Yay...or not.

I was SO excited because I finally found a community group with my church that (I thought) worked with my schedule. I found the leader and I asked to join and it was going to be perfect--they eat dinner together and then sit and talk, either about something specific or what's happening in their lives. Doesn't that sound awesome? Well...apparently I did not look far enough ahead at my schedule because I work during the next 4 or 5 times that they meet! Bum deal. I am still going to persevere though! Last week I went to Newman Night with my friend and it was a surprisingly good time. It's hosted by the Catholic Church and there was a big group, about 50 people, and everyone had dinner together and then there was a talk. This time they brought in a nurse who has actually witnessed live abortions. She shared her stories, which were terrible sad and eye-opening. Overall, it was very interesting and I had a great time meeting people! Hopefully next month my work schedule will clear up a bit so that I can go to my new community group. If not, I'm on the hunt again!

My People

There are some people in my life that all I can do is simply thank God every day that they're there and do my absolute best to make sure they stay. The Reich family is that for me! I've known Laura for almost my entire lifetime and was lucky enough to gain Joe as a friend when they got married. Even luckier still, I have been able to welcome all five of their kids into the world and gained some more miniature friends!

 We're not very good at taking pictures together...but it's because we're always too busy having fun hanging out!

Wordless Wednesday

Okay...so I'm not actually going to go wordless. However! I have really fallen in love with all of the quotes on Pinterest and the cute/creative ways that people display them. So I am going to try and share one each week for a Wordless Wednesday that I either love or feel like exemplifies what's happening in my life at that point in time. I'm just so obsessed with them! I hope that y'all enjoy them as much as I do.

Awesome/Awkward #1

So I'm stealing Joanna's Awesome/Awkward because I love it so much (:

Awesome: Going home to visit my mom, even if it was only for one night
Awkward: Meeting her at my old high school, during a football game
Even more awkward: Watching her sell tickets and give out the wrong change to people!
Most awkward of all: Taking over selling tickets for her
Awesome: Seeing my mom and her coworker's faces drop watching me count out $3,000 in under five minutes
Awkward again: Feeling like a professional ticket seller

Awesome: My friend showing me a website that lets you save YouTube (music) videos
Awkward: Feeling like a thief every time I listen to one of the songs
Even more awkward: I still do it!
Awesome: All my favorite songs are on my iTunes 

Awesome: My friend taking me with him to YoungLife
Awkward: Feeling so out of place that I ended up leaving right in the middle
Even more awesome: Him being super nice and understanding about it 
Slightly less awkward: Having to tell the whole office what happened because they knew we went...
Super awesome: Him a) standing up for me and b) still wanting to be my friend lol

(Sidenote: Apparently after I left, they called up three random guys and three random girls to the front. They had the guys sit down on chairs at the front of the room, and then had the girls sit on their laps. They then told the girls they had two options: they could make out with the guys for 5 seconds or have a cup of water dumped on their heads! Umm, what?! Can you say inappropriate?! Even my friend (a 21 year old, super socially adjusted male) was pretty scandalized) 

Awesome: I love my new church!
Awkward: I've been going there two months now and still don't have any friends
Even more awkward: I went to an event to try and make friends and ended up crying because I was sad that I had no friends
Awesome: there's a small group that works with my schedule!
Awkward: it took me WEEKS to figure out the best way to ask if I could join the group
Even more awkward: they're not even meeting right now, so it was all for naught
Awesome: my church is really quite fantastic

Awesome: Getting a perfect score on an essay exam
Awkward: The professor using my essay, on the overhead, to give the class a good example
Even more awkward: A friend from the class recognizing my handwriting!

Awkward: Turning in a story for creative writing that I hated but didn't have enough time to fix
Awesome: The whole class loved it!
Even more awkward: They want me to write more on the topic (that I still hate)

Awesome: Getting Instagram and lovin' it!
Awkward: The heater in our dorm is broken.
(Okay, I know those aren't related...oh well!)

Cut Off

Waiting for the bus, sitting on the way to class, waiting for classes to start, and in between classes, I was amazed by the amount of people talking about the government shutdown. And by amount, I'm referencing the lack thereof. I did not hear a single person talking to their friends about the hundreds of thousands of people that are furloughed for the foreseeable future. It is fascinating to me that in a generation that is inundated by technology and media, we are more cut off from the world than ever before. My peers, and often myself, are so consumed with our own lives and our own happenings that we forget to look up and look around.

