12 of 12 – march ‘11!

On the 12th of each month, a bunch of bloggers take 12 pictures throughout the day.  Here are my pictures for March 12th, 2011!

11:14 am – car. Perhaps slowly piecing together summer work.  Are you following me on twitter?

11:38 am – home outfitters. OMG which one do I buy?

11:42 am – car. The pink one of course!

12:19 pm – sears. Eugh, old lady clothes.  We discussed aging in Issues in Health on Tuesday – why did nobody mention the terrible clothes as an issue surrounding aging?!

12:27 pm – mall. This kiosk sells fake tulips.  Wonder how many days THAT kiosk will last?

5:21 pm – bathroom. Put my hair up though you can’t see.  Makes everything feel so much better.

6:43 pm – aunt’s house. Butter pecan cupcakes for my grandma’s birthday?! YES PLEASE!

8:49 pm – aunt’s house. Why are these at the top of my aunt’s stairs?!

9:28 pm – aunt’s house. Better yet, 1) why is there cheese in my mom’s purse and 2) why is this blurry?

9:48 pm – back lane. We got stuck in this, we had a semi-blizzard yesterday.  I actually had my first experience having to push a car!  My mom got stuck in this snow, and then she said “Shit!” and then I had to go push.  Good times, mostly.

10:18 pm – bathroom. Um, bath and “Oh Shit! It’s Jesus!” – sounds good to me.  I am LOVING this book.

10:59 pm – kitchen. My Live/Ed Kowalczyk obsession is not letting up.  LOVE this stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12 of 12 was created by Chad Darnell.  To see all the other 12s from around the world, check out his site as he’s been gracious to let us infiltrate his blog space with our links for another year!  Thanks Chad!

“Jesus, let me die inside this – raise me up to live again like You did”

—In The Dark // Flyleaf [alternate chorus]

I’m reading Melody Carlson’s Pitch Black right now.  Again.  The focal point of this book is suicide.  It brings up many interesting points, one of which is spiritual suicide through Jesus.  It really causes me to realize that I think if it weren’t through spiritual suicide through Jesus that day in September ‘05, that I would not be here right now.  “Dying to death and rising to life” [Uncle Bobby, Flyleaf].

Because I cannot get over it.  I cannot get over how Jesus so fully fixed what I thought was a totally worthless life, and killed the old part of me so completely.  The bitter, depressed, angsty part of me.  And let me LIVE.

The book highlights Matthew 16:24.  At this point, Jesus says something to His disciples that totally hits me in the face every single time.

If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.

Matthew 16:24-25, NLT

If I held onto my life, I would have lost it.  In a very, very real way.  Yet, by SURRENDERING my life to Jesus, by giving it all to Him I am here.

I am ALIVE.

what can i learn from You today?

So, through a friend, way back in the day, I found a blog called what can i learn from You today?

I loved it, because it was so real to me.  Because real people experience hard times and darkness, desperation and pain, which are then eclipsed by happiness and the stuff we’re passionate about, the stuff that makes life worth living.  The negative desperation, yeah, it sucks.  But it can mold us into who we are.

Well, at least it kind of did that to me.

Anyways, God is teaching me stuff lately, now that I’ve started trying to grow in Him again.  As I read truereligion, as I go about my day, as I listen to Falling Up on my iPod, i find myself asking:

“Hey, God, what can I learn from You today?”

It’s a cool feeling.  It’s a cool feeling when God keeps interacting in mysterious little ways, like making everything you’ve read in the Bible the night before pop up in truereligion or on your Facebook wall the next day.  When what you were talking about (the Chunnel, for example), pops up two hours later in the book you’re reading.  Yeah, only our God could pull something crazy like that!

I tried to make myself think it didn’t matter in the past, but it did—this:

fellowship helps.

Getting involved helps me grow.  Encouragement helps.  This is what the Body of Christ is about.  Because it’s so much better when you’re sharing the journey with someone.  When you can say “Man, our God is awesome.” and the person gets it.  When you have someone who’s feeling it, feeling change, feeling God as much as you are, who wants to dig deeper, who wants to see the change hope can create in the world—that Jesus can create in the world.

I’m back in church.  I’m not only back in church, but I’m getting ignited.  I want to know more, and I want to be there.  I can’t wait to be back.  I’m doing things in church.  I’m excited about church.  I’m excited about unraveling God’s mysteries, unraveling what God wants us to learn together.

I want my thoughts toward God to become second-nature.  I want to grow deeper, grow bigger in faith.  I want to grow deeper into who God is telling me to be, what God is telling me to go after.  I want to see the parts of this world that He wants me to discover.  I want Him to lead me, to discover how to do all this.

I want to be His.