Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Fake trees are no good.

I love the smell of Christmas trees.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

In the words of Oswald Chambers...

“Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves One who is leading.”



I love this quote. It reminds me what life is all about...I can get so caught up in everything I'm doing, or should be doing that I forget that God is relational.

This is the reason why I could never walk away from God. I wouldn't be leaving behind a system, or just a lifestyle or way of thinking. It would be like someone dying, moving or exiting your life for some reason, or breaking up with someone - that feeling you get when you lose someone in some way or another...except worse because my soul has glimpsed what it's like to be with the one it was created for. I've drifted or gone through the motions, and in those times, I miss him...I yearn for the deep intimacy that I know we can have. I need it.
I'm in love with Jesus and I will never get over the fact that He loves me even more.

This is the day the Lord has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it.

I used to have that verse posted above my bed to remind me of the joy there is in life and in God right from the beginning of the day!


But this is the story of my life. I hate mornings...

You think you know but you have no idea.



Have you ever wondered how people view you?
I don't mean that as an insecurity thing where you're always worried about what others think, but sometimes I just want to know what it feels like to know me not being me.

There is the way that we see ourselves, good and bad, but we know our every thought, feeling, and experience.

Sometimes the things people say make me laugh; sometimes it bothers me...random things that have given me but a glimpse of the false impressions people have about my life.

It makes me wonder how wrong I am about so many people. I try not be judgmental and box people up in my head, but I still view everyone I know in a certain way in my mind and heart, but my perspective is partial and probably skewed in some way...

That is not to say that we can't truly get to know people or have people know us....it just makes me wonder...

Sunday, December 4, 2011

*Butterflies In Your Stomach*


My parents got a puppy and I couldn't be more excited.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Looked Under Your Pillow Lately?



Dear Julie,
Thankyou for your generous donation to my eat-my-feelings fund.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Crowded Silence













It's amazing what goes on inside of our heads.
I swear I manage to feel sorry for myself, lecture myself, argue with myself, make myself feel terrible, and cheer myself up all in the span of 30 seconds...and so somehow within a couple minutes, or a couple days, something seemingly insignificant has taken over.
I think it has much to do with the fact that our feelings often get the best of us. It's a shame we can't run away from ourselves when our emotions and imaginations get together and reek havoc.

It hit me one day what a powerful thing it is that God is with me. I mean it's powerful in so many other ways...but I'm not even alone in my thoughts. His Spirit is there to lead me into truth. I know that I can love God with all of my mind, and that He can reign in my thoughts, and that my frustrations, doubts, disappointments, and insecurities don't have to.

Victory in Christ is a beautiful thing in the crowded silence when we're victims of our own minds.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Inspired






I hardly shut up with my fake British accent...



If you haven't seen BBC's Outnumbered, you should look it up:) Then you'll understand.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Bittersweet Melodies

So I got Feist's new CD, METALS, about a month ago, and I love it! One of my favourite songs on it is called Bittersweet Melodies. Feist doesn't really have anything to do with this blog entry, but I thought it was an appropriate title as I talk about winter.

Winter is indeed bittersweet.
and winter is here.

First, let's talk about summer. I have spent most of my summers at Ness Lake Bible Camp. There aren't too many other ways I'd like to enjoy the season of summer than that. However, it can be very busy and exhausting, and so time off and time alone is a precious thing! My favourite place to spend my time off was on the docks. That is one of the things that I miss most about summer and about camp. It was so relaxing and God always met me there. One evening in late August, I was overlooking the water, and it hit me that winter was coming. Now that might seem a little irrational, but summer was almost over, and fall doesn't last that long before winter hits. Anyways, I had a bit of a feel sorry myself session on the dock.
August came to an end, as did September. I remember the first day I opened the front door to leave for work, and I saw that my car windows were frosty. I had to close the door and have another feel sorry for myself session and complain to my roommate that summer was over and winter was here.

Now I'm not going to lie that as much as I complained and dreaded winter coming (although I don't think it was as much as I complained and dreaded my 20th birthday), I had a twinkle of excitement the first morning it snowed. I could see more and more out the window as I walked up the stairs for breakfast, and was thinking to myself that the fog made it look very wintery. But that is not why it looked wintery. As I reached the top of the stairs and got a good look out the window, I could see that there was snow!
Of course, the first words, or sound I should say, out of my mouth, was something like uuuuhhooohhhawww! I know I'm whiny, and I'll tell you why I hate winter, but regardless of that, at that moment, there was still the little girl inside of me rejoicing with her older brother that snow and all the adventure and fun that comes with it had arrived.

You look out and the white snow is beautiful, and it somehow produces a warm, fuzzy feeling of nostalgia.

I love the sound of snow crunching under your feet, building snow forts, going to the cabin, making snow angels, having snow ball fights, snowboarding, and catching snowflakes on your tongue.

At my parents house, the snow plow would always make a gigantic pile of snow on our front yard, and my brother and I would spend hours making it into a fort.
One of my favourite memories from last winter is having a 2hour snowball fight with friends and kids in the neighbourhood, and witnessing my 35year old friend dump shovels full of snow on little kids and saying "it's not even fair it's so good." Needless to say, I made a truce with him:)

Sure it's cold, but then you come inside and drink hot chocolate as your hands and nose warm up and life is perfect again.
And Starbucks has its wonderful seasonal drinks. Like Eggnog and Gingerbread Lattes. Yummy lattes make me feel like my life is perfect for a moment when I drink a perfect sip of a perfect drink. My most perfect drink is a grande cinnamon dolce latte made with soy milk with no whipped cream, but extra foam...just for the record...


