dreaming season

"we must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life waiting for us." -em forster

photo via: Lina Scheynius

let's lose ourselves to the Only.

worship is the one place we can completely lose ourselves and gain something...a living God, who desires to live inside of us and create a revolution for everything around us.  as human beings we are inclined to lose ourselves in things: people, memories, success, and hurt...but let it instead be Christ.  Christ, we can trust. and He will lead us and sustain us in all other things we encounter in life.  worship is the practice of losing ourselves to gain more of Him.  and it is in Him that we'll find the life we're all desperately searching for.  the God who calls us by name and makes His mysteries our mysteries...His people, our people.  i spend so much of my time dreaming of my life's greatest adventure.  turns out i'm already on it.  and the soundtrack to it is worship.  the anthem is praise.

images via: pinterest

in my ears.

rayland baxter has me kind of lovesick.  can't stop listening.

radical faces.

there's nothing like the feeling of finding people that make you want to be better...the rare ones who make you want to fight for more.  the people whose simple entrance into your life, can give it the violent shake that shifts everything just right, for new dreams to appear. 

photo cred: papier mache

extravagance.

these days, i'm trying to learn about this.  that i will never find the joy that was meant for my life, for my days, for my moments, if i don't learn to love God extravagantly...not just enough to get by, and enough to maintain a relationship with Him, but more than enough...with more than i have, with more than i am.  nothing else matters.  nothing, but the way i love Him, and love the people He's placed before me in this lifetime.

i get so caught up in striving to live my life rightly...in a way that people will look at as an exemplary testimony...but an exemplary testimony is one soaked with an adoration of Him who did it all...and i have to understand that people will not always understand this...or admire it.  that often it will look foolish and wrong...until they know Him.  Him who did it all.

and as it often does...the bible brings perfect light to this in dear, radical, extravagant mary...

"Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume (one that was her dowry...she literally was laying every ounce of her future at His feet); she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair.  And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.  But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given tot he poor?  It was worth a year's wages."  He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.  "Leave her alone," Jesus replied.  "It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial.  You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me." -Luke 12:3-7

in Matthew, Jesus goes so far as to say, "I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her." -Matthew 26:13

is throwback friday a thing?

remembering how scotland was often defined to me by my bed, reading for hours, drinking herbal tea and battling insomnia.  the good news was that my bed was comfortable, the used books were insane, and the tea was winning.

i don't miss insomnia but i sure miss scotland.

Hello Bright Light.

He's so good.  Unrelentingly.  Unfathomably.

But I see so little of it sometimes...because my eyes, they're the dim kind.

Slowly though, they catch the light.

Increasingly though, they're remembering to look up.

And more than a heart could fathom.

There's grace, acceptance, and welcoming that greets them.

And before I know it, I'm again, blinded by the warmth of the light.


photo by: luca bortolato

ringing in my heart today is this declaration.

obedience.  choose obedience.  because our days are too few to not choose His glory for our ways.

big sur.

from the fall...and now i'm aching to go back with the exact same van full of sisters.

when i see Him, i shall be made like Him.

picture: here
and though i cannot see Him
my heart knows Him well

-soon;; hillsong united.

the mighty rapture.

picture: an early morning walk
from coffee with a dear, treasured sister friend this morning...

"defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.  when the great oak is straining in the wind, the boughs drink in new beauty and the trunk sends down a deeper root on the windward side.  only the soul that knows the mighty grief can know the mighty rapture, sorrows come to stretch out spaces in the heart for joy..." -edward markham.

::i, as a canyon::

i felt like a canyon.  like all there was to see of me, was the vastness of my emptiness.  what i didn't realize, was how it was the space you were creating, for me to grow the hunger to dream as big as You are.

how the darkness defined the light.

somewhere up ahead.

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

2 corinthians 4:17