bird

seriously..

everything

He has been so faithful and it has really been tugging at my heartstrings to show that I'm giving everything I am to Him. I'm being baptized on Saturday. as a baby, I wasn't able to dedicate my life to God through baptism and as a 13 year old, I didn't fully comprehend what it meant to affirm my faith and live for Christ through confirmation.

if I was to sit down and write a letter to God today, I like to think it would look like this...



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Listening to: Skillet - Better Than Drugs

jump

sometime after i finished responding to an email from a complete stranger a moment ago, did it set in that i am a very different person that I was a year ago.

I wouldn't be anywhere close to where i am right now spiritually and emotionally if I hadn't taken these plunges in the last year. it all began with deciding to join a bible study with these four completely beautiful women sometime last September.

soon after (without going into any detail) randomly drove 10 hours to hang out in the U.P. with what would become amazing new friends, ended my 4-year relationship for good, randomly camped a spectacular weekend on Lake Michigan with Campus Crusaders I didn't know, flew to Mexico with the church, changed my major for the millionth and final time, and here I am packing my bags to drive the 10 hours to the U.P. for the fourth time this year. I don't know the person I am driving up there with other than that he is a friend of a friend but I'm sure the company will be awesome as everything else that I've trusted into God's hands so far have been.

oh, i'm real excited for this long weekend! words cannot describe how much I love autumn. it will be gorgeous! pictures to come for sure. do me a favor and everyone go buy a gourd this weekend. FACT: the gourd is as enjoyable as a pumpkin, but completely underrated.

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Listening to: The Higher - Weapons Wired

have fun with that

it was sooo good to see a wonderful friend today! we were going to live together this semester but she recently became engaged to my other great friend and theyre living an hour or two away. i miss those two like crazy :) aaand she asked if i'd be a bridesmaid in her wedding! my first non-flower girl role--yes!

completely unrelated but... now i'm pretty discouraged and disappointed. it just sucks that my plans never seem to be congruent with God's. inadequacy feels far too familiar these days.

it's hard letting go of my wants.

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Listening to: Linkin Park - Leave Out All The Rest

carl rogers

i've been thinking a bit on the allocation of my time spent with friends. truthfully, i surround myself with Christian friends 4 out of 7 days per week minimally. i've realized that one of my biggest mistakes in that area is that i will maybe extend an offer to go to church or to a mid-size group to my non-Christian friends but usually give up there and don't ever really go out of my way to dive into their lives.

“In my early professionals years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?

I have gradually come to one negative conclusion about the good life. It seems to me that the good life is not any fixed state. It is not, in my estimation, a state of virtue, or contentment, or nirvana, or happiness. It is not a condition in which the individual is adjusted or fulfilled or actualized. To use psychological terms, it is not a state of drive-reduction, or tension-reduction, or homeostasis.

The good life is a process, not a state of being.

It is a direction not a destination."

Carl Rogers

Rogers was an amazing Humanitarian and revolutionary psychologist. all of his theories were rooted behind the idea that we are products of our experiences.

it was enlightening to me to think about why and how individuals come to accept new ideas according to Rogers. when we give others an unconditional positive regard (a.k.a. loving on people without limits), they are able to recognize that they are valued for who they are and not their potential to be. through repeated unconditional positive regard, individuals are unconsciously motivated towards self-enhancement and a desire for personal growth and self-understanding. basically, Rogers emphasized during his life that the way to empower people to further their own lives is simply to love on them and provide with positive experiences throughout the relationship.

and the idea that the "good life" isn't something to be attained but is actually a way to live... awesomeamazing.

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Listening to: Half Past Forever - Need

excess tuna oil

in celebration of the Office airing this week, i thought i'd share one of my favorite Office moments. that was one awesome night... loving on some beautiful people, then watching this hilarious TiVo'ed episode.



