to the breath

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

"it sucks, but in a lovely sort of way."

oh me oh my.

how i have neglected the blog.

it is not because nothing has happened, but because so much has been happening that i have no time to write or formulate stories or anything of the sort. my life lately has not stopped. i do not like life that does not pause to breathe or rest or enjoy the little things. i'm missing random drives (despite the fact that its still super cold), writing music, being crafty, baking, etc.

so what HAVE i been doing?

one weekend at the end of January, I flew down to lead worship in New Jersey for a friend's youth group retreat. it was awesome. i got to see some friends i hadn't seen in a while and God showed up in awesome ways in the kids lives. It was great to be spending time with youth again.

we had World Mandate - a smaller version of a large missions conference at our sending church in Waco, TX. i got to be a part of the band, which was amazing and also way more difficult than I had anticipated. The weekend was great, but I also had some kind of 24 hour bug. it was not so fun and pretty exhausting. we rocked out, but i'm also learning a lot about trying to worship while leading. I feel like i've gotten much better at this at my own church, when I am leading worship - but this was a totally new atmosphere, and I was following another person who was doing most of the leading. actually being in a state of worship while following and while powering through sickness was uber difficult. i'm still processing it all.
Sunday morning of that conference, I got the most unfortunate call that Vinnie, our personal chef, BBQ judge, Mario Kart oponent, Strollo's buddy, and my New Jersey "adopted" father, had passed away. He had been battling cancer for a few years and the past year especially has been a rollercoaster ride. after finding this out at the end of our conference, I took Monday off work to rest - i went to bed Sun night at 5pm and woke up at 8am. 15 hours of sleep did wonders. The funeral was this past weekend, and i travelled down with erica to meet up with everyone at hotel de megan. i'm still trying to formulate what this weekend was for me. everyone has really been checking in with me now that i'm back home - they want to know how i'm doing. but this weekend was so beautiful, and so healthy.

i said to megan before i flew down there,
"it sucks, but in a lovely sort of way."

i'm so thankful that Vinnie is not suffering. i'm so thankful for him, and for his family in my life. we honestly celebrated him this weekend. the band and the ushers wore hawaiian shirts. we sang his favorite songs. we told funny stories. we ate baked ziti and sausage and peppers. we cried and we prayed, but we worshipped and we celebrated as well. i haven't laughed as hard with friends as i did this weekend in a long time. the way the body of Christ came together this past week and weekend to support family, to mourn and to celebrate, was so beautiful. and in a sneaky way, in the midst of the sadness of losing someone so close and dear to us, the community and family that was experienced was refreshing. I'll never understand all of God's purposes, but I am even more appreciative of the miracle of community in the body. it was healing. God is faithful and oh so good to His children.
I don't really have a lot of extra time right now, but i'm determined to hunt it down and claim it and use it for things that bring life.

i want to live a life that brings more life.
pray for rosie - i met her on the plane and prayed with her. she's hungry for God and seeking Him. Pray that she'll seek Him not through her own power and worldly things, but go straight to the source.

why would we choose the leaky faucet when he offers a living, breathing, rushing river?

Thursday, February 3, 2011

one day, i will blog again.
please do not fret.
until then, watch this again because there's no way you've watched it enough times:

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

A story for Wednesday.

Last night was not fun.
We have had issues over the past few months with the tenants upstairs. They tend to get super loud at night, and although they are well aware that their stereo system is overtop of Elisa's bedroom, they still seem to think that between 12 and 4 am on a weeknight is the best time to have a techno party, storm up and down the stairs like elephants, and yell outside on the sidewalk about who is more wasted. We've emailed the landlord before, and they didn't like that. They came down, very nicely, and asked if we wouldn't mind leaving the landlord out of it and coming up and just asking them to be quiet. This is a reasonable request if it isn't the middle of the night, we weren't female, and there weren't tons of people, guys and girls upstairs, rowdy and drunk. It just doesn't seem safe for us to wander up there in the middle of their party and ask a bunch of wasted kids to keep it down. Common courtesy says that 2am is a good time to be quiet. So the landlord also suggested we call the cops.

Fast forward to last night...

