From Dark to Light

Nothing to do with my post, but I love this picture :) 

[sunset over the horse pasture] 

It's been a while since I've sat down to write about anything that had something to do with heart me and not random, rambling, this is what I've been doing me. I haven't had anything really to write about, to be honest. In the craziness that is summer, things that should be important like Christ  and devotion and morning quiet time tend to fall behind more often than not. But I sat up in bed this morning & wasn't really ready to start my day...so I reached over to Jesus Calling and flipped to today's entry. Crazy how Christ is willing to use something as simple as me being lazy to teach me gracefilled truth. 

Two statements from my reading this morning REALLY stuck out to me: 

1. "Your own desire to look good can drain your energy. I am your Master, and I do not drive you to be what you are not." - Jesus Calling 
2. "For you once were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. WALK as children of the light." - Ephesians 5:8 

Reading this statement and this verse one after another made something click. If anyone has the right to demand anything from me, it's Christ. An all-powerful,  all-encompassing, sovereign God who loves and loves perfectly has every right, is almost expected, to turn around and demand the same of me. He deserves it. He deserves more. Not only that, but He has every right to demand and then punish when I am unable to live up to the standards and requests that He makes of me. And yet, He does not call me to be what I am not....He changes what I am. Does that make sense? I'm not sure if everything is making it out of my head in one piece :P 

As a child of darkness, I was unable to seek Christ. I couldn't become what He demand I become to stand in His presence...but instead of accepting my inability or lowering the standard, Christ took me, changed my very structure, and formed me into the very thing He was asking me to become. I didn't do anything. Christ drew the finish line, noted my distance from it, picked me up, carried me across, and essentially finished my race for me. AH. 

From dark to light, from forsaken to forgiven, from abandoned to treasure, I am eternally at the mercy and grace of an overwhelming Lord & Savior...and that is possibly the most comforting thing I've been able to grasp in a long time :) 

Linking up pretty early this morning with Melissa at the Friend Connect Blog Hop! You might also know her from The Life of a Not So Ordinary Wife. So, click on one of those lovely links OR the picture below, and check it out! :)

Pre-Weekend Ramblings.

Essentially, this is another one of those random, no point blog posts. I don't have the time to sit down & blog about something heavier (those are in the works) but I've missed blogging for about a week and I wanted to get something down! So, randomness embraced, and let's go :D

- I have several questions rattling around in my head right now, the biggest ones being 'It's July WHAT?' and 'WHERE did my summer go?!' It seems like LITERALLY maybe 3 weeks ago I drove Baby Blue (aka my car Scofield) across the Lousiana/Texas border. Apparently it's been MUCH longer than that :D All that being said, I'm actually kind of okay with it. Beginning of August means end of camps, weekend of Alumni Reunion, and some wonderful much needed vacation time with my family on the beach. The beach!!! So we're good :)

The beginning of our roadtrip! 3 weeks ago, right? 

- Seeing as how I DO have to see people that haven't seen me in a year, a lot of Wednesday afternoon was spent chasing down sales with my Momma. I'm actually rather proud to say that I managed to pick out some pretty cute clothes for myself for upcoming reunion & vacation trip! This is more of an accomplishment than it sounds, because style is something that is NOT on my list of gifts. But it's incredible how far studying pinterest boards can get you ;) All that to say, there's new clothes and I'm excited. 

- Most of this week has been spent at VBS with 4&5 year olds, which means I now talk to everyone like they're 4 or 5 year olds. But there will be pictures & stories & a full blog post dedicated to that at some point, so we'll leave it here for now :) 

- I've discovered an all time FAVORITE of mine is being read aloud to...and reading books aloud to others. This has definitely become more & more common over my summer, and I LOVE it!! 

- The no-biting nails resolution is coming along nicely! They were painted for the first time in several weeks this morning, and so far I haven't figited or scratched it off :)

- So, a year ago my family finally made it to Disney World after 18+ years of planning. After we got home, Poptart and I made a promise to Rach that we'd take her back come Christmas and then kind of forgot about it. But after a lot of suggestions became ideas, those ideas became conversations, and those conversations became pleas with the parents, Turshy, Rachel & I will be headed out for #Disneyorbust2013 Christmas break this year :) Although this has meant a LOT of summer saving, we're excited out of our minds!! 

- I made the HUGE mistake of letting the new Miley Cyrus song play on the radio when I was in the car last week....and now I can't get it out of my head. Moral of the story: if you think something's catchy, CHANGE IT before you realize it is! 

Completely honestly, this week has been a week of crazy blessings for me :) I've been able to catch up with best friends far away, figure out the answers to a lot of end of summer plans, and gotten to love on some PRECIOUS kids :D There have been many, many phone calls (which are always some of my favorite things in the world) and last night I was reunited with one of my very best friends! And then simultaneously embarassingly trashed while playing Super Smash Brothers by that same best friend :) 

All in all, it has been a WONDERFUL week :) 

In order to make some new friends, I'm linking up with the Friday Chaos Blog Hop hosted by the lovely Oh So Amelia. So if you're looking for some new people to follow, check it out by either clicking the link or the picture below! 

Hop on over!!! 

Miscellaneous Monday!

I've officially found the perfect linkup for me & my random all over the place thoughts...Miscellaneous Monday over at lowercase letters which, by the way, is a wonderful blog which continues to keep me entertained whenever I'm looking for something to read. Basically the only rule is write your randoms and then link up, so that's what I'll be doing!!!

1. The Little has been in town for about a week, and we've trekked all over the place. By all over the place I mean to Houston, back, to Galveston, back, and to the lake. And back. Not too far & not too much of Texas, but enough to give her the urge to come back! 

