reason.

"You will show me the path that leads to life" psalm16. I have to trust that there is a greater plan for my life, and that there is purpose in continuing education at university, even if every part of me doesn't want to go back. My life starts over, first semester of second year. These hand's are yours God. Teach them to serve. This heart is yours. Teach it to chase after You. Teach it to love.

"This is your life, right now.

It doesn't wait for you to get back on your feet."

summsummmaa

It's 2am and after laughing our asses off we realize we can't sleep. Forgetting the fact that we work early the next day, we run down to the kitchen and grab popcorn and gold fish, supplies that keep us awake for hours longer. We lie sprawled out across the bed, our favorite songs playing, looking at pictures from our past summers together and reminiscing. Our hearts are heavy, but our spirits are light. We stupidly decide to text the boys that make and break our hearts, and we get mad together when we both get no reply. We get all philosophical and talk about how our lives should be, or how things could have been had we've done things differently. But in the end i realize there is no place i would rather be than sitting on that bed, making fun of our ex's, eating empty calories and acting like we're eight years old. This is our summer. Our houses with no parents, our cars running on empty, our jobs with endless hours, our wasted bank accounts, our memories. it's like it belongs all to us.

"i will never know the right way to say thanks for all these nights and days spent hanging out, but that's what this is all about. and i, i am not into, the idea of living without you. No, i am not into that idea"

roadtrip.

it's those long rides in your car, with a couple best friends and a handful of intention. it's the wind that whips through your hair, and the way the sun shines in through the sun roof window breaking down all the boundaries of the day. It's the promise of adventure that a tank full of gas holds, and the circled destinations on our map that expectantly await our arrival. It's when that perfect song escapes through the car speakers, it's when the dashboard becomes our drumset as we keep time with our hands, it's when the base rattles the whole car making it hard to see out the rear view mirror, it's when we tilt our heads back and scream along. .. its infinite. its perfection in our teenage world.

"People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed; never throw out anyone."

hey unloving..

"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?"

I have so much trouble with this upsidedown kingdom, this counter-culture, that the bible teaches. I try so hard to do good but i end up doing wrong, i try so hard to love but i end up hating, i try so hard to forgive but i end up holding grudges. But i read these Words, these words that contradict everything that i've been taught by society, and it's like i can see this truth emerging. The life i'm striving after isn't the life i was meant to live. You see that's the problem, i do it all on my own. I try to live and find my own answers and my own direction in my own life. But what if there was real life out there, one with real ansewers and real truths, and I just need to lose this selfish life first in order to find it. I've already been shown I can't do it on my own.

'hey unfaithfull i will teach you, to be stronger
hey un loving,
i will love you" -underoath.

everything works in your arms.

My best friend is back in town for a week. I forgot what it was like having her around. After i left her house tonight to finally come back home, i just sat there and realized how legitimately happy i am with life. It just kind of all hit me at once, you know, the over whelming feeling of being perfectly content. Moments like that are rare and fleeting sometimes. But this was just what i needed. I forgot how she just makes everything seem that much better. She makes life come alive.

/ / / /

it's not that i'm weak. And no, it's not that i'm holding on. It's just those little things you know? You let go of someone and you think and know that your okay, but then you find an old photo, or note, or you turn over the bottom of your shoe which has permanent marker all over it because they drew it there and then it hits you. It's those small reminders that get you all the time when your not looking for any reminders whatsoever. He was was there when my grandma died in the spring, he was the one to hug me and talk about it. At Christmas my aunt got me a picture frame of my grandma in it, that said I love you. It was sad to see this and it just reminded me how this was our first Christmas without her. It was hard to understand. I went to his house later that night and it was only him who was able to cheer me up. It was like i didn't even need words, he just made things better. I see that picture frame and I feel the sorrow but i think also of how he had the tenancy to make everything better. I see it everyday and sometimes i'm tempted to move it or turn it face down but I don't because sometimes those small reminders are what we need. We need to cling onto the hope that there will always be someone out there who can fix things. I mean i can fix things myself, but it was as simple as that, things just worked in his arms.

a servant's heart

This summer i am working at a camp for intellectually disabled adults, and to say i love it would be an understatement. I love getting up for work everyday, i love the work, the guests, the camp, the co workers. Charly and i are on the maintenance team, and we often come across guests who want to help us out. They are all hilarious and i have stories about each one. My favorite is daniel. Daniel has this huge smile that could warm even the coldest heart. When we drive the golf cart he will run infront of us, and his arms just flail everywhere and he just runs and runs and laughs the whole time. He's our fearless leader. He also loves to help us when ever he can. Things like taking out the garbage, sweeping, re stocking the maitenance closet etc. The thing is, he is always so willing to help, and while charly and i complain and drag our feet, he does all with this giant smile acorss his face. His favourite sayings are "i can do it" and after completeing a task, "i did it!". Acutally that's all he really says.


