currently reading: cold tangerines by shauna niequist

"friendship is acting out God's love for people in tangible ways. we were made to represent the love of God in each other's lives, so that each person we walk through life with has a more profound sense of God's love for them. friendship is an opportunity to act on God's behalf in the lives of the people that we're close to, reminding each other who God is. when we do the hard, intimate work of friendship, we bring a little more of the divine into daily life. we get to remind one another about the bigger, more beautiful picture that we can't always see from where we are."

yes.

yes yes yes yes yes.

authentic love, true community...

oh my heart is overflowing.

THIS is what it should look like.

i want to live with friendships that look like this.

wind and rain and cold- oh my!

it's 7am. the wind has been absolutely howling outside for the past 24 hours. we've had a lot of rain too. what a quick switch from last week!!

i have to be at high ropes inspection in 20 minutes... but i have this feeling that we maybe won't be able to do high ropes today. i just have this image of children being blown off the elements... whoops.

each week the kids just seem to have a different kind of feel to them. this week's kids are sooo spacey and not very good listeners. it's kind of like they're from another planet. they're going to require a lot of patience and firm discipline. i had to use my hardcore teacher voice yesterday and it was only the first night! ah i hate that. i secretly miss having kids i can just hang out with and enjoy and not really have to discipline very much. yes, that means i miss my advance camp kids from the summer.

i keep writing in my journal how much i'm thankful for life at this moment. i've been able to reflect a lot back on what i learned and how i grew at honeyrock and it makes it all the more worthwhile. but i'm also glad to be in this new season of life. God's recapturing my heart in some awesome ways... i love it.

more thoughts in my head, but i need to leave in 4 minutes... and i'm still i my pj's.... yikes!!

"i'm alive... i can feel you all around me, thickening the air i'm breathing, holding on to what i'm feeling, savoring this heart that's healing... take my hand, i give it to you, now you own me, all i am, you said you would never leave me, i believe you." - david crowder band, all around me

FAVORITES

i'm in a really good mood. it's been a fun week- much easier than last week thus far, which i appreciate. and i'm 2 hours into my evening/morning off combo day! yessssss. though i think i have to drive into town tomorrow to do paperwork, so i won't be getting quite as much sleeping in as i'd like.

oh well.

sometimes i decide that everything is my "favorite".

i have a lot of favorites.

here are a few current ones...

enjoying THIS a lot at the moment-

:) the digital "bless your heart"

i love this so much that today i even accidently had it open in 2 different windows on my computer. hmmm. music glutton? maybe...

( pandora.com )

gotta give some love to my dear rachel, the birthday girl. (happy 24th!) if you're a super sleuth (and you're bored with time on your hands) you may be able to find some stuff i wrote for her hidden in her website... :)

i've been meaning to subscribe to this for a long time... so a month or so ago i did. i spent a good amount of time today reading the september/october edition. fantastic. especially the "not going back to school guide".

settlers. oh man. my addiction...

that's it for now.

enjoy. :)

"take me above your light, carry me through the night, hold me secure in flight, sing me to sleep tonight..." owl city, hello seattle

the days that make it worth it

it's so tempting to just want life to be all sunshine and daisies all of the time. who doesn't want to sail through life with one good thing after another coming their way?

no hurt, no pain, no frustration.

but what good does that do?

i learn over and over again that through challenging situations we are stretched and grown. this is the stuff i teach to kids. but it's hard to believe for my own life. i try to get kids to transfer the things they learn at the high ropes course to their lives back at home, but i have a hard time doing it for myself. just this week we talked to the group i'm working with about how we will most certainly fail if we never even try.

but quitting is easier.

it's safer to not care than to have your feelings hurt.

i look at my life sometimes and think i'm crazy for the way i choose to live. it is by no means easy. it is by no means a get rich quick scheme.

it's tough. it's challenging. and it sucks sometimes.

but, as i feel like i'm always trying to explain to people, it's rewarding in different ways.

every once in awhile there is this moment, maybe even just a short amount of time in an entire week, where it's worth it. sometimes it comes in the form of a look on a kid's face when they finally connect the dots and grasp a concept you've been trying to teach them for days. other times it comes in watching a group of kids learn to work together and include the kids who have been labeled as 'outcasts'.