I went to be at 11pm, and Elisa shortly after. I sleep like a rock. Unfortunately for Elisa, I usually don't wake up to the noise because i'm in another part of the apartment and sleep so soundly. But last night at 12:30am I was awoken by knocking that I thought was from someone locked out at the front door. As I slowly woke up, confused and not fully coherent, I realized it wasn't knocking. It was banging and screaming at OUR door - right outside my bedroom. As it turns out, Elisa had made a noise complaint and they didn't respond too well to a visit from the cops. They decided the best course of action was to bang on our door and scream for us to come out, complaining that we called the cops and the landlord. This continued for probably ten minutes before they went back upstairs. I found Elisa, wrote a lovely email to our landlord, and the both of us, shaken up, tried to go back to sleep after it sounded like they were resting upstairs.

I tossed and turned for a while, and was just falling asleep again when I heard knocking on our other door, in the living room where Elisa was trying to sleep because her bedroom was too loud. No yelling this time, but a minute or so of banging on the door. Unnerving. I emailed the landlord again, and tried to go back to sleep. I tossed and turned some more, then listened to a crew of them take out the trash at a ridiculous volume, i'm sure waking up other neighbors. Why one needs to take trash out at 2am I may never understand.

I finally went to sleep and snuck out of my house this morning, praying I wouldnt see any of them. The landlord thankfully got back to me today, and evidently set up a meeting with the tenants, with the plans to call their parents.

Did you get that?
My landlord is calling their parents.

They are college kids, whose parents have co-signed the lease i'm sure.
So we're having a sleepover at a friend's house tonight - i'm not planning on avoiding my own house forever, it just seems wise to steer clear of the area for a night to give them some space to breathe. After the anger we experienced last night, who knows how they're going to react after a meeting with the landlord and a call to their parents.

Updates to follow.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Monday Morning Dreams

Today's dream: an Etsy store.
Technically, I already have one. There just aren't any items in it yet.
Monday morning dreams are always a little wishy-washy. I come in to work after the weekend, coffee in hand, music playing, right after having worshipped my guts out at church the night before, and i'm just so ready for dreaming and scheming. Monday morning dreams tend to be forgotten by the time Tuesday rolls around. But having my own Etsy store is something i've been dreaming of much more frequently than just on Monday mornings.
Am I crafty and creative? Heck yes.
Do I have any idea what i'd like to sell in said Etsy store? Nope.
Do I have lots of extra time to make lovely things and post them and ship them to people who are silly enough to purchase them? In your dreams.

But as I came in to work today and checked in on my favorite blogs, I was re-inspired by my friend Megan's store....(She has some of the best looking models on the whole site.) Here is my store. Why don't you hop on over and take a look for some inspiration? Maybe take a moment to imagine what kind of lovely things could be there. Lovely things you would like to purchased for yourself and your loved ones.
I'm also dreaming and scheming about other things that can't quite be discussed fully at this time, but I could definitely use prayer for them. I know, I know - way to be vague. I just want to keep you coming back...I look forward to your Etsy ideas.

Friday, January 7, 2011

having my cake.

Let me tell you - this is a good moment. I am officially caught up. There is nothing in my inbox that I can do right now without some info that I awaiting. This is a good feeling. Since returning from the break, I have had an overflowing amount of work. It hasn't been stressful, per say, because it's J-term and most students aren't around, so the window hasn't been crazy. But there hasn't been a break. But I have overcome the overflow. And am now feeling uber-accomplished. It only took 3.5 days.
I surprised myself, though - I was dreading the first day back to work like anyone else after the break. I had gotten so lazy - I was staying up late and sleeping in even later, so I knew Monday morning would be quite the task. But as soon as I got to work, I instantly dove right into the pile of stuff on my desk. My co-workers were all chatting about their breaks, travelling, spending time with family, opening presents, etc, and i'm over here in my little corner slamming away on this ridiculous pile of work. I realized that my brain had been so shut off to anything task-oriented or detail-oriented over the break - I had gotten into a rut of being so lazy and watching so much tv - that it was seriously craving something tangible and administrative to accomplish. But now i'm exhausted. Now it feels good for that pile to be gone and to feel more relaxed about the average amount of things to get done.

In addition to feeling caught up, I have also tackled the feat of covering a cake in fondant. (At home, though, not at work) I definitely have a lot to learn, but I am also very pleased with how it turned out for my first try. I brought it to work today so everyone could make oooohs and ahhhs and yummy noises, so we'll see if it actually holds up or tastes good. But how could it not? It's a cake. Covered in icing. And then covered in a layer of sugar and marshmallow playdough.

Come on, people. What's not to love?