Yikes!! Two weeks have gone by already!! Goodness. Summer flies by so fast every time and I feel like I'm always running to keep up with it.
So what's new? So much! I went home for a week and had the most wonderful adventures with my siblings and cousins and even managed a coffee shop quiet time at Grand Central complete with a turtle late.
We floated down the freezing and flooded river and I may or may not have freaked out when two beavers dove in for a swim just a few yards from our rafts.
We star gazed on the roof and I saw 5 shooting stars! How perfect it was! I shall forever love all the memories of looking up at the sky on a summer night with my cousins whilst cuddling under the blankets on top of the kitchen roof.
We played hide-and-seek-in-the-dark and I'm pretty sure I almost dropped a paper cutter on my head, maybe. It was dark, so I don't know what it was.. but it fell about a foot to my right. (Not to worry! We play safe. I was in no danger)
We made and ate so much cotton candy, it's no wonder we didn't sleep til 3 in the morning most days.
There were bonfires and kitten cuddlings, late night pillow chats, and singings at the tops of our lungs.
Every minute, second, hour, day, moment.. all of it, was so perfect. I am so blessed by the family I have.
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| One of my favorite things about home out in the country is that you can actually see the sunsets. :) |
I can't keep up!! When I'm not working or sleeping, I'm making the most of my summer by going outside or visiting friends or whatever else you do in the summer time instead of bumming around on a computer.
The sum up of my life right now is that work is going well and my heart is happy.
There are things the Lord does for me that just make me feel so loved and valued and gives me a sense of worth is the smallest things.
For example, whilst being home last week, there was a point where I got my van stuck in a muddy field (long story) and one of my friends stayed completely calm and coached me through getting it un-stuck (even though the mud was probably at least 6 inches deep) without having to get out of the van and push it. People staying calm when I'm mentally freaking out is such a blessing to me.
I have felt loved by how I have gotten to interact with my friends every single day since being back in Iowa City. The week before I went home I had waaaaaaay too much time alone and was wayyy too isolated which lead to a few breakdowns and momentarily laps of judgement. I realized that, as an extrovert, that I need to at least see or speak with someone of my similar age every day, no matter how exhausted I might be after getting home from work.
My poor friends are all introverts, and so I have felt especially loved that they would come over or go out with me every day even though they would prefer quiet evenings at home by theirselves.
How the Lord has blessed me with wonderful friends! :)
I feel loved in how the Lord has consistently pursued my heart with the exact thing I need to hear at this time in my life. I feel I'm at a steady place, in my walk. I'm not really experiencing a major trial or future anxieties. No relationship issues to sort out and no enslaving sin struggles to break out of.
I feel like while it's a nice sort of place to be, it's also one of the more dangerous places you can be, Spiritually, on account it's very easy to let your guard down.
A couple weeks ago, I met with some Salt ladies and we all decided to read through the whole book of Titus (it's really short) and just pull stuff out of it and talk about it. It was sort of a prep talk because Salt is going through Titus this summer.
There was so much in it that got me that I've been going back to it often. And even when my cousins came last week, we did the same thing... read the whole book, pull stuff out and talk and hash out and grow.
If you haven't read Titus... do that. It's pretty basic and straight forward on how you should be as a Christian. I was gonna write "act as a Christian" but I don't like the word act because it reminds me of plays and pretends. We shouldn't pretend or put on Christian shows... we should just be.
I love Titus, too, because even though I don't feel like I have any binding sin struggles that have my heart all in chains, there are the less obvious issues of apathy and hospitality and purity and walking uprightly. It's easy to think you have things together until you take a bit of a closer look.
I wish I was someone who walked uprightly or lived a holy and pure life. And I know that God can change me to be more like that if I let Him love me well. But then in that moment I realize that in my apathy and complacency, I don't let myself be loved the way that I am. I don't claim my identity as the beloved and try to work my way into deserving to be loved.
*sigh* The Lord is so good. :)
My summer of learning to love better seems to be turning into a lesson of learning to be loved better.
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