wild melody

(Nuvole Bianchi by Ludovico Einaudi) I have a minor obsession with the classical composer Ludovico Enaudi. If famous Italian pianists came to my state, I would pay a lot of money to see him. He writes brilliance & depth & beauty. Certain albums are study music, other albums help me battle insomnia. Certain songs ("Melodia Africana III", "Divenire", "I Giorni") are songs I put on when I desperately need to be still, when it's a struggle to stop and breathe. Others ("Fly", "Una Mattina") make my imagination come alive. I wonder what did he see when he wrote them? Are there stories, colors, moments that inspired them? I see fantastic things when I listen to them, they transport me to my own Narnia. My favorite will always be Nuvole Bianchi. It's the first song I ever heard of his, years ago (which prompted me to find his music asap) It was played by a fellow student at my sister's piano recital. The entire room...

how we do battle. because sometimes the best thing for the soul is skipping church to have one on one Jesus time at the ocean. sometimes my eyes need to see the expanse. my heart needs a physical vastness to truly believe how big. deep. wide. God's love. grace. mercy is. grateful i live in a state with a coastline. grateful for the sea. grateful for the best friend, the comrade in arms being home for a season from across the pond. grateful for the maturity & wisdom & deepening of her spirit that God has done. grateful He offers the same for me. grateful that all is  b e i n g  set to right. maybe not completely set to rights here. but there is constant motion in that direction. there is not a day God forgets about His promise of Kingdom Come.

so i started a 365 project a last week.  not because my life is super fantastic and i have all the time in the world. not because i’m a skilled photographer. but because my canon has a lot of dust. & because my creative side needs an outlet. i love science, but i also love colour. i find studying the human body to be elegant and beautiful. it combines my logic with my artistic side nicely... but it doesn't initiate creativity so i still feel a little starved. but mostly because i forget how beautiful my life is. & because i want to become aware of how  r i c h  the outrageous  g r a c e that covers my life truly is.

this is Finian. aka the shamrock plant i came home to one day after school, the week before st patrick i think. mum knows how obsessed i am with all things Irish. (also how i secretly want to be a gardener, because i like dirt and color and fresh air and hard work) i named him because he's lived somehow for almost a month now. i thought an irish name was fitting, yeah? it brings me a smallish smile in my heart to see greenery and life in my bedroom every day. its a reminder that i'm still growing. that God is still in the business of planting, watering, feeding, renewing souls. it's also a spark of distracting thought trains that never reach a logical conclusion. sometimes i get lost in thinking about aerobic respiration and what's going on in the miniscule cells of that little plant; not unlike (yet so different) what's going in on my own miniscule cells. but i have God's breath of life that creates (soul). pretty much the biggest difference in the definitio...

i'm fascinated by space. it terrifies me. but i always wanted to experience it at least once. it's constant, logical, beautiful. vaster and deeper than i can fathom. a burning stillness. tonight it's comforting (not "comfort" for when one is sad, more like cozy & enjoyable to dwell on). stars & galaxies & planets all spinning through the still ink of our universe... constant. yet always changing. stars die, things shift & alter, planet systems break down. | yet | not one.single.atom fails to an extant that would disrupt the fragile balance of earth. our solar system remains stable. it is continually being upheld by Christ. no matter what happens in my small world, the "real" world is safe. Jesus maintains the world of matter with all its laws & orderly mathematic precision so it can remain unshaken. steady.  hearts and minds falter. nations fail. moments of felt (or actual) weakness is a sure common experience acros...

I had a realization while in Wyoming. i saw my heart in the land, and it gave fresh perspective. My writing skills are rusty as hey. but i'ma try to write it down at least for myself. it's been a few weeks, & I need to remember.  the day before the funeral was freezing--literally, around 17f-- but I needed physical space to work my mental knots out. so Nate & I went for a walk in my aunt & uncle's neighborhood. it's the kind you'd expect to find on a prairie outside Cheyenne, Wyoming. no streetlights. no sidewalks. long driveways. acres of land between houses, usually with a barn & or round pens. the street signs seem out of place. as if the houses are there by permission of the prairie, but the street signs are intrusive. the land can be inhabited; but street signs bring a sense of taming & ownership that can never be truly believed. the prairie is not tame-able. that tangent probably doesn't make sense to anybody but me (which is w...

