Wednesday, September 30, 2009

slow fade of summer

i just discovered fernando ortega's music via kathleen ara choi. i've been enjoying it :) it's been calming my soul with peace this morning. i was listening to his song "california town" and the lyrics caught my ear. maybe because it's kinda romantic but it also just gave me a laid back, relaxed, Jesus is good kinda feel :)



Good evening
Lovely evening
A perfect evening
For a stroll on the town
Couples on the boardwalk
And down on the sandbar
Holding hands, staring out
To the moon on the ocean
Silver and soft
Water in motion

Car lights
Pacific Highway
We look both ways
My baby and me
We find a fancy restaurant
A table outside
In a quiet corner, please
Wind in the palm trees
Candles and wine
Her clear blue eyes
We stay till closing

Come on, my love
We can walk home
Past the dancers
And the bands winding down
Remind me again
What's the question?
We belong here
In this California town

Slow fade of summer
Stars in the sky
Songs in the night
The boom of the breakers

The pull of the tide
The swell and the sigh
Salt in the sea spray

Sunday, September 27, 2009

sabbath

so i just remembered that i have friends who blog!

i just added a buncha people on my subscription list so watch out i'll be reading your entries muwahahahah

today's message at cov pres was about the 4th commandment, keeping the sabbath. today was a great day of rest. sabbath=resting in completeness and fullness. not resting because you're tired, but because the work is finished, done, complete. just like our Savior on the cross.

a family from cov pres invited sunah, sarah, and i to their home for lunch. their home was amazing. they live on a cozy humble farm with 4 goats named kelly, mary, bear, and whoops i forgot the last one :( they live in a house that was built in the 1920's that was intended for two families to live in one house so there's two front doors and two living spaces but one kitchen. but this darling family of six uses up every room of the house well :) they grow their own cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans and other veggies. they have a huge apple tree. they also have a huge chestnut tree and they feed the leaves off of that to the goats which they love eating. i also learned that chestnuts come encapsuled in a prickly outer covering! this prickly outer covering (prickly like porcupines) is also deliciously eaten by the goats.

their children are named (from oldest to youngest): christian, hannah, lydia, and rebecca. christian is chivalrous, brave, and well-mannered (he called his dad "father" which isn't something you hear normally from kids but it was just so endearing to me). hannah is mature and responsible. lydia is adventurous, playful, a dreamer. rebecca can't really talk so much yet as she is 21 months old (?) but she is a darling cutie pie with shining golden ringlets. she had a deep head injury awhile back and had to get it sutured up but the scar is healing very well, the nurse in me says.

the mother, sharbelle (sp?) exhibits a gentle, easy-going, diligent, faithful spirit. faithful to her husband, children, and to God. the father john is sociable, hospitable, welcoming, a leader. he's dedicated to the work of the Lord and longs to see hearts turn to Him. he's all about "using your vocation for His mission." he's also the second cousin of katie couric.

this family has God shining in and out of them and i have to say that they are absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful. getting to know them and being welcomed into their home really touched my heart. through them my heart smiled and i had joy. it gave me hope for the future. no family is perfect, but if they're dedicated to the Lord and put Him above everything else, fruit can burst through. this family is God's. nothing can take that away.

i wish i could have brought my camera with me because there were so many great moments to catch on camera and the scenery around their house was so peaceful, calming, and beautiful. but i got a shot of the goats on my phone :)

this is mary & kelly :) i never knew goats could have personalities as their's!

this is a green bean and spearmint leaves grown on their farm :)

on a side note, i just looked at the score of a test i took last friday and i did bad. but i refuse to have this get me down because God is too good to me :)
Italic

the sacred romance

so earlier tonight i was sitting on my bed with my laptop, clicking around just being bored. the idea of being bored is starting to disgust me and i think it disgusts God too. how dare we be bored when we're living for Him? to me, it implies that life with God is boring but nooo, life without God is boring and also lifeless! anyhoo, i decided to look at my big ole book stack and see if there was a book that i could read. i initially picked out passion and purity by elizabeth eliot but before i took it out of the stack, the sacred romance by brent curtis and john eldredge (author of wild at heart and co-author of captivating). i had been reading this book last year but i think school started to pick up so i stopped reading it sometime along the way. from looking at the last page that i marked, i had gotten pretty far with this book but i really can't recall anything that this book was talking about.

it's a great book though and i think it may help me address some things that are quite pertinent in my life at the moment. it's all about getting to the heart of things and what that means...what God's heart means.

i was just telling my friend sally about how i think i tend to include a lot of unnecessary details when telling stories... the real point of my blog entry was to share a part of the sacred romance book but instead i had to also include the background story behind it -_- pastor mark driscoll is featured on a nightline special about the ten commandments and he talks about how we can idolize ourselves. this is apparent through all of the social networking websites and how we just wanna let the whole world know that we drank a decaf coffee this morning (pastor mark's example). he really does bring a good point and it made me evaluate myself because i can definitely share those kind of comments too. i think sometimes i spill those unnecessary details because i wanna talk about myself and just add more self-elevation, feed my pride. i'm not trying to be hard on myself, but just trying to keep it real.

i'm gonna watch myself now when i wanna change my facebook or aim/gchat status... i don't wanna throw out words of pride, shame, greed, complaining, resentment, bitterness, negativity... but instead i wanna throw words of love, encouragement, hope, faith, heart-issued matters... more of these kinda words need to fill our fb news feeds and buddy lists!

