"when it gets down to it, i hear background music when i see you"

so...get this...i'm in Hawaii. BAH! so cool. as i write this...i am in my favorite place on the planet. listening to wonderful music, about to go to sleep. i'm SO blessed to have been able to come. my family has been blessed in a lot of ways this year. i love them all dearly.

yesterday my brother, susan, alexandra and i got up at 2 to go see the sunrise from atop the crater of Haleakala. when we got there, at 10,000 feet above sea level, i saw more stars than i've ever seen in my life. it was the most gorgeous thing...and after seeing 10 shooting stars i stopped even counting. amazing! we waited in the freezing cold to watch the sunrise, which was absolutely breathtaking and TOTALLY worth standing in the cold for an hour to see. but that's not all...after sunrise our group got on bikes and biked down the crater, all the way to a beach on the southern coast of Maui. at the top it was freezing, obviously, but we biked through all different kinds of weather over those 36 miles. we biked through clouds...saw the an entire rainbow--one end at the top, and the other end when we got further down. it was brilliant...near the bottom we biked through a rainforest, with the most lovely scents...by the end rain was pouring down on us. before the beach we ate the most fabulous breakfast of our lives at this restaurant called Polli's Cantina. i've never had bacon that good. the craziest thing...after finishing the trip, we had been up for what felt like forever...and it was only 11 in the morning. spent the rest of the day relaxing on the beach and visiting Whaler's Village. i have a lot of good/funny memories from that place...

today we slept in a bit and went snorkeling. as soon as we got in the water, there was a sea turtle directly beneath us! that NEVER happens here. i mean, they're here...but you just never see sea turtles. not just off of Ka'anapali beach...so, basically, ROCKIN AWESOME. all the gals got massages today. it was SO nice. oh! and we had authentic Hawaiian Shaved Ice. i got mango. :) i spent the rest of the day on the beach, reading (i finished one of my books!), walking in the sand, and sinking. yes, my favorite thing to do at the beach is when you just stand right within reach of the shorebreak and let your feet sink. it's beautiful, really. got to watch the sun set behind Lana'i. it's now my background on my phone...haha!

i love my Lord.
i love my family.
i love my friends.

so, beloved friends...have a blessed day!

thiiiiis.....didn't end up where it began. cool.

so i was writing today...
remembering things, kind of in a sad mood because i've been mourning some losses in my life over the past 6 months or so. it's odd, really, how much i and the writing style changed from the beginning to the end of the entry. i apologize that it's so long. i also apologize for the style of writing...it's just kind of my random thoughts all over the page. may not make any sense to anyone but me...but in any case i felt like sharing it. :)

sorry. i can't believe i'm saying this. it hasn't really even been a subject on my mind for a very long time. i guess i sort of stay away from it. to keep myself sane? to help myself forget and move on? i don't know.

whatever the case, i...i miss the way things were. i'm different, since then. i've changed so much. over the summer i changed a lot...and now i've changed even more. i'm not sure, either, that all of it was for the better. however, i know some of it was. in the sense that...i've gained some wisdom. in most parts of my life i'm still a fool. but in a few things...simply because they're the things the Lord has been putting on my heart...i'm stronger. wiser. more of the woman God created me to be.
anyway...wow...i don't know how all of that just became a reflection on who i am instead of talking about what has been on my mind today. i don't let myself think about how much i miss it all, because i tend to get a little weepy (yeah, i know...i am a girl after all)when i think of what i've lost. in any case, it's lost. it's done. and it was all so completely out of my control. i guess that's kind of a huge thing to learn. none of the things happening lately, or all of this year, or for that matter all my LIFE, are in my control. it's all in the Lord's hands. which is really good, cause...i tend to kind of screw things up when left to my own devices. moral of the story? since it's not in my hands anyway, i should try letting go of my worries a little bit more. why hold onto something that's not yours? not eternal?

