tiger lillie

i've come to the time in my life where my friends are starting to get married. it's kind of freaky weird. it sounds so grown-up. i doubt i'll ever truly "grow up" though. but as you can imanige marriage is something my self and my friends spend a fair share of time thinking about and talking about. when i was younger and didn't know Jesus i use to think about it in worldly terms and worldly love. how different have my views changed now that i've place God in the center of it all. one thing i try to figure out is what does a Godly romantic realationship look like? and what is God's best for marriage? i've read books, listened to sermons, looked into scripture, and prayed about the very subject--i mean i want to get it figured out before the day, sometime in the future, when i'll need to use the knowldge! i want it done right; even if it doesn't lead to marriage. but the world screams in the background of what it should be like. and what's even more important is what is my role, as a Godly women, in it all? the world tells up to be an "independent women", strong, and able to put on our big girl pants. sometimes i've seen girls stick up their noses when a guy comes and picks up our trash for us at some sort of function--but why? why do we, or i should say I, turn down a guys help to get something high while i'm struggling to balance while standing on a chair, or have my arms overloaded with some heavy stuff? i mean i can do this! i'm women hear me roar!! what are we trying to prove? that we don't long for a knight on a white horse to romance us and take care of us?? ha. who are we trying to kid? maybe ourselves. maybe the world is getting to us and telling us how we should be. but God knows best, and he's letting me in on the secret little by little.

i just finished a book and there was a part in it that captured my heart and it relates directly to this...the boyfriend figure in the book just got upset at his girlfriend because she let herself out of his car when he wanted to get her door for her, and he told her "not because you can't, but because you shouldn't have to." how perfect. my heart swells with the thought that there are Godly men out there like this, somewhere. i need to remind myself this when a guy offers his help, it's not that he doesn't think i can, but he just wants to treat me like a lady, a radiant lilly. he's treating me like the lady i long to be and i should let him. and i don't even really mean romanticly [even though my future husband should definately treat me like that!] but just in everyday relationships and God centered community.

psalm 139

so the passage for the devotions i do at night was psalm 139:1-17 and for this particular book i typically like to read whatever the scripture is out loud to my Lord and i just LOVED reading this psalm aloud to my God, so i would suggest this practice to anyone [ps i keep hearing so very sick sounding bull frogs from behind my house...they need to work on their vocal skills]. how great is God and i find this to be a very powerful means of worship. i didn't want to stop at verse 17 so i finished out the psalm...it is truly lovely, and beautiful.

Psalm 139 (New American Standard Bible)

God's Omnipresence and Omniscience.

For the choir director. A Psalm of David.

¹O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
²You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
³You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
⁴Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, O LORD, You know it all.
⁵You have enclosed me behind and before,
And ⁾laid Your hand upon me.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot attain to it.
⁷ Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
⁹If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
¹⁰Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
¹¹If I say, "Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,"
¹²Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day
Darkness and light are alike to You.
¹³For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother's womb.
¹⁴I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
¹⁵My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
¹⁶Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.
¹⁷How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand
When I awake, I am still with You.
¹⁹O that You would slay the wicked, O God;
Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.
²⁰For they speak against You wickedly,
And Your enemies take Your name in vain.
²¹Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?
²²I hate them with the utmost hatred;
They have become my enemies.
²³Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
²⁴And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.

miracle

very rarely does a book have the have the power to change you. the bible would have to be the book which is most life changing because it's the word of God and HE is life changing. there are also other christian books that have made an impact on my life and changed it, mostly because they kicked my arse and challenged me in my faith. but Animal, Vegetable, Miracle definitely changed my life...or i should say my future life. it really made me think about food differently, and since cookery is one of my passions i tend to think about food a lot. but there's SO much we don't know about the food system of america...yet food is pretty much the most important thing we buy but we don't even think about it. america--and myself--have a lot to learn. we don't think twice when we go to the grocery store, we just look for the lowest price. what's up with that?? i feel like most people worry more about what they put into their cars than their OWN body! how sick is that. and what's also sick is how the animals are raised for meat in this country. we were made to eat meat but most don't do it wisely. as a whole we as americans eat more meat protein than is really necessary for our nutrition and WAY more red meat than we should. did you realize that turkey's don't even know HOW to have turkey sex and if they wanted to most are breed to get so fat so fast they couldn't even do it. they are mostly all test tube babies! and they aren't even feed their natural diet nor do most see sunlight. so here's to my new quest...supporting free range animals! animals that get to enjoy the wind and the sun on their face. cows that get to graze on grass for their life time and walk around. let's work on taking back food culture and our relationship with the food on our kitchen table!! support your local farmers market and grow your own garden. i'm attempting to grow some of my own veggies this summer...it's exciting and i'm going to learn how to can as well. once i get my hands on a pressure cooker and my dad's grapes ripen i was be experimenting with grape jelly! [a note to my roomates...cans of homemade tomato sauce anyone?? or what about pickles?? :) ]and i LONG for the days when i'll have more of a permanent home where i can grow a more permanent garden and even get a few chickens, fresh eggs--yay!! so my challenge to you, learn about the food you eat and figure or simple ways that you can change the direction of our twisted food industry because it should be a miracle. when i started my seedlings i would sometime just sit and think and look at them...what an amazing thing...they started with just a little seed and grew before my eyes and will one day nourish my body. it's pretty amazing to be honest.

