Procrastinatio.

I got my cap and gown today! It's official!! I'm going to graduate! Pretty exciting, I know. Being a senior there is this mind set that the last semester doesn't matter, all you have to do is pass so you can get credit and graduate (and passing means getting a C). I'm a professional procrastinator and knowing this fact had the potential to make that habit A LOT worse than it already is. For me this is a pretty scary thought because it's sad how close I cut it with assignments already. My awesome friend Hannah Cz (or Super Cz - she'll respond to both, I promise) found this verse that is full of all sorts of encouragement:

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." -Colossians 3:23-24

When she tweeted this verse I read it and was like alright, alright God, I get it! I am not going to school for me, I do not strive to get good grades to please my teachers or my parents, my life is not for me or the people around me. It's all for God. That's a hard concept to grasp, I know. Here's some more inspiration: "You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). God gifted us with life and the ability to make a choice: Glorify him in every thought, word, and deed, or forget about him. I choose the former. And what better way to glorify him than at school? Sure, kids will wonder why I'm a "nerd" who actually does my work and tries. But what does that matter? It's just another chance for people to question what's different in my life and find Christ. I hope this challenges your procrastination during this semester and all the hurdles you encounter when it comes to work (:

xoxo,

Abby the Gator

P.S. Big shout out to Super Cz for the inspiration! she doesn't even know it's her tweet that made this post exist. 

Sand Dollars.

Your first impression of a person always kind of defines the nature of your relationship with a person. When I first met Coleman he was writing a $10,000,000 check to himself in the sand (that was over 9 years ago and I will remember it forever). Now, if that doesn't tell you he was a quirky ambitious kid I don't know what does. In our young friendship we were anything but normal. We filmed TV shows, complete with guest callers (his bro Jackson played Joe from Idaho whose potatoes grew wings and flew away) and a special guest (a giant stuffed Pooh Bear voiced by my brother). A castle built closely to the specifications in Bridge to Terebithia was erected in his backyard, and of course I was the queen and he the king. When they made a short move onto the Navy base we turned all the unpacked boxes into a fort in the new backyard which we then deconstructed and used the boxes as a vehicle to roll the younger brothers down hills. Then there was my favorite game played by the four of us: Protect the Package. I, being the only girl, was being hunted by evil spies (usually my brother) and it was their job to patrol around me and keep me out of danger. 

Some of my favorite child hood memories come from the times that I spent with Coleman. We were pretty daring and he brought out a side of me that none of my other friends seemed to be able to reach. After he moved to Mississippi and I to Japan all in the same summer I cried myself to sleep for weeks, there was no one around here like C. We've only seen each other a handful of times since that fateful move, but every time is just as exciting as the last. We're still the same old crazy kids that we've always been (give us a camera, some wood, or some boxes and we'll still be able to come up with some insane creation) and that will never change. The fact that I have friends all over the country is never something that I will grow tired of, whenever I have a hankering to visit Alabama or Texas I know that I'll always have a friend (Coleman) to call when I arrive! Love ya C!

xoxo,

Abby the Gator

Maryuri.

She's 8 years old and lives with her parents and cousins in a one room shack in Nueva Vida just outside of Nicaragua's capital of Managua. The image of her in a satiny lilac dress is forever ingrained in my mind; she changed my mind and I'll never ever be able to forget he sweet smile and kind love for the strange white girl that came to church last summer. 

I've gone on a mission trip to Nicaragua the past two summers, and the first time I went was great, but I didn't come back with any special memories that I would remember for the rest of my life. So when the opportunity arose to return the next summer, although I really wanted to go back, I was a tad hesitant to whether I should or not.  The trip sounded rather appealing: an entire week at the same church with the same kids, so I went for it. Man! Am I glad that I did!

I met Maryuri at the feeding center on our very first day there, she came in with her two cousins and insisted on being carried all around the church on my back as soon as she was done eating. The fact that she and I spoke totally different languages was no bother to her and we became fast friends, she even held my hand as our team walked to a different church to eat our lunch and then waited patiently outside the gate as we ate. Every day was like that. We would scan the masses of people each morning as kids were let into the feeding center for each other and not leave each others side for the rest of the day unless forced too. 

I got to stand up at the front of the church one morning with Maryuri and her cousin when they decided to give their lives to Christ one morning after hearing a message from our resident Nicaraguan, Roger. Its safe to say that standing up there with Maryuri and thirty other young kids who made that decision was one of the most powerful moments of my life.

Leaving Nicaragua this time around broke my heart. I knew that I was going back to a world of comfort filled with unnecessary pleasures while I left my new friend in a world of hurt, poverty, and brokenness. As hard as leaving was for me I knew two things that made it easier: 1. She now knew the Lord and He was with her. 2. I could still help her even from thousands of miles away. 

A couple of months after returning from Nica a few of my peers started an initiative called "One Meal Sunday" where they only ate one meal on Sunday's to raise money an awareness for the situation of the kids who attended the feeding centers we served in Nicaragua. I never really jumped on the bandwagon, until today. They just finished a major fundraising campaign where they made enough money to feed over 45 kids for over a year. Wow. That is amazing don't you think?! Forty-five deserving kids will now have a guaranteed, nutritious meal for an entire year. Knowing that Maryuri is a kid who directly benefits from the feeding centers and the support that we send down there I decided I wanted in on this cause. Jesus broke my heart for this little girl last summer and revealed a way for me to continue impacting her life from a far.

