basically

BASICALLY... brittany fila is the most amazing person i have ever encountered and she is amaaazing. randomly drove into e.l. after work not knowing where i was going at all... short story made shorter: i love talking to her and of COURSE to all of the other gorgeous women God decided to throw into my life lately. wow.
i have grown so much over the past couple of weeks and normally it would kinda freak me out that so much has happened, the circumstances, etc. but... i'm strangely at peace with where i am even though it feels like i'm traveling 29837420 mph and have so much on this plate. very chillax, but only through God's everlasting encouragement and grace has this happened.
i've closed a lot of doors and opened plenty new ones very recently. i have been able to use time to be reflective and think about who has been in my life. and the biggest struggle for me was trying not to blame those who i felt have sinned against me with words and shut me out. but i've been able to recognize (through a greaaaat network of beautiful people) that i can't set the same expectations for those not in faith as i can for those in faith--which corresponds exactly with the trend i see right now and it's crazy. on the flip side, building relationships with certain individuals today was awesome and unexpected on both sides--but much needed. :) my thoughts just sort of ramble together, ifeellikeimightaswelltypelikethis.

Romans 5:3-5

"God is my boyfriend"

"To love someone properly probably means that you won’t be very popular. Pure love, loving the way it was intended, is unfortunately a foreign concept to many. Love is messy. Love will involve hardship, demand patience, require forgiveness, test maturity, strain friendship, challenge priorities, refine character, ignite the heart and unleash the soul.
Love is not something you sing about, it’s the reason you sing. Love is not something you write about, it’s the reason you write. Love is not something you live to find, it’s the reason that you are alive."

-Mark Hart

And here's the letter that has affected all of my beautiful girls and myself. Honestly, ever since I read it, I began to live my life for it. Crazy! It's not even from the Bible, but Britt, Shandy, and I are slowly translating it line by line for text found in the Bible. I actually found some really good verses that parallel a couple points in the letter today. They're found in 1 Peter which I am reading for the first time and have to say that it is quite a cool book so far.

Oh yeah, and for my favorite letter in all-time which I am so grateful for reading: "The Perfect Love."

Everyone longs to give themselves

completely to someone. To have a

deep relationship with another, to be

loved thoroughly and exclusively. But

God, to the Christian, says no, not until

you are satisfied and fulfilled and content

with living, loved by me alone with giving

yourself totally and unreservedly to me,

to have an intensely personal and unique

relationship with me alone. I love you my child, and until you discover that only in

me is your satisfaction to be found, you will not be capable of the perfect human

relationship that I have planned for you. You will never be united with another until

you are united with me- exclusive of anyone or anything else, exclusive of any other

desires or longings. I want you to stop planning, stop wishing, and allow me to give

you the most thrilling plan existing – one that you cannot imagine. I want you to have

the best. Please allow me to bring it to you; you just keep watching me, expecting the

greatest things. Keep that satisfaction knowing that I am. Keep learning and listening

to the things I tell you, and you must wait. Don’t be anxious, and don’t worry. Don’t

look around at the things others have gotten or that I have given them. Don’t look at

all the things you want. Just keep looking

off and away up at me, or you will

miss what I have to show you. And

when you’re ready I’ll surprise you

with a love far more wonderful than

any you could ever dream. You see,

until you are ready and until the one

I have for you is ready, you have to

wait. I am working this very minute

to have both of you ready at the same

time. And until you are both satisfied

exclusively with the life I’ve prepared

for you through me, you won’t be able

to experience the love that exemplifies

your relationship with me, and this perfect

love. And dear one, I want you to have

this most wonderful love. I want you to

see in the flesh a picture of your relationship

with me, and to enjoy materially and

concretely the everlasting union of beauty

and perfection and love that I offer you

with myself. I love you utterly; I am God

Almighty; Believe and be satisfied.

day recap

darn! i forgot to make a lengthy, meaningful post for today...

