Every Woman Should......
Last night I went to Austin to see Katie McNeill, my katie-bug, my Mac.....I hadnt seen her since June before I left for California and we have been best friends since the 7th grade! Ridiculous I know! Anywho, we had a great time chatting about the ups and downs of life and playing catch up. She is the epitomy of Classy Beauty. She reminds me that being smart and witty is beautiful. She is the essence of wisdom and dignity and I feel blessed to have her as a friend.
I have this poster on my bathroom wall entitled Every Woman Should.... As I read this for the millionth time I was reminded of my 3 best friends from high school, and how much the four of us would together call this poster words to live by. This is how it goes:
Every Woman should...Know how to use a stick shift;
a plunger;
Understand the difference between don't tell a soul and don't tell a soul I mean it; Know her mind;change it; Have protection handy; but not too handy;
Use special china and special underwear for no special reason;
Over commit; come through; refuse to do it again; do it again;
Be able to discuss first and ten; Have better things to do;
Set boundaries; Go camping; Grow something;
Dance crazy all alone; Stare at a phone; Get dressed in five minutes;
Be a princess; Get over it; Believe in the perfect man; Get over it;
Read; Walk; Flirt; Shock; Listen; Sing;
Thank God;
Be single and like it; Alot;
Raise a child; Or not; See a wrinkle and be reminded of her youth; not her age.
A Breath of Cold Air...
All I could think about this morning as I opened my door only to feel the cool wind ( about 49 degrees) blowing on my face was...God is so good. I know the weather is such a silly thing to base emotions or overall state of mind on..but I cant help it , that's how He made me, and when it's cold I can't help but feel close to him. :-)
Here's a puzzler.......While at Grace and Marisa's tonight for our weekly Laguna Beach dates......a question arose in my mind due to a conversation that we had.....Is a Hug really just a Hug?...and How much can you Really Tell from a hug? Frontal or the classic clique' Christian approach, the Side Hug...what do these things really mean!? hahhaaha just some food for thought ;-)
Guy girl friendships are funny, esspecially in Christian circles. I've just seen a lot of evidence of this in talking with all of my female friends.....at one time or another have delt with this issue...I feel as though I could write a book on the subject, but that irrelevant. hahaha It just seems that there is always a lot unsaid......but there is almost always confusion, which sparks from a lot unsaid.....there is always a lot of overanalyzing, esspecially on the girls part, but sometimes on the boys part too i have found. It seems as though we as Christian college singles go through the Crush Cycle about once a day, which is pretty ridiculous...but we do it all the same. I get so lost in the idea of Crushes that I wonder if I will know how to distinguish when it's the real thing...... I'll leave that one up to Him :-)
That Old Feeling....
I went to Austin today to visit my good friend Jenn Knox who started freshman year here with me and we met through Cru and through living in the valley dorms together......and today she whipped her BEAUTIFUL Wedding Dress out of her closet to show me. She is getting married to her long time boyfriend, since high school, Michael , in March and I couldnt be happier for her. We talked about all of the wedding plans and the plans yet to be made. We talked about their pre-marital counseling stuff they've been doing....we talk about what life after the wedding could potentially look like for the two of them. Its all very exciting, but i have to confess it made me feel old.
My first friend from high school got married my sophmore year of college ( Rachel Mcgee), my second got married this summer( Crystal Hart)..and now my first close friend, my age, from college is getting married in march; it's all very strange, this whole getting older, growing up thing.
My friend Grace Wray, also my age and also been here with me through every bit of my college experience here all 4 years....she and I had a discussion about this very thing thursday night in my car. Since I'm a senior, but not graduating this may, it's sort of a weird place to be. I feel like I should feel like/ act like this season of my life is over. It was only supposed to be four years and then moving on...but it's far from over, so I can't possibly act like it's over. My roomate Bri, who was my roomate freshman year and the only person from high school who came here with me, is now my roomate again and is Graduating early in Dec. She has been job searching and interviewing and is moving out soon, and moving on and it's just weird for me! We started together so we should be finishing together and yet we arent, she is moving on to another season of life, and I .....will be right here for another year and a half.
Grace and I agreed that the Lord has us on this time frame for a reason....neither one of us are ready for that next season of life just yet, and we are both completely confident in the Lord's timing and that He is sovereign in this. Getting old just ain't easy....
