flipagram.

I'm really into this app on my iPhone right now - it's called "Flipagram" and you basically make a picture slideshow of anything you want. You can add music and text, change the velocity and number of pictures, ect ect. Anyways, apparently it's allllll the rage with the youngin's right now so I decided to check it out for myself. And I cannot. stop. making. flipagrams. So here you go, for your viewing pleasure.

The first one is a "flipagram" highlighting our first Young Life club { night of mayhem for the sake of  high schoolers learning about Jesus } of the year and the second one is all the girls in Cabin Time { campaigners/Bible study/coffee break/laugh til you cry time/eat yummy treats } this past week. We had twelve girls come out to drink { delicious, amazing, life-changing } coffee and hear about this { extraordinary, amazing, life-changing } Jesus. 

dream.

I haven't appreciated the idea of dreaming until recently. And I don't mean the kind of dreaming in the wee hours of the night, where our mind shuts down and our subconscious comes to life, creating the most bizarre of stories. I mean the voluntary dreaming where you allow your mind to tap into the deepest parts of your soul, to take all those desires, wants, wishes, hopes, prayers - and turn them into dreams.

My big-hearted, red headed friend in Costa Rica taught me how to dream big. She taught me how dreaming big in the Young Life ministry is a necessity - how there is no goal too lofty, no high school friend unreachable, no Young Life club too complicated that cannot be completed with God's steady Hands of grace hands guiding you.

My compassionate, Costa Rican mom taught me how to dream big. She taught me the freedom in dreaming dreams may never come true - how to not let the disappointment of an unmet dream stop me from pursuing others and how Jesus is always there to catch your tears if you are met with an impossible dream.

My always gracious, wide-eyed best friend taught me how to dream big. She taught me to not hide even the smallest of dreams that I tended to tuck away in my heart - how God cares about all dreams { big, small, silly, serious, possible, impossible } and to live in these dreams instead of choosing to lock them behind the unfortified walls of my soul.

I'm learning to dream and I want to live in those dreams. To not be afraid of dreaming the impossible - to be okay when some of those dreams never come true. And learn to live fully and in the moment and enter the presence of Jesus in the here & now - to live small dreams and big dreams and to never let the dreaming stop. 

Because I am being more and more convinced that it is in the unfiltered dreaming that we experience a piece of God that we cannot experience when we live in fear of the unmet dream.

"I stop dreaming sometimes, because I'm afraid of what it would take to change my life. I stop dreaming because I'm afraid of the chaos that a dream might bring, afraid of what a new dream will require of me. I practice being fine, and I tell myself that things are all right, just as they are. They are all right, of course. But that night....I dreamed. And it could have been the beauty of the moon on the water, or it could have been the freshness of the sea air, but when I returned home, I felt new, and that the world was bright and new, and I heard God's voice whispering to me everywhere I went. It could have been anything, but I think it was the dreaming." - Shauna Niequist

snail mail.

The rumors are true! Okay, there are no rumors. And very few people will actually care...but I'm excited none the less! Because after seven long months  - drum roll please - I finally have a mailing address in Nica! Snail mail is one of my favs - so if you're feeling chatty and want to use up some of that stationary you've been saving for a rainy day (or is that just me?), send some good ole fashioned, hand written mailbox lovin' my way!

{ just remember to purchase that lovely international stamp } 

p.s. I've also posted the address in the sidebar of this blog so you don't ever have to worry about losing it.

You are so very welcome!

early.

There is just something about early mornings that get me.
Move me.
Challenge me.
Refresh me.
Change me.

The challenge is always - ALWAYS - the constant fight with my snooze button. I literally have to set three different alarms, all five minutes apart with an increasingly more obnoxious ringtone each time. I have tried all the tricks of the trade...putting my alarm across the room so I have to actually get out of bed to turn it off, rewards for if I do actually make it out of bed on time, going to bed at an extremely early hour. But no matter what, the battle rages on.

Most mornings I don't make it. I roll over, hide the phone under my pillow, turn off the alarm completely, block out the world and the rising sun around me. I lose the battle and happily slumber on until I finally decide to make the commitment of letting my feet touch the ground.

But there are those mornings - so few and far in-between - that by sheer forcing of my will (and, you know, God's grace) that I don't roll over at the sound of my first alarm. (Okay, okay - usually I don't even hear my first alarm. Or the second. So let's make that the third alarm. Yes, I don't roll over at the sound of my third alarm.) A few deep breathes, mental reminders that it will be worth it and I literally drag myself out of bed.

And. it. is. always. worth. it.

