heart of a child.

Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder.  Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of Your universe.  Delight me to see how Your Christ plays in ten thousand places…to the Father through the features of men’s faces. Each day enrapture me with Your marvelous things without number.  I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all.
–Joshua Abraham Heschel

Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our need, a joy in total dependence. The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his need.  He is no entirely sorry for the fresh need they have produced.
–C.S. Lewis

flop flip

Today I lost my flip flop while riding my bike.  I stopped and rolled backwards after I reminded myself there’s no reverse gear like in a car…so slowly I inched toward my flip flop and all of a sudden a random man picks it up and goes “here you go!” and placing my flip flop on my foot.  I laughed so hard…but I managed to blurt out a “thank you” and was about to ride off bahahaing.  But then another random man stopped me because he wanted to know where the nearest bike shop was.  I’m not sure why he would assume a girl who can barely keep her shoes on while she rides her bike would know where a bike shop is…but I told him there’s some on north high street.  the end.

Late Night Musings.

“If young people have heroes today, they are athletes. If they have role models of endurance and sacrifice and self-discipline, they are athletes. If a man denies himself comforts, vacations, pleasures with his family, evenings at home, or the free indulgence of whatever appetite he feels, it is usually for money. Nobody will worry very much about his being repressive or fanatical or weird, so long as money is his motive. 

If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd.”
-Elisabeth Elliot

Hohum.  I often wonder why I’m not doing as well in other areas of life, like money and grades, as other people.  Why am I different?  Isn’t this the answer I’ve been asking for?  To be DIFFERENT?  How am I different from everyone else?  Because I choose not to pursue these things?  Is my idea of being the best person possible flawed?  Is it because I can’t be good at everything, including grades and money—but I’m faithful in my relationship with God and I go to where He is and do what He commands?  Is it wrong to have a fear of the Lord that’s very different than the desired norm that I’m constantly desperately trying to fit in?  I feel so tempted to believe my past decisions with my education and choices of how I spend my time have been wrong all along right now.  Why am I such a Feeler.  If I was more of a Thinker this wouldn’t be as big of a problem festering in my heart right now.  haha.

Unfailing Love.

Here’s to a year of leading a tight-woven small group for the first time in my life (in contrast to my pseudo small group leader days in high school).  I still have a lot to learn and I’ve experienced so much grace this year.  I feel like these things I worry about, whether it be in the area of ministry or work or grades…they all fall under the same category of God’s provision.  It’s funny cause I’ve realized this countless times.  But I think this is the first time I’ve felt peace in knowing that.

You have my heart
And I am Yours forever
You are my strength
God of grace and power

And everything You hold in Your hand
Still You make time for me
I can’t understand
Praise You God of earth and sky
How beautiful is Your unfailing love
Unfailing love.

Fridays

I feel so much more relaxed even though I still have the same mountain of work to do. Sleep is currently the most valuable thing in my life…I treasure every little bit of it I get. I don’t like to give it up for less treasured things. Less treasured things=studying.

Google calendar + texting = solution to my life! Kinda. It’s fun though. You text “what is the meaning of life?” to Gvent and it tells you all. And you can even add meaning to your life viewable in Google calendar form.

I wish I had more time in a day to cook. And sit down to eat instead of eating while running around or in front of a computer. I’m going to drop of out school so I can cook and eat for the rest of my life. mmm. I’ve been foodblog-surfing too long.

liddo piggy

How could you possibly cause an epidemic?

blurb

I’ve decided I will not blog on Fridays. Because I am prone to complain at the end of a long week. Hohum =). Praise God! Not just because this week isn’t far enough in to be terrible, but because He has been good in the past and present. And when I remember the things He’s done it fills me with =) joy. And then he keeps reminding me again and again that I don’t need to be rushing around trying to do everything. He’s got my back. I almost typed know instead of need. I guess I don’t need to know everything either. Gives everything more mystery. Which is good. Whenever I blog I start worrying about my future. I don’t know why. Makes me think of “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” And what a coincidence that the verse before it is “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.”

