15 degrees & snow = God’s grace??

after being back out West now for a month and a 1/2, the winter has started to wear on me.  the snow.  the bitter cold.  the lack of flip-flop wearing.

but Paul keeps reminding me that it’s just God’s grace.  what??  I think I probably rolled my eyes at that comment the first 5 times or so that he’s said it. :P

I mean, he might have a point…I suppose.  God has created the earth with just the right levels of nitrogen and oxygen and whatever else so that we can live.  He’s tilted the earth at just the right angle to the sun so that we don’t burn up and we don’t freeze over.

he reasons that anything between –20 deg F and 120 deg F is just God’s grace – it’s not cold enough to freeze us to death and not hot enough to burn us to death.

an overly-excited exclamation of, “Wow, isn’t this great??  Just another taste of God’s grace!!” is not really something you want to hear when you’re running to the car in bitter cold wind and snow.  it’s not really something you want to hear when you’re staring out the window at the snow, daydreaming about being home on the beach.  BUT – I’m starting to learn to just embrace it.  and not complain.

because, after all – I got to go home to the Keys for a month and a 1/2 this winter.  :)

and it’s true.  God’s grace can be seen (and felt) even in the weather.

Eph 1:19-21

"I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us who believe Him.

This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms.

Now He is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world but also in the world to come." (Ephesians 1:19-21 NLT)

Now, if that doesn't get you excited, I don't know what will.

:)

I love the way it's said in this song by Hillsong:
"The same power that conquered the grave lives in me, lives in me. Your love that rescued the earth lives in me, lives in me."

Sing it from the rooftops!!

Wyoming Winters

You know how like, in the old days people wouldn't be able to get places because of the weather? Like a pass would be closed or whatnot? Well i thought that was only in the old days - like before snowplows and salt trucks.

Apparently I was wrong.

I was planning to drive my Zeva girl (a Scion xB) out to Torrington this Wednesday (we're moving this week!!). No snow in the forecast. Good to go, right?

Well then a high wind warning popped up on the forecast. And everyone was talking about how bad the road to Torrington would be and I'm thinking...it's just wind. C'mon.

After everyone kept talking about the roads, I finally decided maybe they knew something I didn't (i know, kinda a stretch, right? ...jk :) ). So I decided to head out to Torrington today with the rest of the crew so I wouldn't get into nasty driving by myself tomorrow.

Sure enough, a little ways down the road there was blowing snow and slush on the roads. One section had like...3-5 inches on snow on the road. We saw 2 cars and a semi in a ditch.

...I'm so glad I didn't have to drive my car. :) I rode with Cristine in the suburban.

A few weeks ago, the road from Torrington to Cheyenne was closed for awhile due to snow. Like, they really can close roads. With this gate-like thing.

I'm used to checking the weather to see if we can get a couple hours of beach volleyball in during rainy season. I'm used to checking the winds to see if we can go sailing. But this checking the weather for winter storm warnings and high wind warnings? Not so much something I think to do yet.

Good thing I live with smart people.

Feel free to send big warm coats and hoodies.

Aw look at Zeva, conquerer of the high wind warning!!

Graduating

This past Sunday I graduated to the full drum set at church! I'm growing up so fast!! I had to promise to play responsibly. And I played pretty safe. Although "Blessed Be Your Name" may've had a slight runaway train feel at one point ;) hey, we just be excited about praisin' Jesus - ain't no shame in that! :)

We'll see what kind of setup I get next week...

Subliminal message to Paul...let her have the whole set again...let her have the whole set again...let her have the whole set again...

I totally rock at the subliminal messages.

It 27 degrees out and the kids are outside playing with just sweatshirts on. Meanwhile, I'm sitting inside wearing more layers than they are and drinking hot chai.

Yep. It's official. Some of us were not made for cold weather.

Missin' the SoFla heat.

Ephesians 1–Identity

I’ve never read Ephesians 1 before and seen who I am in Christ so clearly.  I mean, there’s a ton you can take away from Ephesians 1.  but my identity in Christ hasn’t been something that’s stood out to me from this passage until this week.

