Resonate College Retreat

God's Will is for me to know God's love and

to let that love turn back to Him and His people around me!

Intentions never acted upon become regret, 

and regret is the cancer of our soul!

See more of your life than a career!

Those are three of the many things that I carried with me on my way home from an amazing weekend. To expand a little, I've been struggling with my plans after graduation; worrying about what is the right path and stressing about the reactions of my family.

 God showed me how complicated I was making things without even knowing it.

On that note, I was reassured saturday of something I've been wondering for awhile.

It is a wonderful feeling!

My biggest obstacle is not letting my biggest fan in life talk me out of these plans. Throughout my entire life my mom was my biggest supporter and the person I ran to for everything. But her plans are not my plans and her plans are not God's plans.

Lord, prepare her heart for these plans and give me the strength to say no to her in order to say yes to you.

Something New

Well I tried the whole blogging thing before and it did not work out for long! Hopefully this time I will do better.

I tend to feel weird talking about random things that happen through out my day, but who cares!

With the end of my masters approaching quickly I have been trying to save all the pennies I can so I have a good bit saved up to start paying back those horrible student loans that I couldn't escape. Needless to say, that means that I don't get to:

1.  Try very many new things
2. Buy new clothes or
3. Purchase new books to read

In the last week of so I've done all three!!

Try New Things!

So, I'm not a very trendy person. The whole 'hair feather' things...

yeah they weird me out. And all these new fancy nail polishes and nail decorations...

not really a desire of mine. The other week my wonderful and amazing friend Rebekah showed me her new nail polish at Chi Alpha's WNW (Wednesday Night Worship service). I thought it was pretty cool but didn't think much of it. Well I have to travel twice a week for physcial therapy and found myself killing time in a CVS.

I blame this purchase on emotional shopping but I wasted, I mean spent some money on a bottle of this Crackle Overcoat. I tried it out tonight and I'm not very happy about it.

I thought it would be cool, but it just ended up being ugly and not very professional so it will definitely be coming off before Monday. I have this thing with matching and symmetry so the one random crack down one nail and the 3 cracks down the other is kind of bothering me and I JUST put it on! As for my bottle of nail polish... its a dark blue and up for grabs, preferably to someone in Troy or close by because I'm not mailing it!!

*Ignore my ugly fingers!*

New Clothes :)

New clothes are a must when your work pants give out! I wanted a pair of really cute black slack but knew I couldn't pay much. Ross is a hit or miss store but I totally hit a jack pot! Last weekend was filled with a fabulous time in Auburn with my boyfriend and ended with an overdue shopping trip! This excited me... until I went to start a load of laundry tonight and realized that they are DRY CLEAN ONLY!

*Note to Self: Read Clothes Tags Before Purchasing* Guess all good things come at a cost. 

Does anyone know how long one can go without taking it to the dry cleaners?!

 I take them off as soon as I get home  :-/

So far both of my adventures started good but didn't end so great. Though I am currently rocking the crackle nail polish for the weekend (probably because I'm too lazy to take it off tonight) and have a great pair of pants that will just take more maintenance than I care for.

New Books!

Reading is a fairly new hobby of mine. I do however like to collect the books that I really like, so buying new books (or at least new to me) excites me! Even though I haven't BOUGHT any new books lately, I do have some amazing friends who are lending me their books to read! The one and only Andrea Rowe let me borrow Red Letters by Tom Davis!

So far I'm LOVING it!!!

 *This book by the way leads to a completely different event in my life happening which will soon come in another blog!*

Cover reads:

"In many Bibles, Christ's words are set apart with red letters. This distinction reminds us that when God becomes Man and speaks, it's probably something we cannot afford to miss. So why doesn't the church take these 'red letters' to heart? Why aren't we being Christ's hand and feet to the poor, the disenfranchised, the weary, the ill, the fatherless, the prisoners? Why has the church shrinked its responsibilities, leaving the work to be done by governments, rock stars, and celebrities? The gospel wasn't only meant to be read--it was meant to be lived. From the HIV crisis in Africa to a single abused and lonely child in Russia, the church must seize the opportunity to serve with a radical, reckless abandon. Author Tom Davis offers both challenge and encouragement to get involved in an increasingly interconnected, desperate modern world."