The last day I spent with Maryuri we made friendship bracelets. I tied mine around her little wrist and she tied a blue one around mine. That bracelet remained tied around my wrist today, remembering Maryuri has helped me overcome so many obstacles this year and keep me humble in my life of plenty. Knowing I may never be able to see her again breaks my heart every single time I come to that realization, but the impact she made on my life will last longer than a life time.

xoxo,

Abby the Gator

P.S. If you feel so led to help support the One Meal Sunday initiative, here's how! Through Orphan Network you can feed a child for just $15 dollars a month, the difference your gift could make in a child's life is indescribable.

Against the Grain.

In my junior year of high school I made a decision; I wasn't going to party anymore. Now, I wasn't the biggest partyer before then, but after watching how it tore people apart both literally and figuratively I decided that no matter how fun it was I wasn't going to take any part in partying any more. In high school a decision like this automatically casts you out of the group of "cool" kids since you aren't out getting drunk with everyone every weekend. I have to admit that it was hard at first, loosing all my current friends and having to start all over again with people, but now a days I realize just how awesome a decision that was.

On Saturday night a bunch of my friends spontaneously ended up in my game room. We hung out for hours watching (and quoting) The Princess Bride, fighting over brussel sprouts, and just chatting about life. It's amazing how much differently you can get to know someone when you can just hang out and not have awkward alcohol induced moments. I love my new friends more than I could ever have imagined loving my old friends. We are able to sit around for hours being goof balls, love every moment of it, and remember every single second of it. That's my favorite thing: being able to remember, not having to be retold what happened over the weekend because you blacked out. 

xoxo,

Abby the Gator

(Clarification: My decision to not drink in high school was totally my own. Although I now disagree with that practice I do not judge others who have made a decision different than mine. We are all human being and have the right and ability to decide for ourselves)

Flames.

It's safe to say that I'm a pyroamaniac. If there's a fire around all I want to do is throw things in it and watch them burn. I've attempted to engulf everything from ants to watermelons in a sea of flames. My pyromaniacy is a phase that I will never really grow out of and I'm totally not ashamed of that. Fire has so much power; it has the ability to destroy entire ecosystems in a matter of minutes, take away a person's entire life belonging, displace hundreds of families and ruin whole communities. Yet I can still control it in my backyard as a source of warmth and amusement of a Thursday night. The respect I have for fire's power makes it no surprise to me that it is the medium God chose to communicate with many of His people through in the Old Testament. He spoke to Moses through a burning bush, led Joshua and His people through the desert with a pillar of fire by night, in Revelation flames consume the wicked and non-believers. It seems that every time a major amount of fire makes its way into the pages of the Bible God is trying to send a message to those around. The next time I'm at a friendly bonfire or just warming up by the fireplace I'll pay a little more attention to the messages that God might possibly be sending me there, you never know what I might here. How about giving that a try...

xoxo,

Abby the Gator

(Disclaimer: I am NOT a gator, yet. In two weeks from tomorrow it will either be official or a dream consumed by the fire of life...fingers crossed it becomes official!)

They Will Be Fed.

For the past two years I've participated in this really awesome event called the 30 Hour Famine sponsored by World Vision. Kids from the youth group at our church raise funds to donate to World Vision to help end hunger, and then fast for 30 hours (that's 30 hours with out any food at all!). During those 30 hours we play games, learn about hunger, serve the community, collect canned food, worship together, and learn about the awesome Jesus. I  always love Jesus, there's no doubt in that, but this even really makes me appreciate him in a whole new way every year. To watch how He moves the hearts of the people in our community to donate to this cause just baffles me, last year we raised over $22,000 as a group. That means we helped feed over 61 kids for an entire year. 

World Vision and the Famine both hold an extremely special place in my heart. Through World Vision I sponsor two really awesome kids in Malawi and Nicaragua. Chimwemwe (who my parents sponsor in my name) is a 13 year old girl from Malawi. Her family of seven lives in an area of Malawi severely affected by AIDs and her parents struggle to provide enough to feed the family on a daily basis. Kevin (who I sponsor) is 5 years old and lives in Nicaragua. I have actually been to Nicaragua and although I have never met Kevin or been to community, I have seen the kind of conditions that his family lives. I think it's safe to say that we all feel bad for these kids, but how often to we actually do something for that feeling? I decided that I was going to take the step and spend $35 of my own money every month to help provide food, education, and job training for Kevin and his family in Nicaragua. Believe me, it wasn't easy to give up that money, but then I remembered that it's not really my money...God gave me that money (in the sense that He gave me the ability to babysit and live in a community where jobs were availible) and that it wasn't fair for me to keep all of it to myself. So I gave up a pair of shoes a month, of five lattes, or a meal out with my family once a month to help do some good and change a life. It's really awesome knowing that my little donation can really make a difference in someone's life, even at only 18. This year as I prepare for the Famine I will be remembering Kevin, Chimwemwe, and all the other kids around the world like them that need us and Jesus to help them get out of the rut that they're stuck in.  I'll also remember that each and every one of us has the ability to make a difference in someone's life no matter how big or small the act.

xoxo,

Abby the Gator

P.S. If sponsoring a child is something that you're interested in check out worldvision.org. I highly encourage you to take that step and help change a life, there's plenty of kids out there that need our help (:

Beginning of the End.

