You Know You Have It Good

You know you have it good.....


You know you have it good when you can sit around with your boyfriend and his brother drinking coffee and listen to his brother talk about his nasty, gross, yet interesting dissection camp.

You know you have it good when you can sit in your parent's Sunday School class and watch the Truth Project (and sadly finish it) and become terribly intelligent.


You know you have it good when you can go over some friends' house and eat lunch and have a good time of fellowship.

You know you have it good when you and your bestest friend get to ride in a tire swing and just be happy and have fun and be bestest friends.

You know you have it good when you and your boyfriend's sisters get pushed around in a tire swing by your boyfriend. And you and the two girls get to scream and yell at him since he nearly smashes you into a tree like twelve and a half times.

You know you have it good when everyone you see compliments you on your adorable Horton Hears a Hoo t-shirt.

You know you have it good when you can sit around on a Sunday afternoon and just waste your time and love those lazy summer afternoons that you're living.


You know you have it good when your mom takes you to drive for an hour around town to get your driving hours in.

You know you have it good when your mom also takes you to Starbucks every Sunday afternoon so you can talk about how some people just seem bipolar and how life is good and just every detail of life.


You know you have it good when your mom and you are driving home and a storm is brewing up, crazy lightning bolts are everywhere, and you decide to go home as fast as you can.

You know you have it good when as you're driving home from the crazy storm you drive by the train tracks and there is a train going across, and you catch up with the train, and you look over at the guy controlling it and he waves at you. And you're just happy that some people are friendly. And you're happy that people like that just make your day.

You know you have it good when you get home and your dad is on Facebook looking at the cute video you posted of yourself singing "Jesus Love Me" when you were two, and the whole family is watching and laughing.

You know you have it good when you're sitting on your couch with the power out with a couple of candles lit so you can see, blogging away about good life is, eating pizza and drinking Gatorade, watching it rain and listening to it hitting the windows and the thunder booming like crazy.


You know you have it good when you're sitting in the dark waiting for the power to come back on listening to your brother play Phil Keaggy on his guitar and knitting fingerless gloves for this autumn


You know you have it good.

That's how I know I have it good.
How do you know when you have it good?

On Art

My attention has been called to art, as of late.
First I watched a session in the Truth Project that dealt with art.
Then our high school intern at church did a blog post on art.
And suddenly I felt compelled to give my own thoughts on the matter of art.

I love art. In all it's glory and everything about it. There are so many different types of art: painting, drawing, photography, writing, music - it's all beautiful and it's all a gift from God.
Ever considered art as a gift from God?
I honestly feel like God gave me the talent of photography. Which honestly is a pretty gargantuan job He has handed me. God has created all this beauty. And some people are given a particular talent to show that beauty to others. With photography, I feel like I can show at least some of the beauty He has created in my little corner of the world.
Some people are given a gift of painting - being able to express feelings and show different places, objects, emotions, and people in their own special way. Not only are they showing the beauty He has created through whatever they are painting, they're showing the beauty He has created in their souls. No person paints or does any kind of art the same way. Each person has their own way of expressing art, and through the way they express it, they are showing a part of themselves.
Art is beauty. Showing beauty. Glorifying God for the beauty He has created.

As I watched the Truth Project, I really was drawn to the fact that Del Tackett was saying so many Christians view art as evil. As wrong. As "worldly."
But how can that be? If art is showing beauty, then how can it be evil or worldly? God created all of this beauty. Shouldn't we share it? How is sharing His beauty wrong or evil? Comprehending this question was a new view for me. Honestly, I've never viewed art as evil. Obviously, art can be twisted into something bad. Everything can be twisted. But inherently, is it worldly? No.
A "guest speaker" for the Truth Project, who is an artist, said it beautifully. He said that art, obviously, can be twisted into something evil.
But as Christians, it is our job to twist it back into something pure. Something good. Something beautiful.

God is the founder of all beauty. He is the founder of art. Christians have been given the job of retaining the purity of what He has created.