Quickly growing reading list:

Please comment and add any that you recommend!

I'm pledging to myself to read a book a week, for sure during Thanksgiving and Christmas break, but not sure when else.

1. Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World: Finding Intimacy With God in the Busyness of Life... by Joanna Weaver

2. Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit... by Francis Chan

3. I have one more than my boss's daughter told me about but I can't remember the name of it... details to come later!

What a Journey!

Over this past semester, I've been attending a discipleship class every other week through Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship going through a book study called Discipleship by Design.

"Discipleship is not a protracted counseling relationship, but rather an equipping, supportive relationship involving and interacting with the surrounding community of believers in constructive ways."

A little bit of a book review: (which won't give the book enough credit, its a great book!) it is broken down into two main sections. The first part talks about the foundations and practices for discipleship. While the second part of the book talks about a practical guide for developing discipleship small groups. Even though the book talks about how Chi Alpha does things,

I believe it is an amazing book and if you read it,

you could easily apply the points in the book to every aspect of your life.

We shouldn't only disciple at church or through a bible study. 

Every encounter, everyday, we should live the life as a disciple of Christ. 

With all that said, last night was our last night of class and I would be lying if I told you that at the beginning of this journey with these eight AmaZing individuals I expected God to show up in such AmaZing

ways and work wonders through our lives. I just figured it would be like a Sunday morning bible study.
*some churches have amazing things going on, but more of my experiences haven't been anywhere near this*

There is truly a difference between the typical "bible studies" that I have been a part of and being a part of a "small group" who truly cares about growing relationships not only with God but with each other.

For us, it was more than just meeting at the same place twice a month to listen to someone lecture us about the bible.

We became a little family so to speak. We invested time into each other lives outside the designated times and continually prayed for each other and uplifted each other through out the semester. Having this type of fellowship with these students did wonders in my life. Its hard to explain but it is an awesome feeling to have. It was somewhat like a "safe place".

So I started this at work and I'm home now so the momentum is a little lost.

Long story short. God is AMAZING beyond words. He works throughout our lives even when we somewhat doubt that anything will happen. I started this class because someone asked me to. I didn't truly want to invest the time to it, but I did and I was blown away by the incredible things that I have taken away from this experience. I'm sadden with the end of our class but I pray that I will be able to use what God has taught all of us this semester and be able to apply it and touch other people's lived!

Yippy!! A Blog!!

So for those of you who don't know I only work "part-time" at the bank. The bank industry (or at least BB&T) is very strict about the amount of hours a part-time employee can have since they give extremely well benefits to part-time and full-time employees. I usually can ONLY work 20 hours a week, no matter what. This has been a challenge these last few months with graduate tuition, higher gas prices (I drive a truck and its a killer, so I invested in a new car) and therefore now I have car payments every month. Anyway, I believe you feel me. I am under no assumption that I'm the only one being hit hard financially right now. But I've been blessed this week to be able to work in the Troy branch and the Ozark branch a few days earlier (and now tomorrow as well). This gives me more hours and I love it!

Sitting all alone downstairs in the drivethru in Troy this morning I've realized how much free time I actually do have if I would just rearrange some of my schedule. For example, I've been saying that I can't blog because I don't have any time. Well come to find out, Google is one of the allowed sites at work and work is usually very slow, so ta-da! I know have time to blog!! On a more important note, I've been struggling in my "oh so hectic life" to find time everyday to spend some quality quiet time with God. Staying up late to work on school work, therefore sleeping in late to catch up on sleep... I find an excuse for everything. No more excuses!! I'm rearranging my schedule, finding one that fits with the major of my days and sticking to it.

Not only am I going to free up some of my time, but I'm going to free up some of my money. I've been praying about budgeting. Being a part-time employee and having my hours fluctuate every week makes having a strict budget hard to follow. With this too... I make too many excuses. A budget is a budget and I believe that with some planning everyone can have a budget that fits their living arrangements. This includes me and being the nerd that I am, I'm excited about it!!

Hopefully more blogs to come in the near future!

Something else to learn.

This is my new blog. I'm just starting out... lack of creativity on names and designs so bare with me! More to come! I promise!!