Crys of my heart....

My days seem to be blending together lately, and I feel like more often than not I am constantly in deep thought trying to figure my life out. I wonder if I will find complete peace with God? Will I be free? Will I ever fear God instead of fearing man? What about being truly broken over my sin? Will I make anything of myself? What do I do with my past that seems to STILL be chanied around me? It just keeps going. SO many questions. The one thing that keeps coming to my mind is surrendering. I keep having this reoccuring picture of what surrender means to me. My hands raised with closed fist, and opening my hands to recieve his freedom-Lord please help me to recieve it. I keep coming to this same place where I have 2 choices. The first one I could just go down, but it requires asking for help, and recieving it. BUT NO I am to prideful, self-suffecient and WAY to worried about what other people think and not wanting to burden them to want to take that choice. I choose to carry it all on my own. SO FRUSTRATING. What is it in our hearts that makes us want to not want help (of course except for the fact that we are sinners). At this moment (and I hope that I continue to believe this) but even in all my pride, self-suffecient, anger, jealous, runaway from every problem self that I am. I really am starting to see where he is working in my heart. Humbling me by making me have to raise my hand to ask for prayer AGAIN. I constantly find myself thinking of every excuse in the book of why I don't need to raise my hand-way more worried about what other people think instead of recieving what God wants for me. Or how dear friends have been brave enough to speak truth in my life, even when it has not been easy. Thank you for not holding back. Or for how the past 24 hours my constantly wondering mind has given me some peace. This is not what I thought I would still be walking through years later, but if it takes me 10 more years. I hope that I will grow in many ways. Learning to give my burdens to God, that I will begin to experience or understand the things that I talked about earlier, that I will have no doubt of my salvation and in it all may each and every circumstance teach me to RESPOND the right way, to TRUST Him and to GLORIFY Him. Lord this is the cry of my heart. Help me. Pour out your strength and give me FAITH for what is yet to come. Help me to stay on the steady path, putting one foot in front of the other, ASKING and recieving the help and that leaving, or running away would not be a thought that crossed my mind anymore. Help the lies that are constantly in my heart to stop. May truths overflood my mind and may my HOPE rest in you.

Two PRECIOUS children....

I hope this post makes you smile, when you think about these 2 precious children, and the legacy their mother left them in their short years. I hope that in each picture is a beautiful reminder of their mom and the love that she had for them. Robbie you never ceased to amaze me for how you carried yourself when you first found out about the cancer, how you finished up law school, even with very difficult times going on around you and you continued on serving your family and doing the normal things in life. You were a woman of HOPE, faith and courage. Thank you for your example to me in that. I will miss you. Sometime in April, Elizabeth and I had the idea to take pictures of Lily & Mitchell and then I was going to make a slideshow with the pictures to give to her and then we were going to give her a frame(s) of one of each of the children just to encourage her and give her something to remember when days where hard. Well it never happened, and it is probably a regret that I won't forgive myself for a while. My plan is to later write a letter to both Lily & Mitchell (when I can do it without tears clouding my vision) and to put these pictures on a CD for them to have when they get older, and to give a copy to John. I still wanted to share with everyone these smiles of these beautiful children. It is long, but the last 4 pictures are worth it all! I hope you enjoy!

Though I am not worthy....

Beach Day

Here our some fun pictures from our day at the beach! I hope you enjoy them!

Happy birthday to me!

So I am WAY behind but here is all about my birthday.

Tara had me over for dinner and surprised me with my favorite 

dinner, and friends to be waiting at the door. It was SO special.

Jacob took the picture of the adults at the table (way to go Jacob)

and Jenn took about 20 pictures of just faces. I saved you from having

to look at all those but I thought you would enjoy getting a good laugh 

out of the one of me.

 

Thank-you Tara for making my birthday so SPECIAL! 

I loved that you surprised me by inviting Val, Steph and Jenn to join us and for taking the time to make my FAVORITE dinner (chicken, blackbeans, yellow rice, sourcream, cheese and taco sauce :) Thank-you for the 

yummy cake too. You are a blessing to me and I am so

thankful to be apart of your life! I love you!

(Scroll over the pictures so you can read the captions)

This is for you Medana :)

I don't even know where to begin. March was a crazy month for me. I celebrated my 27th birthday with some special friends of mine (pictures & post to come), then I did some scrapbooking, my dad came into town for a WHOLE week (craziness I tell you, pure craziness) He started another project (still has not finished all the projects that he has already started-MEN but I do have to say I love my baseboards! :) There was the Deluge retreat which was absolutely AMAZING. That will be it's own post too because God really showed up in ways I never thought possible. Then there was Easter (which was much different this year for me) Now it is April and this month is looking like it will be crazier than last month. Well since Medana would like me to post something new I thought it would be fitting for me to share the pictures of taking her older children Taylor, Colin, and also Katelyn, and Hallye to my elementary school-Lake Sybelia. They have an amazing playground and though usually no one is there on Saturdays of course this day they were having a school clean-up day (and of course there were people there I knew-I even forgot names and made a fool of myself-oh well :), and there soccer games going on in the field but we still had fun! I cannot wait to do it again! The first picture is on top of the jungle gym! (You should have seen me trying to climb through so I could take this picture it was quite funny :) My favorite one is just of Hallye. I LOVE it! The very last one was a few minutes after Hallye got hurt, but she still wanted to be apart of the group picture.

Well for some crazy reason I could not get this post to go with the youtube video so read this and then enjoy the video below :) We all know I love worship music (right Jenn? :), and love learning about new songs. This is much different than you probably might expect but it is AMAZING. It reminds me just how small I am in this little world, how prideful my heart is, and just how beautiful and big He is. He loves me more than I will ever know. Think of that first line of the song "He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree." WOW! My friend from Georgia, Laura Susan, had this on her blog and she talked about how she had danced around singing "Oh how he loves us." I think the same thing but my version (and I dream of this often) would be that I was outside when it is raining, sun peaking through a dark cloud with my arms wide open, a little girl who is broken, and in love with her daddy. I know many days I lack to come to Him, to come to His feet and bring Him EVERY piece of my heart, and my life. I am grateful for this moment where He reminds me that He loves me, every scarred memory, every mistake, every minute of stupidness and when I think I can't go on any longer He loves me anyways. NOTHING can SEPARATE me from the love of my Father, OUR Father. How Great is our GOD! I hope and PRAY that this song and the words that you hear will comfort your broken heart and remind you of how much you are loved and how MIGHTY He is. HE LOVES YOU! And I love you too for how you continue to remind me to run to Him and to seek His face and that my strength should only come from Him, and His perfect word. Thank-you for your friendship, and the love you pour into my life and allowing me to be apart of your lives even though I know most times I am stubborn, prideful but I am grateful you still love me anyways :) Love you all!