rough week. but last thursday, mum & i didn't think nana would live through the night and here she is doing better! praise Jesus for small miracles. there's been light, good moments. I want to focus on the beauty. so here are things I learned from spending every spare moment in Apopka with my dads family: 1) family means everything.  i didn't know how tight we really were. tragedy tears apart or brings together; we're together. of course, 4 sons with strong & different personalities plus 4 necessarily strong wives; there are bound to be a few small explosions... but. after the smoke clears, we pull together. division is not the lasting note. underneath it all there is strength & loyalty. I've been so impressed, encouraged, & grateful at the way my uncles & aunts & cousins dropped everything. they put their lives in wyoming & texas on pause. they've taken care of Nana and worked through rough days. everybody wants Nana to be happy. we ...

two theme songs today. one is the way i feel i've been acting towards God. and the other is how i feel He actually is towards me. horrendous theology implications aside... first one: ooohh so me!! i live functionally as if God is my part-time authority. i'm a part-time lover, running to Him when i'm in need and wandering away when i see something else i want. i've never been a full time man. sooo often i think "i've been faithful and God hasn't come through" and i stop. quit. give up. um. word to the girl, you've never STUCK IT OUT! the definition of faithful means *not* giving up when it gets rough. when it looks pointless. i'm willing to admit i'm spiritual Hosea's wife; that's not a new realization. but that my character itself is unfaithful? that something deep in me is a giver-upper? mmm. not me! i'm supposed to be the loyal one, the faithful one. i'm that girl who still thinks about people who walked out of my life i...

this woman. how she has carried me. how richly she paints the Gospel for me! I don't know how to explain the comradeship God has built between us. the way He built passions into our hearts that we had no idea were similar until later. ah. words fail.  [^^^]

❝ Celebration when your plan is working? Anyone can do that. But when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that’s when you start to learn what celebration is. When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that’s celebration. — Shauna Niequist This quote has sparked a lot of thought the past hour...it won't be a logical progression but here's my attempt to put mind-heart muddle into words: Oh look, its that familiar place again... condemning thoughts lie so well, i make myself sick before i realize i've fought all these and i know all the answers: "i'm a waste of space" + "the timeline of my plans is past so why bother" + "why dream?" + "why didn't i do________" ...

can't believe I've spent the past 13 days in Ukraine// Kiev & orphan camp 1. my heart is happy to be here, missing littles from Gordanya, & a little apprehensive about what's next. please continue to pray for elizabeth & i, the HFO team, for the kids, spiritual strength & discernment, cultural understanding & grace to .think. _before I speak? grateful: _for_  Jesus.  prayers!  chance to be here.  awesome HFO team.  10 days with a fantastic American team. Elizabeth.  baby Ivanshko.  coffee!  the metro.  thunderstorms mightier than any I've seen yet.  beauty.  culture misunderstandings that keep me humble.  language barriers that force me to be creative & work at communicating. showers. Ukrainian ice cream comrade's journal// ( Kyev) 

I've been freaking about this day, dreading it. never dreaded June 10 before now. not sure why this year i was. maybe cause I'm not mature enough, I'm not where I wanted to be spiritually--have I been lazy this past year even more than I thought? have I just wasted 365 days of my life? I'm not where I saw myself in life--but I've always tried to follow God. this can't have been His plan! but today I set all those questions aside & just lived it. I know God's hand is upon me. I know that for all my wandering, I sought Him in every big life decision--sometimes I fought His leading but there has never been one He let me go my own way. He always wins those battles! He never left me. even when I have tried to run, He never let me go. so here I am. it is what it is. I'm here, there's nothing I can change about it. people may judge & think whatever they want too; but my heart knows I've tried to walk Gods path for me faithfully. failed in alot o...

its been awhile, but life is still beautiful. here are tonights reasons:  *tell me I'm not Irish enough to keep up with your lil war? challenge accepted! ;) *in some seasons, the best way to show love & say goodbye involves confetti, saranwrap, glitter, silly string, Miranda lambert & midnight & a friend's car. *Star Wars *texts that say "I love you" out of the blue from someone you know doesn't say it lightly. (& whom you kinda adores back) *fresh blueberries *windows down & open roads & lungs that can sing *wallace, comrade, arwen.  *God has a plan. & it's magnificent. even when I don't believe it.  *testimonies of answered prayer & hearing from a friend who just got home from Nicaragua *laughter *end it movement. thank God for this! there ARE believers with passionate hearts! who are not content to maintain a comfortable lifestyle, but instead are willing to actually live like Jesus: messy, engaging, uncomfortable. to res...