There is just something about early mornings that get me. Waking up with the sun, sharing in the silence that unfolds in those hours before the world begins to stir. All my senses are heightened - everything seems deeper and fresher and newer.

These mornings are so grace-filled for me. They lack all the hustle and bustle of a normal race-against-the-clock morning and are saturated with a thankfulness and stillness that stays with me the whole day. A sweet holiness that grounds me. A quiet sacredness that fills me.

I am not naturally a morning person. In fact, there is nothing natural about it for a girl who loves sleep as much as I do. But this supernatural quality is why I find them so rejuvenating. Inspiring.

So I will continue to fight for them, these grace mornings of mine. Because it is in this sacred silence - the silence of the heart - where He speaks.

words.

Getting lost in a book is one of my absolute most favorite things to do. Words can carry such hopeful weight and terrifying beauty. I love when people who see the world differently then I do use their words to challenge my thoughts, beliefs and emotions. When their words can tug on my heart strings or stretch my mind. Here are a few people's words who did that for me this summer...


"People are willing to be brave when they admit their smallness within the enormity of the world, and  the best way to understand our smallness is so leave our comfort zones and start exploring, one foot in front of the other."
 -Tsh Oxenreinder

"To avoid unseemly places is to avoid God's grace in its most abundant and often scandalous form."
-Kris Rocke

"It's sloppy theology to think that all suffering is good for us, or that it's a result of sin. All suffering can be used for good, over time, after mourning and healing, by God's graciousness. But sometimes it's just plain loss, not because you needed to grow, not because life or God or anything is teaching you any kind of lesson."
-Shauna Niequist

"God is God. I dethrone Him in my heart if I demand that He act in ways that satisfy my idea of justice."
-Elisabeth Elliot

"My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?"
-C. S. Lewis

"Either Jesus is on the throne ruling all things for you or this is a good as it gets."
-Tim Keller (on suffering and sovereignty)

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing, live your way into the answer." 
-Rainer Maria Rilke

"The quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun - but to head east, plunging into the darkness until one comes to the sunrise." 
-Jerry Sittser

Bill.

"and the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee them." 

-Isaiah 35:10

It is not often you meet someone for a short amount of time that has such a strong and lasting impact on your life. Often times, I believe, it is people that have something that you yourself long for - a specific type of character that refreshes you by simply being in their presence.

One of those people for me was Bill.

Bill showed up in Managua last week to spend ten days on a work team, doing construction each morning and neighborhood outreach ministry each afternoon. He was not your average "work teamer", being somewhere around eighty years old, but he quickly proved to us all that age is really only a number. On his first day in Managua he told me, "I just wanted to see a different part of the world. And I wanted to prove to people that old people can still do things! We can still go places!"

To put it simply, Bill exuded joy. It was something that was just a part of him, a natural state of being. Even in the hot (HOT) Managua heat, even in the long days and no AC nights, even in the working and the playing and the lack of Spanish - Bill still had a way of loving, serving and caring for people deeply and widely and wholly.

It was evident that this joy and love for others came as an overflow for His love for Christ. He never ceased talking about Jesus. Bill saw Jesus everywhere - in the wall we were building, in the basketball courts we were painting, in the faces of the Nicaraguans we were serving. His simple yet profoundly deep love for Jesus was reflected in all areas of his life.

On the second or third day of knowing Bill, that I found out tragedy had struck his life only ten months earlier. Last October, Bill woke up to find his wife of fifty-one years had a stroke and passed away in the middle of the night, suddenly. It was shocking to me to find that something so terrifyingly sad had happened not even a year ago. You would never know this upon meeting him. 

As he talked to me about his wife, Janice, he told me about her likes and dislikes, her hobbies, what they enjoyed doing together, her love for the Lord and her family and how not a day goes by that he does not think about her or miss her. Not surprisingly, Bill shared with me that there is one word that comes to mind when he thinks of Janice: joy. He spoke of this joy she had as if it were a special gift, something he never wanted to forget about her.

Above everything else, the reason I was so drawn to Bill's character was because he held this sweet sense of hope. And without hope, I am learning, we are left desperate for something more then what life generally offers. Tim Keller writes that "the erosion or loss of hope is what makes suffering unbearable." It is obvious that even in the midst of a tragic turn in Bill's life, he never lost sight of hope. And it is this hope in Christ that brought about the joy that seeped from his heart.

Without knowing, Bill taught me many things last week - but high among those simple lessons of grace, thankfulness, and laughter was this:

never forget to hope.

Hope can brought about in even the smallest of ways - a simple touch, a few kind words, a genuine smile. And the joyful, hope-filled smile did not leave Bill's face the entire week.