My life in pictures

I like to document things. So here are some pictures that are quite telling of the past month of my life. 

I have been able to spend some long overdue time with friends lately.

This girl got quoted for a Covenant thing talking about representing Covenant.
I've never gotten quoted for anything, so its pretty cool!

Been spending a lot of time with this girl!
 So glad Oxford didn't steal her.

Went to Nashville for the first time ever

Spent Valentines day with the best Valentines ever!
Love the time we have together as we're getting older.

RH took us to his favorite bar in Nashville called, "Roberts."
They have live music from 11am until 3am.

Bob and Connice and my sister came to visit
and we ate a lot of food and laughed a whole lot

Celebrated Candace's 23rd birthday! 

We celebrated by playing Truth or Dare.
Jillian had to eat a rosebud.

The Charlotte Fellows Came to visit Chattanooga!

We sang some Karaoke

And clearly I got a little carried away

February has been a good month! So bring it on, March!

Today's dreams

Today, I'm dreaming about shorts and Chacos weather. Sunshine and windows rolled down. I'm dreaming of free time to read good books, browse the shoe aisle at target, and watch movies with the roommates. I'm dreaming of a clean room, a clean car, a clean house. I'm dreaming of time when I can actually sit down to Skype some of my most favorite people, who live way too far away. Time where I can focus on the things that are really important to me. But instead I am camped out at my house skipping classes, work, whatever I have to to finish my Senior paper on NASCAR.  If you ask before Friday how its going-- I may burst into tears like I've already done too many times this week.

I am trying to trust, trust, trust today as I have to do things I don't want to do that are really hard.
I'm trying to cling to the hope that HE is enough, even when I am freaking out and having panic attacks.
I am trying to rest in Him and what he's doing in me, even when its hard.
But really, I'm just seeing that I can try until I'm blue in the face but really what I need is HIM. Only Jesus. He has strength enough for me.

A beautiful Tapestry

Lately, I've been reading a book by John Piper called, "Let The Nations Be Glad." Since I started reading it, things from the book have penetrated my life and heart in ways I hadn't expected. The first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism is, "What is the Chief end of Man?" And the response goes, "Man's Chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." I learned this question many years ago in Sunday school and whenever someone would ask essentially what our purpose is here on earth I would find myself repeating that in my head as an automatic response. But this became much more real to me after a conversation I had with someone the other night.

We talked about how hard it is sometimes to see purpose when things are hard. When things over and over again continue to fall apart and people continue to let you down. We talked about how she had come to a place where she cared very little for anything in her life, not even her friends or her family. And she couldn't understand what purpose or role she played in all of this. Why life was so hard for some unknown reason.

During my summer in Vienna two years ago, this idea of a tapestry was a continual concept I kept coming back to during my time there. This idea that each of us is a single thread in this big tapestry that God is weaving together. When we see that thread by itself it doesn't seem like much, just a dinky thread weaving in and through life, but when we step back and see how God is using that thread to make a beautiful tapestry filled with texture and color, that is purpose. That tapestry God is weaving is His kingdom, and that Kingdom's sole purpose is to bring Glory to the God of the Universe! He is doing things in and through each of us that we may never see reason or purpose for until we greet Jesus in Heaven and He shows us what He has been up to. And how he has used us, not because he needed us, but because he chose to make us a part of his plan. God chose to use us in bringing Glory to His own name, because He is WORTHY. 

I don't think I will ever get to a place where I truly "get this." It is something the Lord continues to teach me and bring me back to in every facet of life. I so often need to be reminded that it is not about me. My life, despite what pop culture would have me believe, is not my own. I gave up that right when Jesus called me into sonship. But this life is not about me and what I want, this life, and everything I do is not about me. It is about the beautiful, wonderful, gracious God that I serve.



Photo: http://windingstream.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/tapestry.jpg

Lately

My life the last two months in pictures:

Love being in this city more every time I come home

Built some good forts in the woods with these funs boys. 

Spent the days after Christmas in my favorite place with my favorite people
The Cabin
Boone, NC

One of my most favorite birthdays I think I've had.
Love that I share this day with my sister

Rang in the new year with some of my favorite camp friends
L-R: Todd, Jordan, Chelsea, me, Lara, Drew

Updated my Planner and got really stoked for May 4th!

My mom is just real cute. 

Got to celebrate Becca's 23rd Birthday!

Cobb and I sometimes send pictures to our friends during class

Its been REAL cold so I broke out the leopard fur

Just got this in the mail and it has already been so encouraging

Sweet Hannah turned 21!
We've been like sisters since we were 3 years old

Attending lots of surprise birthday parties means hanging
out with people I love like Ruth Sneller!

Jordan and I get really excited when we talk about Camp Lurecrest.
We love each other and that place.


I'll leave you with a song I've been jamming to lately. Man, Whitney Houston was the original Beyoncé. She sure knew how to rock the leopard and leather look.

Reputation vs. Integrity

This picture has nothing to do with the blog I just think I live in a pretty place

So I have been thinking a lot lately about reputation. What it is and why it is so important for people to view me as having a good one. Well today my mind was blown as I talked through this with someone. The idea of reputation is something that other people give us. We can't control it and make people think a certain way of us. It is usually driven by people seeing how you live and passing what they see onto others. Thinking about this left me frustrated because a) I want to have control and b) I want people to think well of me. 