I am blessed.  Eph. 1:3

I am holy & blameless in God’s sight through the blood of Jesus.  Eph. 1:4

I am chosen.  Chosen by the Almighty God, the One who rules of all.  Eph. 1:4

I am loved.  So dearly loved by the Creator of the Universe.  Eph. 1:4-5

I am a child of God, His daughter through the all-sufficient sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  Eph. 1:5

I am covered by & shown glorious grace freely through Christ Jesus.  Eph. 1:6

I am redeemed and forgiven through the blood and work of Jesus Christ on the cross.  Eph. 1:7

I am created to bring praise to the King.  I am created to glorify Him and bring glory to His Name.  Eph. 1:12

the battle of the mind

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” – 2 Cor. 10:5 (NIV)

it’s a good verse, right?  I’ve had different times during my journey through life where I tried to put this verse into practice.  take every thought captive.  ok.  killer.  sounds great.  go team.

now I’m trying to put this verse into practice, once again (because apparently, it hasn’t ever taken root in my brain where I do it consistently…ugh).  this time, it’s on a whole new level.  and it’s a battle.

have you ever made a list of all the lies you believe about yourself?  it sounds kinda weird.  and maybe you don’t have many lies you believe about yourself.  in which case, I would love to shake your hand and say, “well done, killa”.  but for the rest of you – have you ever done it?  Cristine suggested I do it a little while ago.  and at first I was like, “um…yeah, no, that’s ok.  I’m fine.” :)  I mean, who wants to sit down and do that?  it sounds like a recipe for disaster, if you ask me.

I kept putting it off that week, but by the middle of the week I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.  so I did it.  and I almost burnt the house down in the process.  no, really…I almost did.  I was sitting in a chair and had a lamp on and didn’t realize the lamp was leaned up against the wall and the bulb got hot and melted a hole through the lamp shade and I had no idea until Paul & Cristine came home and they smelled something burning.  oh, the tragic stories of a non-smelling person (I was born with no sense of smell).  if you feel sympathetic and feel so led, please feel free to send money.

oh – sorry.  ok back on track…

so I set aside some time to make this list.  um…it was quite long.  and while I was making that list, I decided to make a list of fears that I still had.  I thought I was doing really good at kicking fear in the butt.  apparently, that’s not the case because that list was quite long as well.  ugh.

as I was making the lists, at first I was starting to feel despair – and I kind of expected to be hurled down into the “pit” while doing this exercise.  however, something really cool happened – about 1/2 way through listing the lies and the fears out, God gave me almost like…righteous anger, I guess you could say.  I was ticked that these lies and fears had taken hold of me.  I wanted to MAKE WAR.

which sounds great, right?  yeah!  MAKE WAR!  no more believing these lies!  no more giving in to these fears!  go team!

…a lot easier said than done.  it is incredibly hard to re-train your thought patterns when you’ve believed the same lies and been held captive by the same fears for years.

so I’ve been battling, especially over the past couple weeks or so.  but I kept hitting this wall – this wall where I was like “yes, I know these are probably lies – but I don’t fully believe they’re lies…even though I know I should…”

through an unexpected turn of events, last week I hit this wall again and I hit it hard.  feeling powerless over this battle in my mind, I did something I don’t normally do.  I went for a drive.  haha ok j/k – I mean, no – I did go for a drive.  actually I didn’t drive.  Cristine did.  and I rode.  and we drank really bad lattes (don’t you love it when a coffee shop makes your drink with sugar free syrup when you never asked for sugar free?  yum…).  and we talked.  I talked.  I verbally spewed all over her.  which I don’t tend to do.  I tend to keep things bottled up inside and try to work through them on my own – which almost always is never a good thing.

let me just stop right here and suggest that if you need to verbally spew, I will loan Cristine out to you at a very decent monetary rate.  you guys will go for a drive (because going for a drive is so much less awkward than sitting across a table staring at one another).  and you will talk.  it’s inevitable.  she has a beautiful gift of pulling out the grunge inside of you and then talking through it with you.  :)  and if you’re a guy, you can go for a drive with Paul for the same very decent monetary rate (actually it’s a little higher, because he’s technically a pastor so I can charge more for that) because he also has this beautiful gift that you don’t really feel like is beautiful at the time but at the end of the talk, you feel so much better and then you realize it is, indeed, a beautiful gift.  and most likely you will at least have a glimpse at what God wants to teach you through whatever mess you’ve found yourself in.

wow, totally off track again… 

so what I realized was that quite a few of the lies and fears had been influenced by 1 person.  1 person.  why is it that we so easily believe the negative words/actions of 1 person?  if 1 person told me something encouraging about myself, and another person told me the opposite (something negative), I think I would tend to believe the negative.  why is that?  and if like, 5 people told me something positive about myself and this 1 person told me something negative, I would tend to believe the 1 negative thing over the 5 positive.  like really, why?

