Jeremiah 9:23-24

23"Thus says the Lord: 'Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, 24 but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.'"

The Lord has been doing some things in my life in the past few months.

Back in June, I was a couple months in to my very first big girls job. Yup, desk, 7-4, Monday-Friday, I even had TWO computer screens! I felt like a serious big girl. Then some things started to happen...

My car got broken into... nothing got stolen, but my window was pretty jacked up and I had to get it fixed. My thoughts? No big deal, I have a job, and therefore income, so I can get it fixed.

We were nearing the end of our lease in our apartment and I needed a place to go. After a couple of options fell through and my move out date was getting closer and closer, the stress started to build. Again, I resorted to a line of thinking somewhere along the lines of: I have a job with a good income, so I can just get a small place on my own if it comes down to it. So, 'I'll be fine'.

A few more things had happened in my personal life that were really testing my sanity. It came to a point where I felt like the only thing I had left that was stable in my life was my job. It was then that I got a little cocky.

I told God: "God, even if you take my job away, I'll still trust you." (secretly hoping in the back of my mind that He wouldn't actually take my job because WHAT would I do with out an income?!) Well, take he did. And this started a two month journey of joblessness, and learning what it means to fully rely on God and make Him my absolute everything, my rock.

For those two months, all of my bills were paid, and everything I needed was provided for me. There's more to this story and it doesn't end here, but for tonight it does :)

What I would like to point out and hope you would get from reading this is that all of the things we have here on earth: Jobs, friends, family, homes - are all blessings from the Lord! We can live with out them, because all we need is Him, but he chooses to bless us with them!

If you dare to take the risk of asking God to teach you what it means to fully rely on Him - He will. And it's not going to be easy, or by any means comfortable. However, I can guarantee that once you have gotten a taste of what full reliance on Him feels like, you won't want anything else.

So I encourage you - Don't boast on anything in this world, it will all fade away. The only thing worth boasting and bragging about is your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, God, the Holy Spirit. Get to know Him, you won't regret it :)

Time For Another One!

Hello Again!

Not sure if this is going to be a daily thing or not... but thought I would tap a few words out.

I'm currently watching Law and Order SVU (Special Victim's Unit). Love this show - despite its twisted story lines and mangled victims :,(. Nonetheless, I set my DVR to record every episode that plays. Being that every Tuesday USA has an "SVU Marathon", I currently have 86 episodes on my DVR. For those of you familiar with "your unique design", my achiever will not let me delete any of the episodes on there. Which means I have 86 hours of TV to watch until more get added next Tuesday!

For those of you who don't know what "your unique design" is, it is a very detailed personality test that helps you to point out from what lens you view life... I'm a base Persister, but also 100% Achiever, which means I systematically go through a list of things and check each one off one by one. And I am not satisfied until each item has been completed. Now, can we apply this character trait to a list of 86 "SVU" episodes, 41 "Office episodes", 42 "Say Yes to the Dress" episodes, and a few others? Yes. It adds up to hours of wasted time on my couch. Maybe a DVR wasn't such a good idea :-/

Maybe I will try to over come and just delete them all...

Oh, and for those of you who are interested, here is a link to the "Your Unique Design" Website!
http://youruniquedesign.com/

Aaaaaannndddd my "house" is what is at the top.

First Blog of My Life

Hello :) as the title states, this is the first blog of my life. I've been hearing about this "blogging" for years now and thought of doing one but never have - until now. dun dun dun. (that's supposed to be that sound you hear when somebody's in trouble... but you're not in trouble, promise).

Anyway, I get side-tracked easily, as will become increasingly more evident as continue on in my blog-posting endeavor.

So today was my day "off". I put "off" in quotes because I wasn't really OFF - I didn't have to work at Target, which is my full time job, but I did do child care. Every Tuesday I watch all the staff kiddos, from 8:30am-1:30pm, for staff people at my church, The Well. It's a ton of fun, and I love it, so I'm not complaining. Then, straight from there, I went to the church office to meet up with Mary VanAalsburg, our Children's Director at The Well, just to catch up and shoot the breeze :) When I arrived home at 3:30-4ish, I was fighting sleep. I had nothing concrete planned for the evening, but the oil in my car needed changing and I had some grocery shopping to do. A nap also sounded enticing.

The nap won.

I climbed into bed at about 4:30 not to re-awake until 9:30pm! Kind of a long nap when you have to be up at 6am the next day... So, here I am, it's almost 1am and I am writing a blog of all things! I did go grocery shopping after all and also started a load of dishes - so today wasn't a complete waste. Actually, I would argue that I was quite productive today - nap and all!

That's all for now... I'm going to prepare for bed and play solitaire on my phone until I fall asleep. I know my life is exciting and intriguing, but try not to be jealous, it's not an attractive trait.

<3

Ps, if you don't already know me, I'm pretty sarcastic so I was just kidding about the jealousy part ;) Love you all. <-- I mean that. I really love people - so interesting! And God made all of you, so what's not to love?!