2 lives and one parallel course
It is no secret that my roomate corrie and I have a somewhat sad addiction everyweek day at 4pm and again at 5pm on WE channel for women, to reruns of my most favorite television show of all time perhaps, Felicity. We tape them if we miss them, but i'm not gonna lie I have skipped class to get home in plenty of time to watch 2 full hours of the show that taught me how to overanalyze, opened my eyes to my passion for Art, that having 2 guys that you want, is way more complicated than having none, and confirmed what I already knew, that New York is the most amazing city and sweaters are fabulous.As they have gone back to Felicity's freshman year episodes and started all over again, which i'm super excited about, I am seeing more and more of felicity in myself! Not to flatter myself and say that she and I are the same person, b/c I adore her and she is beautiful and smart and of course, is only a character portrayed beautifully by the lovely Keri Russell....But, the character of felicity and I have had many similar situations. I watched the Todd MulKayhie(sp) episodes recently, and man...scary how much those relate to my life over the past 2 months.
She is now discovering her love of Art, and I am very much into my abundance of art classes and projects in full force, and looking now for my " direction" as David Hefner my Watercolor Studio teacher puts it. He says that I need an overall direction of where I am heading as an artist, that its time to get past the experimenting, trying out different things stage, which has been very helpful and productive for me.....I don't know how to achieve this so called direction though....i feel like many things in life, it cant be forced. I want it to naturally happen for me, and i've sorts been stuck in a rut with my Art lately. I'm having fun, and i still have a lot more studio classes to take to try and figure out my "direction". As an Art teacher, which is what i'm striving towards, I feel like I need to be well versed in all areas of art. I'm still learning and having a lot of fun in the process. It's amazing how much better my work is when I just let go a little bit, free up, and just let the art come to me without forcing it. Felicity figures it all out in the end....well she actually goes back to her original major of Pre-med, hahaha but she finds direction, and I'm sure I will too.
Elizabethtown......A window into my Soul
Corrie and I made our way over to the San Marcos cinemark Starplex 12 on saturday early afternoon to see the much anticipated Elizabethtown with the super sexy british actor Orlando Bloom, and the lovely blonde bombshell that is Kirsten Dunst. Being a Cameron Crowe film I had some preconcieved notions of what the movie would be like, but it blew away my expectations.
First of all the Music selections for each scene couldn't have been more perfect. The timing and placement of each song was right on, and helped us, the viewers of the film, to get an overall sense of how to feel.
It is a great story full of life, death, travel, family, laughter, tears, and Love. It has the perfect balance of genius and Irony. While it seemed very heavy and real, much like life at times, Claire the character of Kirsten Dunst provided a light, refreshing sense of peace. The relationship between Drew and Claire, was pure perfection. It wasn't planned and it didnt make sense and it couldnt have been worse timing.......but it was sweet and real and the instant , natural chemistry between the two of them couldnt help but make me smile.
It will be one to purchase for sure....for the clever lines and comedic timing alone I need to watch it about 5 more times! Go see it....it's a breath of fresh air.
I Don't Wanna Be....
This week has flown by! It feels like fall retreat was yesterday when it was actually a full week ago! It was so fun by the way. It wasn't so much a spiritual awakening for me, as a restful restoration time. Women's time was Absolutely wonderful. Amy, the speaker talked about how lately her walk with God had felt like she was on a tight rope, holding on tight to Jesus merely for fear of falling, but that she wasn't going anywhere with Him, she was just holding on....I admittingly have felt this way 99% of the time since Ive been back from Summer Project. Jesus is there and we are ok, but I'm not running with Him, i'm just holding on....which is not where He wants me to be, or where I should want to be. So it was refreshing to hear that a woman who is clearly in a very different stage of life, married with 3 kids....can have the same struggles as me a 21 year old, senior in college, single. I was encourgaed to say the least.My very talented friend Josh Thomas Bronlewee did an amazing job playing 2 Gavin Degraw songs on the piano at our homecoming talent show this past wednesday. He won his division and we were all so proud of him!!! I am one of his biggest fans for sure!
