she reads of disillusionment

Its funny how many times God can bring a passage or word or friend or picture or butterfly into your life just for the specific purpose of showing you His love or helping you into a realization that He has lying right in front of your face.

My Utmost For His Highest July 30:

Disillusionment means having no more misconceptions, false impressions, and false judgements in life; it means being free from these deceptions. However, though no longer deceived, our experience of disillusionment that comes from God brings us to the point where we see people as they really are, yet without any cynicism or any stinging and bitter criticism. Many of the things in life that inflict the greatest injury, grief, or pain, stem from the fact that we suffer from illusions. We are not true to one another as facts, seeing each other as we really are; we are only true to our misconceived ideas of one another. According to our thinking, everything is either delightful and good, or it is evil, malicious, and cowardly.
Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of suffering of human life. And this is how that suffering happens-if we love someone, but do not love God, we demand total perfection and righteousness from that person, and when we do not get it we become cruel and vindictive; yet we are demanding of a human being something which he or she cannot possibly give. There is only one Being who can completely satisfy to the absolute depth of the hurting heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord is so obviously uncompromising with regard to every human relationship because He knows that every relationship that is not based on faithfulness to Himself will end in disaster. Our Lord trusted no one, and never placed His faith in people, yet HE was never suspicious or bitter. Our Lord's confidence in God, and in what God's grace could do for anyone, was so perfect that He never despaired, never giving up hope for any person. If our trust is placed in human beings, we will end up despairing of everyone.

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Also today I opened up some frames that I had bought at a thrift store that appeared to have cards in them. I thought oh well I can use the cards and the frames both, a two for one deal for a measly fifty cents! Well, turns out I opened up someone's life that they disposed of in a thrift store donation bin. Frame after frame I opened to find card after card depicting a different moment in the woman's life. Eliza teaches. She was once in love, and was in some sort of relationship for at least five years. I feel like I opened up someone's diary. It was a little eerie.

And yes I am going back tomorrow to buy the rest of the frames.

shes a fool for sunday afternoon pizzas

especially when they can be remade later that week as quick tasty lunches.

as i may have suggested sometime previously, a few of our friends have been coming over to our apartment on Sunday afternoons after church and we all eat together and just hang out. its really an awesome time. plus we have had anywhere from 7-14 people at a time. thats kind of crazy, but definitely quality fellowship time. plus this past weekend us girls got several pictures hung and random pieces of furniture put together as the majority here were boys. they had a pretty productive day, and we enjoyed the benefits.

while i was at home i watched a lot of the food network... along with a few other things but to suffice this topic, i watched a lot of cooking. well ms ina garten made this fun little get together for a few of her friends where they made their own personal pizzas... and grilled them. sounds pretty cool huh? well i thought it was pretty nifty, plus everyone got to make their own food! so we decided to do that this past weekend. yeah, definitely woke up early to make the dough... knead it out... set it out to rise while we were at church. i get back from church earlier than the other girls so i started on the dough when i got back... yeah, didnt work out so much. and i started freaking out. couldnt get it to agree with me that it was best to stay in a disc shape without being speckled with holes. i tried to make it understand that the pizza sauce wasn't found of holes in a crust and just didnt find that attractive... but alas, it wouldnt listen, and proceeded to instead stick to the wax paper i was using to separate them, no matter how much flour i used. finally accepting defeat, we made the decision to swing over to publix (grocery store) to buy some dough. this was very depressing. up until alex and i had this incredible idea of using.... tortilla wraps! so it was born, grilled pizzas using two tortilla wraps with cheese melted inside as the crust. and it was glorious. you simply must try it. i think you should also try just chilling for a few hours with a few friends after your sunday morning service. its quite medicinal.

i am also very proud to say that i now know how to operate all the machinery in the gym. the most amazing Bailey came over yesterday and gave me a tutorial. man im going to miss that girl when she leaves too soon to pursue life after an AU diploma.

she may seem like a shy girl

but when you get to know her, she won't stop talking.

this week has been so wonderful. all my roommates are here for the week, plus one more. Rachel came down for a visit and Megan, a friend of hers came as well. we had a lot of fun. Jerusha and Karrie are already here so we are living together for the first time for a few days and its been very heart warming. i love these girls so much, its amazing how God brings people together and works things out. Alas though, Rachel will soon be going back to Rock Hill for a while and Jerusha had to go and leave yesterday for Africa... she's going to visit her brother and go camping all over this island for "a couple sundays with a couple more days thrown in". She will be missed.
Yesterday Rachel, Megan, and I took Jerusha to the airport in Charlotte. Of course Karrie was there in spirit.

we rock. you know it.

These are the times, these are the times.

And the times... they are a changin.