Several mass killings of Christians have taken place in the past few weeks. 85 men, women, and children were killed coming out of a church in Pakistan. 72 non-Muslims were killed in a mall Nairobi, Kenya (these people were held at gunpoint and asked if there were non-Muslims or Christians. If they answered in the affirmative, they were killed immediately). In Egypt, dozens of Christian churches (58) and Christian owned businesses (>160) have been attacked in persecution efforts going on since 2003. The list goes on and on and on. These are our brothers and sisters. How are we supposed to mourn our brothers and sisters if we don't even know what's going on?

I'm guilty of the same self-centered tendencies. I've been known to choose New Girl over the news because I don't want to be bummed out. It's much, much easier to live out comfortable lives, blissfully unaware of what's going on around us, down the street or across the world. But that doesn't eradicate the fact that there are things going on around the world that we should be aware of. I don't want to forget that my brothers and sisters are hurting, are dying, are freezing and starving. I can't live my life in a constant state of misery, nor do I think that that is what we are called to do, but I can be aware. I can offer up a prayer for them. I can, at the very least, recognize how very blessed I am every. single. day. I don't want to be cut off from the world, even if it's sad or hard. Even if I feel completely and wholly powerless.

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me int he day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me. -Psalm 50:14-15

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! May they be secure who love you! -Psalm 122:6

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all whoa re in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. -1 Timothy 2:1-2

Forgotten

I got busy...and forgot how much I love to blog! So I am determined as I go into this next month and beyond to post more. They may not be long posts like my sagas of the past but I like being able to  look back and track where I was at and where I am now. Even if it is only in a few sentences.

PS: I joined Instagram. This is monumental for me because I have resisted for months. That's me for you: a resister. I don't know if it's the rebel in me or the lazy, but I am always lagging behind the bandwagon. I read Twilight months after it came out. I didn't read Harry Potter until this past summer...years after it came out. I didn't start using Snapchat until long after all of my friends had joined up. The list continues. On the one hand, I like that about myself. I think it goes to show that I don't have to be on every bandwagon in order to have fun or be myself. It allows me to contemplate my relationship with technology (yes, this is something that I contemplate and am often concerned over). I also think that it helps me to strengthen myself against peer pressure. Although they are little things, they help build me up so I'm strong when it comes to big things. Like exercising.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into it all! Maybe I am just late to join the party and could have been appreciating Harry Potter and Instragram for years and instead just sat back and watched the world enjoy them without me. Who knows (: Either way, I'm not upset about it.

Romans 12:12

I get a daily verse automatically sent to my inbox every morning from Bible Gateway. I find that the risk with having a verse in my inbox every morning is that the reading become rote and doesn't really infiltrate or affect my day. But some days, like today, the verses catch my attention and get me thinking.

It seems so simple. "Be joyful in hope." Surprisingly, of the three, this is probably what I struggle with most. I label myself as a realistic individual. I like to think of all of the potential outcomes and prepare myself for each. When something good happens, I immediately think about what will happen next or, even worse, what bad things happened along the way. Hope should be easy but, really, it can be a trap for my sinful mind. I can't tell you how many times something beautiful and amazing and hopeful has happened...and then I immediately desire more, more, more. One thing is rarely good enough.

I think that this commandment has another meaning too: don't lose faith. Even in situations where it seems there's no positive outcome, keep hoping. Trust in the Lord to make good out of every situation. And be joyful while you wait and hope to see how the Lord can use the big and the small to glorify Him. Rarely am I joyful in my hope in this way. I am typically impatient and ungrateful and selfish. I want the Lord to use all of the situations to benefit me. To glorify me. It's even harder to swallow the fact that many situations will not work out to make my life better or make me happy in some way, but for the good of someone near me. Or for the good of a perfect stranger. Or, if it is all about me, He uses situations to grow me. And growing pains are just that...painful. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that hope in and of itself can be difficult and being joyful throughout all of that hoping can be downright miserable. In comparison, the other two seem like a walk in the park on a sunny day. Funny, that, because those two sound deceptively simple as well.