a list inspired by kelly of the wonderful ideas. why focus on the down side of life. keep on the sunnyside of life!
1. the color green on any day but most specificaly on a day when the sky is bright blue and the sun is shining. it is the best green around four in the afternoon in august.
2. walking thru a crowd of people and not knowing anyone, then seeing a face i know.
3. sitting on a cold day ensconsed in blankets near a window with books and tea.
4. reading. books. words. pages.
5. the smell of paper after it comes out of a printer or copier.
6. children in any form.
7. driving in my car and pulling up next to a car with a child at the window. smiling and waving and making faces at them makes me especially happy.
8. typing.
9. opening my inbox and finding an email.
10. the smell of the printmaking room at BJU.
11. the belly of a cat. it is so very soft.
12. warm feet.
13. sitting around a campfire with friends staring in the flames and becoming mezmorised.
14. finding shapes in the clouds.
15. brown dirt...so brown it is almost black.
16. sitting on a porch in a rocking chair with a friend or family member not saying anything, just rocking.
17. fireflies in ohio. in the summer time at dusk hundreds of thousands of them would come out and light up over the soybean field behind our house.
18. faeries and pretending they are real.
19. feeling snow or rain on my face.
20. yellow rain boots.
21. green slicker.
22. the fuzzy black worms.
23. stars: falling or stationary.
24. driving in snow at night with the headlights on: the swirl of snow around the lights.
25. waking up on saturday morning at 8:00 knowing that i can go right back to sleep.
26. my sponge bob square pants boxers.
27. the smell of baby.
28. forts made in corn fields with little brothers.
29. my pawpaw telling the same joke every time i see him. "there was once a very wise man nammed yogi berra that asked a man one time: ' what do you do when you come to a fork in the road?' (pawpaw is laughing hysterically and slapping his knee at this time...) 'you pick it up!'"
30. visiting places from my childhood.
31. the smell of a freshly cut alfalfa field.
32. the hooty owls at my house in ohio that would sit on either side of the house and talk to each other at one in the morning.
33. lying in my bed and seeing the moonlight come into my room and making leaf shapes on my bed, wall and floor.
34. the sound of locusts in august.
35. looking at the moon and feeling like i know it.
36. narnia in any shape or form.
37. singing "be thou my vision"
38. feeling mud squish between my toes.
39. going barefoot at every opportunity.
40. playing grown-up days and dressing my age.
41. my boss and his quirks.
42. jeremiah's laugh.
43. puppy dogs that get so excited to see people.
44. cuddly children that are tired and just want to be held.
45. the rock down by my river, and sitting there with my friends.
46. peter who is four years old that told me the other day that he needed to start shaving cause he now has a beard. and that everyday he "very needs to definately cut goliath's head off."
47. candles that smell good.
48. talking with children and seeing the world thru their eyes.
49. gwen, tim, ethan.
50. knowing that i can talk to Jesus whenever i want!
i have three tops on. a blue long sleeved t-shirt, a grey short sleeved t-shirt, a short, brown wool sweater with grapes and leaves on the side. my skirt is a small tent and is green, i have blue WARM sweats (kind of sweats. more like knit cotton...) on under my skirt, black and white socks on with my tan birkenstocks. the key is warmth here people, not fashion
“Honestly, that is the most bizzar thing of which my eyes have read.” we won’t mention any names, but his initials spell tim french.
A bit of a conversation that I participated in today...
Talking about people who try too hard with their outfits, this person said:
"Hillary, I don't want to be one of those people who wears clothes..."
*silence was heard in the room, then a bust-your-gut laughing time period.*
from a friend...
"I had to laugh while I was standing in line at the records office. They
have a rack of borchures about the University (BJU of course)
beside the information desk. One is about Why Christians should attend a
Christian University. I did have to chuckle (chortle) slightly when I
saw your picture on the backside. I thought it a bit ironic."
I feel like someone has taken their year's supply of cotton balls and stuffed them up into my head around the ear, eye, nose and cheek area. I feel like someone is taking a vice grip and squeezing the living daylights out of my head. I feel like I am only hearing half of what is going on around me because my ears are so stopped up, and yet, the show must go on. Life, work, school and misery goes on even if you don't want it to! =)
On a slightly better matter, I am now the proud new owner of a cellular phone. It is blue on the front with a nice decal of a clock and LG on the top middle of the phone. In the lower left hand corner is the speaker for speaker phone. And my favorite decal is the verizon symbol located lower right. I won't go into any more detail cause everyone and their mother, even Tim, has a cellular phone. So if you would like to call me, do so by sending me an email ([email protected]) first and getting my phone number or giving me yours. Have an absolutely fabulous day.