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Listening to: Michael W. Smith - You Are Holy (Prince Of Peace)

teleological functionalism

since i signed up for a couple classes a few weeks late, i didnt have much of a choice in regard to which ISS class i got into. my ISS class' topic is the study of society... and we get to start off the semester learning about basically my most favorite subject EVER. evolution!! </sarcasm>

today, i was especially intrigued by the idea of teleological functionalism (at an evolutionist standpoint). teleological functionalism, when applied to evolution, is pretty much the epitome of neutrality. the root word "telos" of teleology is Greek for "purpose" or "end." teleological functionalism (which i'm tired of typing) is the idea that things exist solely for their final function. in evolution/religion, T.F. explains that we are here for the purpose of turning to God but the mechanism for how we got here is not by His creation, rather are by completely natural causes. wtf, T.F.?

sometimes, i'm not completely sure why i believe that God was able to create everything out of nothing. well, i'd be fresh out of faith if all the answers were laid out in front of me. for, it is "by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible" (Hebrews 11:3).

side note: i'm starting to explore study abroad options and am pretty sure my heart's weighing heavy for Africa (...maybe Ghana). so if i could get a shout out to the Big Guy on my behalf for direction, that'd be sweet.

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Listening to: Anberlin - Symphony of Blasé

thanks

Beau sent this prayer to me a couple days ago when I was distraught about my major:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.

--Thomas Merton

first off, there are no words to explain how much Brit and Beau encourage me daily in my walk. i love waking up to Brit's uplifting text messages and voicemails. aside from loving the Word, they remind me constantly of what a pure Christian relationship looks like and serve as my definition of a cord of three strands.

it's so fascinating how God lets us think that we have it all figured out, but in reality, we cannot even fathom the amazing future He's creating for us which is far from the present. for me, the most encouraging part of that prayer is that our desire to please God and follow Him exclusively and in everything we do is enough. enough for Him to mold into something great. Proverbs 3:6 is a promise that God will lead us in the right direction as long as we acknowledge Him. to acknowledge God is to obey Him in every dimension of our lives and desire to make His will for our lives number one priority.

i'm working this prayer into my morning routine as it reminds me that God will give us a single heart in our daily challenges as long as we are living to obtain His perfect and pleasing plans for our lives.

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Listening to: Mae - We're So Far Away

backspace

yeah, so about my last post... fast-forward two weeks. school is kinda depressing. i'm studying for hours and hours on end, yet i still manage to FAIL (and i'm not exaggerating) all my quizzes in calculus. the sad thing is: i feel like i understand the concepts but i'm still getting thrown off by all the crap questions that require you to memorize the definitions of stupid tests and theorems word-for-word. seriously? if i wanted to be a literature or writing major i'd understand.

and my materials class... holy pi, put me out of my misery. so in lecture we're taught about materials, their properties, and various chemicals' melting points, etc. okay, fine. but then we get this crystallography worksheet to finish by the following week. mind you, this is no busy-work ditto, this is the mother of all worksheets and it deals with the craziest geometrical/mathematical questions i have EVER seen, oh and a mere 12 pages of it. what?! we don't even ponder examples of these questions in lecture.

for this worksheet we were put in groups of two and i feel like the biggest slacker/freeloader ever. i'm usually the one getting the most done in groups and spending a lot of my time just irritated that my partner isn't pulling their end of the weight. okay, after talking myself up there... i want to now throw it out there that i am so awful about getting my end of the work done. to be honest, just reading the problem stresses me out because i don't even know how to go about approaching the problem. my partner surely hates me academically. i feel so screwed over in life right now. bah!

i thought God really put it on my heart to pursue math and science since i really like it. correction: used to really like it. not a whole lot of students actually enjoy math and stuff. so since i did, i figured it was an indication that i should be majoring in something related.

during church today, all of my feelings of self-doubt and uncertainty in school were brought to the surface as i had a mini mental breakdown in my head. our world is so broken and is deprived of adequate love in so many places. i feel like what i'm studying right now doesn't help any of it.

when i graduated from high school my mom told me, "i don't care what you decide to major in as long as you're helping people." so i started out in Graphic Design, then when i decided that increasing my development of carpal tunnel wasn't worth the major, i switched to Marketing. then i thought about what mom said and realized i was kinda going in the wrong direction as the vast majority of Marketing is dedicated to convincing consumers to spend their money and time on things they don't need. not really helping anyone there.