Emotionally its been a weird, rough week for me. I'm having to deal with situations and feelings that I havent had in a long time. I'm figuring out for the first time in my life some things about us as women that we all have in us, that I hate. We are manipulative and we feed so greatly off of the attention that we recieve from the opposite sex. We think we know what we want, and then we change our minds. We think we dont want something and then when it starts to go away we want it back. Notice that all of this is nothing less than selfishness, and completely about feeding my needs and wants, and I know that is not how the Lord would have me be. I know that my hope and confidence is in the Lord and Him alone. My actions and words this week in dealing with certain situations would not prove this true in my life. I'm just now figuring out somethings about my heart and character for the first time, and I have to say some of it is not so fun and I've been more dissapointed in myself this week than I have in a while.I know what I don't want to be.....I just need to continue working on what the Lord does want me to be.
How come SHE gets a Fairy God-mother!
I had a sweet flashback of my childhood this morning. As I'm sure you have seen, Disney decided to bring back the digitally remastered DVD version of the classic rags to riches story of a young beautiful girl who had big dreams, and with persisting hope finally found her prince and lived happily ever after,
Cinderella . I bought it yesterday and as I watched I was reminded of why I am such a girl, because my mother allowed me to watch this movie over and over again as a child, no wonder I turned out to be the hopeless Romantic that I am!
The funny thing is that I still watch this movie with as much bright-eyed wonderment now at 21 as I did at age 5. In the very first full scene of the movie she is waking up from a dream and while chatting with her friends ( the birds and the Mice) she proceeds to sing to them the
A Dream is a Wish your heart makes, when your fast asleep, and there is just something so sweet and hopeful to that song that makes my heart flutter a bit. She, Cinderella, had every reason to lose hope, and doubt, and to feel like this was the best her life had for her....but no the Girl had faith that these Dreams of finding her prince and living a life beyond being a servant in her own home and talking with the mice and birds all day, while she couldve been content with this, she knew God had more in store for her; of course we can assume Cinderella was a Christian and had put all of her faith and trust in the Lord, this is what the fairy God-mother was symbolic of. Hahahaaha ok perhaps I have taken this a little too far, but I just have one more thing to add.
At the ball I noticed watching, this time around, that she and the Prince locked eyes, within five minutes had interlocking hands, a couple of more minutes they are dancing in the ballroom alone gazing into each other's eyes, singing
So This Is Love to each other and then taking a romatic stroll over the bridge under the moonlight, and are just about to lock lips right as the clock is striking midnight. All of this taking place within the course of less than 15 minutes mind you. How did she know!? I mean they both knew, instantly. And the funny thing was, she didnt even realize he was the Prince until later, but it didnt even matter at that point, she had already fallen for him, and hard. I guess when you know,you really do just know. Oh if only real life was as simple as the fairy tales. ;-)
how David Crowder has changed my life....
My beloved David Crowder Band has a new CD out entitled
A Collision and its simply Genius and simply Fabulous! in listening to it....I was realizing how far the Lord has taken me since my first David Crowder experience when he played at Lakepointe's high school camp for a week the summer after my Junior year of high school. That was my last Church camp as a camper and I remember it well, mostly because of David Crowder. The man knows how to lead a group into a spirit of worship, and does it well. I could tell from the first moment that he knew it wasnt about him, and he didnt want it to be at all, hense his appeal as a worship leader!
Since that first cd purchase the
All That I Can Say record, to now a good 5 cd's later, God has taken me through different seasons of life,and has done a complete transformation on my heart as far as worship goes. I was still trying to figure alot of things out in my walk with the Lord that first summer with Crowder. I think I had all of these ideas in my head about what worship and a life with God was "supposedo be like" and I was trying so hard to meet that standard and do all of these things, and had no real heart behind any of it. He began to show me that summer that worship isnt just something you stand in front of a stage doing and there's no right way to do it......it has to be the essence of who you are and how you live your life, striving to Worship the Lord at all costs with every aspect of your life. I'm still trying to figure it out, but over the last 5 years I have definitely learned how to let the Lord guide that for me, and to throw the rule book out, b/c its not about that its about Him. There is a song on this new album called
Wholly Yours and there is something just so sweet and honest about it that I love. It talks about how God is HOLY and also, Wholly, meaning Fully ours and we are wholly/fully His. Check it out is you havent, the whole cd is pure genius and and will set your heart and mind fully on the Lord in all His Beauty and Majesty.
