The other day.

Tuesday was a beautiful day. It was one of the first warm days in awhile. (Now we're back to dreary rain :P) I went on a walk, soaked up some vitamin D and even went barefoot for awhile, taking it all in. Then I made a smoothie with just a banana, strawberries, and pineapple. The pineapple and banana were SO ripe, I didn't need any sugar and it was still really sweet. Yum. Hope your sunny day was justas grand. If you have any ripe fruit around on the verge of becoming unpleasant, make a smoothie. Or do as my mom does. Her motto is "when life leaves you with ripe bananas, make banana bread."

decades

Yesterday, one of my close friends turned 20. We've known each other 8ish years and honestly, I can't remember most of it. Not because of her, but because In have a terrible memory. Ask my sister. I do remember having good talks and good times. We've gotten closer as we've gotten older. Our conversations changed from what Disney movie just came out to what we're gonna do with our lives. It really struck me that we've grown up. Or are in the process of it anyways.

 I'm turning 20 in about two weeks. I've been on this earth two decades and yet I feel so young. I feel like I'm not ready to be a big girl. To stop procrastinating, to start taking the initiative, to stop leaving my room a mess, to stop borrowing money from my sister, to stop watching tv all day, to possibly becoming a wife soon, to possibly becoming a mother eventually, to possibly move countries and teach children in poor areas. And the list goes on and on. A list of responsibilities and choices I dont feel ready to make. But I've always hated the phrase "I feel like.." because our feelings are so fickle. So let me use my mind instead. I know I'm not completely ready to live like an adult, but I KNOW that God will guide me. So while my heart and mind may not be ready, my God is and I can CONFIDENTLY shed my teenager skin and become the young woman He wants me to be. I've just got two weeks to let that sink in.

Wish me luck, or better yet, Pray for me.

Happy Birthday Sydney. Hope the next twenty years of your life are blessed beyond your imagination. I'll be praying for you too. Love you. 

Outings...Outside.

Something that I have always known is fun, but almost never done, is go out with friends OUTSIDE.

 

Serenbe is one of those great places where there is a lot to see without necessarily spending money. And if you get tired of window shopping, you can get lost on a four hour hike on an endless trail! (Yes, that actually happened to me) That's always fun. Right..?

Regardless of how LONG you go, the trails at Serenbe are BEAUTIFUL whether you go in the spring, summer, or fall. Though I think fall is my favorite.

 

 

 

 

Ever heard of Geocaching? I hadn't until recently. Even spell checker recognizes it. Apparently it's extremely popular and you can find it all over. It's like an ongoing worldwide scavenger hunt. A couple days ago I went with some friends. We were all broke but really wanted to do something. The lovely Alyssa suggested walking around the lake in PTC. Then I remembered hearing about geo caching, and found the app on my phone. Next thing we know, we are trampling all over a hill among the trees and thorns looking for a "coffee can sized container." We never did find that coffee can. We did find the next one, a little camo covered pill bottle (seriously, a camo pill bottle? some people). We did mange to find that one, after passing it about five times. :D It had a list inside with all the names of the people who had found it. pretty cool. It has become my new addiction. While I don't usually have time to go looking for them, I sometimes stop and see if there are any around. Surprisingly there everywhere! So if you are ever bored, grab your smart phone, gps, or you can even print off the directions at home, and go find a random container with random stuff in it. what could possibly go wrong?  

 

 

 

 

I like a somewhat wise person said "a dead end sign really just means 'awesome forest ahead'" Go check out that forest. you might find something good you weren't expecting.

 

Outings

Believe it or not, I DO do things. Though my blog may not show for it. I'm going to try and post more. maybe I'll inspire you to go places. HA. this is really more for my own amusement. :)

 

 

Going out with Leslie is the most natural thing in the world. When I first started having a car and money I thought it would be weird. I don't know why, maybe because I wasn't used to it. But we just continue our lives. We have the same conversations we would have at home, the only difference is the location. 

 

 

 for about two years that I can remember, our group from church has been going out after church on Wednesday nights. Its usually always fun. It depends on who goes. But no matter where we go, our usual place or somewhere new, with the right people, its always a blast. Which I've seen goes to show that its the people, not the place, that makes an outing fun.   