One of my favorite parts about senior year are all the "lasts" I get to have. Today I took the last high school midterm I will ever take. I've already had my last first day of high school, my last first quarter, etc. Lasts can sometime be depressing, they mean that one thing is nearing an end, but in this situation lasts are cause for celebration. Now, I don't hate high school (hate is a strong emotion...more like severely dislike) but the fact that  its coming to a close couldn't be more exciting for me. As fun as it has been these last four years I am highly anticiapting all of the new experiences and challenges that await me as this chapter ends and I begin another. I have successfully reached the beginning of the end (:

xoxo,

Abby the Gator

Just Dance, Rice Krispies, and Nail Polish.

I hate Mondays, besides cooked spinach Mondays are probably the thing I hate most in this world. So I decided that I wanted to find something that made Mondays super awesome. Here it is: every Monday I'm going to talk about one of my very special friends that I love dearly. I figured that pairing the terribleness of Mondays with the awesomeness of my great friends would make the world even better (: And the award for first featured friend is....ALYSA!

Alysa and I moved to Guam the same summer. All of seventh grade I was like man I want to be her friend! But of course I was not nearly cool enough to run in the same circles as her, so I suffered to hang with the nerds and wish. (Man that makes me sound really creepy...!) Then came 8th grade, the two of us got assigned to work on the end of the year slide show for "graduation" that year. This meant that we spent lunch together every day working on the show...YES! my wish had come true!! (Also creepy...sorry Lys!) Through this new friendship that we were forming we lost a couple of our other friends, they got extremely jealous of what we had going and thought we were stealing the other from them. So we sufficed to live out the rest of 8th grade just the two of us. 

Ninth grade was a magical year for us. Our little pair expanded into a group of four super close friends. Alysa, Becky, Jordan and I were attached at the hip the entire year. Sleepovers were a weekly occurance and going to bed before 5 am was an oddity. We never seemed to grow tired of each other and time apart killed us. Thankfully our school was small enough that basically all of our classes over lapped and we saw A LOT of each other all the time. My favorite memory of the four of us was after the homecoming dance, at 5 in the morning we all got a sudden craving for jambalaya. So at 5 o'clock in the morning we whipped up a pot of it; this became a tradition that we still practice today. We were fearless as freshman, climbing on roofs to tan, pushing each other down hills in wheel chairs, and discovering the abandoned military base around the corner were some of our favorite pass times. Fun seemed to be all around us and we were really great at finding it. I had never had friends like the three of them before and loved every single second of our time together.

That summer we were all split up. I moved to Virginia, Alysa moved to South Carolina, Becky went back to California and Jordan stayed in Guam. For a while we were really great at all staying in touch. Unfortunately crazy lives and the difference of time zones has now hindered my communication with Becky and Jordan but Alysa and I are close as ever. Every summer since moving we get together and spend a week indulging in our three favorite obsessions: Just Dance (yes, I'm a closet dancer...when I'm awake...), Rice Krispie treats (mostly my obsession, but everyone is nice enough to accommodate it), and nail painting (which Becky and Lys rock at and I just like to pretend I'm good at). Friendship is definitely not something to take for granted, and I will forever be thankful for what we've got. 

I made commitment a while  back that I was going to at least text Alysa once a day, and while I'm not always the most consistent we still talk rather often. Today I decided to call her Alysa the tiger (she recently got accepted to Clemson!!!) and I became Abby the gator, which she promptly told me I was to now sign all my blogs with. So, here goes nothing...thanks for the new moniker Lys the Tiger! <3

xoxo,

Abby the gator

This is Who I Am.

So that night's post was rather lengthy and awkward, I know believe me, I wrote it. I felt this morning that it needed a little bit of clarity...While that was a good sized chunk of my testimony it wasn't all of. My relationship is growing and changing every day and therefore so is my testimony. This is blog is the continuance of my story, here I shared the stories that are being added to my story as I live my life. What I shared last night was more of a background of sorts on how I got to where I am today, but it doesn't end there. THIS is my story, THIS is who I am. I am how and I live, and this is me sharing how I live. Let God change your story today as you step out into the world too. 

Lost and Found.

Tonight at small group my youth pastor Wayne  challenged us all to live a rescued life. He told us that because of Christ we have been saved from the deadly disease of sin and from having to go to the only truly God-less place there is: hell. As a part of a challenge to live a rescued life, we were tasked to help to "diagnose" those around us with the same disease that we have been rescued from and show them the cure: Jesus Christ. The best way for  us do that, he said, was to share our story of how we were lost and God came and saved us. This really pushed me to share my story on here, a story that not many people in my life actually know all of, and I felt called to share it here on the internet where the whole world can see it...this is kind of a really big and vulnerable step for me, but also something I've been thinking about doing for a while. So, here goes:

Before I was born my parents decided that they wanted to raise their family in the church, so that's basically where I grew up. I went to Sunday school every week, and always had all the right answers, heck I could probably even recite all the Bible stories backwards if you had wanted me too. Church was a routine in my life, a block I could cross off my weekly plan every Sunday. I knew all about Jesus, but I didn't really KNOW him. I knew that he died to save me from my sins, but I didn't really grasp what that truly meant.