Plus, the four of us (sadly minus Rachel because of student teaching) are starting to plan an amazing Spring Break trip. I can't give out any details yet until we ourselves know a little more.. but lets just say it involves a plane ticket and a roughing it backpacking attitude. As you can imagine... I am excited beyond belief at the thought of the possibility.

shes got it going on

as far as crocheting is concerned.

i am so excited. i just finished my first piece that i actually followed a pattern through and through for. no winging it involved. i completely followed the pattern.. which is a big deal for me because usually i just do my own things with my scarves. because reading a crochet pattern is like reading another language. but i did it... thank you, thank you very much. and i must say that i am pleased with the way it came out, actually, i am quite thrilled. the yarn only cost me 4 US dollars and the scarf ended up being longer than i am tall, when i wrap it around my shoulders it goes to my knees. and its like seven inches wide or more. i am pretty pleased with this one. it took me a while, but i got it.

so of course you know i had to take pictures of it... and got a little excited with the camera and did more of a photo shoot with it like i did with my jars of buttons. im sure karrie is thrilled.

enjoy:

My Weapon:

Groups of Eight:

What exactly 160 strands of 24 inch yarn looks like, on our living room floor:

along with the terribly long scarf:

with Jerushas chair:

how one should or should not wear it, depending on your personal opinion:

And tomorrow is a new day. I opened my mouth and something of the sort near I want to help came out, at church yesterday morning.... So tomorrow I am going to go hang out with some kids. I think we are going to go see a movie. Is it selfish to secretly hope we are going to see Ratetouille? (or however you spell it..) And I think the youth pastor and I are going to talk about how I can get 'plugged' in. He seemed excited when I told him I wanted to help, so that made me excited. ....

But oh pray for me. ;-)

she likes to ride her red bike.

getting up this morning to ride my bike to the bagel shop was a good idea.

getting up this morning to ride my bike to the bagel shop the day after i worked out in the gym with karrie for an hour, with a 20 pound bag containing a laptop on my back....
was a good idea that needed to be reconsidered.

because once i got halfway here and halfway up the small but steady incline my severe shortness of breath and aching body assured me that its going to take some work before i can bike to class in august. but i did safely make it and this poppy seed bagel with honey walnut cream cheese was quite worth it. its all downhill back anyway. well... sort of. except for that small mountain to climb back up to my apartment.

Other than making small biking treks my time has been spent mostly at work. although yesterday i went to a pool with karrie to make my first time to a 'public' (we have one at our apartment place) pool in.... quite a few years. And i am working on crocheting some masaterpieces although im not getting them done as quick as id like, and ive gotten several sets of earrings made. ( I am hoping to get enough done to sell in October...maybe) A few of us have been getting together onSundays after church and we cook and eat what we cook and hang out. Fun times. And last week Karrie and I went to an Emery show in Greenville with a few of the boys. We had fun... as can be seen here:

Boys are weirder than me.

The boys were trying to jump off the stage so Karrie could get a picture of them mid air, the man behind them halfway kicked them off. He seemed quite proud of himself.

she found herself back to the place they call work

Today was my first day back to work since April.
I moved back to South Carolina last Saturday but I intentionally didn't start work right away. I remembered how last year I too many times had to tell friends 'No I can't come, I have to work'. So this past week I got to do all sorts of stuff.

*It involved movies
*It involved bike rides
*It involved church
*It involved cookouts
*It involved car rides
*It involved cooking for friends
*It involved Little League All Star Games
*It involved [my]toenails painted in a marvelous pedicure by a certain 3 year old
*It involved reconstruction of my voice mail by that three year old

And all sorts of other things that I just cant think of at the moment because everything runs together and I find it hard to tell it all apart.
It was a good week. Something that I realized while at home ..
is that I was missing my friends. And then it dawned on me, that the situation was somewhat bittersweet because for the first time in my life I had friends (plural) good Jesus lovin friends that I missed. So it was like wow, I miss them but I am thankful for them.

This morning Gillian and I rode bikes at 9 ish oclock up the street to the Bagel Shop. It really wasnt that much of a ride, it was fun, although it was misting. Totally worth it. And we then spent practically two hours there just catching up and sharing about Peru experiences. Gillian is leaving for Peru in I believe sixteen days now, for a year. She will be missed, Peru is one lucky country.
[You can find Gillians blog listed in my friends over on the side of this page...]

Now, what I am getting at after this lengthy introduction, is that today was my first day back to work. I was a little nervous to go back. But all went well. And I was reminded that I had gotten my hair cut because they hadn't seen it yet. I am also going to get to get together with this awesome girl named Aurora (isnt that a beautiful name?) whom I work with and am hoping to have a better friendship with.
I also got to meet this couple and their college aged son whom were my last table of the night. This was very refreshing and completely unexpected but loved. Because they were all three really awsome people, very patient with me, and toward the end of their visit we got into a conversation about my summer. And I find out their son is coming to Anderson so of course I plugged RUF. And they prayed for me, not a hey can we remember you in pray but a hey I want to pray for you right now in the middle of this restaurant. It was definitely such a wonderful way to end the evening.