well, 4 hours of churchtime in one day and i can't even say that i'm full. had a really good family get-together for Leo's birthday. i love Leo, what a good kid. got some good talks in with the fam :)

hopefully next sunday (if i dont go to bed at 4am), i could possibly attend I.H.M. at 7am with the gram cracka. that would be sweet because i can tell she's excited that i've been toying with attending masses more regularly. ooh, that reminds me that i saw my classmate with her daughter at st. john's. oh my goodness, her little kindergartener is the sweetest thing ever. maybe we'll talk about that in orgo tomorrow, haha.

oh shoot, i also had a really good lunch outing with britt and shanda after church. i could have possibly had the most amazing sandwich i have ever had in my lifetime--and that is saying a lot! i'm not 100% sure if talking to britt and shanda about their current love situations is putting jealousy or happiness on my heart... i'm pretty sure it's happiness though. well, probably like 97.98321231342% happiness and 2.01678768658% jealousy. PROBABLY. dang, i'm such a math nerd. why did i drop stats again? oh yeah, because it sucks!

praaaiiissse the Lord, I saw the light
I saw the light, I saw the light
no more darkness, no more night
now I'm sooo happy, no sorrow in sight
praiiissse the Lord, I saw the light

John 13:34-35

A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

i think i'll come back to this verse later because i need to go take a nap. but talking last nite really made me appreciate hugs and just the need to love on each other in general.
now for my favorite video ever which you've probably seen, but if you're like me then you could watch it over and over and not get sick of it.

what a beautful day

60 degrees and sunny? heck yes!! SO beautiful out. i really want to go play tennis all evening but i have previous commitments to an amazing gala/dinner tonite. i actually don't know what gala means, but i'm pretty sure that's what it is. ...WHAT! i just googled the definition of gala and i'm pretty positive that i'm not attending a "gay festivity." so confused. i think it's just an awards night/dinner... a slashie. haha, slashie award.
so i'm pretty sure that this city would embarrass Seattle as this morning there were more tire tracks in the median of the highway than i have ever seen for our first real rainstorm of the year. i passed 3 cars connected to tow trucks. one of which was pulling out a really nice mercedes clk350 which was definitely from oncoming traffic. scarrrry. i would probably just start crying if that happened to me--but then again, i don't think i will have pinks to a mercedes ever.
today was a really good reflective time at the bookstore. i was reading about Moses and about what God told Moses concerning who God is and how big He is. it gave me a sense of relief and hope with my (and everyone's) occasional frustration with who God is. "I Am." so basically, we cannot even fathom His NAME alone! and when you can't even fathom who God is, how can we expect to put a physical description to Him? this point was a new one to me: if God had a physical sense about Him that we could describe, this means that God would have a start and an end to Him, he would have edges and boundaries. since God simply "is" and doesn't have any limitations, a God to see and describe physically wouldn't be our God, ruler over all and found everywhere. now that's something to ponder.
well, it's gay festivity time.. haha! 2out.

God "is",
Sara

EDIT: i love british accents.

things that amaze me

there are some things in life that i don't think will ever cease to amaze me. what, you ask, are those things? welllll for starters:

• a new day starts at 12:00am? why? would it be too much to ask to get that changed to start at 1:00am? honestly, i think about that every time it turns midnight--which i am awake for obviously, every night.
• truffles... liquid gold for the mouth? i think so.
• why does everyone automatically brake during morning traffic when they get to the on-ramp past 96? the speed limit didn't change. there's maaaaybe 3 cars merging. i bet this is what happens every single morning: some old lady, i'm sure, taps on her brake just because she's passing the on-ramp past 96 and BOOOOM--chain reaction! before you know it everyone is traveling 23 mph in a 70 mph.
• how good it feels to listen to "Wonderwall" and how it always seems to connect to your life every time no matter what. maybe this is just me because there are usually so many things that i would like to say to so many people but i don't know how.
• taco bell sounds like the best thing ever at 1am. this is usually right after i finish pondering why the day started an hour ago.
• unless i'm spooning, i can never fall asleep before midnight. REDIC. redic and never ceases to amaze.

i'm going to go brush my teeth and pray that i get to bed by 1:30. have a beautiful and glorious day. remember: every sixty seconds you don't smile is one minute of happiness you will never get back.

