Where I Belong

We sang this song at our women's conference this past weekend. It's a simple song but I think it has deep meaning. Definitely a desire to be delighted in by the Lord.
Lyrics:
Your presence is all I’m longing for here in the secret place
Your nearness is all I’m waiting for here in the quiet place, here in the secret place
My soul waits for you alone
Like the watchmen wait for dawn
Here I’ve finally found the place
Where we’ll meet, Lord, face to face
I’ve finally found where I belong, I’ve finally found where I belong, In Your presence
I’ve finally found where I belong, to be with You, to be with You
I am my Beloved’s and He is mine, so come into Your garden and take delight in me
Take delight in me
Delight in me, Delight in me
Delight in me, Delight in me
Here in Your presence, God, I find my rest
Here in Your presence, God.

Not Me Monday!!

Just a few things I have NOT been up to lately....

This past weekend my husband and I did not get new Droid phones that did not completely baffle me in how complex it was...I mean c'mon, I'm 29 years old...not 70! These new fangled technological advances come super easy to a young person like me...and I did not just use the words new fangled....ahem. With this said not new phone I most certainly could figure out how to quickly edit contact information and definitely did not call one of my friends early Saturday morning over 6 times accidentally while trying to edit her contact info...I mean, I'm so much faster at figuring out how to use this phone than that! I also did not eventually pass my phone over to my friend's mother to see if she could figure it out for me who would never have also accidentally called her daughter and then when she answered tell her to promptly go back to sleep then get a very good giggle out of it with me....we are so much more technologically savvy than that and compassionate at sleeping high schoolers! Also with this phone I definitely did not try to text my sister out of excitement with it and find out 3 days later that I had actually texted her office work phone...not mobile phone...and I was definitely believing the best the whole time as to why she wasn't texting me back! (oops :) ). Seriously....I'm way faster at figuring out this whole smartphone thing than you may realize ;) HA! And lastly...I did not dig in my purse only to find my sunglasses had broken and would never then ask my husband to try on my sunglasses just to get a good laugh out of it quickly snap a picture using the new Droid and definitely had more grace than to post it immediately to Facebook...I'm such a sweeter wife than that! :)

ps- I definitely did NOT just squish a fruit-fly on my laptop computer screen in order to kill it...that's gross! I mean, WHO does that?!


Here's to things you would NEVER find me doing...so what things have you NOT been up to lately?! :)

Drrooiiid

So we did it. Jack and I finally broke down and got the new Droid Bionic phones. They have been fun to navigate and play with in the last 2 days we've had them. Sometimes it makes me feel like an old person because at times I feel like it's WAY more high tech than I am BUT thankfully I'm not afraid to play around with it and figure it out.



I have even successfully figured out how to edit my contact information in it after calling a friend of mine early in the morning about 9 times while attempting to correct the spelling of her last name, then finding out she was sleeping and apologizing and telling her to go back to sleep. Whoops! She was a good sport about it and later told me she had finally woken up for the day she got a good laugh out of it. *shakes my head*

Anyways...other than that life has been going really well. I attended an awesome "home-town" women's retreat with my church this weekend called Faithful Abundant True where we watched a 6 session video series by Kay Arthur, Priscilla Shirer and Beth Moore. It.was.FANTASTIC!

Points of interest/learning from it:

• If we are truly going to trust God we must KNOW God and the only way we can really know God is if we are consistently studying his Word! When we live by every word that comes out of the mouth of God we are enabled to endure the trials we face...but the key is to KNOW His Word! When we know the Word of God we can live with the rest of faith. What's the rest of faith? I'll tell you...The rest of faith is uniting the Word of God with faith for a particular situation. It means cling to the Lord, cling to His Word when difficult times come. KNOW the Word in order to apply it.
• We must believe that our God is able, able to even surprise us! However, my foundation of who Christ is must be correct and true before I will truly be able to believe and trust that God is able to surprise me. If we don't believe God is able it will alter how we pray and alter the way we lean on Him and trust Him. We must remember that God CAN, however, whether or not God does something is a question of his sovereignty NOT his ability. Our duty is to believe He can and to trust Him in how He responds. And the truth is...God can do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond and even BEYOND beyond what we could ever ask or even imagine! Don't close God into a box.
• I long to be a godly woman...a woman who pursues God and lives in the Spirit. Any day we just wake up and decide to just live it out we will simply live in the flesh. We will never live a day in the Spirit accidentally. It is an active pursuit.

That's just a quick snippet of all the nuggets that were gleaned. If you ever have a chance to see any of these ladies or participate in one of their studies I highly recommend it.

That's all for now...off to work with the Youth! w00t! :)

Not Me Monday

Ever have things that happen that you can't believe you actually did, said, thought and then looked back and thought to yourself...that was NOT me! Well here's a tribute to those moments. I've been following a blog and she started these a little while back, took a hiatus, and now she's back...so I figured I'd try one out! Here's to "not me Monday"

Last week I most certainly did not pull all the clean clothes out of our dryer and throw them directly back into the laundry basket without folding them. I definitely did not then wear clothes the rest of the week from said laundry basket, and of course I did not throw it back in the dryer to de-wrinkle before wearing...NOT me! I also would never ask my husband to wash a load of laundry for me while I was at work and come home to find all the clean clothes from the laundry basket BACK in the washing machine...no way. I then would not just laugh, point to the stack of dirty clothes in the corner of our bedroom and say, those were the ones to be washed. Not me!! And lastly, I would never wait until today, over a week later, to actually get around to folding those clothes while having piles of other clean folded laundry lining our hallway upstairs, and then leave those piles to come write this post...NOT ME!!