alrighty, so i did a job-shadow with my neighbor and decided that i would become a nurse anesthetist. after studying nursing for a year, i became aware that the area's nursing schools have about 800-1000 students applying and except about 20%. some students spend a couple years just getting in! i'm not a patient person and i like to see myself moving to my goals, therefore, decided that i can figure out a major that i'm passionate about and can see myself progressing towards. and that's when i decided on engineering.

i'm not considering a major change (or at least won't admit to it), but i am having second thoughts. i need some good heart-to-hearts. so confused right now. boooo to confusion!

the words "never underestimate my Jesus" are being sung in the background right now. out of the 2,576 songs on my itunes, the shuffle feature lands on this? fantastic. "i throw up my hands, all the impossibilities. frustrated and tired, where do i go from here? now i'm searching for the confidence i've lost so willingly. overcoming these obstacles is overcoming my fears." oh, the irony!

classes

my classes are going wonderful :)

on monday, i was kinda just in shock that i had to do work again. but today, i'm just really excited to be here and in the learning mode.

if you have to deal with me on tuesday and thursday evenings, don't let my british accent throw you. both of my professors on tuesdays and thursdays have british accents and to say the least, that keeps me very much engaged.

cheers!

pterophylla camellifolia

okay, this katydid was in my pool. look at these pictures and tell me you're not fascinated. i probably wasted a good half hour on grasshopper and katydid classifications. all images are links to the actual size of the picture.



next to my hand


massive


the structure of the wings are amazing! any entomologists know if they actually have plant cells in their wings?


not gonna lie, that horn at the back freaks me out


pretty sweet :)

wishlist

• 2 Tickets to Fox Theater on November 17

yeah, i don't ask for much in my current "just because" wishlist. just two $100 tickets to see Jim Gaffigan. no biggie.

alright i'm done. for some reason posting at 4am is so much more appealing than posting at say... 4pm.

i need to go to bed

it is 4am and i should go to bed.

it is ridiculously hot right now and i am just lazy enough to not do anything about it. im really tired. i know you can't tell, but i am. maybe i should write more insightful things on here from time to time.

yeah, not tonite. just know that God is so good and constantly remind yourself that we can take all of our burdens and worries that life has given us and ever-so-gently... throw them all at God. i keep forgetting that He has my big picture worked out already. mad props, God. :)

oh akeelah...

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

--Nelson Mandela

spiritually high

dejé mi corazón en México.

adios

isn't that last song posted amazing? :) alrighty.. this is it for the week. off to baja. keep me in your prayers.

small bit of food for thought (by the way, i just typed 'snail bit of food'--weird)... anyway, i wrote down this quote from church a few weeks ago and am just now reviewing my notes. wouldn't it be great if we started every day with this question:

what am i going to do today for Jesus?

colossians 3:17

all set

losing air

isn't it strange how just seeing a picture of someone can make you forget to breathe? as in "wow, that person is amazing..." maybe you can't relate and i'll be honest, it doesn't happen that often for me, but it just did and i liked it a lot. :)

God is completely amazing to let us love on people so much that we can just get lost within them. coincidentally we can get lost in Him much more easily.

grrrr

i cant let myself rant >:(
but DANG, i'm angry and i cant get this stupid frown off of my face. being in a bad mood before bed is not good.

tomorrow will be better. ♥

waiting

It just seems like you're taking your time
I'm just waiting for the sun to shine
I don't wanna go another day
Without you here, without you here to stay

It seems like forever and I'm still waiting for you
I'm still waiting for you
It seems like forever and I'm still waiting for you
I'm still waiting for you
Yeah, I'm waiting

All I want is to see you smile
If a blink lasts forever, this might take a while
I don't wanna go another day
Without you here, I want you here to stay

It seems like forever and I'm still waiting for you
I'm still waiting for you
It seems like forever and I'm still waiting for you
I'm still waiting for you
Yeah, I'm waiting

It's never gonna be enough to dream of you
It's never gonna be enough to dream of you
I wanna see you... I wanna see you

It seems like forever and I'm still waiting for you
I'm still waiting for you
It seems like forever and I'm still waiting for you
I'm still waiting for you
Yeah, I'm waiting...

:)