I love traveling by myself. I mean, I love traveling period! :) don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of the bonding & camaraderie that develops en route to another country with teammates. (Short group flights are just boring, lets road trip those instead) when you've got multiple airports & a bunch of exhausted excited people it's hilarity waiting to happen! you also get to see how folks respond in tense or high stress situations when they're tired. good things to know pre-mission haha. so that's prob second fave flying... flying solo. there's a sense of freedom, possibility & adventure when one is alone that isn't there any other time. it's my favorite! I love watching people & creating stories from clues about where they're going. I love one-time conversations with strangers about where they are from/going & why. I thank God for Starbucks, wifi & books. speaking of...the guy in the last plane was reading a book called crea...

hi guys. good news! i am still here. bad news! i haven't had time to write out the how-God-drastically-changed-this-heart-and-why-i-now-have-a-tatt post. i really do intend to...i actually NEED to make the time. hopefuls for tonight? because i am one of those people who has to process her life. ya know, taking time out of it, thinking & compartmentalizing & doing the whole what is the big picture/story here that i don't see? kinda deal. (oh look. horrendously constructed, ultra confusing sentence for the day? done!) but what i do have time for is to slap up some pictures. i actually had this fantastical post written the night i did this (i think it was 3 weeks ago?) but i did it on my phone and cash deleted it. :( so this is the scrambled version but it beats nothing. i smile everytime i remembered this day so i thought i'd share the happy. a few weeks ago, i got off work around 2.30 in winter park and as i was driving by the I-4 ramp toward home, th...

"Even our (failures) can bring forth}} good .if. they crush our independence,  }}drive} us closer to Christ and make us more aware of our need of grace . The greatest need of a true saint is a greater revelation of the love of God IN CHRiST." ~paul washer so maybe i feel like i am doing the worst single-mum-of-5 + dog + helpful teenage weekend ever. i think i was more fun, patient, leading-little-hearts-toward-Christ aware my very first time at this than i am now. but. maybe God's working in me. AND these precious littles. maybe He has a plan in all the littlest things that don't seem siginificant at all. who knows? He is about the business of redeeming hearts...hooray. cheers.

tuesdays are not my day. we struggle to have a love/hate relationship...i roll out of bed at 5.20 for bible study. sometimes have pt at 8 afterwards, if not i get Jesus time. walk into school around 10.30am & don't get out of my last class till 9.15pm. the highlights of my day are: seeing sunrise, coffee from home or from scraping my change together, lab, & my 5.20-6.30 break. i feel like i'm dying halfway through my second class. but i do love bio lab. (sometimes i think that's bc its 3 of 4 & know FOOD is about to happen haha) but. i survive all 11hrs every week. and this time, God met me. so many little ways. i saw His hand all over the place! convicted me. i need to start looking for beauty specifically on tues. need to be praying while i walk from class to class, need to look for grace & ways to be love. since this is my blog and i can be as boring as i want to. here's a recap of the first thankfulness tues. this tuesday. life was beautiful...

grateful for undeserved common graces: 236) spent wed-thurs babysitting one of my fave families of 5 + an extra girl. 237) comfy sweatpants 238) clean water & hot water--in my house! 239) Beks is happy, well & loves living in WV. 240) Sarah. Abigail. Beks. Wesley. {{i am astoundingly wealthy. 241) made a Mediterranean fish dinner last night after a year of wanting. & it tasted amazing. 242) Friday night w. Emma. my sunshine. lovely.

that night, 2.3.12 I will never forget. it was full of ordinary things, the typical weekend night of an american female 20-something. 3 girls met up at Starbucks. took pictures. went to a civil wars concert. sat in the car for hours after; talking about Jesus n life & how those two meet & intertwine. but for me, it wasn't ordinary. ordinary at that time was panic attacks. fear, doubting my sanity, doubting my interpretation of scripture, doubting God's promises by wondering if His best for me involved me losing my mind. that night I felt...not stable. but at least able to fake it. I saw, for the first time potential that I might return to life before January. me & ok was real. in the future. I laughed out loud that night. damn i have great friends! it startled me. I was shocked i could laugh & yet. also shocked to realize I couldn't remember the last time I'd truthfully laughed out loud...Christmas? surely I laughed that day. it was one of the f...

so much I could (& will) write about where Gods brought me in a year etc. but tonight I just want to say He is beautiful. number one .01. reason that my life can be! I'm so grateful for a God who delights, who is happy, who is not just good but perfectly Holy & Sovereign. grateful for His work in friends hearts & lives. grateful for the ever patient forgiveness of my family. grateful for target clearance & $4 sky blue backpacks replacing the torn brother cast-off. grateful for the past taxes I paid that I'm getting back via school money. grateful for education even when I disagree w my profs. grateful for an imagination that can spark curiosity in the boringnest classes. grateful for physical therapists grateful for bicep tendons (please heal quickly little guy!) grateful for littles grateful for theme songs; today was desert soul by the rend collective. (they're Irish! folksy! love Jesus! what's not to love?)