the kids i'm working with are rough. they are not always full of sunshine and laughter. this week they have been rude, disrespectful, and cruel to each other and staff members. but today we had some really good moments. i think my favorite came in the form of an unplanned event. kory was dealing with some discipline issues (about 1/5 of our class...) so i had to stall before our evening event. so i had my 20ish kids sit in our classroom and i read off a bunch of "would you rather" questions. we laughed so hard as we went through the deck, and it was so fun to watch them be so into the activity. it was the longest anything had held their attention all week. it was the first time i really feel like i got to laugh and connect with a lot of them and it happened purely by accident.

i had to remind one of the girls today (while she was being incredibly disrespectful to me) that i was a person with feelings too. it's easy to forget that these little 6th graders are hurting, confused, frustrated, broken people too. today i found myself constantly begging God to give me a heart to love them, even in their ungratefulness, knowing they may never show me any kind of love in return. maybe that is one of the lessons i'm here at the OEC to learn.

"lost and insecure, you found me... laying on the floor, surrounded.... why'd you have to wait? where were you?.... just a little late, you found me..." - the fray, you found me

i should be sleeping.

i'm always tired. i really wish 8 hours was enough sleep each night for me. but nooooo i have to be a freak who needs more than that. agh.

last week flew by.

amanda kelly came and spent the night on wednesday on her way out to cali. it was SO good to see her again, even for just 12 hours. she came out to the waldorff with my coworkers and i and it was a lot of fun.

friday night i headed down to indy and was so thrilled to spend the weekend with the miller family. i can't believe it was 2 years since i'd seen them last! never ever ever again will i let myself go that long between visits!! i can't even put into words how much they mean to me.

last week on thursday i was offered to stay here through the school year (beginning of june). i'm practicing thinking before i speak- so i asked them if i could think about it. (which was also actually code for i need to pray about it... because i'm so confused by where God is leading me lately)

so i thought, and i prayed, and i went to indy for the weekend and had my heart just torn up with longing to stay there and help them start the new ministry they're working on in downtown indy. i so wanted to stay. but i had to decide by today whether or not to stay here at OEC.

so i said i'd stay in battle creek. and i'm still debating whether or not that was the right move. will i ever be sure??

i have one of those personalities... i'm always afraid i'm missing out on something 'better'. i guess i'll never know. i suppose this is the 'responsible' move. but is responsible always better? am i living by the reckless faith that i know provides a better life? or is staying here denying myself and practicing discipline? i can justify it either way. and i love to justify everything.

"you dismantle me..." -anberlin, 'dismantle:repair'

more adventures. always an adventure.

weekend #3 of exciting road tripping has come to a close. and i'm already looking forward to next weekend. (headed to indy to see the miller family!! i haven't seen them in 2 years!)

i made it up to evart in just over 2 hours on friday. the drive was beautiful. i hung out with courtney and kevin for a bit then headed over to springhill. it was good to see so many of those friends again! i spent the weekend mostly in the tpost, though i happened to be in the right place at the right time to assist with the tram crisis on saturday.

last night i hung out with the boys (philip, caleb, and derek) and we played some settlers. it was fantastic. i love those guys. :)

i just got back a few hours ago and my exhaustion is really catching up with me. don't think i'll make it too late tonight. but i probably need to shower at some point too... oh life is so taxing. i also sort of suck because i looked out my window and (besides the giant tree in my way) there was a beautiful sunset. but i was too lazy to walk out to the lake and see it in all its beauty.

i lost my pink watch again.

that happened last year around this time too... but somehow i don't think thesaurus (murphy's cat) is the culprit... i probably took it off my wrist then got distracted.

i think it's gone for good this time. *sigh*

i had a lot of those "how are you/how's life?" conversations this weekend with people. it's hard to feel like all i want in the world is the perfect job to just fall down from heaven right into my lap, and maybe by having one more of those i'm-desperate-for-a-job-that-suits-me conversations someone will magically present me with it.

i just want to be a small part of something big.

one step at a time. at least this point i'm not stressed out. i'm just trying to trust.

"if you wait for me then i will come for you although i have traveled far i always hold a place for you in my heart. if you think of me, if you miss me once in awhile then i'll return to you, i'll return and fill that space in your heart... " tracy chapman, the promise