What have you not been up to this week?! :)

Visiting "The Springs"

This past weekend Jack and I enjoyed a quick visit to Colorado Springs, CO to catch up with our friends J*K, see a Rockies game and help out with a Cares Ministry outreach event. What a sweet time of catching up and enjoying our friends. We are thankful for them and thankful that we can continue staying close even though we live 4hrs apart. J is working hard on his seminary classes while K just got a new job with Compassion International. She is super excited about working with that great organization and it's been so great to see the Lord's provision for them as they took the step of faith to move to The Springs. We had a blast driving up to Denver on Friday night and after finally getting to the stadium we were able to enjoy the Rockies game. Too bad they had a "AAA line-up" as Jack kept mentioning and they didn't play their 2 star players but that's ok...it was fun to sit up there, relax, and watch a game with a gorgeous view! After the game we headed through downtown Denver and walked to a nearby restaurant for a late dinner. It was fun being back in a city that was actually awake, open and hopping past 8pm! Santa Fe tends to shut down around 8pm...anyways, we enjoyed a fun dinner and headed back to The Springs late that night. Kimi and I were thankful the guys were awake so we laid the seats down in the back of the Flex and stretched out for a nice snooze on the way home.

View from our seats

The sunset was fun to watch from there

Skyline from the stadium

Heading home, Jack has a new accessory :)

Saturday we woke up and started getting things ready for the outreach to their apartment community. We had brought corn-hole with us, J and J headed to the store to run some errands and bough ladder ball and K and I were busy getting drinks and whatnot set up for the outreach. Buffalo Wild Wings came a brought 300 wings to help with the outreach (for free!!) and we provided chips and drinks. We set up around 12 and the people started coming. We played lots of games, threw the football, met lots of neighbors and had a spicy wing challenge. Over all we think about 45-50 people showed up which was a good turn out and K*J were able to make lots of new connections with their neighbors. We are excited for them to pour into the lives of the people in their apartment complex. After we packed up everything and cleaned up we headed to a restaurant for a super early dinner called The Elephant Bar. There were SO many selections! We had a great time eating, catching up, and watching some college football (aaah, love this time of year!). Then we headed back to the apt, packed up, sat around chit-chatting some more and then Jack and I headed home late that night.

The festivities in full swing

The two challengers!

WINNER!!

He needed a drink right after it was over :)

Sunday Jack taught our Sunday school class since our leader was out of town (I think on some big hunting trip) and he did a great job. We are working through a study on the book of Mark and we had lots of really good/deep discussion with the people in the class. We then headed out for some lunch with our friend, Dixon, then headed to the Postons' house (one of Jack's bosses) to hang out, watch some football and catch up. Then the 3 guys went to the Lab to do some work while Barb Poston and I hung out. It was nice to catch up and go for a short walk together. That afternoon Jack and I headed back to church because we've started working with the youth group (started about a month ago) and had a blast running obstacle/relay courses (we did the ultimate fun one where you spin around a bat then have to run back to your team...needless to say there were numerous falls, crooked paths and a lot of laughter...too bad I didn't have the camera with me) and then spending some time in the Word with the kids. We are so thankful for our church family, friends and the ministries we are able to be involved in. It was a full and fun weekend. The next couple of weeks are going to be full as well with work and getting ready for our house guests coming the first week of October! Looking forward to enjoying the Balloon Fiesta 2011!! :)

Oldie but a goodie!

So a few years ago we had some friends (Debbie, Brian, Seth, Rebecca, Jack and me) down to Atlanta to hang out at my parents' house and to run a fun trail 5k race. It was right around the time of Jack's birthday so my parents were gracious and bought him some really nice Bose headphones for school because he liked to drown out the guys around him with music so he could get work done. One thing we realized was that when you were listening to music the headphones were so good at noise cancelling that you couldn't even hear yourself singing if you sang along to the music. We decided to test that out. The really fun part was that the person with the headphones wasn't allowed to pick the song and had no idea what they would be singing until they heard it on the headphones. We all had to have a go at it and sang to our heart's content while the rest of us got a good laugh. Here's the funniest video we have from it...blast from the past. Hope you enjoy!! :)

Beauty in Suffering

So a friend of ours sent us this video. Our friends went to college with this family (The McLeods) and have been praying for them for the last few years when their son was critically injured in a football accident. He was 15 years old when it happened. God has been working in this family's life and their son has been a source of encouragement and has pointed them towards Christ through their struggles. If you have 30 minutes to spare I encourage you to watch this video. It was taped at Cru's national staff conference this summer in Fort Collins, CO. I was definitely in tears at points but it was a good reminder of where our hope should truly lie when we encounter various trials. Hope you enjoy it was well!