 

 

One morning I woke up at six am, not to go to work, not because I had too, call me crazy, it was because I wanted to. It was to go have coffee with Lauren. Woke up before dawn and got to the coffee shop when the sun was still peeking over the edge. But despite the ridiculousness of the early morning. Its always worth it. Making an effort to have a cup of coffee with someone is always worth it. And its not the coffee that's worth it, like I said earlier. It's the person. And Lauren is pretty awesome.

bondfires

This past weekend I went on a retreat with the Christian Campus Fellowship at my university. It was great. The speaker, Will, reminded me of a very southern Francis Chan. Funny, great story teller, and incredible passion and love for Christ and His work in us. God showed me a ton of new stuff in His word that I had never taken the time to notice. A highlight definitely was the night we did the bond fire.

 

 

The fire was started and kept up by two college guys, so of course they made it as risky as possible. They literally could not make the fire any bigger because it might have escaped the pit. They started it with pine straw and some napkins, it grew till it was burning massive logs. The fire was blue because of how hot it was, turning into orange as the flame went up. It was beautiful. We kept turning ourselves like chickens to stay warm. The stars were amazing. We could see so many because there weren't any city lights nearby. I think I saw a shooting star, but no one else was looking so I can't prove it. :D Someone brought a guitar and we all sang. Two girls ended up sharing their testimony. It was an incredible night.

 

 

The trip was also sandwiched by trips to Helen. On Friday we got there early. After nearly running over a dog... we made it to Helen to have dinner. We found THE MOST amazing coffee shop ever. Better than ANY OTHER I've EVER been to. It was called Higher Grounds. If you're ever in Helen. Go. We sat and chilled with our Tuxedos, (Name of the drink), and had "Tee Game" competitions. It's the one with the golf ball tees on a wooden triangle, it's always at cracker barrel. We went back after the retreat OF COURSE. We had to get coffee there again. This time I had a drink that had Coffee, Mint, Coconut, AND Chocolate. It was so good. We saw glass blowers and weird shops. We went in a photo booth. It was my friend's first time.hilarious. The glass carver's shop was unbelievable. The guy was doing it freestyle. It was so beautiful I wanted to cry. And to top it off, in my mystery box (boxes with a random glass inside) was a wine glass with the SAME carving the man was doing! I couldn't believe it.

 

 

The bunks were extremely graffitied. If you can't tell, the close up says "I love Edward Cullen, aka Robert Patterson" My favorite part was that someone scratched it off and wrote "Ew" Glad some people still have their heads.

 

 

All of that with of course some crazy driving and my handy dandy GPS Maggie, made for an amazing trip.

 

 

 

 

stuff people say at passion.

This is a video that pretty much sums up Passion. In a very non deep way its completely accurate. With a smidgen of sarcasm and exaggeration here and there.

Passion

In a word,  Passion 2013 was.....intense.

Highlights?

•  singing "In Christ Alone" with 65,000 people.
•  Francis Chan's sermon was my favorite. John Piper's was a close second.
• standing in line hoping it was the line you needed to be in.
• finding a dollar going up the escalator, though I didn't actually find it, it was GraceAnna, but still awesome.
• sleeping in the middle of the hallway with thousands of other people.
• Watching "poor" college students raise 3 Million dollars for slaves in 3 and a half days.
• Seeing the lives of people change around me.
• Hearing testimonies of freed slaves who have not only found physical freedom, but spiritual freedom.
• Witnessing God work through all kinds of means.
• Being extremely hyper without having caffeine in my system, in other words, running off pure delirium.
• Laughing hysterically at 1am for no reason.
• Trying to find future husbands. (we all know that's why we go to conferences like these... JUST KIDDING)
• Finding out that nine random people can become a family in 4 days.
• Finding out that despite extreme tiredness and crankiness we could all still love each other at the end (and beginning) of each day.
• Crying tears of joy at the amazing work Christ has done in my life and in others.
• Witnessing truly amazing things. Awe-inspiring things.
• 3,000 people in a community group cheering when someone told their family group they accepted Christ as their Lord an savior. EVERYTIME

There was soooo much more I could tell you about, but the one biggest take away was that God can do immeasurably more than we can imagine. Despite the wickedness of this world, despite false preachers and all the other "fakers" that were present at this conference, the true gospel got out to thousands, and maybe even hundreds of thousands through this conference. And lives WERE changed, lives WERE given to Christ, people WERE convicted, people DID repent. Everyone DID see the amazingness of God's love for us. I know I did.