the things i should be holding onto...are those that last.
being an inconstant being, the only part of you that is constant is the part that does not depend on YOU. if you are a child of God, THAT is your only identity! you are HIS!! the Word details what that means and how it should look in your life. in the end, the fact that you belong to and depend on Someone OTHER is all that matters. because, honestly, most of the world depend on themselves. well...ALL of us do. most of the time, actually. and it NEVER works. not once. cause it's not in our power, really, to begin with.
so in short...i should be holding onto my identity in Christ--the only thing that will be sustained against all odds. in fact as i live my life daily, i continue to grow and mature INTO who i truly am in Him.

also, in the Word, (philippians maybe? gosh, i don't remember where) it states the things we should be thinking about. dwelling on. holding fast to. "If anything is pure, noble, lovely, admirable, praiseworthy..." i don't remember it all by heart. but we should be thinking on these things, it says. if i'm going to trust that those words, the very breath of the Father, are true, then i should be changed by it. funny...i should be CHANGING into this constant being. moving dwellings...like from a house on the sand to one built on solid foundations. those foundations are the pure things...the noble things...the lovely things...the admirable and praiseworthy things of the world. basically? all of those things point to the Lord. they all, again, remind me that i have to depend on Someone else. hmmm. interesting.

i like where this thought bubble ended up. much more God-focused, much less me-focused. that tends to be why i write. i have trouble expressing what's going on within me. and those things are mostly focused on little ol' me. but when i can express it in writing, i can take the train the whole way round--to where my thoughts point to the Father, as they inevitably will if i truly "ponder things in my heart" as Mary once did. smart girl, that Mary. i should take after her example a little more. recently she's been added to the list of people i would LOOOOVE to meet. well, one Day soon i'll meet more of my brothers and sisters in Christ than i could possibly imagine. CAN'T WAIT! yay eternity...let's go there.

ROAD TRIP! :)

UH mazing.

so i'm currently in Oklahoma visiting the fam...

we always have...special...memories that are made whenever the whole clan gets together. we're all kooky in our own ways. makes for some good stories. sometimes the stories are kind of embarassing...:)...but they're always worth telling. i love the wonderful memories that we've made already, and i look forward to the rest of the time i get to spend with my marvelous family. i really don't see them enough, and the sad thing is...i'm going to start seeing less and less of them. what with most of us being off at college, some newly married and living farther away...you just really learn to cherish the small amount of time you can spend together over the holiday season. i've been reminded these past few days of the things i love most about Christmas...

my great grandmother, and the wild stories she tells from when she was young...my grandmother's pecan pie which, though it may make my stomach unhappy from the sugar, is worth every bite. that woman makes the best pecan pie in the whole world, hands down...seeing my younger cousins again, always astounded by how much they've grown...seeing my older cousins again, and remembering our childhood together...and being totally clueless as to how we got here so fast...fitting our entire family into my grandparents' small house...
actually having time to get done with all the reading i wanted to do...having time to sit and chat with the older, wiser ones who have so much wisdom to bestow...heck, just HAVING TIME...

as much as i can try to complain about the close quarters, or the fact that i'm spending most of my break away from the friends i haven't seen in months...i just can't complain. there's too much good here. too much heart. and whether i knew it or not, i missed times like these. i'm going to cherish every moment of it, because the next few years will fly by just as quickly as all of the others.

i love Christmas. :)

"none compare to You; with my heart and mind and soul i'll praise You!"

sometimes people surprise you.
sometimes they know you better than you think.
on occasion...you wind up with a situation before you that you never would have expected, and you just don't know what to say.
sometimes when you don't know what to say...that's because there either aren't any appropriate words, or the appropriate words need careful consideration.
sometimes we can learn humility through the strangest situations...
a lot of times in those same strange situations we can learn a lot about ourselves.

from time to time...you get really, truly, thrown-off-your-rocker surprised. and you learn that the Lord deals best in what He had planned, not what you did. and you finally remember why you're always telling yourself that His plan is better. then, at least for a moment, you stop listening to all the lies being thrown at you on a daily basis...and you TRUST. you finally trust the plan that you should have been trusting all along. because whether you trust it or not, that's what's being played out in your life...and if you will trust it, if you will trust the Author of all hope...then you won't need to worry about pointless things.

last night i got really, truly, thrown-a-few-hundred-feet-off-my-rocker surprised.

somehow i don't think it will be the last time.

i am blessed.

so. today.