However, art has taken a twist for the worse in the past century.
And I don't mean to be a hater or anything, but I honestly think we have a problem when there is modern art and metal music in the world.
You may feel completely different about this kind of thing, but how can I say anything else? Modern art and metal music is not retaining the beauty God has created. When Paul says in Philippians to think about things that are pure, lovely, and excellent, he was talking about literally everything. Including art.
Think about it. As Christians, are we not supposed to be supporting and creating lovely things? Obviously. And when we support the modern art movement, we're supporting "art" that looks like a five year old's scribbles. Lovely? Not quite. It's formless. It has no shape or beauty. Some say, "Oh, modern art is just expressing the painters feelings." Yes, but isn't that what artists have been doing for the past thousands of years? Compare the following paintings:




Now. Compare. First picture. Did it express the artist's "emotions"? Perhaps. But can you tell what the heck it's supposed to "express"? Well. I can't. And if you can't even tell what it expresses, does it matter that the "artist" was supposedly trying to express anything?
Second picture. (favorite artist by the way) Does it express emotion? Obviously. To me, this painting captures some of the strongest emotions I've ever seen in a painting. But you can tell what it is. It's beautiful. It's creative. It has form and meaning.

However, after all of this talk of showing God's beauty, I want to make something clear.
Now you'll recall at the beginning of this post, I mentioned that my intern high school pastor did a blog post on art. And although this has already crossed my mind, I think he put it so beautifully, I had to quote him:

"I believe that this is when God will be most satisfied, when His people find joy, beauty, peace, and goodness in all the good things that He has created and when they produce art that is no longer a 'Christian' version of what the world likes, but art that is so true and glorious that the world cannot help but notice."
-Josh

Beautifully put? I think so.
For a while, a few years ago, I thought everything should be Christian. Christian this and Christian that. Music, art, just about anything that could be turned into something Christian.
I no longer think that way.
As I said earlier, God created beauty. So beauty doesn't have to be turned into something Christian. It already is. It's God-given. And honestly, don't you think we'd reach more people if our art wasn't "Christian" but was something that was, as Josh said, so absolutely glorious that the world would want to reach out and touch the beauty? Art is full of God. Sure, people can try to remove Him from beauty, but isn't it sort of hard to remove the Creator from the created thing? It's like trying to remove the fact that an artist painted a picture. It's like saying the artist has no relevance to the picture. But isn't the piece of art just a reflection of the artist? In other words, art doesn't have to be Christian to reach other people, or to be beautiful and completely relevant to God and glorifying Him.
If He gave you a gift of art, use it with all your might to glorify Him. It can reach the lost, lighten the soul of a Christian, and bring joy to a dark world.

Amazing?
Yes.

Changes & Sickness

So first of all you probably noticed that the name of my blog and the link to it has been changed. Why? Because "The Time of Our Lives", though very descriptive of my life, is not exactly the most creative thing ever. And I'm very creative. And when something isn't creative that I created, I become very disgruntled.
Very. Very disgruntled.
Therefore I decided this name was a great deal happier and creative, so I voted for this one.
Yeayeayea.
Also, if you hadn't noticed, I created a "page" on my blog. It was a brave leap for me. I've always been fascinated by the different life stories of different people and how inspiring they are.
Mine isn't all that inspiring.
However, if you have absolutely nothing to do and want to read something that is relatively slightly maybe possibly kinda sorta interesting, there you go. You have something to do!
That's all for changes.

As for being sick.
Blahblerghblerghishnessbllaerrgghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
That basically describes how I've felt the past two days.
Yesterday I woke up feeling absolutely repulsive. Stomach ache. Nausea. I got up. More nausea. Hah. No more nausea. Because usually when you throw up, nausea goes away right?
This week my church is having VBS, so yesterday when I woke up throwing up, I decided going up to VBS would probably not be a choice of utter wiseness. Not that wiseness is a word. But since I'm so wise I guess I can make words. Right? Of course.
Moving on.
Yesterday I had the utter pleasure of puking four times in two hours.
Sorry if you're easily grossed out.
Anyways. I thought by last night I would be better this morning. And I felt okay until I came out of a room smelling my mom's coffee cake baking. So once again I had to forget about VBS.
My mom was talking to my boyfriend's mom this morning, however, and apparently some stomach bug has been going around, and apparently I somehow caught said stomach bug. Hopefully it'll be gone by tomorrow though, because for me, stomach bugs rarely last more than two days.
But since this week I'm doing VBS, just watch it stick around another day. That would just be my luck.