And now I can wear my cute toques, like the one I got in Switzerland, and the one my wonderful friend in Vancouver mailed me for Christmas last year;)




But toques wreck your hair , and now my wardrobe is depleted to my winter jacket and a few sweaters and pants. It's like a shopping spree when warmth comes again and you can whip out all of your non-snow-and-freezing-cold-weather clothing :)
I hate that feeling of aching cold. I swear it never leaves my feet the entire season.

I hate the days when you bundle up as much as possible and I still want to cry because I'm so cold.
I hate that you can no longer run out to the car and make a quick trip. No, driving now takes 3 times as long, as you must shovel all the snow off your car, scrape all of the ice off of your car, let your car run and warm up for ten minutes, and shovel yourself out of the driveway. And then once you get out of the driveway, you have to drive on crazy slippery roads!


Speaking of snow and roads, let me tell a story of when winter almost killed me and my friend one day last January.
It was a Sunday morning, and I went out to my car 15minutes before church began. I now had quite the task ahead of me, and there was no way I was going to be at church in 15 minutes. My mom's car was parked behind mine, and so I shoveled much snow off of her car before doing the same to mine. I was wearing boots, but the snow was deeper than they were high so I felt like I was essentially walking in sock feet in the knee-high snow. Now that the cars were ready to go, I had to shovel the driveway. Easier said than done my friends! Either I have really bad technique and form or I am a big pansy and extremely weak, but whatever the reason, I could NOT shovel the driveway. I would get a pile of snow pushed a foot forward and I couldn't seem to move it any further. After many futile attempts, and the minutes clicking by on the clock I gave up. I managed to back my mom's car out of the driveway, but as I pulled back in to the other side to park it behind my dad's truck, I got stuck. Why? Because I hadn't shovel the snow! Because I couldn't! After the sound of my tires spinning began to irritate my dad, he poked his head out the door and told me to park my mom's car on the street. So I did. And off I went to church. I was late, and all I remember of that church service is rubbing my wet legs and feet trying to warm them up.
Church ended, but the day of the snow torturing me did not.
As I was leaving, I received a text message from a friend saying, I'm never leaving my house again until spring!
She also had to shovel her way out to go to church. She was not too weak to shovel like me, but it took her so long she missed church altogether :)

So we decided we go to a friend's house to go sledding. When winter gets you down, you must do fun winter things to bring you up out of those seasonal blues!
Now I took a different way home because it was less busy and I thought it would be smarter because of the bad roads. It is kind of ironic because someone slid through a stop sign into the back of my car. Now I'm always paranoid that everyone is going to hit me when I have the right away. I wasn't hurt or anything though, and it actually worked out to my favour because my car got written off. It had lots of issues and problems, and I was able to get it off of my hands and made more off of it this way than if I tried to sell the darn thing. Regardless of all of that I just wanted to go sledding! So I went home and called ICBC and dealt with it. Then off to Emily's. We ate lunch and were ready to go sledding. Except my car would not move. It wasn't stuck because Emily spent all of church shoveling the snow out of the way. Crying inside, I called my friend (who I always called whenever I had car issues, and she most always fixed them) who was inside the house. She came outside and took a look under the car and scraped snow out from the wheels or something all was well again. I backed out....and then got stuck in the allyway, because they don't plow the ally very often. I finally got out. But then my friend also got stuck in the ally.....and then got stuck on a hill at a stop sign and had to reverse down to get out of the way of the cars behind her. We finally got back to the house, in shambles! We certainly did not go sledding that day. Julie came to the rescue again, and shoveled a driveway on the front lawn to avoid getting stuck in the ally....lucky for that because a couple days later the carport collapsed because of all of the snow on top of it.

It really is funny now, but it wasn't then, and I wasn't laughing as I was reminded of it when I got stuck in an intersection last night and missed two green lights when I was first in line. It took at least 25 minutes to drive a little over 5km from my house to my parents.

And so these are my bittersweet melodies. I'll try my best to be optimistic and enjoy winter to the fullest, but I know that I will be glad when it's over for a few months :)

Monday, November 7, 2011

Oops.





















I just didn't know how to give him what he needed.
...but I'm much better with children, I promise.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

The monster under your bed.





So I like to think I'm pretty adventurous...
I love rides and being spontaneous and all that risky stuff, but inside I'm a lock-myself-in-my-room-and-drink-tea-and-protect-myself-from-life-and-all-of-its-dangers kind of person half the time.



Fear is a silly thing that I try to talk myself out of, but some things continue to scare me.

Like spiders.
Yes. You rational people argue that they are much smaller than I, but you don't realize that these small mysterious creatures have the ability to keep me up at night if it's in my room, scream and feel like my life is over when it's in my car while driving, and stop me from being hygienic that day if it's in the shower. They are just as sneaky and scary as they are small.

Now it's not just spiders....most bugs can do this to me...

Actually most living things...


Like people. They are the scariest of all.

The people you really have to watch out for are those insightful ones. You could also call them caring. Those people who ask questions and see through your answers.

Being known is what everyone really wants even if they won't admit it because being unknown is a lonely thing, but at the same time it's so much easier. And so the fear of being known overrides the inner longing for exactly that.

Now I know Jesus and what He did made us back into the beautiful image bearers of God that we once were, but I'm still held back by the fact that sin made us into terrifying and untrustworthy folk...


Today one of those insightful people told me I was the most mysterious person they've ever met.

Someone else also once told me that I was like a turtle, and I poke my head out just a tiny bit and think "oh that was scary" and retreat back into my shell. Well I like to think my shell has no flaws, and it makes me feel safe from everyone else's.

Silly people.....if only I didn't need them so darn bad.







I think he's a turtle too.