September 24th

Today is:
*My Mom's birthday
*The 1 year anniversary of the first time I ever ran screens.
*The ending of one year of consecration for the Lord
*A good day. :)

I yearbooked myself...

I yearbooked myself...

www.yearbookyourself.com

3 Men and the Light!

These are some videos my friends back in Michigan made for evangelism.
They're pretty obnoxious, but I grew up with 2 of these guys and love them too pieces. My favorites are 2 and 3. Good job you guys. :)

Incarnate Thirst

"Just like Adam we do have a choice as to whether we will honor the way we were created and love God, but we must understand that there is nothing we can do to change the way we were fashioned" -Stephen Venable

"Hey, Whoever you are who wrote on my jeep"

This afternoon while leaving the FSM building I discovered a message written on my window. It just said "HEY ABBY!" but I'm dying of curiosity to know who did it. People shouldn't do things like this to me without revealing themselves. :-p I don't handle these things well so it's become this huge mystery that I'll probably loose sleep over. I've eliminated certain possibilities and texted pretty much everyone I think it could be. But no one has come clean. Come on people! Curiosity is killing this cat!!!



On another note Judith (my favorite German ex-roomie) and I went to Chipotle to catch up and talk about how life was before people wrote on my jeep without leaving their name. While we were eating 4 police men walked in probably hungry from stopping all window writing shenanigans. Well as we were leaving Judith and I were highly amused that we were so securely surrounded by their vehicles. I just thought the picture below was highly appropriate... Let's see you try and write on my jeep now!!!

Gift giving

During FMA last year every student was required to take a personality test in order to discover the best ways of working with one another in such a close environment. I resulted in being an Otter (fun loving gal) and Golden Retriever (administrative evaluator type). Anyway, a couple of friends and I took it a step further and took another quiz to discover what our love languages are, not just for 'future husband' benefit, but also just to know how we like to be loved and how we like to give our love. The quiz is based on the book 'The 5 love languages by Gary Chapman'. In conclusion I found out that my receiving love language is physical touch while my giving away love language is giving gifts.

I really feel like this is accurate for me because there is nothing I love more than giving gifts to people I really truly admire and cherish. A lot of the time I feel like I am not so great at expressing how I feel with words. So if I really like someone I get them a gift.

Gifts can say so many different things like: "hey, I was listening to you when you told me you really wanted _______". Or "I know you really like these things and wanted to bless you with getting you one". Or even "this is just something I might thought you like". It could also be a reminder of a memory like "hey, remember that day when we laughed so hard about so and so such thing, well this totally reminded me of that". The list goes on and on. I love it.

The good thing about taking these self examining quizzes is that for the most part I don't evaluate how I come off to other people. I could really like someone but have really closed off body language. Or I could really want to talk to someone but never speak up (not out of fear) just out of not knowing the things to say. Gift giving for me is the easiest form of showing affection/respect/admiration because I feel like a present says everything for me or jump starts what it is I want to say by beginning with a simple "I appreciate you".

The point of this post is not so much conveying how I love other people but more so a statement and testimony of how this has transformed me into learning how I express myself to God. I have had such an awesome time giving to the Lord. Finding what He wants and sneaking little presents here and there. He's a hard guy to surprise but I've found so much delight and favor upon my life just in looking for ways to give more to Him. I really think all of our giving love languages are gift giving to God to some extent simply because He longs for us to live righteously and that takes the sacrifice of giving of yourself. The best part of it all is that He created me to receive love through physical touch and honors that on occasion with physical manifestations of Himself. How rad is that? I don't know much but I know how I love and I know how I want to be loved back and all I can do is come to Him as a little weak girl hoping for more of Him.

I feel loved when...

The Five Love Languages

My Primary Love Language is Physical Touch

My Detailed Results:
Physical Touch:	11
Receiving Gifts:	10
Quality Time:	6
Acts of Service:	2
Words of Affirmation:	1

About this quiz

Unhappiness in relationships is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. It can be helpful to know what language you speak and what language those around you speak.

Tag 3 people so they can find out what their love language is.