When I moved to Guam in the seventh grade I started to develop a bit of a rebellious side. I started fighting my parents about going to church. Church meant waking up early on a weekend and spending an hour of my morning listening to some old guy talk about God. Basically I thought I knew all that I needed to know and didn't see church as a necessary part of my routine. I kind of wrote God out of my life, I was an invincible teenager and could get by just fine without Him. The friends that I made in Guam were in the same boat I was, either they just didn't know God all together or they just didn't care. We looked for satisfaction on a Saturday evening in a bottle of smuggled alcohol during our freshman year. It seemed just a normal a routine as church once was. I still went of course, my parents wouldn't let me miss it. But I was living a sort of double life; I'd go to church and put on this facade that I had it all together and knew it all, and then I'd go hang out with my friends and be a totally different person, a person that was could careless about living a life as devoid of sin as humanly possible. Now, I knew that drinking and smoking was wrong but I also knew that it was fun and that was much more important.

I then moved away from Guam after freshman year to Virginia Beach, Virginia. Immediately I made friends with a group of kids who were a lot like my friends in Guam, at least in the activities they saw as fun. Those friendships lasted about 3 months...I decided to go to Hunt Club for Halloween with a friend from our new church here instead of the big neighborhood party. That decision meant that I basically got disowned by my new group of friends. I was alone, abandoned in a new place with no friends to turn too. To my surprise, the kids that came a swooped me up in that time of darkness were a bunch of Young Life kiddos. Of course I was skeptical at first, my trust in people here who claimed to want to be my friends was not the strongest. However they somehow managed to win me over and convince me to attend Fall Weekend and summer camp that year. I went, and I listened, but I didn't absorb. I shrugged off the talks as stuff that I had already learned when I was little and didn't need to learn again. The double life I had been living before was still there, not as severe, but still there. I was claiming that I was a Christian, but I wasn't living my life as one and the doubts I had caused that.

Junior year is when everything changed. In October of that year I attended D-Now with Trinity Church and a bunch of my Young Life friends. That weekend was magical, it was like there had been cotton stuffed in my ears for the first 16 years of my life and now it had been pulled out ever so suddenly. I not only heard what Wayne was telling us, but I understood. Understood that my life was a lie, that although I claimed to be "saved" I was truly still more lost than I had ever been. After returning from that trip I decided to start attending Trinity, with out my parents. This was the first real step that I took in making my relationship my own, and not something that was forced by my parents. At small group meeting I learned more and more about life with Christ and could see my life changing everyday. I made the decision to not drink and stay pure when it came to boys because I now realized the boys and booze could never ever give me happiness like Christ could. My life had taken a turn for the joyful, I sought to love those around me that others didn't feel worthy of love, I wanted to find joy in the small things and the struggles that I faced everyday. I now knew that God had a plan for my crazy life and I wanted to glorify Him in it.

Now I have to admit, it wasn't an easy road when I made the decision to live for Christ instead of myself. There are days that I look at my life and wonder why the heck am I doing this!? But when I reflect on my life then and now I see why. Without Christ I was terminally ill, sin had over run my life and it was only a matter of time until it killed me and sent me to hell. God swooped into my life and diagnosed me, at that D-Now weekend he was the doctor that showed me I was internally dying, in all truth I was already dead. I CHOSE to take the cure that he showed me, and that cure was Jesus. We all come to a point in our lives where God's looks at us and says you can keep living like this and die and live without me for eternity, OR you can live for me, bring others to know me, and love like me. It's an incredible thing; I was lost and dying and God decided to take the time to try and save me. We are all his children, he wants to save all of us from imminent death, it's just a matter of whether or not we take the cure or turn the other way in ignorance.

This is a long post, I know, but it's one that has really been on my heart to share. There is not a person in this world who hasn't been lost at one point in time. If you have been rescued I challenge you to also live a rescued and share your story of being saved with those around you who need to hear it. If you're still lost, I hope that this post inspires you to seek Christ and the cure he has to your disease. It will change your life.

Life Lost. Life Found.

Today marks 5 months from my first real run in with death. People have obviously been passing away my entire life, I knew what death was but I had never really experienced death in a way that made it personal. I didn't know what the emotional side of death was until five months ago today. 

A friend of mine, and nearly everyone at my school, Eric Sorg, passed away extremely unexpectedly while on a family vacation at 3:43 on the morning of August 21st. It rocked my world. Eric and I weren't the best of friends but his passing was so different from all the others I'd heard about it the past, I knew that his absence was one the I would most definitely notice and miss. For days upon days it didn't real to me, I thought that I was living in a really sick dream and one day I would wake up and he'd be back. Unfortunately that wasn't the case; he was gone. Three weeks before the start of senior year, gone, just like that.

