I miss Africa.

 I've never seen so many beautiful smiles :)

 They love to learn!

 This is my buddy Caleb, the sweetest and most beautiful boy I could ever imagine. I won't hold it against him that he's wearing an Obama shirt ;)

I love babies!!!!

I've always loved to travel. There's something so magical to me about being in a new place, surrounded by people and sights I've never witnessed before. I've had the privilege of being able to visit so many incredible places and make precious memories. I've been on mission trips to Guatemala with my grandparents' compassion ministry, and seeing the severe poverty prepared me for my recent journey to Uganda this last May. Even though I've had mission trip experience, nothing could have prepared me for not only the intense poverty and suffering I witnessed in Africa, but also the abundance of joy, hope, and kindness I witnessed. From the moment my team arrived in Entebbe, we were shown such hospitality and generosity that we immediately felt at home. Today I'm missing the red dirt that caked my shoes and the bottom of my long skirts I had to wear. I'm missing the bumpy, frightening van rides, our hut and mosquito nets, and the food. More than anything, I miss the people. I miss their absolutely beautiful, black faces, and their luminous smiles. I miss the way the children chased after us in their bare feet, begging for their picture to be taken. I miss hearing their life stories, and how they persevered through trial after trial. Their English was slow, enunciated, and quiet. It was like a soothing murmur against our loud, jumbled American voices. I miss hearing their laughs as tried to speak their language. I miss the way the people worshiped God with humility and reckless abandon. We heard stories of children dying, parents dying, siblings dying, whether from war, HIV, or any other number of tragedies. Still, these people had the faith to move mountains. I love this place and these people more than I can explain. I went to Africa to serve and to give my all to be a blessing to the people I encountered. I immediately felt overwhelmed when I arrived, because I found myself being served and blessed beyond what I could comprehend. I hope one day God brings me back :)

Goin' to the chapel...

Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 is the first one that popped up in the google search bar, which kind of disappoints me because I feel like that means it's overused. Oh well. Today I read this in my Shakespeare class, and it seemed so fitting since my best friend is getting married this weekend. Weddings are a beautiful mess. I'll just say it. They are wonderful celebrations, but I don't think there could be a wedding without some chaos. I guess it's fitting for life! I'm so happy for her, and I'm so thankful to get to be part of their special day, and though this sonnet may be a cliche wedding blessing, any chance to get to quote a little Shakespeare makes me feel good!

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Love Does.

I read this book over the summer, and as is the tradition in my family, passed it along. My mom first read it, loved it, and proceeded to buy 4 more copies- one for each person in my family. Usually if my mom does this I say to her, "mom, as a fellow book-lover and collector I understand what you're doing, but you're killing more trees!" She would respond by telling me she was supporting a great author (who, in this case, gives the proceeds to Africa) and that everyone in our family simply had to have this book on their shelves. This is one of those books. There's plenty of Christian books out there that talk about love in action, but this book is witty, funny, heart-wrenching, and beautifully refreshing. Bob Goff gets back to the basics, while still being forward-thinking. He relates every story in his life- even the most obscure and minute ones, into an analogy of God's love. Each chapter begins with "I used to think..." showing how his life has transformed all because of Christ, and how he lives each day to show others this great gift. My favorite of these statements, perhaps, was this: "I used to think you had to be special for God to use you, but now I know you simply need to say yes." As I was reading this book and all the great things Bob has done to glorify God, I kept thinking to myself how Bob was special. One of the greatest tragedies of human life is the feeling of being so insignificant, when Jesus Christ died for all of us, and would have died for even just one of us. Bob said yes, Joan of Arc said yes, Mother Theresa said yes, I can say yes, and so can you. This book changed my life. READ IT.

"What I've learned the more time I've spent following Jesus is that God delights in answering our impossible prayers. The kind of prayers made in a dark cell by someone holding unwashed hands. Prayers asking for the things we couldn't possibly think could happen for us or someone else. Ones we might even feel a little bad saying, as if it's just asking God for too much. But what we need most is to return to Him, to return to our lives."

"I've learned that God sometimes allows us to find ourselves in a place where we want something so bad that we can't see past it. Sometimes we can't even see God because of it. When we want something that bad, it's easy to mistake what we truly need for the thing we really want. When this sort of thing happens, and it seems to happen to everyone, I've found it's because what God has for us is obscured from view, just around another bend in the road."

"Because of our love for each other, I understand just a little more how God has pursued me in creative and whimsical ways, ways that initially did not get my attention. Nevertheless, He wouldn't stop. That's what love does--it pursues blindly, unflinchingly, and without end. When you go after something you love, you'll do anything it takes to get it, even if it costs everything."

Album of the week? This is the album of the decade...

I am not someone who jumps on the bandwagon. I also don't like to be that person that says, "I liked those before those were popular," but I will say that I did read and enjoy all the Twilight books before that craziness, and I have loved Mumford & Sons long before they appeared on the radio with their last album. I have a wide variety of friends, and one of my more country conservative friends just recently told me he didn't listen to Mumford & Sons because they are too "hipster and mainstream." Why does indie music have to be associated with the style that has been labeled "hipster" just in our decade? I am a girl from southwest Kansas, I love some good ol' country music, and even though I have some liberal thoughts in my head, I guess if I had to "label" myself I would be conservative. I don't wear trendy hobo clothes or architect glasses and I don't ride a bike or vespa. I like coffee, but I'm not obsessed with taking pictures of it. I don't really care if food is organic or not, and whatever else stereotypes someone as a "hipster", I don't really qualify for. This band and this album is pure genius. These guys are poets, and they create beautiful music that leaves me awestruck. My personal opinion? Yes, but I just really think this band shouldn't fall into a category that would make others outside that circle feel as if it's not their style. Just listen to the lyrics people, those are for everyone because they write about the human experience. I love every song on this album and their last, but if I had to narrow it down to a favorite on this one I would say check out "Holland Road" and the album opener "Babel." Go listen and decide for yourself :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UDWCScrWeo

To the woods!