diligence

the other night while doing devotional i was reading in proverbs 4 [which i also happened to be reading in my brand new zondervan nsab study bible, which rocks, i'm really looking forward to breaking it in more!] but verse 23 really hit a note with me.

Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.

one thing that i've been thinking about lately is just keeping myself emotionaly pure. it seems to me that there is more to purity than just the physical sexual stuff, and there's more to it than just romantic relationships. but what i haven't quite put my finger on is what it entails completely or how to go about it. i think part of it must go back to keeping some things just between God and myself...and there's a level of humility about it i think. oh humility. my earthy flesh fights back at it all the time. i wanna be the girl that doesn't care if people know about her work or even just my dreams and ambitions and goals...or even how great my relationshiop with God is. one place where i strugle is definately with my siblings. growing up as the oldest i always had to be the best, the smartest, the one in charge, and the one giving out all the orders. and now it's to the point where our age differences don't really matter anymore but part of me still wants to be "well i'm the oldest!" but i guess i just need Jesus' help to fight back.

well that was a tangent i hadn't planned. it's the first wednesday of my summer break and i'm starting to get to the point where i'm like "ok, what now?" i have successfully cleaned and organized my room [minus a few little projects for a later date] and i even have gotten a job squared away, i have orientation tomorrow! yay! what an answered prayer. i've been thinking about getting started on my scrap booking sometime soon...dun dun dunnnn. i really wanna use my mom's dinning room table and just leave stuff spread out. i don't think she'll go for it :( my mother did do something really nice for me, something that even makes it seems like she might know a little bit about me. she heard this band on xm radio and liked a song and found out they're christians so she sent me the cd on itunes as a gift. they're called NeedToBreathe and i hadn't really heard of them but they are good...and actually one of the songs on the cd i remember hearing someone sing at church once and then i've heard it again on some christian radio station...it's pretty good.

goals for this summer:

1.) read at least 8-10 pages in my bible everyday so i will therefore have read through the old testiment by well before i go back to school
2.) i have these audio files from Eric Ludy discipleship program thingy and i wanna do this and make a binder for all my notes on them
3.) catch up on all my scrapbooking. eck!
4.) read like there's no tomorrow
5.) watch less tv
6.) help my dad save money...my dad eats out too much i've decided so i also decided he would save TONS of money if he didn't and it would be healthier so i wanna find recipes and make up shopping lists for him so when we are over there we can just eat in instead
7.) go to every festival i can
8.) go to a church in nky regularly
9.) become a prayer warrior
10.) workout??
11.) keep my room clean :-/
12.) sit outside, under the stars with God
13.) keep this list going...

I flew in on a whim

so the school year has come to a close and it's a weird feeling...it's different than years past. right now i'm in a good place and i don't wanna lose it. the other week katie said that we should all keep blogs this summer to keep in touch...so this is my attempt to keep up with my blog this summer, my blog shows a very good reflection of how the school year got more and more busy as it went on! but now summer is upon me and i don't have to wake up for anything in the morning...glorious.

so this is how you get noticed at a bar.

katie decided it would be a good idea "to go salsa dancing" the other night. some band that she salsa[ed] to one time was playing somewhere and that would be our end of the semester outing. well this was decided some time ago and i'm pretty sure she convinced whit to wear this fun dress that she had just gotten, so as the day comes it turns out whit had moved all of her clothes home except for that dress and one t-shirt outfit, cause we were going to all wear fun dresses. well it comes time for the night and katie and kel are not wearing dresses while myself and whit are. so we show up to this little hole and the wall bar--which we almost reconsidered upon seeing the place--and proceed to go in. the only free seats happened to be behind the pool table on a bench. we sat in a row and took in our surroundings--what a mixture of people! there was about a 70 some year old man walking around, a middle aged women with a backless shirt and no bra, there were a few other college kids, a few very drunk people, and a crazy guy so really loved playing pool and almost gave us all black eyes with his pool stick. the one this we did notice was that everyone would whisper, look at us, and whisper again, we even got a few points. at one point someone even approached up and asked us what were doing there because they believe we were obviously not even old enough to get in. ha! so that's what they all thought, that and that fact that we were all not drinking anything. typically underage people people sneak into bars with fake ids and don't drink?? so the moral of the story is that you think that the ladies that get noticed at the bars are the ones barely dressed sipping on a beer but guess again apprently all you have to do is not look your age and sit on a bench with your girlfriends and not drink. who would have thought we'd attract that much attention--i guess it helps that my friends are all babes. ;)

in more recent news...