We had learned about his accident the day before and immediately a gathering was called together for the next day at the neighborhood park to pray for Eric, his health, and his well being. Everyone in the community was scared out of their minds, this kid was the nicest, happiest kid in probably all the neighborhood, and he'd spent hours at the bottom of a ravine and was now fighting for his life in the hospital. He didn't deserve this at all. The concept of him dying hadn't even crossed my mind making waking up on the 21st and finding out that he had even harder. We still met that morning, and instead of praying for our friend to make a quick recovery and return to normal life as soon as possible we ended up praying for comfort for the mourning family at the loss of their son and brother. That day made death so personal and real for me that I couldn't even wrap my mind around it. I hated death, I hated heights, I even hated God for a while for taking away a friend. 

I think that death is something that we all live in fear of at some point in our lives. It's an unknown, and unexplored territory that we never want to venture into. Last night I was talking with my good friend Townshend about my response to the shooting at our school and he said something that really challenged me: "We should not live our lives in fear. God has the destined date, and if more lives can come to Christ through my death than what I could do with my life, then God ought to take me." Those two sentences made me sit back and think for a second, he is totally right. Death is really, really for human kind but God commands us in Joshua 1:9 to "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." In death and in life God is walking right along side of us and we shouldn't be afraid of the hurdles that we encounter, even death, because He is so much bigger than all of the things we are afraid of, even death. To bring Jeremiah 29:11 (my fav verse at the moment) into this situation, remember that he has "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." He will never forsake us and always lead us down the exact right path to help us be lights to this dark world and brings the dead to life through a relationship with him.

After Eric died I realized something: he wasn't expecting to die that day. Death could be lurking around the corner for each and everyone of us and we don't even know it. We've all heard the concept of "live today like you're going to die tomorrow" and thanks to Townshend I found a really encouraging verse on this sublject. Ecclesiastes 9:10 says "Whatever your hand finds, do it, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom." Don't live a today that you will regret tomorrow because tomorrow may never come. Live TODAY for God, live TODAY to the best of your ability and find a way to glorify HIM in your every thought word and deed. Death is scary, but with God it doesn't have to be. Thank God for that (:

Perspective.

Its been a hard year at my school. The last five or six months have thrown hurdles our way that I never thought I'd run in to. It's amazing how much a few events can turn your life around and make you reexamine everything about it. This evening at the basketball there was a shooting, I wasn't there so I can't speak on specific details, but a guy from another school came with a gun and decided to discharge it in the parking lot. Having the conversation of gun-shots-were-fired-at-our-school is not a conversation that you ever want to have with your friends in the car next to you at a stop light. Shannon and I drove the rest of the way home literally in silence....Thankfully no one was hurt physically; however having guns recklessly go off next to you is not a memory that leaves quickly. After the initial thought of holy cow I hope all my friends are safe and no one was harmed I thought about the shooter. I then realized that there must be something in his life that caused this outburst of violence and sent up a little prayer that whatever it was would cease and that he would find peace after this terrible event. My school will now be infinitely known as the school that got shot up after a basketball game, and although that will cause much distress and hatred in the student body toward this guy there is no reason to hate him. God tells us to "love our neighbor as ourselves." Yes, this guy intentionally shot a loaded gun in our school parking lot while it was full of teenagers, and while we have all the right in the world to be insanely angry at him we also have the ability to forgive. To love him like he is one of our fellow Patriots and forgive. 

I know there's a possibility of getting a lot of heat for looking at the situation this way, but isn't this just a great example of how to apply how God instructs us to live our lives everyday? "Love your enemy." He endangered the safety of our classmates, he is our enemy, and we have every right to hate. But love is the true answer. The law will punish him for his crimes and that is enough, at least for me.

Bones.

I have an obsession with bones. The human skeleton fascinates me. Wrapping my mind around how they grow and how the body itself just works so perfectly isn't even possible for my mind. I have a tendency to turn this fascination into art, art that many of my friends find a little creepy. I'm not some creepy goth though, I promise. The human body, ultimately its bones, are something that will never cease to amaze me so I will never stop portraying that through my art. Bones have the ability to express so much emotion, which is funny because they are so basic but so important. When God created the Earth, Adam was made from dust and then He made Eve from a bone. Bone marrow can be injected into the body and knows EXACTLY where it needs to be and heads there. Our bodies are beautifully and wonderfully made, they work in such a harmony that can only come from one place: an all knowing and all powerful God. When I think about how our bodies work I can't believe that other people can look at everything that our bodies do and tell me straight to my face that God doesn't exist, that we are just products of evaluation. I see my facts and they see their's, but I'm firm in where I stand and will forever have a huge respect for how we operate every minute of every day. 

Dynamite.

This song came on the radio on my way to work this afternoon. I instinctively turned it up super loud and would have thrown my hands up and started dancing if I hadn't been driving...It's amazing how easily a song, just one song, can stir up a million memories and never ever get old no matter how many times you hear it. 

Dynamite brings forth the adrenaline rush of bursting into a room of screaming high schoolers during my week in Saranac, NY. It will forever serve as a reminder of the best year of my life: Young Life camp. If you don't know what Young Life is, you're seriously missing out! Young Life is an organization that goes into high schools and middle schools and strives to show the kids of those schools how to cross from death to life through a relationship with Jesus Christ. I didn't hear about YL until my sophomore year, and man did I find out about it at just the right moment in my life (it's amazing how God does those kind of things...). 

