Belated

If you were wondering if the Chubby Chicks quilt ever got finished (and I am well aware that you are not), it did. Four months ago, just in time for Christmas. Don't judge me in this picture. I finished it at 2am.

Time With the Fam

I got to spend some time with my family this weekend, which was so fun. Betsy and her husband, Rocky, and daughter, Elise came from Nebraska. We celebrated my dad and Elise's birthdays (she's ONE!!) together. Rachel and her boys came up from Denver. It felt comfortable and normal and it was good to be together. A few family pictures...
My sister Betsy (left) and Rachel (right). We discovered I was the tallest and should stand in the middle. Do you know how momentous this was? I have never been the tallest in any other picture in my life. Write it down. Big day.
My sweet nephews and niece. Orion (9), Elise (1), and Coda (4). Coda has such a sweet relationship with Elise and loves her dearly, you can tell. It is such a tender thing about him.

The whole family...fun to see our family growing! Elise, Rocky, Betsy, me, my dad, Rachel, Orion, Coda, and my mom. And...big news...Betsy is pregnant again and due in December. How exciting!

My One and Only

Easter was just a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I'd share a couple of reflections. At our Christmas eve service at church, one of our pastor's asked if our hearts were prepared for Christmas. I'd been working crazy holiday hours at the Mace, been shopping for Christmas gifts, helping with decorating at church...it was a crazy time of year and as I sat there I realized...my heart was not at all prepared for the very holiday I had been running myself ragged to celebrate. I think everyone has had this realization, and, if you're anything like me, you probably have it every year. *Sigh* But at that moment, I decided that I didn't want to feel that way about Easter this year. I really wanted my heart to be readied for Easter. I picked out a Bible study that would focus my heart on Christ and began it shortly after Christmas. I didn't necessarily time it this way, but I finished it Easter day and it was such a blessing. Easter has never meant more to me, because I have never been so intimately acquainted with the life and heart of the One who bled and died and then rose again on that day. Here are the highlights of what God taught me in the past several weeks:

• Jesus' birth was preceded by a 400 year period of silence from God. How the people must have ached for a Savior and how much faith it must have required to continue to believe that Christ was coming when it had been generations since God had been heard!
• God is faithful and inconceivably enjoyable even when a request goes unmet (Zechariah and Elizabeth)
• Jesus' mother Mary was chosen by God for a special role. Her song (Luke 1:46-55) reflects that she must have loved scripture and had a unique heart for the Lord, including more than 12 Old Testament references.
• Christ's very job description is given in Isaiah 61, including to heal the brokenhearted. The original word for heal means "to mend by stitching." He had to be pierced to make us whole again!
• Every need humanity possesses is secondary to the need to hear and receive the gospel.
• Christ holds us responsible for the things we only say to ourselves. We are accountable for our thoughts! (Luke 7:39 and surrounding story). Our innermost places need daily purification. Part of the process is recognizing and confessing judgmental, impure, or critical thoughts before they make their way into our mouths and actions.
• Hearing God's Word is fundamental to growth of any kind! (Luke 8:11-15)
• "Wrath" means "utter abhorrence to sin but with longing mixed with grief for those who live in it." Even in His wrath, God is merciful!
• Few things cause people to sin like unforgiveness!
• The four cups of the passover meal represent the "I will" statements of Exodus 6:6-7: I will deliver you, I will redeem you, I will take you as my people, I will be your God. How profound that we are His chosen ones.
  
• The cost for me to become a new creation was beyond what I can fathom!
  

Things I am praying as a result of this season:

• That God would motivate me to actively engage myself in every message I hear or read, to be teachable because His Word is always living and active, regardless of delivery.
• That I would develop God's taste: desire what He loves, hate what He hates, marvel at the things He finds marvelous...
• That God would give me a longing for the sinners of this world to be forgiven, not for the sinners of the world to be judged.
• That God would search my heart, soul, and mind for vulnerabilities to foolish decisions.

On the last day of my study, Beth Moore poses this question:
"Has Jesus become your One and Only? Is he transcending all else in your life? Is he beyond compare? Your one and only Savior? Your one and only deliverer? The one and only lover of your soul."
I am so blessed by God's goodness. He does not allow me to draw near to Him without changing me. I feel like I know Him so much more now and I can honestly answer more truly than before, yes, He is my One and Only.

What a Mess...

I am realizing that I am truly my mother's daughter. For the longest time, I have always thought of my mom's van as a sort of black hole slash Walmart because it has EVERYTHING you could ever need in it. It is chock full of a bunch of stuff and there isn't a lot of room to sit in it and actually go places.