 These are some photos I snapped over the week-end! We saw a MOOSE!!!

This weekend I traveled out to the beautiful Colorado mountains with my parents to close down our family cabin for the winter season. Our cabin is nestled in the mountains of Taylor Park, a namesake of which I am very proud. This place is my sanctuary: surrounded by pines and a few scattered aspens, perched on a hill overlooking a pond and river, with mountains saluting our land from across the road. I love this place. I will be completely cliché here and say that if home is where the heart is, this place is most certainly my home. When I drive up the gravel road, turn a corner and see our hammock, our elk racks hanging on the garage, and the variety of birdhouses and feeders my grandma has decorated the outside with, I can barely contain my joy. I take a breath of the pure mountain air and I feel filled, despite the thin atmosphere. When I am here, my thoughts echo Thoreau: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

My dad taught me to fly-fish out in these streams, and I am convinced there is no greater feeling than when that trout strikes the line, you reel him in, and land your prize on the bank. It’s an altogether unique form of bliss; rivaled only, for me, by rocking a baby to sleep. Kansas has its own form of beauty—probably the most beautiful sunsets around, but the woods and mountains are enchanting. I love feeling like a hermit in our cabin. I’ll cuddle up with a blanket and cup of tea by our wood-burning stove and think, “this is the life.” When I am here, I forget everything that worries and plagues me back home in my everyday life. I read books, wander through the woods, scope out wildlife, laugh with my loved ones, and lay on our deck to observe what seems like millions of stars. I don’t think about where I’ll be in a year—if I’ll have a job, if I’ll have a love interest, who our president will be—I am completely thankful for the present moment.

Sometimes I fantasize about completely abandoning the real world and escaping to the woods as Thoreau did at Walden Pond, away from the constraints and suffocation of society. When my mind turns toward this course, I’m reminded of the movie Into the Wild, which I believe was first a book based on a true story. In this movie, a young man completely abandons his life and escapes to the wilderness of Alaska, where he believes he will find life’s true meaning. He meets a variety of people along the way, including an old man father-figure that makes me cry every time I watch a certain scene in the movie. He ends up eating some poisonous berries and slowly starves to death. As his life slowly and agonizingly ends, he is confronted with the conviction that “happiness is only real when shared.” I don’t want to turn my back on the world or the people I love and seek the wilderness to fulfill me. The truth is that it gets to be extremely isolating and you feel alienated and insignificant. In the bustle and chaos of the world, as well as in the stillness and tranquility of the woods, my one constant is that Christ is alive in me. He has rescued me from sin and death, and living a life to honor him does not involve rejecting the world and all the lost souls in it; quite the opposite, actually.

Note: I wrote this blog while I was at our cabin, and while we were there my parents received a phone call informing them that my “poppy” (my mom’s dad) had a stroke. It is almost a year to the day that he had his first stroke, and the news made us immediately pack up and head home early. As I looked at his picture on the wall of the cabin holding a monster of a fish, with that bright, huge smile, I prayed. I asked what I’m sure all people ask God in moments of crisis. I prayed for peace, for his protection, for God’s will. My dad prayed, and simply said, “God, we trust You with him.” That’s what it really comes down to. In moments of helplessness and fear, you can either trust God no matter the outcome, or let the fear and worry overwhelm you. I’m so happy to report that my beloved poppy is doing much better, and I give all the glory to God.

Shout out to my metaphysical homies

Probably no one knows this about me. Well, maybe a few of my fellow English majors, but not my family or closest friends. They would say, who are these mystery men you're obsessed with? There have been times I have tried to introduce the special people in my life to the greatness of these men, but I don't think I've gotten through to them completely. So I hope you read and appreciate a poem from this genius of a man, whose words feed my soul. Without further ado, I give you, John Donne.

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
   And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
   "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,
   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
   To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
   Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
   Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
   --Whose soul is sense-- cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
   The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
   That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
   Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
   Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
   Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
   As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
   To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
   Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
   And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
   Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
   And makes me end where I begun.

You're so nice...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYWv_NSBZQI
This is going to be a stereotypical single gal post. My apologies. This week was just one of those weeks where the whole "content with being single" mindset flew out the window. It happens from time to time. Let me be clear: I am not the type of girl that sits around reading Victorian novels listening to sad British pop music, writing in my journal about my longing to find true love. Now, I won't say I haven't ever done that, but it's not a habit. Anyway, this song came on my shuffle one day and it pretty much summed up the way I was feeling. This isn't just a song for the single, but maybe for the brokenhearted or rejected. I'm not trying to depress anyone, but I love the lyrics in this song because they are so honest and straightforward. I can tell she didn't sit down to write it hoping for her gloom to be translated into poetic genius. She just wrote what she felt, and it resonated with me. There's someone out there that I wish knew when I meant two sugars I actually meant three. One day... Sometimes being alone feels just fine, and other times, it leaves a bitter taste behind.