Dream Machine Part 1

I guess if I had to say that the theme of my summer is learning to trust. Living in a broken world, I get to caught up in my own insecurities and believe the lies that the devil whispers in my ear that I'm not good enough, I'm not going to make it out of this storm, I'm all alone....yeah I think you get the point. Well this prayer of trusting God with my life really came into play this past week as as the plans that I had weaved together in my head came ripping apart at the seam....

It all started with an adventure. The most random last minute thing that I think I've ever done was to buy a plane ticket to Portland, Maine to visit my mom and her side of the family. So within 24 hours of buying the plane ticket I was in New England. Craziness! I hadn't seen my mom's family in almost 4 years so it was refreshing to see the faces that were buried in the back of my mind. My grandparents and mother picked me up from the airport and we had a nice reunion. I've decided that airports are on my list of most romantic places. Just the whole idea of someone that cares about you enough to drop you off to watch you disappearance in a crowd of strangers. Then allowing you to get on a massive jet that is going to fly you to some foreign place just screams romance to me. I will continue this point in a little while. So anyway we drive back to New Hampshire, taking the scenic route (which is the only route) though the state of Maine and the Shire. We drove through towns that were founded in the 1700's! Which just blows my mind. We finally make it back to the lake house that we were staying at and I reunited with my mom's family. Which I found out that my mom's family is so different from my dad's that it's not even funny. I mean they are about the same size, but my mom's family is loud and Catholic. So I enjoying relaxing in by the lakeside, reading, and laughing at how ridiculous my mom's family is.

Now one thing about my mom that is quite humorous is that went she goes back to her roots she feels as if she's back to her youth. One time we for example, we went ice skating. My mom told me stories of how she would be picked before the boys when she was younger. So we're skating along and next thing i know she smacks her elbow on the ice so hard that it started to bruise right away. She goes "I don't remember the ice being that slippery??" Serious mom, serious??? Anyway this time she was as inspired to sail the 1970's Dream Machine, aka her sailboat that she grew up sailing. So on July 25 her and I decided to set sail the sky blue dream machine.... little did we know that it would be the last sail of Dream Machine's life.....

back home again in indiana!!

I love that song from the previous post ha! I thought that it would be appropriate seeing that I'm heading back to home sweet home in a couple days. I feel that sometimes I get carried away with my dramatic life that I take for granted where my roots stem from.....

Like when most kids where spending their summers swimming and playing with their friends, I was helping my dad. Just thinking about those countless summers that I spend working on our farm brings back the sweet fragrance of new mown hay, the feeling of the hot sun beaming down on me, and the words of my mom saying "I wish I could just bottle up the aroma of freshly cut alfalfa..." Every summer she would say the same thing, but it never seems to get old. Or watching the cows reactions when they see my dad carrying fresh hay bales, it's like Christmas Day for them. I remember as a kid would sit in the feed bin and pass out flakes of hay to the cows and imagine that I was handed out pieces of cake ha. Then I would just hang out with them and talk to them while them ate. I guess that's a little odd, but I feel that I'm somewhat normal now or at least I like to think so...

Oh good ole farm life. It's so weird that I've been away from the farm for a year and a half! I feel so lazy sometimes, like now I have the day off and I feel that I should be doing something. I know that I'll probably be singing a different tune come Thursday when my dad puts me back to work in the field. I feel that country life is so embedded in my heart now that my love for it will never die. Ha so cheesy! I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that I miss that little piece of heaven that's down a little gravel road in the middle of the Hoosier State.

Rodney Atkins - Farmer's Daughter (official music video)

so i was driving home last night and i was listening to this burnt cd that my friend gave me. this hymn, that i've heard probably a thousand times started playing. it just was so convicting....

1. Out of my bondage, sorrow and night,
   Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come;
   Into Thy freedom, gladness, and light,
   Jesus, I come to Thee;
   Out of my sickness, into Thy health,
   Out of my want and into Thy wealth,
   Out of my sin and into Thyself,
   Jesus, I come to Thee.
2. Out of my shameful failure and loss,
   Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come;
   Into the glorious gain of Thy cross,
   Jesus, I come to Thee;
   Out of earth’s sorrows, into Thy balm,
   Out of life’s storms and into Thy calm,
   Out of distress to jubilant psalm,
   Jesus, I come to Thee.
3. Out of unrest and arrogant pride,
   Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come;
   Into Thy blessed will to abide,
   Jesus, I come to Thee;
   Out of myself to dwell in Thy love,
   Out of despair, into raptures above,
   Upward for aye on wings like a dove,
   Jesus, I come to Thee.
4. Out of the fear and dread of the tomb,
   Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come;
   Into the joy and light of Thy home,
   Jesus, I come to Thee;
   Out of the depths of ruin untold,
   Into the peace of Thy sheltering fold,
   Ever Thy glorious face to behold,
   Jesus, I come to Thee.

