LIVE 2013

Dear Ginny,

Another semester.  This one is making you the most nervous, and excited, of any semester (thus far).  You're gonna have homework, tests, quizzes.... laundry, cleaning, meetings, relationships to maintain, relationships to begin, conversations to have, moments of silence to sit in.  You're gonna get tired.  You're gonna have to abstain from fun when you really don't want to.  You're gonna have to go have fun when all you want to do is lay in self-pity.

Girl.... these are BLESSINGS.  Rejoice.  You know who you are- God's daughter.  You can handle whatever comes your way because the King of Kings, He is with you and He cares for you.

Don't you let yourself give in to laziness or sloth.  When that creature begins to slide into your life, bash it and do the opposite of what it beckons with yellowed claw for you to do.  Go run, go make artwork, go read and study in a quiet place, go say hi to people.

When fear begins to breath foul breath on your neck, you jab it with you elbow and run towards what it  told you to flee from.  This will be hard, harder than ANYTHING.  You don't like discomfort, do you?

You will NOT sit back and let fear or laziness keep you from doing what God made you to do or what living truly is... to care for others, to live life full as I can, to adore and spend time with my King, to honor Him in all I do.

GO!  LIVE!

GO!
LIVE

I will furiously love others.

Oh, How I need You, Lord.

Living

Denae went for a stroll and right after turned to her journal.  Comfy in striped pajamas and hot cider at side, she wrote her daily musings carefully. :

I look to the stars falling
wintry snow, taking its time
Mind filled with all sorts of concerns,
Day to day matters and the big-picture questions.
I breathe in air and snow, exhale slowly-
This isn't the life I'm meant to live;
What is it to live? What is a life that shows what that means?

Live-- life--
i look to the One who gave me life for clues as to what to "live" is.
He smiles and rubs his hands;
Has He got a lot to show me....

And boy, am I learning.

There are no short cuts to any place worth going."  — Beverly Sills


"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else."

— Henry Ward Beecher

Mirrors of grace

I guess one thing I'm learning this semester (among what feels like a lot!) is about grace.  I'm experiencing grace through different professors.

I have just really struggled this year with school.  This semester I was honest with my profs about it, filled them in.... and they are being crazy gracious.... I'm really quite overwhelmed that they are being so kind.  They treat me with dignity and kindness despite my not being a great student.

I want to demonstrate THAT grace to people.  It mirrors God's grace.


Thankful for these professors; how they are reflections of Christ; and for how refreshing/really quite amazing when you consider it, undeserved grace is.

"in one moment"..... a romanticized ramble, naturally.

Running swift through the fields
That rustled and whistled as she went by-
Bugs leaping up disturbed from their picking or from their relaxed plant meditations
In the hum of a summer evening--

She charged through the hay that was tall and gold yet rosy in the reflection of the pink piercing setting sun.

She stopped barefoot and toes dug into sandy earth; a warm breeze hit her and she raised her arms slightly, parallel now to her ribs.  She gazed at the land before and all around her.  Breathing in she tasted farm fields, nature, grace and satisfaction.

For a moment she was a horse, digging hooves into earth before cantering, then charging, once more through foliage; she snorted and huffed air our of nostrils and shook tangled mane, rebelling against something.  She was a doe, delighting in liberty to leap and bound without fear of enemy bullets piercing her side; she was protected in an armor not her own. She had faith in the promise and it gave her a certain courage to do things she might otherwise fear doing.  a process--
She flew over fields as a sparrow outside of its barn, flying for the sake of flight itself and it being created to beat wings up, down, glide.  She was a girl, living life to the fullest by enjoying one acre of land on her uncle's farm.

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and then here is a random quote I heard today, and liked quite a lot:
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Healing- the woman reached out to Jesus and believed; and that was all it took.  Jesus didn't even know he was healing her at first :)  From K-love.

part of my testimony

http://www.goodseed.com/products/str-eng-book-ebook/

This book:  The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus by John Cross- was a major part of me coming to Christ.  Upon finding this book and reading the introduction, i asked God, "Are you real? Can you show me please??"trembling to be asking the God of the universe if he was real and feeling silly if he was not real.

God answered using the book and the Bible...