Had it ever occurred to me to ask the Lord to give me faith? No. Sadly not.
This weekend was the 2005 College Winter Retreat at the Bonclarken Resort thing. There were about 30 college age people there. I rode up with a friend and we started talking about our testimonies. She said that at one point she was reading David Brainerd's diary and realized that she had never asked for faith before.
So many times I struggle with having faith, and it never crossed my mind that I am not going to be able to make myself have faith. I just would hope for the best and doubt that the Lord would come through. I didn't really think about asking for faith until my devotions on Saturday morning. I was reading in Romans 6 when that good old ton of bricks hit me in the face again. It says "We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin."
I knew that I am crucified with Christ. That has been pounded into my head. But this weekend it really hit my heart hard. My body of sin was nullified. In Christ I am no longer responsible to my sin, or have to obey it. "Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him." It was like the Lord finally opened my heart. I had had head knowledge of all these things before, but this weekend he softened my heart to understanding. It was then that I realized how important it was that I ask God for faith to believe these things. That is what this is all about! I can't have enough faith to believe that I am dead to my sin. It will take so much more faith to believe that I can defeat my sin rather than God nullifying it forever.
Is it crazy that I have gone 22 years without having this heart knowledge? All I can say is:
I will extol you, my God and King,
and bless your name forever and ever.
Every day I will bless you
and praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised,
and his greatness is unsearchable.
Psalm 145:1-3
Thank you Lord for your goodness and mercy to me! My heart is overflowing with praise and thanksgiving. My mouth praises you! I want to shout to everyone that Your are a God of love and that You love me! Lord, give me faith.
my church just had the season of prayer. it was one of those full-heart experiences. the intensity of hundreds of people praying at once, and the joy at knowing that the Holy Spirit is right there in your midst.
we had Bible study last night, and we continued the season of prayer and spent 75% of the time in prayer. to have that close knit time of prayer with people your own age, it was truly awesome. it was one of those experiences that so moved me that i can't really explain. only that how can anyone NOT believe that there is God that sent his Son??
i love rainy days. right now i am sitting in "my" office looking out the window wishing that i was running out there stomping in the puddles. today is the perfectest day cause they are thoughtful days. (not to side track here, but who in the world thought of spelling thought with a g??? i would hate to be a foreigner trying to learn english. even foreigner. forener. that is how i would spell it. but i am not the world's best speller as heidi and gwen would tell you. i spell envelope, envalope. it makes more sense that way.) i love days were i can sit with a book in my nice warm living room with the door open so i can hear the river and the rain, all snuggled up in a blanket. and a cup of tea. sometimes i like just sitting and watching the rain fall down. sometimes i like laying on my back in the rain and feeling it on my face. i wish i had a green raincoat. a slicker with a hood, and blue paisley on the inside. with red rubber boots to splash in. i wonder what a raindrop thinks when it is falling to the ground. is that weird? ok it is, but think of it. if you were a raindrop, it would be the beginning of your life. you would fall to the earth, and if you were lucky, you would fall on the grass and turn into grass or flower or tree food. ok. i will stop. rain always makes me think of green. maybe that is why i like rainy days. i love the really fine misty stuff that feels like hundreds of tiny kisses on your face. and it is just cool enough to be very refreshing. or the really big wet drops that you can dodge. those are fun too. cause normally it is really warm outside when those come, and you can run outside barefoot.
so moral of the story (other than it has been seven days now that i have made my bed and have kept my room in perfect order) is, don't be gloomy on rainy days. they are so very beautiful.
the books i am reading right now are as follows:
a fairy called hilary
atlas shrugged
i capture the castle
villette
new year's hopes:
beginning next post, to write grammatically correct, as well as spell check all my entries...=)
exercise
read thru the bible chronologically with my sunday school class
get un-addicted to coffee
eat breakfast
write christmas thank you notes
get involved in some sort of bible study
get a "b" in both human anatomy + physiology as well as nutrition at greenville tech
get new red shoes
be faithful in bloging and or journaling
keep my room/car clean
use my sewing machine more!!
go camping and hiking more
keep up on my email
so that is my life in a nutshell....well, a big nutshell.