Wow...it's song is has my name all over it! this broken world feeds on my soul, making me feel that i'm nothing but some useless instrument. i remember this art project that my church made awhile ago. they took broken instruments and orchestrated a beautiful masterpiece by incorporating all of pieces together into a single display. the theme was that just like the instruments, we are broken and it takes a gifted musician to come along an sees the beauty within the brokeness. this hymn just speaks that, wherever we are in our daily battle of living in this world our Father is there. that no matter how many times seem to fail, our Father's unfailing love covers our failures. lately i've been thinking about failures and how we let sin inhabit our hearts. that we let it build up within us to produce shame that weighs down our soul....

"Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matt 11:29-30.

why cant it be that easy?? aww i love these next verses, they just pierce my heart....

"blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith-more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire-may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter 1:3-9

good quote

Lately I'm realized just how some people are very hard to love and it's so easy for me to give up and let bitterness harden my heart towards them. My friend gave me this quote....

"I admit that this means loving people who have nothing lovable about them....perhaps it makes it easier if we remember that is how HE loves us. Not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are things called selves. For really there is nothing else in us to love: creatures like us, who actually find hatred such a pleasure that to give it up it like giving up beer or tobacco."- C.S. Lewis

bye bye fb

So as of yesterday I've deactivated my facebook account.....for good! I just came to the conclusion that I was a slave to it. That my friendships were turning into how much we interacted via wall post and status updates. I have always had this urge to stop using facebook, but I always was like "but it's a good way to keep in touch with people." Which I guess is kind of true, but then the more I think about it, the more I realize that I really wasn't keeping in touch with people, I was stalking them! All I had to do was login my account and I could find out what was going on in anyones life without any human interaction. I just feel that this way of going about a friendship is so materialized. I mean think about it. When someone posts a picture of you that you think is unflattering what do you do???? umm de-tag, it's like you can erase the parts of your life that you don't like. Then we build up our profile using the cutest picture we can find, even if it was taken 2 years ago when you looked totally different. I mean who's going to know anyway right? Then you have the guy factor.... Whether it's an ex or some guy that you're crushing on, you want to find out as much as you can about them so of coarse you stalk their profile. You make connections that you can use to your advantage the next time you see them. Being all like "Yeah I love Coldplay..." when truly you don't have a clue of who the lead singer is. That's just one of the parts of the guy factor, the other one is to see how many girls he has writing on his wall. You read way into the wall posts and you let bitterness grow inside your heart because of some silly sentence that everyone and their brother has access to. Man I could just go on and on, but I'm pretty such that I"ve already stepped on a few peoples feet right now.

Basically I've just felt so convicted to pursue real meaningful relationships. I mean isn't that what Jesus did? He pursued people, broken messed up people like me. He didn't care if they had their life together because He was doing it out of love. He didn't do it to see how my friends we could show the world that he had, but out of His unfailing love. I don't know, I'm off my soapbox for now ha.

What Time Is It???

So I've decided that life is all about timing....

"And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek GOd, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us." Acts 17:26-27

I just love those verses. I was listening to a sermon the other day on this very topic of time. It related to dating, but I feel that you can relate it to anything in life. For example, say a few years back you met someone. The sparks were flying and time felt like it stood still when you were with them. Everything was going great, just so peachy, until time passes and you see your paths leading down different roads. You begin to have a change of heart. Why is that? Probably because the feelings that you felt at the being of the relationship: the sparks, etc, were not feelings of love, but feelings of timing. That God placed the right person in your life at that moment and it just fit.

Lately, I've been seeing this happening in my life. Like me coming to Memphis, it was God's timing. I wanted, longed so much to go to Auburn, however, God saw a different way. And looking back now I can see how many amazing things that God has done in my life, with the friendships that he's given me and the struggles that I've faced in nursing school. I just think that it's so amazing how God knows our allotted periods, he knows our dwelling place. That every relationship, job choice, or place is somehow shaping us into the person that God wants us to be. We just need to trust him and let him lead us.

Don't Go Chasing Crabs.

So I'm on vacation with the family that I nanny for. Well I guess it's not really a vacation seeing that I"m working, but still it's at the beach so that kind of makes it a vacation. Yesterday I was playing in the ocean with the girls and I had a super cheesy moment, ha so I'm going to share it.

Sumner was catching waves and I was too, the next thing that I know Sumner's screaming. A crab just pinched her! That so freaked me out. I mean I've only been to the ocean a total of 7 times in my lifetime, so I don't really do sea creatures. Sumner and Lizzie decide to go get their nets, so they could catch the crab! For the next hour we are walked down the ocean shore on the look out for a crab! After we searched high and low we ended up with nothing!

Later in the day Sumner was asking me about guys. And she goes "Katie, don't you want to find a guy?" I just was laughing because she's ten and way too in touch with everything. My response to her was the story of the crab. I explained that when you go out looking for a crab you end up finding nothing. But if you go on with your life and don't think about the crab, then it will end up finding you. Man I don't know where all this cheese is coming from, but I feel that it's one of my gifts in life. So the moral of the story is to not to go chase guys because it'll just leave you with a broken heart. You just have to learn to live your life without one and he'll find you.