March 1, 2012

• “Silver white winters that melt into spring”

  “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
  Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
  Brown paper packages tied up with strings
  These are a few of my favorite things

  Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
  Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
  Silver white winters that melt into springs
  These are a few of my favorite things” 

   

  

  The fingerless gloves Esther crocheted for me…they’re so perfect for photography in the cold!

   

  

  It really DID snow this winter, believe it or not!

   

  

  Swingfull of snow

   

  

  morning glow on white fluffy stuff

   

  

  A world all coated in white…and the sunrise was gorgeous that morning.

   

  

  We had snow cream that morning. It’s absolutely delish! And my happy mug from Mexico:)

   

  

  My ever present water bottle…and ever growing love of water

   

  

  My first attempt at drawing labs and starting an IV.

  I was successful even though I couldn’t see the vein and had to go by feel. *proud grin*

   

   

  

  touch of green in very brown woods

   

  

  My Path

   

  

  Sunshiny days and that BRILLIANT blue sky!

   

  

  edges of sunset

   

  

  The things you notice when you’re on a quest for beauty

   

  

  raindrops

   

  

  Angel food cake (it’s so FLUFFY!!!)

   

  

  Ordering my pin…I can’t believe this is happening to me!! 

   

  

  the red candles in my room

   

  

  I named him Jefferson (don’t ask me why, because I honestly don’t know:P).

  (one of the Valentine’s day gifts my sweet boyfriend gave me:)

   

   

  

  tiny braids in hair

   

  

  Proof that Quido is actually coming to visit me! And there’s no return date! Hopefully

  that means she’ll stay forever:)  

   

  

  curtains dancing in breeze

   

  

  the fairy world inside a tulip

   

  

  blooming things

   

  

  curly wild onion stems

   

  

  toes in grass

   

  

  PEAS!!

   

  

  The countdown till our final exam..:) 

   

  And we are currently on Spring Break now and I’m sooo excited!! It’s so wonderful to be able to just relax and not think about studying and being able to spend time with my guy and other people and just..aaaah!! I can barely contain the happiness! I hope this week doesn’t fly by too quickly…

   

  The # of pics is 78. It seems like so little compared to 1,000 but I’ve enjoyed it so much already, I’m very glad it won’t be over soon.

   

  “Why would the world need more anger, more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world. When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into broken skin and deep crevices, LIFE grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us? The clouds open when we mouth thanks.” -Ann Voskamp

   

  “The act of naming grace moments, this list of God’s gifts, moves beyond the shopping list variety of prayer and into the other side. The other side of prayer, the interior of the throne room, the inner walls of His powerful, love-beating heart. The list is God’s list, the pulse of His love–the love that thrums on the other side of our prayers. And I see it now for what this really is, this dare to write down one thousand things I love. It really is a dare to name all the ways that God loves me. This is the vault of the miracles. The only thing that can change us, this world, is this–all His love.” -Ann Voskamp

   

  I’ve experienced this! The more I name, the more I see, the more I give thanks and praise and make my list, the more I see God’s love for me. The other day, I looked at the sky in all its glory and it hit me. God really loves me! It made my eyes sting and my insides go melty. We’ve heard it over and over…all the time. It’s become an overstated (can it be overstated? maybe not) fact that we barely hear anymore. And then he pulls back the scales and we see and it makes us fall to the knees with the unworthiness of it all but…with gratitude and life changing hope and…love back. And it hit me too that it’s been here all along. All this evidence of his love. Spread so lavishly all over creation and in my life, his fingerprints everywhere. And I feel a pang of shame. I have been so blind. This sight..this SEEING it all (or at least the tiny fraction I can take in right now) is so overwhelmingly beautiful and full of JOY.

   

  I listened to a message by Paul Washer the other day. It’s called “The glory of God in ministering to the Lord” and he had some really interesting thoughts along the lines of ministering to God! He starts with reading the first 2 verses of Acts 13 “Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.” After that it says the prayed for them and sent them away and then it lists a lot of the places they went to, spreading the gospel. Paul Washer points out that in any missionary history teaching or anywhere you hear about the history of the church, these verses are always pivotal when it comes to the first missionary movement ever started. He goes on to ask what they had come together for..what were they doing there? He asks what “ministering to the Lord” means, and after getting some feedback, he says he thinks they were gathered together to praise God. To lift him up. They didn’t gather to map out a plan on how to save the lost, or a seminar on teaching people how lost the lost are. Their focus was entirely on God and they were ministering to him. And from that, the greatest missionary/church movement of all time was started. Isn’t that beautiful? PW suggests that instead of prayer meetings like most churches have where we make lists of requests, someone should start a prayer meeting sometime where it’s all about praising God (I always want to substitute “thank” for praise, but I’m not sure that’s legal:P). Just focus completely on lifting God up…magnifying him. Speaking of all the good he’s done in our lives, all the miracles he’s worked, and ESPECIALLY the “little” things he’s done for us, the stuff that’s so easy to overlook, mention all the things we love and are thankful for and then just..thank him for them. I can’t even imagine how happy it’d make people! I’m not saying requests are wrong. They’re actually RIGHT, and just what God wants. But I agree with Paul Washer in that we’ve got it backwards. We have focused on man and his needs and if we’d switch our focus to God, we end in actually helping man…(more than we ever could alone), and when we start with man, it doesn’t usually go much further than that. 

   

  Okay I’m done! Goodnight:)

  • 10:58 pm
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