aaaanyway... so back to the sacred romance book haha. i really liked this one paragraph:

"Indeed, if we all listen, a Sacred Romance calls to us through our heart every moment of our lives. It whispers to us on the wind, invites us through the laughter of good friends, reaches out to us through the touch of someone we love. We've heard it in our favorite music, sensed it at the birth of our first child, been drawn to it while watching the shimmer of a sunset on the ocean. The Romance is even present in times of great personal suffering: the illness of a child, the loss of a marriage, the death of a friend. Something calls to us through experiences like these and rouses an inconsolable longing deep within our heart, wakening in us a yearning for intimacy, beauty, and adventure."

agape christian fellowship <3

Saturday, September 26, 2009

rainy saturday

saturday rain
'the office' marathon
room makeover
homemade fried rice
running out in cool rain
pho
colbie caillat
lightroom
song of songs
camera obscura
scalloped potatoes with cheese and broccoli
pizza + a movie
no patient data sheet/med sheet due tomorrow!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

i want Your eyes to be my mirror...

praise God for giving me such great people in my life to encourage me and speak words of life and truth to me that hits straight to my soul. whether i know it or not, it ends up being just what i needed.

sonia told me on gchat today, "thanks for being you. you are needed."

it's so hard for me to believe that i'm making an impact on someone's life unless i see the evidence for my own eyes or i hear people say it. which isn't very often. God can use people in the ways where you least expect it. He uses me in ways that i least expect to be used. and when i'm used for His glory by just being ME...it brings me to a peace of mind that tells me that being myself in God's eyes is enough. i'm living in His Spirit, and other people can see the love, compassion, peace, and gentleness that comes along with living in the Spirit.

let my pain be my gift to others...and to myself. use your life to encourage others, spur each other on, lift up one another, relate to one another. we humans need each other. with or without God, we do.

man, this was a huge day for reflection. day offs from clinicals are nice :)

Love is still the answer.

i saw this verse on a friend's facebook status... don't know if she's a believer or not but i thought it was really cool that she put it up:

"Owe no one anything, except to love each other." -Romans 13:8

i dunno what version that's from but it's way diff from the NIV and totally didn't realize till now that it's part of the verse that i put up last night.

with no bitterness, no judgment, no record of wrongs, no grudges, no fakeness. i wanna love sincerely, love out of my comfort zone, love so that i can also be healed.

radical, crazy love.


i wanna set my eyes on what matters. what lasts. what's beautiful.

He matters. He lasts. He's beautiful.

this is kind of a tangent...but i was telling a friend whom i'm just starting to get to know about my life. she was saying how she was so amazed at my story because it shows how God trusted me to give me those struggles in my life (hopefully i'm saying this right) and my mentality of self-pity, regret, complaint, anger just started to melt away. i realized i had that mentality bc of my own selfishness. my life is not my own. God has set me on a journey and my map is the Spirit. i shouldn't care about the opinions of others, the circumstances in my life, what i desire out of my life... i'm living for Him, whether i like it or not, God is always gonna reel me back to Him.

i was just comparing myself to about 5 months ago and man...God really does make life exciting to keep on changing me like this.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

LOVE is the answer.

an excerpt from my journal bc i don't feel like making up new words :P

"Romans is an amazing book of the Bible. I was really amazed by this verse:
'Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'Do not commit adultery,' 'Do not murder,' 'Do not steal,' 'Do not covet,' and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.'
-Romans 13:8-10
That just blew my mind and it just totally clicked--LOVE is the answer to everything. How do we live? With love. The fulfillment of the law is love. Living by the Law means to LOVE. Ugh, so simple! So true!"

yeah, i'm not too eloquent with my words when i write in my journal haha. i've just been astounded by love tonight.

"The Lord says, you can only love me as much as you love yourself." --Graham Cooke

the call

It started out as a feeling
Which then grew into hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a quiet word
And then that word grew louder and louder
Till it was a battle cry
I'll come back when you call me
No need to say goodbye

Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never been this way before
All you can do is try to know who your friends are
As you head off to war
Pick a star on the dark horizon and follow the light
You'll come back when it's over
No need to say goodbye
You'll come back when it's over
No need to say goodbye

Now we're back to the beginning
It's just a feeling and no one knows yet
But just because they can't feel it, too
Doesn't means that you have to forget
Let your memories grow stronger and stronger
Till they're before your eyes
You'll come back when they call you
No need to say goodbye
You'll come back when they call you
No need to say goodbye
--regina spektor, "the call"

And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference


Robert Frost

Sunday, September 6, 2009

need some time to breathe.

so nursing school has picked up for me this semester with a fresh new round of clinicals! i'm doing my pediatric clinicals for the first 5 weeks and then moving on to adult health for the rest. it's been a week since i've been doing the peds clinicals at uva and i've been learning lots already!

i'm realizing that i'm not perfect. sooooo far from perfect. especially as a nurse (well i'm not one yet) but if i were to become one tomorrow i know that it could potentially be like a train crash. so the attitude that i'm having for this semester is to be teachable. i'm here in school to LEARN. gosh, sometimes i really lack motivation to want to learn. yet i wanna get that A. but i only wanna earn that A through an easy path, not one where it involves learning. geez, i'm just like those nursing classmates of mine who are also greedy for A's. sigh. but wow, my attitude is already changing. i'm a totally different person compared to last year. i view academics and God so differently.

week 2 of clinicals... Lord, send some compassion, attentiveness, eagerness, and diligence my way please!

crabtree falls 09.06.09