 But then we started talking about integrity. At my high school in Charlotte, we had a guy who was our 'Spiritual Life Director' and he used to say, "Integrity is doing what is right, even when no one is watching." So really the person who ultimately has control over integrity is myself. I cannot control what people say or think about me, that is my reputation. But I can make sure that I do things with right intent, or integrity. 

I think often times we get so caught up in wanting to have a good reputation that we are willing to give up integrity to achieve that. I see myself doing that often, especially when dealing with conflict with my friends and family. I want them to not be mad at me or to be okay with me again so much that I am willing to give up integrity to please them. I become a slave to what others think about me instead of just doing what I know to be true and right. My integrity is between me and the Lord. He sees whether or not I choose to glorify him when no one else is around. 

Jesus could have cared less what kind of reputation he had because he had ultimate integrity. He hung out with tax collectors and prostitutes because he wanted to love them and care for them. He knew he was doing right in the Lord's eyes and that kept him from falling into letting other people determine who he is by who they say he should be. When Jesus called me he didn't call me into a life of ease, he wasn't preaching a prosperity Gospel like so many warp the Gospel into. He called me to follow him. He said to gain your life you must lose it. He knew he was calling me to a life of suffering, to a life of hardship. But he has already given me good. He has given us himself. That is the best good we can receive. 

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." - John 15:18-19

Its not easy to not care what other people think about you. More often than not my sin leads me to choose pleasing others over pleasing Jesus. c'mon really! No one likes not being liked. I mean think back to middle school; that was all of our deepest desires and still is if we're honest. But thats why we need him. Daily, hourly, continually. 

Life lately

Lately lots of things are happening:

My SIP (Senior Integration project), my big senior 30 page thesis paper needs to be finished...today. (Yikes!)

Today begins scholarship weekend so there are lots of high school seniors flocking to campus.

My car has been making strange noises and I'm afraid if I don't get it looked at soon the whole thing will just fall apart.

I have books to read, papers to write, friends to see.

I've got responsibilities- like making sure the trash gets put out, making dinner, cleaning the kitchen, paying my bills.

I've got people who are heavy on my heart, that I feel called to pray for.

I've got jobs to search and apply for.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here in the library and I keep coming to this place where I long for the future, I long for the next phase, for a new beginning, but for a consistent me. I am me, but yet I am growing and changing and learning. I am not who I was when I set out for this mountain almost 4 years ago.

The last 4 years have been sweet, filled with good friends, late nights pulling all nighters because of homework and some not for homework. Fun hall dinners in the great hall, afternoons reading on the chapel lawn, soccer games at scotland yard, stargazing on shadowlands field, morning chapels, and being pushed and challenged and encouraged to be who God has made me to be.

Its a scary things to leave the known and move into the unknown. Its an even scarier thing when that unknown includes, no job, no place to live, and lots of student debt, at least as of now. Not that I will be living on the street, my parents are far too gracious and wonderful for that. But the training wheels are coming off. Mom and dad are standing in the distance along with all my friends and professors and saying, "Good luck out there! Don't fall off!"And they send me on my way.

But the Lord's hand is steady, and it is never failing. He is gracious and compassionate and He has a plan that is better than mine. If ever there were a time where I am all in having to depend solely on the Lord, that time is now. Leaving the known, the predictable, even at times the monotonous and heading into unknown, murky waters, filled with fears and loan payments. Oh Boy!


Here are two things that have been inspiring me lately,

I have been listening to this one song by Bailey Cooke for the last several days. Its just so good.

And a quote by C.S. Lewis

"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." 

- "The Weight of Glory"

Transition sucks

            I know I've mentioned before how awful I am at transition. It really can be pretty difficult for me. This summer was especially difficult. Coming back from Camp where I was blessed with such a great, caring community to a very different year than the three before.
            I was talking with a friend about transition and how it can be so difficult and she said that Sometimes we don't want to leave a place because our hearts are so full of love and contentment in that place and it feels like its the pinnacle of our time there. And sometimes that is when God calls us to leave that place so that then we know exactly what kind of community and fellowship to look for when we leave that place. I am so thankful for the places I have come to love. But even more than that, the people that were there that God used to stretch me and grow me, the people who walked with me and cared for me and loved me. Its those people that mean more than the locations I was in. 
            I cannot tell you how much the Lord has been working on me the last few months. But the last month I have spent reflecting and processing and I can see a little bit of the threads the Lord is weaving together, to make me exactly who he wants me to be. 

 These were my Cross Trainer (CTs) girls from camp. This was my favorite part of the summer. Getting to know each one of them and their sweet hearts and their desire to know the Lord more. I am so thankful they each let me in and allowed me to walk a little bit of this summer with them. 

 I got to celebrate the birthday of a good friend from high school and have a mini reunion with some of the girls I spent those 4 years with. We don't get to see each other often, but when we do, let me tell you... it is a party!!

                   Spending just a week in this city was so good. Charlotte will forever be my home.  

 My mom and I got to spend lots of good time together between camp and me moving. I love her and am so thankful for her wisdom.  She listens to all of my ridiculous stories and we just have so much fun together!

                                                          My new little house :)

 My family got to spend some time together in Boone before I started school. It is rare that all five of us get to be together but when we do it is so fun! 

                                                              Love these two!

                                            One of my favorite spots. I have missed it here.

                  Reunited with hall mates from the last few years. I just love them!