orphans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZgLf3rN9xg

Haiti. the world and God's heart for it. He made it. He cares.

Haiti has been on my heart alot.

Everytime I eat lately, or sleep in my warm bed, or take a shower or drink anything my heart really breaks and feels guilty because I know there is so much suffering there right now. But shouldn't this always be so??? There is suffering around the world right now but Haiti is in the limelight so my heart particularly breaks for this country but there is that hurting everywhere. Hopelessness. People without hope in Jesus...

What does God break your heart for? Are you letting God share His heart with you by spending time with Him and allowing Him to show you His heart for situations? That is something I don't always spend enough time doing is letting God's truth penetrate my life... that just shows me where my heart is though - selfish. Lord help me never be selfish and not let you radically change my life with Your powerful love!!!!

hope. always hope!

oh the depths Christ went to save us
from the pain and sin surrounding us
the most painful of all deaths and hell
3 days down...

oh the depths Christ went to save us.

oh the times i try on my own
to save myself or not remembering His love
or the depths Christ went to save me.
let me never minimize my Savior.


oh how often i do - and negate the cross
what a price He paid,
Lord bring me back to You
in every situation let my heart conform to Yours
remembering that You took this for me
let no bitterness or un-forgiveness be found
because at such a price you took those to hell.

let it all stay there and let me rejoice in your triumph!
what a day...
what joy and what love!

you my Healer and restorer
my place to learn of true Love and healing


and let me never hesitate to follow You
and show this glorious saving of my heart
let other's know of this Savior
we all need to be saved no matter how big or small
You are that Savior...
saved us one and all!

thank you Jesus!!!!!!!!!!!

excited.

because today i woke up WANTING Jesus.
wanting to worship Him and wanting Him to have alll of me.

i love waking up with Jesus so in my heart.
wanting to spend time with Him.
you know i pray for that - i want to love Him most.
having Him pulling my heart towards Him.

Him first...

you know but sometimes my heart gets distracted.
so i was excited...
excited to have a heart undivided!!!


pSalM 86:11-12
teach me to walk in Your ways, Lord
give me an undivided heart that i may fear Your name.
i will praise You, O Lord my God with all my heart
I will glorify Your name forever!

Glorious Numbing of Noses and Toeses

- emily, me, ellen, alison and rachel -

Pure joy...

I feel so blessed and privileged to have such incredible sisters in my life. After ice-skating today we went to a coffee shop and had such encouraging conversations. These girls are absolute gems and I feel so blessed to have such wonderful sisters who have hearts focused on serving Jesus and living that out in every area of life. Encouragement to the soul...

Psalm 3:3
But You are a shield around me O Lord;
You bestow glory on me and lift up my head!

C.S. Lewis

(art by John Thacker)

"To Love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be certainly wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure to keep it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness; but in that casket-safe, dark, motionless; airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable and irredeemable." ~C.S. Lewis~

Lord - break my heart for what is breaking Yours. Let me never be calloused.

God's Temple, God-prayers

This morning I was reading through chapter 8 in 1 Kings and it is when King Solomon finished building the temple. I love what he prays...

verse 54:
When Solomon had finished all these prayers and supplications to the Lord, he rose from before the altar of the Lord where he had been kneeling with his hands spread out toward heaven.

How beautiful to have a place where the Lord dwelt after many years of prayer and waiting. How beautiful to see the fruit of answered prayers.

continued in verse 58:
May He turn our hearts to Him to walk in all His ways and to keep the commands, decrees and regulations he gave our fathers.

verse 60:
so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God and that there is no other. But your hearts must be fully committed to the Lord our God, to live by His decrees and obey His commands as at this time.

Sometimes, God answers prayers quickly, sometimes years and years go by without a sign of Him hearing, but time to God is not as time is to us. So trust and never stop praying a prayer that is a God-prayer.