The friends that I had made shortly after moving here started to drift away from me ever so slowly by that October. I was alone. A good friend of mine Carly Kelsick (check out here awesome story at http://www.icarlymission.blogspot.com!) invited me to Fall Weekend which is basically summer camp condensed into two and a half days. I was so hesitant at first, I was still new to the area and literally knew just about no one who was going. But I caved, signed up, and went. I was glued to Carly's hip for most of the weekend still that same shy kid I'd always been. Needless to say that weekend changed my life. I learned to love YL with a passion so great I wanted to participate in any way I possibly could. 

That summer I got the opportunity to attend YL summer camp in Saranac, NY. A lot of my older friends had gone to Saranac a couple of summers before and could only speak the highest praises of the camp. Other than being set in the picturesque Adirondacks, Saranac was filled with tons and tons of people from all over the country who loved the Lord. My most poignant memories of that camp are in the club room, in that room we danced, sang, laughed, and listened to talks that challenged who we were and how we were living. Every single time we entered that room Dynamite was blasting in the speakers; we would even run around camp during the day singing and dancing to that song. 

It's safe to say that Saranac and YL have literally changed my life, I truly believe that I wouldn't even be writing this blog today if it weren't for that awesome camp and organization. My very closest friends today come from the cabin of 17 girls I spent my week with. We watched each other grow there in ways that we would have never been able to see back home. Every single time I hear Dynamite all I can do is smile, it's such a wonderful reminder of that amazing week (: 

Facebook "boycott" Day 1: Gotta find a better name for that....But this thing is harder than I expected! Thanks to Morgan for keeping me accountable though and totally taking away the temptation of checking it (: I'm thinking that after a little while I might not even miss it...we'll see what happens!

Hello Goodbye.

I have a confession...when I started this little project I seriously didn't think that anyone was going to read it. I kind of thought that this would just end up being my diary, that just happened to be on the internet for the entire world to view if they so pleased. But holy cow was I wrong! It seems like every time I post something new another random person pops out of the wood work and tells me how much they enjoy reading this. Wow, NOT what I was expecting at all. I all set out to do was change my own attitude toward life, and if someone else happened to be inspired along the way that was just collateral damage of my little project. 

Every since starting this I've noticed a things:

1. Positivity rules

2. My Facebook and Twitter may be gone soon

3. Inspiration is everywhere

I've always been a real big hater of "professional haters" as I like to call them (people who have nothing else better to do with their lives other than incredibly degrading everything around them). I knew that this was always around me but I became really really good at just becoming blissfully ignorant of those kind of people. However it has come to my attention in the past few weeks that my Facebook and Twitter are littered with hate; LITTERED with it. Now, the idea of just down right deleting my account has always been in the back of my mind, but there has always been some aspect of it (like photos, or NHS posting, etc) that has kept me from actually going through with it. I'm starting to rethink that now. When you choose to live with a positive attitude all that negativeness can be really draining, a lot more draining than I thought it would be....

I'm not sure if I will actually delete my Facebook but the amount of drama is definitely pushing me toward that action. I'm also not saying that support or protest Facebook by any means, but I do think that our reliance on it and addiction to it's drama is becoming a problem. I know this because I'VE got the problem too! Take a break from Facebook the rest of this week...see how it changes your attitude and outlook on life that week. 

Shan.

Every time that I have someone tell me how jealous they are of me and my best friend Shannon I realize just how special what we have is. It's safe to say that there a few people in the world that I trust more and am more loyal to than Shan. One of favorite ways to pass the time is to sit around chatting, drinking a Diet Coke (we're both addicted), and watch whatever crazy show is on television at that moment. So simple yet so awesome. I forget sometimes that some people don't have a Shannon in their lives, and I'm terribly sorry for that because I don't know what we'd do with out each other. We've been through a lot together in the over two years we've been buds and although we have our fair share quarrels there's always one thing we come back to: we're best friends and that's the way it will always be.

One of the funniest things about our relationship is that if we both hadn't participated in a sport that we absolutely hate now, we would have never become friends. However it was our united hatred of crew that brought us together in the first place, I guess complaining to someone is a good way to become their best friend? If you're us it is. But don't ever ask Shan about my racing experience, the story is mostly false based off a small amount of truth (one of the biggest disagreements we have...)

Another awesome thing about Shan and I is we had sad things. We hate them to the point that we literally leave sad things out of our conversations. For example the future and my moving away is something that will bring us both to tears so it's a topic we stray from often. I'm pretty sure I would cry a whole lot if she wasn't always changing the topic when things like that came up (:

Even though the ever changing future is fast approaching I now there is one thing that will always, always remain constant: I'll always have Shan and she'll always have me. What more could you ask for?! (: 

Love ya girl <3

It's a Small World After All.

When I moved here from Guam two and a half years ago my biggest fear was the shear difference in size between the two places. In Guam, an island with a population of about 160,00 people, I went to a school of barely 400 kids. Here, a city with over 400,000 people, I was to attend a school of close to 2,000. In Guam I knew basically everyone I went to school with; the whole community itself was extremely close knit. The kids you went to school with were the same ones you saw on the weekends, the same ones you worked with, and the same ones that lived next door. Everyone there was displaced from the families who lived back in the mainland so we all became each other's extended family. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and nearly every other holiday (whether it was usually accompanied by a feast or not) became a huge neighborhood party. All we had was each other and we celebrated that every chance we could. You would see a car pass you on the road and know exactly who it was, and you were likely to run into so many people you knew (and were probably pretty good friends with) whenever you went to the grocery store or the Navy Exchange. I knew that this tight knit community was something that I would crave and miss dearly when I moved back to the states.