God = love,
Sara

should be studying

this whole facebook withdrawal thing is harder than i thought it would be. now instead of spending a couple hours on it here and there, i just accidentally keep typing facebook.com into the URL bar, then i reach the log-in screen which is when i go: oh, yeahh... i forgot i'm not doing this for now. which only happens once every 10-15 minutes. so when you think about it, the time wasted on facebook is slowly but surely decreasing. my goal is to log on once a week by summer time. wow, i'm so freaking deep right now with my thoughts. that's why you should read this blog, because one post may be the most insightful thought about spirituality you have ever reasoned with and the next just might be about cringeworthy showers are. and i just created a word called "cringeworthy"--NICE.
i haven't started my statistics homework yet but i did email my teacher. so i guess i'm at least thinking about it right now. i'll stay here all night if i have to for this to be done. yeeup, i'm sure beaner's will love that. it's not like i can procrastinate, drink free water, and listen to crappy underground latino music anywhere else. soon i'm hoping that kaitlyn will come and join me in my procrastination. at least i have a clear view of people that are studying and being model college students from here. so i know what it looks like to actually do work and i can recognize that this is clearly not work.
i just found a list of good questions that make you think, maybe i will just work my way down the list with each entry. the first question is not applicable to me at all so i'll just start with numero dos:

If you knew that there would be a nuclear war in one week, what would you do?

i would purchase an economy-sized boat and travel Noah style to Antarctica bringing my family and friends, note: left behind would for sure be my statistics text. actually, in all seriousness i would probably go see all of the people that mean the world to me and just love on them and tell them exactly what they mean to me. as cheesy as that sounds, that question is very difficult to answer and i wonder what everyone else would do.

God is love,
Sara

note to self: purchase headphones before this funky indie music gets to me

p.s. this made me laugh as i was going through my lab procedure for tomorrow... i will be sure to include this crucial step in my write-up.

Procedure: You will be given 1 orange from which the peel is to be taken. Peel and eat the orange outside the lab.

bible study heartbreak

i love bible study. love it so much. i honestly look forward to bible study more than anything all week. if i learned anything this past year (besides sodium/potassium channels), i have learned that i've always yearned for the amazing fellowship with these amazing christians that i have in my life right now. it makes me extremely saddened to think about how 75% of them won't be around next year. this kind of made me think about a part of Velvet Elvis that i read last nite:

Here's what often happens: Somebody comes along who has a fresh perspective on the Christian faith. People are inspired. A movement starts. Faith that was stale and dying is now alive. But then the pioneer of the movement--the painter--dies and the followers stop exploring. They mistakenly assume that their leader's words were the last ones on the subject, and they freeze their leader's words. They forget that as that innovator was doing his or her part to move things along, that person was merely taking part in the discussion that will go on forever. And so in their commitment to what so-and-so said and did, they end up freezing their faith.
What gets lost is the truth that whoever painted that version was just like us, searching for God and experiencing God and trying to get a handle on what the Christian faith looks like. And then a new generation comes along living in a new day and a new world, and they have to keep the tradition going or the previous paintings are going to end up in the basement.
The tradition then is painting, not making copies of the same painting over and over. The challenge of the art is to take what was great about the previous paintings and incorporate that into new paintings.
And in the process, make something beautiful--for today.

how powerful, right? i at least know i'm not going to let my faith freeze up. this is because the passion and drive behind our bible studies can't be freeze-framed, they have to progress. they have to progress for our own self-improvement and for our ability to create a new generation of Christians with a flexible and fresh outlook each time. because though God's will and promise is solid, our world is constantly changing and ministry has to be compatible with the world.

God is love,
Sara

just have to live it

You will have your heart broken probably more than once and it's harder every time.
You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt when yours was broken.
You'll blame a new love for things an old one did.
You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and
you'll eventually lose someone you love.

So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love
like you've never been hurt.
Because every sixty seconds you spend upset
is a minute of happiness you'll never get back.