The more you spend time with God the easier it is to distinguish His heart and knowing how He wants us to pray. The more time we spend on our own without acknowledging and giving God every part of our lives the more confusing things get and our prayers become frantic and scattered and selfish. Let God's heart beat strongly in your heart and shape your prayers and desires. Then you will be filled with His peace and joy that passes all human understanding.


Psalm 16:11
You have made known to me the path of life,
You fill me with JOY in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.

love.

why is it so easy for us to love some people.
harder to love others (at least fully from our hearts)
and yet even HARDER to let Christ fully love us.

i have been realizing lately what a grinch i am when it comes to letting myself be loved by God and Jesus. like really understanding and being excited about their love for me. how they adore me - their creation, sister, daughter and friend. how they long to spend time with me and hear my heart and walk and enjoy things with them.

i think if i stopped and let Jesus love my heart instead of block His love He wants to shower me with it'd be alot easier to love those people it can be hard to love at times. and it'd make our love for people easy to love even MORE full. Christ's love does that.. sooo powerful. and...

it casts out all fear.
fills you with joy.
covers you with forgiveness for yourself and others.
peace that passes understanding.
patience in trials.
kindness and goodness.
kindles faithfulness in all things.
controls yourself in out of control situations.
brings gentleness to wrath.



i set the fire-alarms off in our house today. :)

blizzard thots.

When you end up inside for a few days you have alot of time to think. And wow, has God been moving my heart lately!

The school year has started strong for me - I am teaching 6 classes for Hearts in Step this year. 5 of those 6 classes are 3-5 year old age classes and I LOVE them! Some classic quotes so far this year have been:

"And God, help my grandma's bad breath to go away..."

(after a little girl finishes twirling across the floor.."
"Whoah.... I'm SOOOO busy!"

But then there is also the really precious comments made by students. I had been sick one weekend and hadn't slept well and then Sunday night I ended up sleeping great for the first time. Well, I arrive at my Monday morning class to have one of my little angels inform me that she prayed for me last night, and she prayed I would sleep good! :) What a blessing knowing children are praying and God ANSWERS those prayers! We can learn about prayer (and so much more) from children. I think it's partly why I love them so much - I never want to stop having that child-like faith in Jesus!

Narnia

It has been quite a while since I've gotten on here! It's been such an incredible season month or so. Let me try to sum up with words and pictures! :)

I completed and performed in my first full length ballet I choreographed, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." It was an incredible time. Let me tell you I lived, breathed, slept, ate, everything Narnia for a few weeks leading up to that day. It was amazing and after it was done, I just felt like God had just taught me so much and provided. I think that was the key theme for that event was God's provision. Everything from randomly driving out of my neighborhood and finding the "wardrobe" one day to the facility being basically given to us for free, a ton of costumes randomly given us a few weeks before the show, Kelsey writing a few songs that went precisely with the different parts of the ballet. (She wrote a song from the trees perspective and all the girls in the chorus of Narnia were trees for half the ballet.. what?!) :) Even just providing the right dancers and behind the scenes crew. It was amazing! Really the Lord worked through prayer. I remember one rehearsal where we were going to choreograph the Stone Table scene and I was anticipating it taking at least an entire rehearsal. This was to me the most climactic point of the ballet because it is a depecition of what Christ did on the cross. We all gathered before we started rehearsing it and literally that scene came together in 5 minutes. This whole production was SO focused on prayer... I remember some rehearsals we spent literaly an hour to an hour and half praying over details and it was awesome seeing the Lord answering specific prayers and unifiying our hearts through the Holy Spirit. What a joy to be a part of such an incredible thing! So many people donated so much so that we could give everything to Open Arms for Asia - an incredible ministry to the children in India! Ahh.. Praise the Lord! Here are my favorite shots from this production...

I loved every part of Narnia and will hopefully be able to do it again sometime in the next few years... God knows when I will enter into the world of Narnia again but I have a feeling that just like in the books it will happen when I least expect it. Untill then it holds dear memories in my heart. :)