its olivia!!!!

oh my gosh!!! isn't she soooo cute!!! oh my gosh!!!!! i love it!! she is sooooo cute....and she leeps getting cuter and cuter.

i love how cute olivia is. i am glad that zack is texting me. i love that slum dog millionaire won so many awards. i love that i should be going to bed but instead i am up watching the academy award. i love how warm it is this apartment

speaking life

So i love when people speak life to me.
my friend jo wrote me this:

this makes me think of you... “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes "Awww!” (Jack Kerouac)


i think sometimes i am that person. and sometimes i try to prove i am that person. i think that is the line for me. when i try to prove myself and get people to notice me and prove that i am beautiful and alive i am really dimming who i am. i need to put the need to prove my self to death.....that sounds fun!!!

when i was prayed for at the network meeting in august beth prayed " you are afraid that when you go home you won't be able to dream. that God won't give you anything to dream about. but God is saying. you have been asleep. he is going to wake you up"

so i feel like places in my soul are being woken up. place that have been dead to God. that have blamed God are being woken up and given life.

as mike so amazingly put it....eating from the tree of life not the tree of good and evil.

i love bejeweled twisted. i love natalie niger. i love the dinner scott and rebecca made last night. i love waking up in the morning all snugly under my covers. i love that the sheets i get to sleep on feel like the softest most amazing sheets ever.

kingdom of heaven

so i have been searching for answers. i feel like i have all these puzzle pieces and am trying to fit all this together. i think i learned about a piece of the puzzle. i have all these questions about salvation, poverty, is Jesus the only way?, what do the 15,000,000 hindus who never hear about Jesus...what happens to them? what happened to the women who dies in my arms at the train station. i have questions. and i had a lunch with my dear brother yesterday....scott crawford.
and it became clear that at the core of questions i am asking, " am i right or wrong? are they right and i am wrong?" and i think i learned yesterday that is the wrong attitude. b/c in the kingdom of heaven there is only love, not right and wrong. right and wrong creates, jealousy and anger and causes bad fruit in my life. my job is not to prove that Jesus was right, but to love. Jesus can work out the heart stuff.
i realized that this feels like truth b/c something in me is able to take a deep breath and breathe......i know that in moments in kolkata....the unshakable kingdom broke through the darkness. for example, when i held that dying women in my arms......i don't know what happened to her when she died, but that wasn't my job...my job was to love her in that moment like our Father in heaven wanted to love her.
i need to give up my need to be right.....that is scarier then anything so far.......

i love scott and rebecca crawford. i love velvet elvis. i love that i miss eating bread and cheese. i love that i feel like something broke in me yesterday. i love that i realize.....hmmm....maybe my heart does need healing.

movement

so i have been holding india at a distance. when i left there....i left. and i haven't let india in and all that it has meant to me in yet...until this week. i am in jacksonville staying with my amazing friends jen and craig. they live in this cute house surrounded by trees, near lots of parks, and jen got me a membership to her gym for two weeks. its good and safe.
i have been seeing counselors here that helps people transition back to the states. it has been good and deep....so deep. i am finding roots in my heart that go all the way back to my childhood. i have a clearer picture of my heart and my brokenness and why i am the way i am and what needs to be healed and places in my life that needs repentance. so it has been good.
i feel like my heart has been a wall for the past couple months and the wall is being taken down and am entering in again to all the hard stuff.
i am finding lots of things behind my walls.....that i really do have such a sweet intimacy with Jesus, that isn't so much dependant on what i have seen or heard but on the state of my heart. I am flushing out what it means to live in my femininity. i am seeing how the prophecy that was prayed over me 3 years ago is still so powerful and through this counseling experience i have practical things to match the spiritual words that were spoken over me.
and i miss beth and sarah and am learning how much i learned from them and how well they loved me and how they truly saw me....all of me....and loved me. i am so thankful for them and their friendship. i am so thankful that they fought to see my heart when i would hide it behind really thick walls.
i still don't know what i am going to do with my life. still don't have a job. still don't know where i want to live......but that is okay right now. its a season to rest...and even though that is scary it is good and right and needed.

i love panera's. i love grapes. i really really love diet cherry soda. i love people who engage my heart. i love that shannon had her baby. i love that i really want to hold a baby. i love that i get to see one of my longest time friends aileen tomorrow and celebrate valentines day with her and her kids!!! i love that beth, sarah and i started a tradition on valentines day where we just tell each other why we love each other.

Safety in each other

i found this tonight. i wrote it sometime this summer when i was taking a lady from SB to the doctors. she is one of the most fragile, beautiful, most damaged but life giving women i know. she has this beautiful laugh and kindness and even a silliness about her that we got to see the longer we knew her. she is one of my heroes.

Safety in Each Other
We walk down these crazy streets surrounded by people busily streaming by us. Cars honking trying to make a way for themselves. Men going home to their families. People living on the side of the road with poverty as their closest friend. City buses brimming over with anxious and sweaty people.
And in the midst of all this, you have your hand notched in my arm. Your hand feels light and fragile as you walk beside me and lead me through the traffic jams. We laugh together as we walk, just happy to be with one another. Happy that our paths have crossed in the midst of all this chaos.
As we walk down the street I think of the disease that has infested your body and will slowly tear you down. I think about how your suffering has lead us together. You walk besides me carrying with you the secrets of your suffering that only Jesus will every fully understand. And I feel how you have your hand notched in my arm.
And I find safety in that feeling. It makes me feel like darkness has not won. The disease has not won. Despair has not won. Oppression has not won. Because as we walk down the street together with your hand notched in my arm we are safe. We find safety in the presence of each other.

i love telling people about SB. i love red rooms. i love my blue sweater that beth bought me. i love that i have a gym membership for free for two weeks. i love when people pray and they know my heart without knowing me. i love that i am learning how to rest.