no good to just learn all the facts and ideas behind Christianity, if you do not feel the love and freedom God offers through a true relationship with Him so much that our personal experience and actions show more of the nature of Christ to unbelievers than the amount of pure facts we can spit out at them.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."
-James 1:27

My favorite book of all time is The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. So much of his writing has influenced my thinking and brought new light to many ideas regarding our community and Christianity. One of my favorite terms he uses in the book is "highlighter Christians". This term refers to how many Christians tend to look only at certain parts of scripture and choose to live only by those highlighted passages, instead of reading and accepting the entire Bible as it is. In this book, Claiborne counteracts “highlighter Christians” by highlighting the truth of the Bible that is often overlooked because of the required actions that follow. He goes on to explain that before learning more about the gospel, he had his life put together with plans for his future until he “met Jesus and he wrecked his life.” Although he does not mean his life was completely destroyed, his beliefs and values were put to the test in a way that changed his entire life.
I don't want to be hesitant to read parts of the Bible because I am scared of the actions that should follow my knowledge. I want Jesus to wreck my life.

"We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the Kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy, too. But I guess that's why God invented highlighers, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest." -Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution)

Shane Claiborne's Website (thesimpleway)