Something Beautiful

Happy Leap Day! Once every four years this day comes along, and this year has been an exceptional 29th day of February. Things I've been celebrating today: I have 125 clinical hours. . .I need 100 to graduate. Out of those 125 hours, 71 are hands on hours. And I already have appointments booked into the month of May. God is good!! Every once in a while when you are climbing this mountain, you reach a clearing and can look back to see where you have come from. I feel like today I have had such a great perspective on where I have been coming from. I am so incredibly blessed to be where I am in life. I am blessed to be going into a career where in the words of a friend I get to be barefoot every day and my job is to be relaxed. And as if I needed one more reason to be happy about today, Psych comes back on tonight. . .yipee!! I hope your leap day has been great!! Peace out yo!

I have been incredibly humbled lately as I have been focusing more and more on God's faithfulness. Sometimes God asks us to give up something that we greatly desire, something that is close to our hearts. We don't understand why or what His purpose is in doing this especially when it is a desire that He has placed there, but we aren't required to understand, just to trust Him. God did this to me last year. He asked me to give up traveling to Him. He asked me not to travel. For anyone who knows me, you know that this is a huge deal for me. I love to travel. It is in my blood, and I love going new places and meeting new people and experiencing different cultures. God always speaks to me through traveling to new places, and He widens my heart to embrace more of His creation and His people. I really didn't understand why God asked this of me. I was already planning a trip overseas for this last spring when God turned my plans upside down with this simple request. So what do

I must confess that no matter how many times I watch Little Women I always cry when Beth dies. I cry because Jo not only loses her sister but she loses her friend. I feel as though I am embracing the sorrow that Jo feels, the loneliness, the desire for all her family to be together once more and to be well and happy. Who wouldn't want that? I think of all my family (both those I am related to and those who are my embraced family), and I can't help but long to be all in the same place, to gather around the same table and fellowship with one another, to embrace all my loved ones. And I would be lying to you if I said that the absence didn't bring tears to my eyes. I think everyone can understand sorrow because we have all experienced it at some point in our lives, some more deeply and closely than others. Sorrow will change you. It will either destroy you or it will transform you. That's what I find so inspiring about Jo's story from Little Women. She faces the sorrow

There are so many things that I'm learning right now, so many thoughts swirling around in my head, so many new and different thoughts that challenge me and cause me to grow. But before I get into all that may I just say that Frank Sinatra makes my life infinitely better. Okay back to what God has been doing in my life. . . I have been praying lately about embracing all of the elements of my femininity. I took a sexual wholeness class this last fall (one of my favorite Bible studies I have ever been in), and we talked about the five elements attached with femininity. They are mistress of the domain, helper/completer, lady of wisdom, lifegiver, and glory of man. The lady who taught the class asked us what our favorite part of our femininity is. My favorite without a doubt is lifegiver. I love that I give life to those who are around me. I love that I have the ability to give life, that there is a stream of living water which flows from me. Anyway, I have really been wanting to fully

I have so many beautiful thoughts floating around in my head. Such joy, love and peace, with appropriate amounts of tears and sadness mixed in. Just when I think my heart cannot handle all of it, it expands just a little bit more, and I grow as a person. I grow more refined, more loving, more kind, more gentle. I grow more into the woman God has created me to be. Every time I say goodbye to a sweet friend, is one goodbye closer to the day when we shall never say goodbye again. For the time being it is difficult, but I choose to see in light of eternity, and in eternity we shall never be parted. My heart is full, and I cannot even begin to express all the thoughts that are filling me up, especially since it is late, and I need to get some sleep. But rest assured, I will be telling you more of my thoughts soon. In the meantime, tell someone you care for that you love them. They need to hear it.