2. I've been trying to stop biting my nails this summer....and the reason I don't have a victorious 'look at how long they are!' hand picture is because it hasn't exactly worked yet. But fingers crossed I actually have nails to paint come the end of July! 

3. Hanners and I spent a good 30 minutes sitting on the side of our dock arguing about whether the little Loch Ness monster looking heads popping out of the water at sunset were turtles or sticks. She insists they're sticks...despite the fact that they pop IN AND OUT OF THE WATER and LOOK LIKE TURTLES. It was fun though :P 

4. Speaking of turtles, Tricia and I rescued 2 this weekend! We almost hit them with her car, so she stopped and I jumped out to fly them across the road and to the water. The first went smoothly, but I don't think the second little turtle knew exactly what was going down, because he proceeded to scratch at me and then I accidentally dropped him. Except it was less of dropping and more of flinging in shock because I thought he was about to bite down and break my finger. But he forgave me and made it across the road with little to no mishaps :P 

5. We're a little under halfway through July, which is sad because it means we're basically over halfway through the summer. But I've gotta admit, there's a part of me waiting to usher in the end of this month :P I'm selfishly ready for camps to be done so I can reclaim my friends. Plus Alumni Reunion & family vacation comes at the beginning of August! 

6. We got hit by one of the biggest (and prettiest) storms we've had all summer trying to grill for the Hargises last night. It came out of nowhere! 

7. I have a [temporary] pet German Shepherd living in our house with us right now. The boy's best friend is here and she comes with ^this beautiful dog in tow, whose name is Misha :) I'm living the dream for a couple of weeks! 

8. Speaking of pets, VBS has started and aside from the fact that I've got a class full of ADORABLE kindergartners, I've decided (with the help of Hannah) that if I could change any one thing in my life I'd give myself a pet dragon....who will remain nameless because I can't think of any one name quite epic enough for him yet! 

Welp, this has been the first of (many) Miscellaneous Mondays! Link up with the link below if you want to join the party! 

4th of July & weekend adventures!

It's late. I know it is. But I told myself as soon as I got home from the weekend at the lake I'd go ahead and post because this is BASICALLY the only chance I'm going to get to do it. 

Tomorrow is dedicated completely to cleaning the room & getting everything put together because when Tuesday arrives the Little touches down at 1 o'clock and we get an entire WEEK together! Which, if anyone is wondering, is the longest time we've ever spent together without having to say goodbye somewhere in the middle :) 

So before the crazy sets in....my 4th of July weekend! 

[complete with pictures] 

We went all out for 4th of July outfits this year...sunglasses & facepaint included! 

We camped out on the back porch for dinner right as a storm rolled over the lake

We ended up sheltering this little guy from the rainstorm, much to the disgust of the bug-hating best friend

Afternoon rainstorms kind of killed the fun on the lake, so we chose SpongeBob as our cartoon of choice :P 

And finally walked outside to this beautiful sunset, which of course meant we had to take a billion & one sunset photos 

He made me promise I would include the one of him pretending to push me in.....

and even though he's not making ONE normal face in any of these photos, he is my baby brother and I swear he loves me too

We finally headed out to a nearby new friend's house to watch the fireworks

Other big events of the weekend included putting the boat in the water for the first time 

Of course we had to name it. We batted the names Kingfisher, Kota and Skeeter around for a little while, and finally narrowed it down to Kota because that's what's written all over the boat anyways 

We went tubing, which resulted in me & baby being thrown off MULTIPLE times, and ending up sorer than I've been since I ran track in high school 

And there was my weekend :) 

This blog was mostly pictures and very little words, so I'll work on fixing that soon. But for now I've got to get to bed, so I actually have energy to throw clothes into my closet before Hannah gets here ;) 

35 HOURS AND COUNTING! 

day 30: the end.

It's June 30th. Which means the end of Blog-a-Day in June. Which means the end of June. Which BLOWS MY MIND. Where is my summer going?! 

I kind of scrolled through my list of words still left, scratching my head & looking for one to do. I have five or six words still left that I could do, but to be honest most of them are incredibly thought provoking and I wanted to hang on to them so I could have some more time to think about it. So if you gave me a prompt, and I missed it, that's why :P. So, instead of picking a word to do in specific, I thought I might just go back over my month. So here we go! 

I started blogging at the beginning of June because I thought it would be a fun little thing to get me thinking...and surprise, surprise God has used it over & over again to get me thinking, remind me of His faithfulness, and start conversations with friends that I didn't think I would ever have. It was hard and wonderful and ridiculously fun all in one, and I'm actually really going to miss it! 

Highlight of the month: the sister friend turned 20. 

At first this was an exciting new development, but now that it's actually set in she's starting to freak out a baby bit. 

I include this picture because it is one of my favorite ones. Ever.

Because she is a precious little dumpling. 

And because when I think 'summer' this picture continually comes to mind! :) 

Father's day came & went & I just really love & appreciate my family a whole bunch. 

Even if Daniel is making a chipmunk face.

To finish, Daddy and I went sunset chasing tonight with Matti in tow. He tried to surf in the back of the truck the whole way, but once Daddy actually got out on open highway he panicked a little and sat back down ;)

Yeah. I think this might quickly have to become an actual summer tradition. Not only was it beautiful, but it was some wonderful time spent with my Daddy :)

To everyone who started reading and didn't stop, thanks for sticking around :) The conversations & thoughts I've had because of it made this whole thing worth it, and stuck a few memories alongside just to make it even better.

June, it's been fun and I will miss you.

But since July & August hold just as many if not MORE exciting things, it makes saying goodbye just a little bit easier!!!