Take the Quiz!
Check out the Book

"Everything I am for Your Kingdoms cause"

I've been reading through some of my old journals. Not just hand written journals but also posts on the Internet I wrote in high school on livejournal and xanga. It's pretty cool to see the things the Lord was revealing to me throughout the different situations and circumstances of life.

There's a few consistent themes popping up in my current season and turning to the Lord in circumstances happens to be one of them. The Lord is good all the time. Rain or shine, bad or good, healthy relationships or not so healthy relationships. He has taught, and continues to teach me that He is enough. At least recently I've been impacted with revelation that my relationship with God does not depend on circumstances. But a lot of my focus was aimed towards 'my relationship with God does not depend on my bad circumstances'. When it seems like all this time He's been showing my heart that my relationship with Him doesn't depend on what is good in my life/the good circumstances either. I think that's sometimes a harder reality to come by. I think a lot of the time loving God when things are good comes more naturally and that's why I didn't catch on to what He's been revealing to me for so long. It's really coming to terms with He is enough.

I've struggled with this a lot these past few weeks because I feel like the Lord has placed a couple different doors of opportunity in front of me because my year of consecration is now coming to an end. The Lord did a ton of stuff in my heart/life last September and the 23rd will mark the one year anniversary of that. So I feel like I'm coming to a cross road of descion making.

Choice A:
Suffer through the lesson of learning patience and choose to go through this door. This door seems to be the painful, lonely, self sacrificing option but I truly feel like if this is the route I travel there is a greater existence of the fullness of the Lord.

Choice B:
Immediate. I could automatically get the satisfaction of the desires in question (which are completely godly mind you) but not have the lessons learned in the encounters of waiting even longer for what God has in store.

Conclusion:
Choice A wins because of the greater love it brings between me and the Lord. It's always been the Lord first and I have to wait on Him to bring circumstances (both good or bad) into my life and not try and control destiny. The hardest part is that if I choose A I turn myself over to completely trusting in the Lord for receiving what I want in the end, because it has yet to be made known if the possibility is actually something directed in that path. While if I pick B, I get what I want and quicker.

However the choice is still A. It's always been him. I just didn't know it for a really long time. And to be completely honest/truthful I don't want either choice if picking one does not bring more fellowship with the Spirit, partnership with Christ, and glory to the Father.

"Everything I am for Your Kingdoms cause, as I walk from Earth into eternity"

Okay this was just funny...

Loving others is essentially what makes us grow in faith. And Jesus said that whole, if you have faith as big as a musterd seed you can move mountains, so I'm guessing not too many people excel in the area of loving others since I haven't seen a ton of mountains flying around.

P.S.

A note on things to come.
I've been doing a lot of studying on the Psalms this summer and for this past week have been caught up on Psalm 119. I want to write some about my own heart reflections/application of this Psalm and am hoping it comes as some benefit to you as well. I'm not calling this a blog series because I'm horrible with those. I still haven't finished my 'so-called-series' on praying through the beatitudes, although my heart is still truely set ablaze when I take the time to meditate on Matthew 5. Anyway, point being that it is my intent to not get scripturally dull with my blogging. Even though I have been posting more about feelings and life updates. Just an FYI. :)

Family

The hardest thing about living in Kansas City is that I'm so far away from my family. I love my parents and my brother so much and really do miss them. But I don't feel like I miss them because of their individual qualities as much as missing the way I see Jesus in them. To be completely honest I selfishly miss the reality of having the support system of a family right at my finger tips. My parents are just a phone call away but it's not the same as actually being in the room, challenging each other spiritually and emotionally. I just know my heart has been longing for these tangible relationships lately. Finding Christ in people as well as scripture.

Quick update for those tracking with me.
I'm still doing the Surgical Tech. program at Penn Valley this semester. Studies are going well but it is pretty difficult retaining all of the information. Especially since most of it is Greek or Latin. It's also hard to be back in a secular school. My heart breaks for a lot of my class mates. However I have found a lot of opportunity to commune with the spirit during classes. Pray for me to be a light and that I would help to capture their hearts with desire for God.

Blessings all. I am so thankful my friends for your support as I chase after my dreams and catch up to them. The Lord is good.