Just the other day Char was having a bad day, and daniel runs up, this giant smile across his face, "i can do it!" and she said just seeing him smile made her day thaaat much better. And when we tell daneil he can't help us, he almost gets this sad face, which is a big deal becuase i mean, the guy never stops smiling. and he's like "okkkaaaaayy" and we just feel so bad, we find a job where he can help us again. I just wish i could have a heart like daniels. One that's so joyfull and willing to work. One can learn so much from intellectually disabled people. It's a shame that most of the time they are kept to the side lines, out of the big picutre of society. They have such beautiful lives and hearts, the passion some of them have for life is amazing.

"Begin to look around, see things in your world and right now, you'll find beauty in the strangest places; in backwards glances and passing faces, in familiar landscapes you've seen all your life, in the peace of the quiet, and the sky of the blue."

through painted deserts.

"All I’d wanted for so long was for someone to explain everything that had happened to me in a simple way. To label it neatly on a page: this lead to this which lead to this and this."
i want life to make some sort of sense for just once.

"And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and i, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it? "
through painted deserts, by donald miller.

we.

it was a glimpse of something beautiful.
it was a little bit of perfection found in a broken world, it was a little bit of warmth held between between our cold hands, it was a calm we found in an awful storm. it was the sun hitting the window in the most perfect way, that we could see the frost dance. it was the redemption we found in what we had created. it was our favorite song on the radio that played as we were lost in deep conversation. It was laughter among the painful tears.
it was the smile on our faces that gave it all away.
it was the pull of our hearts that made it that way.

"when all was gold and you two touched and felt the flutter underneath your skin. You stood in glowing rooms, the light dripping from both of you, and nothing since has felt as radiant or real."

19.

I am officially legal. I finally feel like a legit adult now. It's all too wonderful but scares the hell out of me. Being this old probably means i should start acting my age. And it probably also means that my massive fear of the dark/serial killers/ etc. is now irrational and should be gotten over. There is so much to work on this year...

To accomplish on my 19th year:
-start a budget, (and acutally stick to it) and save money for once in my life
-start folding my clothes, do laundry more than once every two weeks
-work my ass off in school. Go to all classes, all tutorials, and have a study schedule for exams
-look into transferring universities for third year
-spend the next summer in a random city with a friend or two
-find a shade of blond that wont kill my hair and stick to it
-stop straightening my hair everyday
-paint my toe nails more often, get more nail polish
-get into mountain biking
-buy my own mountain bike, tent, sleeping bag, and MEC backpack
-date a black guy
-get into new bands, go to concerts more often
-write a book about my 19th year, or just document it
-get involved with the soup kitchen at school
-go to the gym regularly, and acutally use weights even if the intimidating football players are always around them .. oooh, and, stop being intimidated by people
-buy more expensive clothes/ have more of a sophsiticaed wardrobe
-keep room clean
-learn how to cook
-get my level one ski instructors
-go on a legit hardcore canoe trip
-go camping
-roadtrip to the USA
-go to a casino
-read more books
-go to church more often and get involved
-get a tattoo
-see the 2010 olympics, and ski on whistler
-go surfing
-work on managing my free time better
more to come later.

break my heart for what breaks yours

I think there a couple of people in life who you meet, and all of a sudden you get this feeling, like they are home to you. I don't mean home in where you came from, but home in where you will end up. It's like these souls hold your destiny, and with them you find your path in life. They bring out this new light from within you, and suddenly your just glowing with life, with joy, with love. Maybe that's called friendship, or maybe it's called love. I guess it can be whatever you want it to be, but i think it's something that some will never experience. I just know that when you have it... you know.

you still feel like home to me.
"We become attached to what's familiar and sometimes we hold onto things that are safe and predictable even if they are bad for us."

waiting.

It's like I'm just here spending these last two months waiting. But i'm never sure what i'm waiting for. Maybe just to go back to school, maybe for things to be normal again, maybe for change or maybe i'm just waiting for answers. I just don't know, but I know it's out there and I know I don't have it yet. There is so much uncertainty in what lies ahead of me.


I wish i could view my life as one big picture instead of the little boxes and time chapters i place everything inside. I see now as a time of transition, from one unknown to the next. But life is now! You know if you don't stop to realize these small things, life will just as easily pass you by. It's so fleeting these tiny moments. These moments spent in waiting, in anxious waiting... they should not just be simply gotten through. They should be lived. If only.

"Perhaps the most difficult choices to make are the ones that deny us what our heart wants most, because as it's been said, without reason and without prudence, the heart wants what the heart wants, and more often than not, it will not be denied."

///

new favourite song...

Going Back to the corner where I first saw you, Gonna camp in my sleeping bag I'm not gonna move. Got some words on cardboard, got your picture in my hand saying, "if you see this girl can you tell her where I am"

Cuase If one day you wake up and find your missing me and your heart starts to wonder where on this earth I could be. Thinkin maybe you'll come back here to the place that we'd meet and you'll see me waiting for you on our corner of the street...So I'm not moving, I'm not moving.

-the man who can't be moved by the script

you change everything

but i am constantly reminded that we are nothing if not for the Love of God and his guidance and blessing over our lives.