It came as a huge shock to me that people here lived right down the road from where they grew up, from their grandparents and aunts and uncles. That was something I'd never had before; my family had always lived at least a days drive away so visits we sparse. I didn't grow up getting together for family dinners once a week or going to church on Christmas Eve with the whole family. I literally couldn't wrap my mind around the concept of living so close to my family that you could see them almost everyday. When you go to the grocery store here you aren't very likely to run into a friend or anyone who know for that matter. Cars would drive past on the boulevard and when I realized I didn't know whose car it was I was reminded of just how big this town is. For a long while after moving here I found the immense size of this population overwhelming and over all depressing. I longed for knowing all the kids in my school again, heck I would even settle for just knowing everyone in my classes! 

Today though, two and a half years later, I was reminded that this area is a small world after all. I spent the day with my very good friend Morgan at two of our favorite places: Panera for lunch and Starbucks for studying. It seemed like every time we turned around at either of those places we laid eyes on someone we know. We literally ran into probably 15 people that we are buddies with. It was a huge reminder to me that a community is only as big as you let it be in your mind. Seeing all those people all over the place today, while it's still not Guam, really reassured me that this place is awesome and filled with really great people that I love running into. It also reassures that I've actually made friends here, but that's besides the point. I think it's safe to say that I am definitely going to miss this place next fall, no matter how ready I am to get out of dodge.

Whose We Are.

It's been told to me over and over again that it's impossible for us to know WHO we are if we don't know WHOSE we are. Have you ever really thought about that? I though I did, I thought I knew exactly what it meant and that I had that whole aspect of Christianity figured out. Well it turns out I knew what it meant, but I hadn't really APPLIED that principle. 

This morning I had K-Love on while I getting ready for church (I've been listening to them a lot lately) and JD said this: "We aren't defined by what the world and the people of this world say we are, we're defined by who God says we are." Wow. That really struck a chord with me today that's for sure. As I was dolling myself up and making myself "presentable" for church, this radio DJ tells me that none of that matters. It doesn't matter if people think that you're ugly, or a nerd, or too tall, or have crooked teeth, or an annoying voice, or a less than desirable job, GOD loves you. You belong to GOD. He doesn't see any of the things that this world sees, He doesn't judge us in the way that this world judges. 

It's like a father looking at his children, he doesn't look at them and say Man, I will Susie were a faster runner or Geez why can't Steve be smarter. No. Those are his children and he loves them for who they are. It's the same way with God; He made each and everyone of us to be exactly who we are and loves us when we are who He made us to be. It's not until we realize that we are the sons and daughters of this all mighty and powerful king that we can truly experience WHO we are in Him, which is who we were made to be. 

After JD said this one the radio he played this song: Remind Me Who I Am by Jason Gray. Listen to it. And let its words - "Tell me lest I forget, who I am to you, that I belong to you" - be your prayer as you embark on this Sunday and every day.

Traditions.

As I was walking into a swim meet with my friend Paige last night we had a parent comment on how impressed she was that we show up to so many swim meets. She said she would have never trekked all around the city to attend these kind of things! We then had to recount to her our sad sad story of second quarter:

Every November a good chunk of my friends decide that they like to swim, so they try out for the school swim team, make the cut and disappear into a pool of chlorinated water for the next 9 weeks. We catch slight glimpses of each other at school every once and a while, but hard core hanging out is a no go during swim season that's for sure. After school and weekends turn into a time where I sit in my room and sulk in the fact that I have no athletic ability. Therefore, if I want any HINT of a social life over the weekends I gather my cash and my keys, hop in my car, and head on over to which ever rec center is hosting the amazing Patriots that Friday night. Believe it or not, crashing swimming events usually turns into a pretty grand time. (:

Last night was an especially special meet to be at; it seemed like the coaches really wanted to show off my friends speed and every time I looked up I knew at least one person in the pool (surprisingly I'm not friends with THAT many people on the team...it's huge). My favorite event to watch: Micheal in the 400. He was awesome - although he will likely deny that - and afterwards informed everyone that he would rather take a calculus test than ever have to swim another one of those races. I absolutely love spending my Friday nights cheering for my fish-like friends, and we've kind of made a little tradition of it. Hannah, Paige, and I come to the meets, we cheer our little hearts out and explore Twitter's funniest of the funny, then all the seniors head out for dinner and hang out after that. It's a Friday night tradition that I will dearly miss when college roles around. What kind of traditions do you share with your friends?

Decision Making.

I found out today that a good friend of mine from Guam was incarcerated for the past month due to some poor decisions that he made. In less than 2 years he's acquired a record longer than my forearm. At barely 18 (or maybe 17, I'm not quite sure...) he's already been to the hospital to get stitched up after numerous fights he's gotten himself into, including a few lacerations caused by a prison guard. Seeing pictures of him all beat up and sitting a hospital room in his jumpsuit sent a shocking revelation through my brain: he looks just like the inmate we met on our trip to jail a couple of months ago. This kid that I've shared so many experiences with and loved dearly has taken a turn for the worse, with the possibility of never returning to life he had prior to his one bad to decision give car keys to a drunk teen. It's absolutely heartbreaking to watch it unfold through Facebook; being thousands of miles away and not being able to do a single thing to help turn this situation around. Wow.

