Just One Cup at a Time

With more purpose

Last year I didn't visit here very much.  Looking back I see why now but I didn't see it then.  I was in a different place at the beginning of last year and pursuing things in life that took me off my usual course.  I didn't know it at the time but it ultimately wasn't where I wanted to belong, where my hearts desires really are and now, now that God has circled me back, opened my eyes a little more, I see that this is where I want to be.  I missed this place too.

I love connecting with people through blogs and writing and have noticed even more so over the past few weeks how much I miss each of them and how I've missed the chance of meeting some of the new friends I have made.  I love to write even though I'm not all that great at it and even though I'm usually one big run-on sentence I like it.  I think I like the expression of my heart in writing more than the actual art of writing but it's me and I like that part of me...for the most part anyway :).

I have realized that when I read, when I write or when I'm designing, I feel the most at home and it's when the noise of life truly goes silent.  I can hear my heart whisper.  I can hear God's still quiet voice.  I like the whisper.  It's refreshing, it refuels me and I walk away with my cup overflowing once again.

But to write here and be real and true and purposeful - that is my desire and also my struggle at times.  I have recently discovered Ann Voskamp.  Do you know her?  Now she's an incredible writer, incredible heart and story.  She has this great bloggers prayer on her website that I loved and can relate to.  This moved my heart to blog with a different purpose so this is now why I'm here (thank you Ann):

        May I write not for subscribers...but only for Thine smile,

        May my daily affirmation be in the surety of my atonement,

        not the size of my audience,

        May my identity be in the innumerable graces of Christ,

        never, God forbid, the numbers of my comments,

        May the only words that matter in my life not be the ones I write on a screen

        but the ones I live with my skin.

                                    Ann Voskamp

Love being back and excited to see where this goes.  I pray when you glance across these pages that your heart is somehow blessed, encouraged and maybe even a little chuckle or smile.  Grab a latte and join me sometime.  A. xo

 

Blow my Mind Jesus! I'm so ready!

It's Saturday and I'm getting some awesome downtime right now reading and writing then I get to have a hair appointment (love seeing my Cynthia) then football with friends.  It's going to be a great day.  Tomorrow I get to plan what I'm going to do in Feb in Belize, Cozumel and the Cayman Islands...far too blessed for this girl right here!

This week has been an incredible heart journey for me and I'm bursting at the seams to share.  Share my purpose for this blog and why I must write this year this twenty 12 and visit this here blog often and I'm beyond excited.  I have been digging deep into His word and have been reading many stories and about lives that have broken my heart, peeled away my selfishness, told me not to look at myself in the same way, encouraged my heart to leap forward with no fear, to be ever so THANKFUL, to love people without worrying about the end, to give it all...oh so much God has been giving me this week.

Hope is more than just a word, it’s a state of being. It’s a firm belief that even if you don’t know how, even if you don’t know when, God will come through and better days are up ahead. Life sends rain… Hope dances in the puddles until the sun comes out again….. Holley Gerth

This pictures just screams hope to me and I so badly want to dance in the puddles of life!!!!

I'm so darn blessed and God is truly "blowing my mind".  Listen to this song and I pray it makes your arm hairs stand up on their end.

I'm praying and loving the life that God has blessed me with.  So today I'm embracing it all fully - will you?  And in the very eloquent yet succinct words of one of my favorite blog writers....."GO"!

A hedge of fog

Today is a new day.  Not new as in things from yesterday are forever gone replaced with what is here today - no today is just new.  Different.  Some things from yesterday still linger.  I was reminded of this early this morning when at that very instance that you wake up and things are just beginning to come into focus and you realize...yes it's still me I'm still here, this is the same place I was last night and oh yes that little part of my heart that has some extra stirring...yes it's still there.

I wish this picture could fully capture what the moon looked like Saturday night on my little Santa Barbara escape this past weekend.  The sunset was changing colors and for a few brief moments was casting shades of pink towards the East.  I walked to the other side of the wharf to see this view and there was the full moon hung in all its glory.  The valet had already pulled my car around but I asked them to hold it so I could run over and catch a picture of it.

Sadly it doesn't do it justice.  It was gorgeous in it's brief but seemingly long existence.

The fog rolled into the crevices of the trees and hills that were lining the coast as if they were sitting in the 2nd row allowing a hedge to form around them to protect.  It was safe.  I kind of feel like the fog right now, I'm content just to settle in the 2nd row, protected by a hedge and let God and others take the stage.  Kind of like how Job wanted a hedge around him to protect him.  It feels safer here right now.  Oh I'll be back in the front row soon enough you know me :) but for now this is good.  This is peaceful.  This is trust.  I know God is guiding me in His perfect timing to His perfect place...I just know it. 

Today I am trying to see deep - see deep beyond what's right in front of me and look for Him in all things.  I want to be thankful, yes oh so thankful.  "The art of deep seeing makes gratitude possible.  And it's the art of gratitude that makes joy possible.  Isn't joy the art of God".