In any case, this has probably been the most utterly boring post I have ever done on this whole blog. I feel ashamed. I promise next time it'll be better. Even if I have to wait a whole month for inspiration. But as I have a sore throat and I've been sick the past two days, I figured if I posted one post in my life that was inexplicably boring, it would be okay.
But to make it better I'll post a few pictures of some photography I've been doing lately.
Randomly.
But maybe it'll make this post slightly more interesting and happy.
So here they are:

health is not valued until sickness comes
{thomas fuller}

I haven't been everywhere but it's on my list

Travel.
The exhilaration of flying to a different country and speaking a different language and being in a different culture and just having everything be absolutely, utterly, beautifully, magnificently different.
It's something that I've dreamed of since I was a very small girl. I believe the first spark of my imaginations of traveling began when I was about 7 or 8 years old. My dad and one of his best friends went over to Europe during the 80s, and one day this friend of my dad's came over and showed us a slide show of all the pictures they took while they were on their 10 week trip. When I sat down, I was expecting to be very bored (as I expressed later to Mr. Wade, much to his amusement and my mother's chagrin). But once we were done, I was filled with the beautiful, old pictures of a picturesque land, somewhere way across the ocean. As I got older, the idea of travel grew heavier and heavier on my mind. Within the past year, it has definitely been in the top ten things that I think about on a regular basis.
Travel seems to have some sort of a mysterious hold over me. There is something so exorbitantly beautiful about traveling to different places. Honestly, so far I haven't been to that many different places. I've been to Chicago, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Atlanta, Panama City, Annapolis, several different large cities in Virginia, Gatlinburg... but that is about the extent of my traveling experience.
But rest assured, that will change. My dad has always told me to be sure to take some risks in life. Do something daring. Be a little crazy. Don't settle for being your mediocre person. And I don't intend to. My plan at the moment is to finish college and once out of there, immediately go into at least half a year of traveling all over the world to different places that I've always dreamed about going to. Money, you ask? Saving. For years and years. Starting now. Trust me, if I want something, I will stop at absolutely nothing to attain it. When I want something, it's already mine. I'm determined. I'm stubborn. And under no circumstances do I back down.
Also, I'm not your usual "I want to tour the world" type person. In some ways, yes, that's a true statement. But in other ways? All I seek is the simplicity and true nature and culture of the different countries. This one story (of the many, many stories I have been told) my dad told me about his trip to Europe kind of sums up my reason for desiring to go and travel the world. He told me one time, I believe he was in England, possibly Scotland, he got up one morning and just went for a walk. He was out in the middle of no where, with nothing terribly exciting to see. Or so he thought. As he was walking down the simple path out in the simple beauty of Britain, he stopped in his tracks. He looked. Was it really...? On this completely random path, he walked straight up to the worn down remains of a castle. Now I ask you, how often do you go for a random walk on a random path out in the middle of no where and come across a castle? The reason that story really sums up my reasons for traveling is I want to see the heart of a country. The little secrets they hide that really no one knows about except for a few people who live in the area. Of course I want to see the big cities of the countries I visit. They're part of the country. Just like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, and places like that are part of America. But still, I live in a little town that almost nobody would just plan on visiting if they were coming to America. That's the kind of place I want to go to.
I have so many places I want to go to. This is one of the times I'm feeling the use of school work coming into play. Geography has taught me about so many different places that I never would have imagined going to, but now have every intention of going to. I plan to find the most unexpected remains of castles in England, I plan on climbing to the top of the Wudang Mountains, I plan on going to the Atacama desert, I plan on crawling through the wilds of the Amazon River, I plan on going to the picturesque nearly fairy tale-like villages of Austria and Switzerland, I plan on drinking champagne on the London Eye, I plan on walking around Machu Picchu and exploring every rotten cranny of the old beautiful place, I plan on walking the streets of Chicago and New York decked out in the most fabulous and eccentric clothes, I plan on perambulating the Highlands of Scotland, I plan on ascending the wild peaks of the mountains in New Zealand, I plan on seeing the blond headed children of Norway, I plan on viewing all the pyramids of Egypt, I plan on standing on a glacier in Greenland, and I plan on viewing every piece of history, art, and magic that each country holds all to itself.
I suppose you could say I have itchy feet. I sort of do. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love living where I live, and I love home, and I love familiarity. But something in my soul is wild. Untamed. It constantly wants to do something or go somewhere on the spur of the moment and do something completely unexpected. I feel like packing my bags right now, driving up to the nearest air port, and catching a flight to London or perhaps Santiago or Beijing.
Even now, probably three or four years before I'll be able to go to any of these places, I'm already planning out everything. Places to do photography, places to eat, places to hike, places to meet new people, places to do something a little crazy, places to spin in a circle and squeal about the fact that I'm actually in a different country living a life so few people have. Crazy? Maybe a little. Fantastic? Big time.