It's really become poignant to me recently just how important the decisions that we make are to our lives. And we all know that decisions aren't easy, at ALL. This time of year high school seniors are faced with possibly the biggest decision of their lives to date: college. As acceptance and denial letters trickle into our mailboxes the stress builds exponentially. It's been drilled into our brains since kindergarten that the college we choose to attend will determine our future. The amount of pressure that adds to an 18 year old's life is so immense I'm surprised we don't explode. With my parents living in Germany for my first three years of college this decision became even harder for me: stay in state and be near all my very dear friends, or move to Florida to pursue a wonderful degree program and be nearer to my extended family...

I came across a really awesome verse recently that reminded me that no matter how stressful and impossible this decision may feel, there's this big guy named God who's already made the decision for me. Jeremiah 29:11 says, " 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'" God already knows where I'm going to college. I know that He's known every aspect of my life since before I was born because in Jeremiah 1:5 He says, "'Before I shaped you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.'" Although I've already made my own decision to accept admission as the University of Florida if I'm accepted (less than a month til I find out!) I can find comfort in the fact that the only reason that plan won't work out is because it's not what GOD planned for my life. 

In the end we need to remember that yes, as humans we have the mental capacity and privilege to make our own decisions, but it is pertinent that we are able to accept the fact that GOD'S decision is ultimately that path we will take. As long as we trust that He has plans to "prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope and a future." God's a sneaky dude. But he knows exactly what situations to put his followers in, exactly what hard decisions to hand them to strengthen their trust in him and give them the fullest life possible. 

A Normal Face.

I've been working at Operation Smile for a little over a month now, and each day that I'm there I learn something new and exciting. My afternoons there are spent inputting data and looking at pictures of people with cleft lips, cleft palates, and other facial deformities. At first the pictures (especially the pre-surgery and surgical ones) really got to me and made me a tad sick to my stomach, but I've thankfully been able to condition myself to see that as a new "normal" of sorts. Eventually all the cleft lips start to run together and I often lose track of which patient I'm working on and have to do some major back tracking to be sure I haven't messed up.

Since working at Operation Smile I have become ever grateful of my smile, granted it's a bit crooked and not as white as it could be, but I've realized a major plus: it's a normal, average-jane smile. My smile has never caused me to be bullied and tormented, or kept me from being able to speak and eat correctly, never caused me any physical of emotional pain either. And to think that I still look in the mirror, or in photographs, and go "I hate my smile." I literally want to kick myself in the teeth when I think that. I spend hour after hour staring at pictures of kids and adults alike who would never have the opportunity to lead a normal life if they didn't have surgery provided by this awesome organization. Its a really beautiful and fulfilling thing to look at the post-op photo from a week later and be able to already see a difference, and be able to imagine how immensely their life will change because of this.

Human kind is extremely vain and superficial, its all about what on the outside and how gorgeous we are compared to everyone else. I'm beginning to rethink that ideology. Are looks really what matters? Today I had pictures of a young kid who not only had a cleft lip, but his whole face was deformed. My heart broke into a million tiny pieces. He has so much life ahead of him and unfortunately no amount of plastic surgery would be able to make him look "normal" and "beautiful" to other people (and probably not even to himself). But then I realized, how often to I think I'm not beautiful? A lot. I have no scares, no deformities, just a dusting of acne on my cheeks and skin that's a little too oily for my tastes. This young guy really put things into perspective for me...Beauty is what WE define it to be. Beauty doesn't have to mean anorexic supermodels in lingerie, it can be that little boy covered in scares if we so decide. Think about it, how skewed is today's society's view of beauty? How should we redefine it?

Photographs.

I am totally a photograph fanatic. Pictures of everything near and dear to me litter ever service of my room. Today my best friend Shannon finally gave me my Christmas present: one of her senior pictures in the most epic frame. It may sound like an odd gift to you, but I absolutely loved it. LOVED it. I realized that with my going of to college next fall something like that will come in real handy, especially since there's a large possibility I'll end up a long ways away from home. Photographs are always something I will be thankful for, they are little reminders of what I absolutely love every single time I look at them. I will never be able to have enough photos, that's for sure!

ThreeSixSix

         On the 1st of this year I decided to assign myself a challenge: write down one thing I'm thankful for every single day of the year (there turns out to be three-hundred and sixty-six of those this year...darn leap year!) I thought that this little challenge would be a good way to keep myself in check through out the year about what really matters in my life by really digging down and discovering what little things make me jump for joy. So far in my handy-dandy notebook I've got everything from special people, to foods, to Christian music. Reflecting the other day on how just ten days into the year I'm already experiencing a kind of high from focusing on all the positives in my life I decided to was too good to keep to myself! I then realized that this little 366 day project of mine was a perfect reason to do something I've always wanted: start a blog. So here it is, three-hundred and sixty-six things that bring me absolute joy. I hope that maybe it can bring you a little joy too (: