June.

I made this post (just the title and photo) back in the middle of March when Luke and I still had about two and a half months before we would start dating. 

I could barely contain myself with the thought that this boy cared for me and that one day soon, I'd be his girlfriend. I wanted to tell everyone. 

I am so glad that June came and so, so glad that every day since then, Luke has been my boyfriend. I grow in excitement about us being "us" more and more each day.

Every day with him is so much sweeter than even I could have dreamed. :)

I love you. And I am so thankful for all the Junes that we have ahead of us, together. 

A Morning Run.

 Jeff Deitrich of Freedom Valley South Hanover shared an awesome sermon tonight at church.
A quick story he told somewhere in the middle really caught my attention.

A married couple Jeff knows wakes up every morning to run four miles. Well, every morning the wife runs four miles. Some mornings the husband stays behind. The man asked his wife one morning how it was that every single morning she made the choice to get out of bed and begin a four mile run.

Her response was that she doesn't make the choice every morning. She made the choice years ago. Every morning she simply decides not to second guess it.

She understands that the original choice was one that benefits her. She made it with a sound mind and an understanding that the hard work would be worth getting out of bed when she's as comfortable as can be.

This is living by principle rather than living by feeling.

Sometimes my prayer life frustrates me. Well, I guess sometimes I frustrate myself with the choices I make about my prayer life. Often my choice to spend time in prayer versus doing something else just comes down to what I feel like doing more. Just like the wife knew running was good for her, I know I NEED prayer. I know I am desperate for time alone with God and that very often as soon as I begin to pray, I wonder why I was so hesitant to push other things away before and just be with God.

I think this is a good challenge to start making decisions sooner. God is so ready and willing to help us decide how and by what standards we'll live our lives... if we'll just let him. He's a good, loving father who doesn't want us to live frustrated or live thinking we have to be flaky and controlled by feeling all the time.

God, tonight I choose to slow down and let you counsel me about the standards by which I make my decisions. I'm so thankful for your protection and guidance in my life but I know I'll have a lot of tough decisions in the future... and I want to be ready. You are so good to me, God. So patient and so kind to someone who tries to do things herself way too often. Thank you for loving me endlessly and caring so much about me that you want to help me instill these principles in my life now. I want to live my life with you making decisions that I can be proud of and that make even more room for my life to be full of all your goodness.

"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of a sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7

A Few Favorite Things

Just a few pictures and links I want to share with you this morning...

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In this post I wrote a little bit about why I keep encouraging notes on display in my room. I'm sure this would have a similar effect.

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I thought these were little pillows when I first looked at them... they might not be. But they're adorable. Houses are my very favorite thing to draw. I think the detail on these would make them fun to sew, too.

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One of my favorite memories from being a little kid is taking trips to the craft store with my Mom. I went through a latch hooking stage where getting a new latch hook set would have been the most exciting thing ever. I tried cross stitch (like the picture above) a couple times, too. When I saw this picture for the first time, I told myself I should start a cross stitch this summer. I love having a project like this to keep my hands busy.

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Brad Leach, a church planter in Philadelphia, wrote a great post called "Uncertainty is Good For You". You might not believe it... but this post will change your mind. This week I'm going to allow God to soften my heart and increase my faith with this lesson. Take a minute to read it!

I woke up this morning in a slump.

I was feeling negative and just a little discouraged. I'm really thankful for how quickly the morning changed, though. Sometimes when I wake up feeling like this, I allow it to last hours. But not today. :) God got a quick hold on my heart and helped me get some much needed perspective.

Honestly, most mornings I wake up feeling that way, it's a result of how I used the moments before I fell asleep. It's about what the condition of my heart was and what I allowed it to be. There's a big question: Did I read my bible? (Or 'Was I willing to listen to God instead of just going to sleep?') I'm NOT making this legalistic... I just know my heart can go in a bad direction really fast and I need all the encouragement and truth I can get to keep it pure and on the right track. God really wants to help us with that.

This morning as I made my bed and cleaned up my room a little bit, I was reminded of something by the Holy Spirit. When I feel this way, the solution is to be purposeful.

Let me say one thing... being purposeful is NOT the same as being busy.

In fact, being busy is probably the worst thing I can do when I feel like I did this morning. Want to know why? It's because I knew the empty, negativity I was feeling was simply a hunger to be with God.

I want to share a couple things that really helped me this morning in getting free from the slump I woke up in. I don't think I'm the only one who experiences this. And I know we don't have to live every day just ignoring how awful our hearts feel by being busy.

1. Make a decision to purposefully get out of the slump.
Half-hearted attempts don't usually work out. They just keep the cycle of discouragement going longer.

2. Clean up your environment.
For some reason, being purposeful about making the area around me look nice and restful really prepares me to take care of the condition of my heart, too. It gets my day going. I have to get out of bed and start improving something. It takes me out of the mindset of just letting things take their course. (It makes sense to me! :) )

3. Close the computer, stay away from the phone. 
Opening facebook and checking emails becomes way too distracting for me. Some mornings I'll be so confident that I want to start my day with prayer. But by the time Facebook is opened and I'm done thinking about the emails I just followed up with, I end up just wanting to be busy. I'd rather "do stuff" than share my heart with God and hear from him about his. It's really important to embrace that stillness we have in the morning... it's an awesome time to prepare for the work of the day.

4. Pray and write.
Just share with God what's on your heart. What has most of your attention and gets you excited right now? I get so excited about prayer all over again when I remember that God desires to give me wisdom and better insight into what I'm facing if I'll just listen. In prayer and listening, all of our plans, our relationships, and our thought life are refined and made much more beautiful. Journaling is a big thing for me. I spent a long time this morning doing the same thing I did in prayer. I finished writing feeling so encouraged. God is really, really good to me. He is to you, too... we just have to purposefully reflect on all we're seeing him do.

5. Be Encouraged.
This one has to do with your environment, too. Keep things in your room that remind you of how good God is. Our hearts naturally go toward selfishness. I keep cards on my window sill from some of the biggest encouragers in my life. They remind me why relationships, my faith, and the dreams God has given me are worth all the work and self discipline they require. (And they're pretty.) :)

6. Share what you learned.
That's what I'm doing here. I'm convinced that when God teaches us something big, especially something that is key to getting out of a trap we've found ourselves in before, the best thing we can do is teach it to someone else. We take ownership of that lesson and we help other people get free. We think through it in greater depth and understand why it works so well. It's the idea of pouring out what God gives to you so that you can receive even more from him.

Hope this helps!