verb: its what you do.

so, once upon a time i worked at a restaurant and it was awful. after that i made a rule for my entire life about jobs: the only job i will ever have is one i would do even if i wasnt being paid to do it.

i realize that this is not feasible for most people. it is not feasible for me either. it is partially about attitude and partially about choice.  

attitude comes from here:

{It is not what we do, but how much love we put into the doing. If I belong to Christ and at that moment He wants me to be cleaning the toilets, or taking care of the sufferers from leprosy, or talking to the President of the United States, it is all the same; because I am being what God wants me to be, and doing what He wants me to do.
I belong to Him.}

mother theresa

choice comes from the decision to choose to work for less money or a less than perfect schedule to be in an environment that i dont dread going to.

my job now? i look forward to it. i get excited about it. and who wouldnt? i get paid to dance and sing and play with playdough and have picnics in thomas the tank engine tents and throw colorful scarves up in the air and see if who can catch them first and tickle fests and rasberries and be with the sweetest girls in the world. and then im like, how the heck am i getting paid to do this? and last year when i was teaching students with disabilities and taking them on adventures and laughing and crying and growing, i felt the exact same way.

one thing that changed my life was a book i read in Australia about being a twentysomething, and a question was asked: if you could get paid 10 million dollars a year to have any job, what would it be?

and the more i think about it, the more i want to pursue what god created me to do. because money dies with you. and fame only lasts a couple hundred years if youre lucky. 

i just think its really really really important to do what you love at (almost) any cost. and if that isnt possible (or even if it is) i think its just as important to love what you do, regardless. 

{If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lives a great street sweeper who did his job well.}

Martin Luther King Jr.

something from nothing

so, i made this: 

 

and this:

 

 (this flower is more lime than celery in real life, and dont mind no-makeup saturday)

so, i found some old hand me downs that never quite fit right. they were either a color i loved or a fabric i loved so i couldnt part with them, and so they sat in my closet for way too long until this morning. 

i roughly used this tutorial:

http://www.designspongeonline.com/2009/12/party-flower.html 

(by roughly, i mean that i cant really handle step by step instructions and im really impatient so i layered the fabric and free hand cut all four at once for each part. also, i didnt feel like trying to buy matching thread so i ripped a piece of thread out of the article of clothing that i was cutting up and that worked perfectly. oh and i used 10 cent felt for the back. so, total cost: 10 cents.  actually like .01 cents because i only used a little tiny piece of the felt. anyway, my point is that its really easy and cheap and kind of fun.)

by the third one it takes ten minutes a pop. score!

to prosper you and not to harm you

we've got some big plans in the making. and some small ones. and some medium sized ones that could potentially be either big or small ones. just a bunch of ideas and thoughts and dreams jumbled all up in our hearts, pleading with our Maker to guide us in the right direction. the direction that leads us closer to His will and plan for our life, and farther from our own desires. i think about that song by Jon Foreman {your love is strong- its on my new sidebar playlist } that goes "why do i worry? why do i freak out? your love is strong...." and i totally totally get that. worries and trying to figure out our lives, when we have never known whats best for us. He has led us in every which way except for the ones that we planned, and here we are completely provided for and purposeful and in a place of growth and strength stemming form following His will, and we dont want to lose that. we want to be free in Him, and trust him enough to GO when he says GO.

anyway, here is my heart:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

haiti part 2

"Church groups are singing throughout the city all through the night in prayer. It is a beautiful sound in the middle of a horrible tragedy." -- From Twitter user troylivesay in Port-au-Prince at 03:09 a.m. Wednesday

if you want to cry,

click here. 

if you want to help,

click here.

(we just spent $20 on 117 meals through Feed My Starving Children,

World Vision is awesome too.)

haiti

today i stared at a wall for an hour and a half.

and somewhere between 30,000 - 100,000 people died.

that really sucks.

can we pray for them?

a morning letter

 One of my classmates from UNLV sent me this. And I cried.

I was sitting at the hockey game tonight and a family brought a little girl maybe 7 years old with cerebral palsy. They carefully walked her down the steps and sat her down in the seat. Her hands were twisted but she had the most pure and innocent smile on her face. I couldn't help myself and I burst into tears. I thought about my own disability and wondered if God saw us as broken and disabled. I remembered the shortest verse in the Bible: Jesus wept. It shows me that God has compassion on us and Jesus did not come to make us feel bad about ourselves but that He loves us. He weeps for us like I wept for that little girl, so innocent and tragically disabled for life. I just feel so bad that we don't have the power to heal people like Jesus and the disciples did. And I always go back to the same thing everybody does: If God is all loving and all knowing, why did he allow for all this suffering and disability to hurt so many people? Why is there so much awfulness and ugliness in the world? And the only answer I get is that God wants to show how much He love us. And that we can show His love to them through the work that we do. Maybe that little girl will be one of our students one day. Maybe she'll grow up and do something great for the world. Or maybe she'll draw one broken man closer to God.

God Bless,

Wesley

like a werewolf, only not at all.

i am the happiest girl in the world. most people would say that. most people would say that i am obnoxiously joyful all the time. and i am, its whats in my guts.

but those same people dont see me 1-2 hours before i go to sleep. because i morph into a grumpy, hopeless, crazy person. im not really sure what happens in my brain, and i think its because im tired, and it used to not affect anyone but me.

but.

then i married this guy who has to hang out with me. specifically during the 2 hours before bed. and i take it all out on him. almost nightly.

how can you love someone more than life itself and completely hate their freaking guts twenty minutes later???

okay, thats an exaggeration. but still. its really annoying to be married to me when im tired because im a heartless grump.

and then i wake up the next morning singing and giggling at butterflies, and hes like wtf? you wanted to die last night.

which makes no sense to me when im happy. like, sounds like hes crazy because how could i be SO happy, but so miserable 14 hours later?

anyway, that is my weakness. and there is a certain enemy who attacks right at that time. this nagging feeling of misery that isnt even real and why do i keep listening, when i KNOW whats true?

conundrum.

end rant.