my Saturday night

consisted of going to the grocery store at 10pm, looking up recipes online to cook for myself this week, and now trying to work on a paper. awesome..

"the journey"

I’m surrounded by people and yet alone.
I carefully watch, observing everyone around.
Wanting to scream that “I am here!”

How many times will I be at this place
Of longing, desiring Jesus to fill me wholly?

In between two competing worlds
Too young, and too old.
Barely out of my reach, I am left here,
Alone again.

This is the place of healing that I know too well;
Now is the time for repair.

A silent Presence soothes my soul,
As I dare to place my trust in the One who knows me.

With each tear, He covers my brokenness.
With each loving gesture, He beckons me to continue with Him.

And so I walk on.

solving the energy crisis

I love that I have owned my car for 6 weeks now, and filled my tank with gas for the first time TODAY!
YAY walking!

success unexpected in common hours

A few words from my favorite transcendentalist. Always an encouragement when having an 'I don't know what I'm going to do with my life' crisis (like right now!). This passage never fails to comfort the part of me that is never content to just be and sit still in one place, and continues to inspire dreams, creativity and originality. (If only I could foster such elegant words instead of merely quoting them!)

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open.
The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours… In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

hey, I went to Vietnam!

So, I forgot I went to Vietnam. And that I have a whole folder full of pictures. And that I slept out on the roof of a boat in the middle of Halong Bay. It was AMAZING!

Bicycles everywhere= gladness




color the world happy

heading out to sea

view from my cabin

HaLong Bay: a natural world heritage site. over 1,000 islands

fellow sailers

vietnamese 101

and the BEST part: kayaking through bat-filled caves, discovering small secluded pieces of heaven off the coast of Northern Vietnam.

a beautiful sentence

The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect,' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as a love between the sexes.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.

to be sinless

He was sinless because he was the friend of sinners!
"This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them" (Luke 15:2).
Jesus' sinlessness was anything but obvious. The sign of it was not heroic moral purity but a life that called his purity into question. His friends and associates were not the good church people of this day. They were his enemies, not because he rejected them but because they rejected him. His friends were political revolutionaries (the Zealots), dishonest business people who were also traitors to their nation (the tax collectors), immoral women, social outcasts, and half-breeds... In this way he was for his fellow human beings as they really are- guilty, needing forgiveness, acceptance, and help. In this way he was obedient to God and fulfilled the task God had given him to do- not to minister to well people who do not need a doctor but to sick people who do; not to call the righteous but sinners (Matt. 9:12-13). His sinlessness was his willingness to be sent "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom. 8:3-4) in order to overcome the broken relationship between God and humanity and between human beings themselves. It was the willingness of the one who "knew no sin" to be made sin for our sake (2 Cor. 5:21).
Jesus was sinless because, in perfect obedience to God and perfect love for his fellow human beings, he was willing to risk his good name and his "moral integrity" to be with and for undeserving, unworthy, sinful people.

Shirley Guthrie,
Christian Doctrine

-what I came across while doing homework this evening

ACL

3 days. 8 stages. 130 bands.
http://www.aclfestival.com/

Set in a huge grassy park directly in the middle of the great capital Austin, TX, Austin City Limits proved to be as amazing as its following.

Although feeling slightly irresponsible for taking a 3-day break from life to just sit and enjoy music and atmosphere, I concur that it was worth it!

Favorite moments:

• spending time with my friend Rachel, who recently moved to Austin after graduating Baylor.




• Vitamin water after hours of direct sunlight and 90+ weather.




• Sipping Pinot Grigio on a blanket during the evenings while rocking out or simply swaying.



• Seeing hundreds of people in tie dye.




• Watching people, in all shapes and sizes, in all clothes and nakedness, young and old, loving life like crazy!

Some bands that threw killer shows, [probably why they are all famous!]: Foo Fighters (of course), The Mars Volta, Beck, The Raconteurs, Manu Chao, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Iron and Wine...

Some amazing new discoveries: Band of Horses (love them), Gillian Welch (made me want to learn how to play the banjo), Neko Case (awesome voice), Vampire Weekend, The Swell Season, Fleet Foxes...

God's will?

Instead of diligently chipping away at my theology homework on Christian Doctrine, Shirley C. Guthrie's chapters on the "person" of God and why we exist, I cannot stop contemplating the ambiguity of God's will.
I've always heard and believed that one of the ways to know God's will is by the ominous "opening of doors." And, quite truthfully, I've followed most of the opened doors, assuming that they are God's will. If everything works out perfectly and it feels right, it is... right?
On Sunday, I was listening to a podcast of The Village church in Dallas where the speaker Beau Hughes began a series on Jonah. To my surprise and discomfort (the good kind), he revealed that there will always be "open doors" leading away from God and His plan. In fact, there will probably be several appealing options, pretty ornamented doors with signs that say OPEN ME on them. Pretty colored doors with gold handles. Doors that swing open noiselessly and easily. For Jonah, there was a boat going to Tarshish.
I can't help but wonder how many luxurious cruises I've taken to Tarshish, missing the one to Nineveh.
Thankfully, I haven't been swallowed by a great sea creature- yet.

"I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls" ~Henry David Thoreau

Here are some pictures of my apartment!


my bedroom:


largest closet ever!:


"Mama," the new mode of transportation :)

and my new roomie, Jessica :)

New Address:

1800 S. 5th St. #3005,

Waco, TX 76706