i've been organizing my room since i've moved back hom for the summer, i've taken a lot more stuff home this year than in the past since i'm not living in waller next year, i was able to leave a lot of stuff there but there was a lot that i also wanted to bring back to nky and not bring back. so it's safe to say it's going to take hours, upon hours, upon hours. i want to try and get rid of a bunch and try to make the most of the space i have available. unfortunately i found a box in the closest that been there a while, why i hadn't already gotten rid of it? who knows. there's not point really, it would do absolutely no good. i set it on my bed so i would throw it away but unfortunately again before i got the chance to it feel off and it's contents scattered across the floor--but non of it held any hold over me anymore, i didn't even want a good bye look. i promptly scooped it all up into a trash bag and headed to the garage can; unfortunately there was no fire to be found or that would certainly have worked even better. [taylor swift anyone??] but it was still freeing, i had pretty much forgotten about the contents but it was freeing non the less...i took out the bones from my closest. i'm looking forward to the future without my past holding me back. [ps and i just noticed the date today, & hopefully i will be able to not think of this when this date comes up in the future, but what a signifagance. how many things can change in five years]

In On A Whim
Matt Wertz

I flew in on a whim
These wings won't take me home
New eyes for my blind
I found a home and a place so far from my own

But all good things come to an end
Still I don't wanna leave this place yet
It's just so funny as I look back
on this year

(Chorus)
But I haven't even left here
Still I miss your face
Standing right beside me here
Pull me in with your embrace

How fast the time burns
When you're trying to hold on
And how slowly it slips away
When you're not

So tell me again
How this friendship has to be
I'm trying to understand now
Some patience, and we'll see

(Chorus)
'Cause I haven't even left here
Still I miss your face
Standing right beside me here
Pull me in with your embrace

Have you ever looked so good to me?
Have you ever loved this way to me?

(Chorus)
Pull me in, pull me in, pull me in, pull me...in

lord knows how hard i've tried

so i've been listening to a lot of matt wertz lately--again--and my song of the moment is from his EP that i got when i ordered his new cd...except i can only find one site the has the lyrics and it's missing one of the words, and i'm not quite sure what it is either--yet!!

hollywood's makin a way through the land mines
and over the walls that'll build from my heart
it's taken some time but i finally realize
if you wanna finish then you'll have to start

oooh oooh oooh... oooh oooh oooh... oooh oooh oooh...
lord knows how hard i've tried

all weekend long the clock has been tickin
stealing away everything that we own
you followed me back to the places i've hidden
if we never try then we'll never know

oooh oooh oooh... oooh oooh oooh... oooh oooh oooh...
lord knows how hard i've tried

and if our time comes to an end
we will be fine again knowing that all these feelings were true
moments before we were kissing our goodbyes
you on the curb so we'd be eye to eye
the radio sang everything we were feeling
old ...?... is still on my mind

oooh oooh oooh... oooh oooh oooh... oooh oooh oooh...
lord knows how hard i've tried
oooh oooh oooh... oooh oooh oooh... oooh oooh oooh...
maybe it's not our time

the end of my first senior year

wow. my school year is coming to an end, all that's left are finals. it's weird to think that if i hadn't change my major a few times and gotten behind i was be preparing to graduate--ahh! that scares the crap out of me, i would be completely freaking out. last night we had a very nostalgic synergy--it made me a little weepy, yet most of my friends are going to be in lexington again next year but i'm even just sad about going home for the summer. i'm normally really READY to spend time away from lexington and enjoy my summer in nky, but i feel like i'm going to miss lexington a lot more this summer than the past. i'm really excited about going home, summer in nky is always great but it's just gonna be different. this school year has been really great and i'm just so uber excited for next semester already, it's gonna hold a lot of great things too. so here's a list of the top things about this school year, in no particular order!

1.)new years in hoptown/ liberty bowl game in memephis trip
2.)putting frogs in boys tents on fall retreat
3.)memphis spring break road trip with kate, jordan, and tomtom
4.)mad potter with my girls
5.)my mom's wedding
6.)matt wertz concert!
7.)getting optimus
8.)every trip to the farmers market