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 is not just in some of us; it is 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.

A Return to Love - Marianne Williamson

Broken Mess

All the driving that I've been doing lately has given me ample opportunity to do lots and lots of thinking (and singing=)). Believe it or not, I'm enjoying the default "me" time where I can focus on what's going on in my mind...and the road of course. Driving home last night I was overwhelmed with a wave of emotion that is quite difficult to describe. The emotion lead me to tears and it calmed me in an incredible way, yes, gentle and calming tears.
I kept thinking that after that initial infatuation phase seems to come the reality phase where you realize that to truly make things work you must make some substantial sacrifices. That is most certainly where I am with God right now. He's challenging me at the core of my being, my weakest point, and it's hard. Part of me wants to run away and do my own thing, but I've been there before and it left me completely empty and broken. I do not want to walk down that road again, but I'm terrified that I will. In my mind I know what to do and what is right, quite often I do. Unfortunately my mind and heart sometimes have difficulties finding a pathway to one another and being on the mission together. How do I get the two not only to communicate but to agree and follow through? The struggle lies is becoming selfless and giving up control and simply laying down those ugly desires of the flesh.

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyong what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. - 1 Corinthians 10:13

Nature adventure

So yesterday I decided that the perfect weather was pulling me into its glorious beauty. I had a definite itch to go outside...so I didn't hesitate to scratch that itch and went outside to play. By play I mean that I went out for a wonderful, almost three hour, hike by myself. Being the social person that I am doing something like that alone was rather out of character, but strangely enough I had a great time and think I will do it again soon. Being outside and enjoying nature makes me feel just a little closer to God and that is an incredibly great feeling. It allows me to just look around and smile at the beauty of His graceful creation.

There are little things all around that if we don't slow down we miss the fine touch of a wonderful creator. Like this picture. For some reason this just captivated me. These two trees, interwoven at their roots, the depths of who they are. Between them runs a path and they clearly lead separate lives and yet they are rooted together into the same ground. Yea, that's cheesy, but when I saw this it instantly made me think of love. Before seeing this I don't think I would've been able to tell you what I picture love to be, but if you ask me now I can say that this is it. This is the image that will forevermore come to mind when I think of love. Call me a hopeless romantic, guilty as charged. Here are some more pictures from yesterday.

On a completely separate note... I've become obsessed/intrigued with the word grace. As I was on my biweekly drive up to school last Thursday I was listening to one of Matt Carter's sermons. The sermon that I listened to was about grace (I believe the title of it is "Grace Defined" from 12/23/07). He defined grace as the unmerited favor of God, with unmerited being the key word. He used a story to illustrate the difference between mercy and grace, which made the word grace come alive for me in a whole new way. I won't spoil it for anyone who wants to go listen to the sermon, which you definitely should consider doing. Point being that the word grace in my mind now is incredibly deep in its connotation, more than it ever was before. It just blows my mind that God gave us mercy and more importantly grace, absolutely incredible. I rejoice in the fact that I have been saved by mercy and grace!=)

Falling in love never felt so good

Being away from my regular daily routine and living back at home with mom is putting my life into perspective in a whole new way. The gift of singleness that God has blessed me with is also teaching me to focus on Him in a more intense and wonderful way. I can honestly say that He has absolutely captivated me and swept me off my feet. I'm falling in love. It's the most incredible feeling in the world. And never before has falling in love felt so safe. Not to say that it's an easy romance, because just like regular love you don't wake up every morning wanting to, but you choose to love and make it work. The infatuation phase is filled with bliss, then come the rocky parts where you have to make a conscious decision to love, which soon is followed by the natural act of loving, where it becomes second nature (or first nature for that matter, if that's even an expression).

The more deeply I delve into the word of God the more I see how much God is romancing me on a daily basis. He knows me and gives me all that I need. Still learning to apply that to my life as a whole. I have the tendency to be a tad of a control freak (total understatement), which makes trusting and letting all control be out of my hands immensely difficult. It's quite the roller coaster but He has shown me time and time again that He knows best...

He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
~2 Corinthians 12: 9-10

Quick update

Lying in bed, finally kicking back and relaxing. How is it that once the stress is gone we finally begin to feel the full extent of our exhaustion? Does not fully make sense...

So the GRE is said and done and I am quite positively pleased with the outcome. I did by no means blow it out of the water, but I exceeded my expectations and made a score above what I needed and that's more than enough for me. Just one more thing to mark off the list. I'm taking this whole PT school application process one step at a time and it has proven to work well for me so I am going to stick with this method.

Now that I've started writing I realize how tired I feel and how this, supposed to be long and informative, post just is not going to be that. It is not in me today.

Third time's a charm

And so I return to blog... I've missed it.

A place to vent, to waste time, to share, and more. This is the third time I'm going to attempt to start this back up again. The inspiration is multifold. But really the main reasons are a request from a friend and the desire to write things down to share with others. In my mind it's a more acceptable form of wasting time.

Wasting time as I am right now. I have a test tomorrow and am taking the GRE on Friday. This is supposed to calm my nerves because, quite frankly, I'm freaking out. As I like to tell people, the GRE really is not a big deal, it's not like it is a factor in determining the rest of my life...yikes!

There is so much I want to write down, but for now I must get back to the books. More to come, I promise.=)