what am I doing

Confession:

When God is showing me what I'm supposed to do and it seems a little hard or uncertain I tend to look for other "good options" just incase he (or I) might be mistaken about the first.

I love fire :)

I saw the coolest thing sunday night. A few of my friends and I were sitting around in our living room with the lights out and a bunch of candles lit singing some awesome Jesus music while the breeze blew in through the open screen door. As we sang one of my favorite songs I closed my eyes and all of a sudden I could see this orange flickering from all of the candles just dancing around. And right in that moment God used the free flowing movement to remind me that His spirit was there with us, moving among us as we sang. I love when God pops up unexpectedly...I guess I should learn to expect it more, I mean we were getting together to sing and pray why wouldn't he show up, he already promised us he would.

How He Loves - David Crowder Band

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all

We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
And Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us...

What's up

I popped a bag of popcorn tonight...only ONE kernel was left unpopped. Now that is awesome.

I'm looking forward to this semester. About half of my classes will be really good and half will be ridiculous, but such is college.

I came back from Jamaica last summer and all my junk that wasn't stolen was covered in mold. I came back from springfield this summer and all my cabinets in the kitchen were covered in mold. DISGUSTING!!! A bunch of bleach a few rags and a dehumidifier later and everything is getting better in here. I really wish I had a roommate. I never thought I would say that. As a teenager I always pictured myself living alone.

I prayed for friends at SBU yesterday and God brought one over to my apartment to hang out today!

I love studying at the park. I always see something cool that God created. Yesterday it was a 2 foot turtle and today it was a 2 inch bee. Im not kidding the thing was HUGE.

My First Tri!

This morning I woke up(before my alarm, grrr) at 4:23 and the first thought in my head was, I don't want to do this! All week I'd been nervously excited for my first triathlon and then the morning of it was just like my body new what was coming and it was trying to convince me to "just say no." I arrived and got everything set up then decided to skip my warm up in the pool due to the rather chilly weather. (The weather was perfect for a tri by the way! Thanks God!) As I lined up with my group of 5:00-5:59 min swimmers I felt kind of awkward because I ended up being the front of the line with 36, 43, and 57 year old men right behind me that were all like 6' 5". I swam my 300 yards in 4:45 which is 15 seconds faster than I ever have before, that was freakin awesome! Gotta love that race day adrenaline! The bike portion really wasn't too bad I actually felt like I had prepared for it pretty well. But I would like to throw my bike in the garbage right now, the seat was too low, every time I stood up my knee hit the gear shifter, my chain came off and my peddle was screwed up and all crooked. And I'd only really been on 3 rides on that bike so I wasn't too familiar with how it shifted. Maybe next time if I can get all that figured out I can pick up my speed a couple mph, I did my 12 miles in 50 min and I know I could do it in 45! Then came the run, that was just a joke. The first 1/4 of a mile I was trying to catch my breath and get my leg muscles to figure out how to run after biking, then I hit the 1 mile mark and realized I could walk faster than I was running so I did the last 2 miles in run 2 min/walk 1 min intervals finishing in 32:08. Somehow that only slowed down my normal running pace by 22 seconds, which makes me feel like a totally slow and lame runner. I crossed the finish line in 95 minutes and had to stop to get my chip taken off my ankle and I kind of felt like I was going to fall over right there, but luckily my legs held up (that's why you are supposed to do a cool down after a work out and not just stop immediately!) In the end I loved it and was pretty amazed that I did it. In high school just the thought of swimming a 300 would have scared me off, and never in a million years would I have guessed that I could run 3 miles without dying! I'm really glad I got to share the day with Matt and Jo (my goal is to someday beat Matt, which should be pretty easy to catch up to him seeing as he is 14 years older than me!) . I've been spending all afternoon looking up races, if I can come up with $33 I just might do a duathlon in October. I'm addicted, I love tri's! I'm so thankful God's given me the ability to get out there and have some fun taking care of my "temple" (1 Cor 6:19).

sing a song/ ride a bike

Ok, I admit I get tired of singing at church from time to time. I've come to realize its because a lot of the songs we sings aren't worship songs! The pastor at Desperation made me laugh last night when he called it "Christian sing-a-long." The way they go about picking their worship songs is to ask "if we were standing face to face with God would we say these words?" For some reason I don't think if I was standing in front of God I'd start saying "I'll fly away oh Glory!" or "when you and I embrace surrender you and I will see who we were meant to be..." Sure, these are great songs, but when we get together to worship let's sing songs that are honest words from our hearts to our savior in adoration of his awesomeness.

Did my first long ride today on my road bike! 20.5 miles in 82 minutes, dropped my water bottle and my chain fell off, glad I got that out of my system before the tri next weekend! It was pretty great expect for I couldn't go very hard for the last 10 mins b/c I thought I might barf, I should probably eat more before I start next time. Can't wait for my next ride!