Joy.

 

 

The Ocean and Trust.

This was my spontaneous weekend.  Well actually only because I have a loving patient amazing BFF who's crazy wacky and brilliant idea it was to whisk away to this place.  This amazing spanse of un-ending glory and grace and beauty and story and love and forgiveness and depth and awesomeness and healing and hope that we sometimes so short-sidedly call an ocean.

Oh it's so much more than an ocean....so so so much more.

At first I sat at a picnic table yards away from the sand and let my BFF inch her way closer to it's majesty.  Silly me.

I soon knocked some sense into my little broken heart and rolled up my skinny jeans and walked in the cool powder-like feeling of the sand and let it squish between my toes.  It was extra cool in January so un-like when you have to skip across it on a hot August day.  It was dreamy.

I sat. I cried. I prayed. I soaked it all in begging God to heal my broken heart from my coffee date earlier that morning with an incredible man that I may never see again.  Only time and God truly know.

I don't often share THIS type of truth on my blog but this year in this twenty twelve year I will. 

This break up is raw and real and deep and sad and I'm in it big time right now.  So bear with me I'm walking my journey for reals today.

Trust.  That's what I'm trying to do today.

Thus Far....

As this new year has started (and where in the world did the last one go might I add...) I can't help but reflect back on 2011 in wonder, awe, delight, sadness, victory, joy, healing, relief, growth, strength and so much more.  I plan to be real and honest and share what is behind this list of simple yet such complex words.

I will say that 2011 was one of MY BEST YEARS yet even though it was filled with a mixture of laughter and tears, love and heartbreak, emptyness and cups overflowing....

May TWENTY 12  knock my socks off even more because I am still living my THUS FAR!

"Thus far has the Lord helped us" 1 Sam 7:12 

The words “thus far”are like a hand pointing in the direction of the past.  “Thus far has the Lord helped”!  Whether through poverty, wealth, sickness, or health, whether at home or abroad, or on land, sea, or air, and whether in honor, dishonor, difficulties, joy, trials, triumph, prayer, or temptation—“Thus far has the Lord helped”!

I LOVE THIS:

We always enjoy looking down a long road lined with beautiful trees.  The trees are a delightful sight and seem to be forming a temple of plants, with strong wooden pillars and arches of leaves.  In the same way you look down a beautiful road like this, why not look back on the road of the years of your life?  Look at the large green limbs of God’s mercy overhead and the strong pillars of His loving-kindness and faithfulness that have brought you much joy.  Do you see any birds singing in the branches?  If you look closely, surely you will see many, for they are singing of God’s mercy received “thus far.”

These words also point forward.  Someone who comes to a certain point and writes the words “thus far” realizes he has not yet come to the end of the road and that he still has some distance to travel.  There are still more trials, joys, temptations, battles, defeats, victories, prayers, answers, toils, and strength yet to come.  L.B. Cowman

            The Lord who “thus far”has helped you

            Will help you all your journey through.

When the words “thus far”are read in heaven’s light, what glorious and miraculous prospects they reveal to our grateful eyes! Charles H. Spurgeon

 

Silence

Careful there...don't fall off your chair now because you saw my blog name in bold on your blog reader and you didn't quite know what to do with a new blog post from me....7 months later.  Love me..oh just love me. :)

And not that my blog silence really has anything to do with this post...or does it.  I've had an interesting year in many ways and waiting on God has been a HUGE part of it...hence the "silence".  I thought my year was supposed to be about joy but then silence hit.  Perhaps my lesson this year was....joy in silence?  Well if that's the case then I failed....and pretty darn miserably I failed.  :)

I read this and absolutely had to.  I had to share.  It was a huge encouragement to me.

"Has God trusted you with His silence— a silence that has great meaning? God’s silences are actually His answers. Just think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany! Is there anything comparable to those days in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking Him for a visible answer?

God will give you the very blessings you ask if you refuse to go any further without them, but His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into an even more wonderful understanding of Himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? When you cannot hear God, you will find that He has trusted you in the most intimate way possible— with absolute silence, not a silence of despair, but one of pleasure, because He saw that you could withstand an even bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence, then praise Him— He is bringing you into the mainstream of His purposes. The actual evidence of the answer in time is simply a matter of God’s sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a while you may have said, “I asked God to give me bread, but He gave me a stone instead” (see Matthew 7:9). He did not give you a stone, and today you find that He gave you the “bread of life” (John 6:35).

A wonderful thing about God’s silence is that His stillness is contagious— it gets into you, causing you to become perfectly confident so that you can honestly say, “I know that God has heard me.” His silence is the very proof that He has. As long as you have the idea that God will always bless you in answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give you the grace of His silence. If Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, then He will give you the first sign of His intimacy— silence."  Oswald Chambers

I'll be back....don't you worry your pretty little head :)