It is not down in any map; true places never are.
{herman melville}

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees
what he has come
to see.
{g.k. chesterton}

Once you have traveled, the journey
never ends,
but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers.
The mind can never break off
from the journey.
{pat conroy}

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things
you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines,
sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore.
Dream.
Discover.

{mark twain}

(picture credit-Google images)

Growing Up

Growing up.
It's something we all do sooner or later. Hopefully.
And honestly, it's something I've been mulling over in my mind lately. I can't really seem to stop thinking about it. It's stuck in my mind and it's continually growing and growing.
I'm getting older. I'm nearly 16. And I'm still a teenager, and I love being a teenager, and I love doing things a teenager just does. It's great. It's wonderful. But as I sit here, an upperclassman, nearly 16, and something hits me.
I'm no longer a child.
And as I consider this, I continually get frustrated with myself. I've always been a rather happy, bubbly person, but sometimes I can go overboard on the bubbly part and start acting like a little freshman girl. Recently, every time I do this I immediately become frustrated with myself. Why am I still acting like a child? Why am I not growing up? Why can't I just be mature and perfect with the snap of my fingers?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to grow up to fast: as in, I'm not trying to grow up so I can be Miss Business Woman, I'm not growing up so I can go be an adult... I just want to be mature.
This is kind of a weird post, I know... not your typical topic for a blog, but hey, it's weighing on my mind. As I consider growing up, I wonder how you even do it. I mean, you watch these movies, and in the beginning, the person is an idiot and then magically at the end they're perfect and you love them. Why is that? Why can't life be like that? Why can't I magically change in two hours from an annoying girl to a mature, analytical, intelligent young woman? It doesn't seem fair that the girls in the movies get to do that.
It's funny how much I've changed throughout the year though. Even though I wouldn't consider myself a wise young woman yet (as you can tell from the attitude of this post), I know I've at least changed in my viewpoint toward myself. I remember last year that someone I knew told me I was getting more and more silly. Well. Silly me. I thought I was getting more and more mature. I was exorbitantly peeved at this guy, because I thought I was so mature and intelligent.
I thought I was so great. I thought I was always right. I thought I was becoming exactly who I wanted to be.
Heh heh.
I think it's required in high school that you look back at yourself every year and think, "Gosh. I was so immature last year."
I've changed a lot in my thoughts about myself.
I realize that yes. I was silly. I was immature. And I was annoying.
And yeah. I'm still the same way. But now, I'm honestly trying to overcome said barrier.
Overcoming such a large wall, however, is not exactly what I'm used to. I'm used to being my regular old self. Actually trying to change the way I act and say things and do things is not a part of my regular habits. As I said in movies, it just seems to magically happen in two hours. In real life, it seems like that doesn't happen. I know some of it just happens over time. I can tell that in some ways, I actually have matured in the past couple of years.
{gasp}
But not in all the ways I would like.
I honestly get sick of myself being immature and annoying just to get attention. I sit and think to myself, "Why can't I just be rational like so-and-so? Why can't I just act like so-and-so? Why can't I just be normal like so-and-so."
I can say from experience, it's not an overnight process.
I know in time I'll become who I should be, and who God created me to be. It's all a process, and I know that eventually I'll get there. But at the moment it just seems like a long road ahead of me until I become who I want to be.
Honestly, I feel like I should leave this post feeling inspired. But at the moment I just see nothing but the work of growing up ahead of me, and no telling when it'll end. I'll probably look back on this in 10 years and think of how silly I was, and think about all the lessons I've learned.
I can't wait to learn those lessons.
I can't wait to be mature.
I can't wait to be grown up.
I can't wait to be my future rational self.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought
like a child,
I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man, I gave up
childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
Now I know in part;
then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
{1 corinthians 13:11-12)