So here I am rejoicing because I can see clearly that God is good and then I start getting anxious. Whoa. What comes next I wonder. Hrms. Gotta go be contemplative and prayerful now.

fruit not included

WHAT.  My cereal does not include the blueberries as shown on the picture.  I thought the blueberries were dried.  So when I opened the box this morning I thought the fruit was just at the bottom of the box or something…and now I’m eating it again and I still didn’t get any blueberries, though I thought I tasted some blueberry particle this one time.  But then the box said to me, “HA!  I tricked you!  No blueberries here!”  I is like work.  I is not like school.

I have decided I am a crazy lady.  I know this because I announced to my lab group I’ve only known for a week that I have a lot of boogers today.  And I felt absolutely no regard that this could be an unordinary conversation starter.  I will probably continue to start conversations in the same manner.  I don’t know why.  I do know why.  I have all this weirdness stored up inside me and I can’t help it from exploding every now and then at inopportune moments, but that’s ok with me!

reader.google.com

is my friend.  It tells me all I need to know about things I care about but no one else in their right mind would care so much for it that they would spend hours with it.  I have nothing but food blogs in my reader.  But anyway, I sink it is an ingenious invention…and I made my first legitimate music purchase 2 days ago since 2002 o.O  wow.  that is a long time ago.  I have stolen so much music since then…er…I don’t know if I should end this sentence with a “haha” or not.  I’m leaning toward not.
I need to give thanks to God today!  Today has been a bad day.  I overlapped appointments with people because I am forgetful so I had to cancel one…I hate canceling appointments that aren’t doctor appointments.  except then my other study appointment today canceled on me, so i can reclaim my other appointment with my other person.  I am all over the place.  I am like butter spread thin on a hot potato that ends up running all into the cracks and over the edges making a big buttery mess.  I think I’m just hungry right now.  I’m at work right now awaiting the results of an experiment I’m running… *30 minutes later*…and2/3 samples turned out negative.  crap.  the same thing happened yesterday so today was supposed to be hopeful   but nothing works the way you want it all the time.  I think I’m gonna have to get used to this…failure and disappointment thing, and also get used to the giving thanks thing even though I don’t feel good about anything at the moment.  Usually I can tell when I’m feeling thankful, because there’s just this happy feeling in my gut.  My gut is not feeling happy.  It is feeling hungry.  There’s a recurring theme of food here…I feel ridiculous.  Delirious.  Frrrazzled from a long week….I was dropping important things left and right today and my brain was missing.
Oops.  Almost forgot about giving thanks:
After 4.5 months of volunteering ~11 hours/week at the lab they decided they are going to pay me.  And my bosses said they like me.  I hope it stays that way.
… why is it so hard to give thanks when I’m a grump.  I was riding on the happy cloud 2 days ago because of my official job-acquisition, and I definitely still am happy about it, just not as ecstatic and thankful as when I first found out.  Because 2 days later, I found out everything will not stay happy-go-lucky forever.

feelings of happiness = thanksgiving

Oh yes, there is a difference between feeling thankful and being thankful.  But is being without feeling genuine and authentic and hip? I dunno.  I think this just takes practice.

time to stressing

out. But the day is too sunshiney today to be stressed. I am a little disappointed in myself for not getting things done and not getting lots and lots of sleep this weekend, because getting up at 8:30 AM every weekday is no fun and burning eyes. hohum. Work at the lab is getting more interesting and longer. Yes. More longer. I need to ban myself from facebook, google reader, and cuteoverload.com needs to delete itself .
But I did have a lot of fun this weekend, and I thought to myself, I’ll never be a screaming fangirl at a Fiction Family concert again when I’m old, so good thing I can do it now..! Sieze the days of screaming fangirlyness. Nah, I would have to say that concert was the most low-key, casual, and personal-ish concerts I’ve ever been to. Jon Foreman requested all the fangirls to sit up on the stage while he and Sean played. Well not exactly in those words…but it was all that was needed to send Amy and I sprinting to the stage ready to knock out anyone who tried to stop us with our cameras.

Well, time to start my day with some studying…please pray for me and my non-ability to say “no” to work, although I’m not sure if cutting out work will increase my study time.  meh.  meh…the word I use when I wish things didn’t matter.  What a gross word.