Chapter Six

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Sometimes it's hard to think of life in a "big picture" sense. You just see what's directly in front of you and you know that there has to be a solution to the problem but it's just way too big to see around. Sometimes it's homework piling up and you can't see how you could possibly finish all of it, let alone keep going and graduate. Sometimes it's a relationship that's in the rocks and you don't know how it will ever get better. Sometimes it's a bad hair day or you have a new ugly pimple on your face. In the midst of it you just feel like your world is falling apart. You feel like you can't keep going and waking up every day. You feel like doing nothing. 

But it gets better. At least that's what I keep telling myself. Everything has to come to an end, right? One day I'm going to wake up and be happy and excited. Maybe that day will be tomorrow, maybe the end of the semester, and maybe in five years. Either way, in the big picture, it's only a couple blinks away. So I'm trying to rest in what I know to be true, in the big picture and the now picture. God's unfailing love for me. 

Despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today or worries about tomorrow- not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love.                                    Romans 8:37-38

Chapter Five

Being six hours away from home stinks. Being seven away from the love of my life really stinks. Having friends who take my weirdness makes it a whole lot better. Even though they don't understand my Harry Potter references & look at me strange when I start talking about washing my hair in Lake Michigan & my endless string of stories about my cousins. I am precisely where I am meant to be. 

Photo creds to: Lauren Anne Photography

Chapter Four

Over the summer I had the great opportunity to be a camp counselor at the camp that I've grown up going to. Not only was it a huge privilege and blessing to be a counselor to some awesome junior high girls, but I also had the opportunity to assist in leading worship. Because I don't have the opportunity to play "for fun" very much anymore it was such a great experience to have fun playing and leading. One of the songs we played was called Alabaster by Rend Collective Experiment. I had never heard the song, but it became an immediate favorite among the campers. Since then I've been listening to them a lot and something about their music completely speaks to me. 

Chapter Three

  This semester has been jam packed with practicing, but I still don't feel like I'm practicing enough. My Junior recital is next semester & I basically should be practicing nonstop. It's funny how the thing that used to release my stress has became my stressor. Not completely, of course. I love playing. But there isn't a time where I ever just sit down to play what I'm feeling, I'm constantly checking something off on my practicing to-do list. 

Chapter Two

Thank God for:
Feet that run
Lungs that breathe
Legs that bend & stretch
And Nike

Because these are the things that continue let me run & be happy even in the most trying of times.