just realizing that 1 thing has blown my mind and is starting to shatter the lies that I have let infiltrate my mind for so long.  I have a long ways to go still.  but God is blowing my mind.  I feel like He’s beginning to restore me back into who He’s created me to be.  Rediscovering my true identity in Christ.  yesterday morning I was reading Ephesians 1 and I’ve never got this before while reading Eph. 1 but yesterday I just kept finding verse after verse that proclaimed who I am in Christ – and wow is it awesome to be a child of God.  Ephesians 1 – that’s a whole ‘nother post.  maybe tomorrow.

one more thing – and this has been crucial for me to learn.  I realized I can’t take every thought captive on my own.  I’m powerless.  I completely need the power of the Holy Spirit to do this.  and I fail.  like daily.  ok like multiple times daily right now.  but God is gracious.  and He has surrounded me with amazing people who love me and want to see victory over the lies and the fears.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” – Phil. 4:8

oh the sweet, though sometimes painful, restoration that Jesus offers us when we fix our eyes on Him.

A night of laughter

I love our church's worship team. We eat dinner together every Saturday night, then study Scripture or just spend time sharing what God's been doing in our lives. Then comes music rehearsal.

Tonight I think we all laughed more than we all have in a long time. It was like everyone was in rare form. We didn't get to meet last week because of the worship conference. Maybe we were just excited to be back together.

Either way, I love these people. We've become like a family. And I think that was so clear tonight. Just the overflowing joy of being together.

Jesus' love is so sweet, flowing between His followers.

Today

Today I am thankful for God's strength.
For His grace.
For His unfailing love.
For His patience.

Today I am thankful for great friends and great family He has blessed me with.
For the ones who stick by, even closer, when things are ugly.
For the ones willing to walk beside me when the road is ridden with pot holes.
For the ones I can laugh big belly laughs with.
For the ones that make me smile just recalling memories of.

Today. :)

Props to Otterbox

I have an Otterbox Defender Series case for my phone. Even though it makes my phone rather brick-ish, I would have destroyed my phone by now if I didn't have it. I drop my phone so much :) I even threw it in a big empty trash can once (the kind you roll out to the road) and there was disgusting liquid in the bottom of the trash can - but my phone totally survived! Score! ...I had my 7 year old cousin climb in and get it for me :)

The point is - this case is amazing. But over the 11 months that I've had it, the hard part of the case has been breaking off in little chunks. I was about to buy a new one and figured I might as well see what the warranty was 1st. I called the otters at Otterbox and get this - they're sending me a new case, free of charge, no questions asked.

Seriously want to give everyone at Otterbox a huge hug right now!

here come the MIT’s…

(MIT’s…) Galaxy defenders (oh oh-oh, oh oh-oh, oh oh)…

if you weren’t a Men in Black fan, you totally won’t know what was up with that.

for the rest of you – the good guys dress in black, remember that.

ok sorry.  I just had coffee.

so I’ve been inspired lately by Paul & Cristine to make an MIT list each morning.  MIT=Most Important Things.  each morning, I try to make a short MIT list (around 3-5 things usually) of what I absolutely want to get done that day.  and then I get to work knockin’ ‘em down like Muhammad Ali.  float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

seriously?  gotta stop blogging after drinking coffee.

I feel so much more productive when I make an MIT list.  I didn’t do it this past Monday, and by the end of the day I felt like I had gotten nothing done.  scattered.

I’m reading through “Zen to Done” right now (it’s a quick read).  it talks about MITs.  and taking care of things as they come up instead of setting them aside to do later – which usually ends up getting put in a pile and getting done later than later.

so, I’ve also been inspired lately by the same dynamic duo (Paul & Cristine) to get a planner.  like, a legit, hold in my hands planner.  no more using my iphone for trying to remember things (because I stink at that).  so in my planner is where I write down my MITs each day.  and lots of other great things.  it’s pretty much a grand adventure just reading through my planner, let’s just be honest.

ok that last line was a stretch of the truth.  probably.  maybe.

dude – Continuous Worship conference tomorrow-Sat out at Maranatha Bible Camp – super stoked!  not super stoked about the snow storm we’re supposed to get.  but there’s more to life than being warm and wearing flippers and your swim suit and board shorts all the time, right?  …right?  just say yes.  help me out here.  homesick for the Keys today.

ok I better stop rambling.

keep it real.