Shamefully, I must admit that my car has become the same. *Sigh.* So, I cleaned it out yesterday and you just won't even believe the contents. Thought you'd find it entertaining:

• Snow boots
• Lunch box
• 2 translations of the Bible
• Book
• 3 clothes hangers
• Package of thank you notes
• Googly eyes (like for crafts)
• Painting clothes
• Favorite jeans...was wondering where the heck those were
• Diaper wipes (Sunday school kids)
• Tacky glue
• White label stickers
• Red acrylic paint
• Character bandaids in 2 varieties (Sunday school)
• Bandaids (obviously, I'm set should I ever need one)
• Pair of socks
• I Pod cord
• Lint brush
• Interior design idea book
• Hot pad
• Dress pants
• Green purse
• Plum purse
• Red marker
• Saline nasal spray
• Phil Wicam CD
• Polka dotted flip flops
• Winter scarf
• And here's the kicker...a fondue pot and 6 forks.

What in the world?! You'll be happy to know that my car is now vacuumed and washed and that today I was all that is man and refilled my very own wiper fluid. I deserve a ribbon.

From Indoorsy to Outdoorsy

I bet you thought I'd never go four-wheeling and camping for five full days. I certainly never did. I left during the middle of last week to go to beautiful Moab, Utah and enjoy quite an adventure. I had so much fun and was completely out of my comfort zone. Here are a couple of pictures:

This was my first obstacle. I was a little bit of a dare devil, I guess, because I really wanted to do this whole Jeep Safari thing 100% if I was going to do it at all. So I rode along for some really scary obstacles. This one wasn't bad once I had something to compare it to, but at the time it was terrifying!
I was laughing and screaming at the same time and this is kind of what that looks like. :)

One of the most interesting things for me to watch on this trip was how all of the guys seemed to just have a sense about them with four wheeling. There would be a problem and they'd just all jump out, pop the hood and start checking things out. They always seemed to know what to do but they rarely communicated about it. They just kind of worked together. It was fascinating. We were going up this really steep obstacle when Colby popped his tire off of the rim. It was sitting right on a rock and the guys didn't want him to move it because it would ruin his rim. They needed to change his tire, but the truck was at a 45 degree angle. They all got in there and assessed the situation...

Then they jacked it up a little bit and put the rim on a piece of wood so that it would be so bad. The tied a strap to Ben's truck (parked in front) to give Colby's truck stability.
Then they changed the tire and it was finished. The whole thing probably only took 15 or 2o minutes. I could not believe that, almost without a word, all of these guys could solve the problem.
This was the scariest thing we did the whole trip, and I got to ride along!! This is called the Escalator. The way this whole thing works is that the boys walk the obstacle and decide where they want their tires, etc. This is called "a line." Then someone is in charge of making sure they keep their tires where the driver wanted them and they get going. It's a pretty controlled environment, really.
So at this point we're on a pretty steep incline and I am almost completely laying flat in the truck because of it. You really can't see anything at certain points and that is terrifying.

There is then a big hole in the ground and it has water in it, which isn't great because the water doesn't help traction. So the goal was to keep the tire out of the water.

This is Ben telling Briton that there is not way the tire will be able to clear the hole without doing through the water a little bit.
Feeling a little bit scared at this point and pretty unstable but trying not to make that known.

Yep, that's three tires making contact with the rock. Scary.

So at this point we were pretty much stuck in a hole.
Here are the guys trying to figure out how they should get the driver rear tire out of it's little rut.

So they tied a strap onto the truck and then they all pulled on it. They're not really pulling the truck out, they're just providing tension so it doesn't roll down the very steep rock we were on.

What a fun time! Might post some more pictures later.

Been Away for Awhile...

Haven't been too into blogging recently, but I guess people want some updates, so I'll see what I can muster up. :)

What's happened during this little blogging hiatus...

• My sister and her family moved to Nebraska. This was met by tears on my end for sure, and I miss having her and little Elise nearby.
• I moved out of my parent's house.
• I took classes to learn to be a nursing assistant, enjoyed them, got through clinicals, got offered a job then failed the strength test to do the job, hence, still at Macys.
• God used that disappointment to stir in my a greater longing for the lost, and that is exciting.
• I've thought much more seriously about getting my masters.
• I celebrated my 23rd birthday a couple weeks ago with a bunch of friends. It was great! Hard to believe all of the wonderful friends I have made since being here less than a year. What a blessing!