"riff-raff, street rat, i don't buy that, if only they'd look closer...would they see a poor boy? no sirree. they'd find out there's so much more to me..."

"sometimes we build walls. not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to tear them down."

i have trouble writing blogs. no one would ever know...but i really do. i've lost count of how many times i have written a really long blog entry and then deleted it because...well...a lot of different reasons. usually the reason is that i'm afraid to let that much of my heart be laid bare in a public forum. even tonight i wrote an entire blog, and then deleted it to be replaced by the one before you now. it's one of my many complexes...the things i really love to write about never make it past anyone's eyes but my own. maybe someday i will write one of those truly open-heart entries and just hit the "publish post" button before i change my mind. maybe someday. we'll see. we'll see if i even publish THIS.

i don't even want to say how many times i have edited just this one blog entry. it's just sad.

'PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!'

in the Wizard of Oz, the character that i most closely relate to...is the Wizard. i can't tell you how many times in my life i have been going along, doing my thing, when someone caught me for who i REALLY am...and i immediately started screaming..."PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE GIRL BEHIND THE CURTAIN!" and spinning wheels, punching buttons, flipping levers...frantically...anything i could do to distract them from realizing that this girl behind the curtain was the REAL ME.

i can't say i had a city built for me, or had people worship me as an all-powerful wizard...but, let's be honest. if a reality like that were offered me, i wouldn't go back to Kansas either. considering all the things i dislike about myself...all the things i would NOT mind hiding...it would only get easier and easier day by day to get behind that curtain and turn the wheel, push the buttons, move the levers.

i don't think any of us are exactly handed a realm like what the Wizard of Oz had. but we tend to do it in reverse order...we think that maybe if we just get behind the curtain...if we put on the show...then the Emerald City will get built. the people will come and ask for advice. and they'll never have to see that, after all, i'm just some girl and the show is just that...a show.

the majority of my life i put on the show every single day. i think, if it makes any sense, after a while i got so tired of the show that i was waiting for a Dorothy to come along and figure me out so that i could just be me to someone. believe it or not...the Lord brought more than one of those people into my life, over time (each of them blessings, i tell you what...). and, over time, i've learned to come out from behind that curtain on my own a little bit. it's not every day. and some days it's not completely. but what's amazing is that when i allow myself out from behind the curtain...it's not as scary as i expect it to be. i actually like me a lot better when i'm just me.
the me behind the curtain...even with all the flaws that i know so well...is a little more beautiful, a little more genuine, a lot more passionate. i think i don't know the me behind the curtain as well as i thought i did. i only gave myself enough time to learn her weak points...and then i shut her up behind that curtain, before i could find out she's strong in a lot of ways too.

the beauty, genuineness, passion, and strength of the real me...plus a lot of other characteristics i'm still learning...all come straight from the Lord. they're not manufactured, like the self i put on display. it's just who i am in Christ, and it's beautiful. and i would like for that girl to be a little less afraid of opening up that curtain from here on out.

random. ha...what's new?

so i'm pretty loaded with random facts as it is. but i have fun looking up new ones too. so today, dork that i am, after getting kind of excited about it i went a looked up some new ones. this one made me crack up so i thought i would share it with all of you:

an airplane mechanic invented the Slinky one day when he was working with airplane parts and discovered a secondary use for the springs.

ha!!! sorry. okay. hope that made everyone's day a bit brighter!!! it did mine.
:) :)