Mercy Is Yours

Take 5 minutes out of your day to watch this, and I guarantee you that you won't regret it.

I would love to sit here and write the longest post about this and why I love it so much. But unfortunately, I'm short on time and will leave you to watch it yourself.
There is not one word this guy says that I do not agree with. I find it so hard sometimes to organize all my thoughts about something and then I see videos like this, and think "That's exactly what I didn't know how to say."

The passage in the bible that he mentions has been one of my favorite stories for as long as I can remember.

This woman committed a sin worthy of murder. She broke one of God's commandments. She was dirty. She was wrong. And all the people around her were ready to kill her. But Jesus, the one who wrote the commandment, the one with full authority to say "Stone her," bent down, picked her up and told her she was forgiven. He didn't condemn her. He didn't judge her. He didn't kill her. He saw her heart. He saw her through the eyes of love. He saw who she was, not what she did. He didn't see her sin. He saw HER.

Every single time I screw up, this is the passage I think about. It doesn't only apply to adultery. It applies to every aspect of our lives. When we think we've done something unworthy of love, we beat ourselves up. When we sin, we feel horrible. We find ways to try and "make it up to God."

But God doesn't see it that way. God isn't waiting to throw the stone when we mess up. He's waiting to lift us back up and let us know that we're still loved.

"I love you. I accept you. Mercy is yours."

More powerful words have never been said.

A Happy God

I have never been one to talk about dating and boy-girl relationships. Partly because I have 0 experience in that area and partly because I felt I wasn’t allowed to.  I’ve always been scared of people looking down on me and lowering me to the “love-struck stupid teenager” status.

Lately, I’ve started thinking a lot differently.

I read 2 amazing books this month; “Divine Nobodies” by Jim Palmer and “The Misunderstood God” by Darin Hufford.  The list of things I have learned from these two books is 10 miles long but one point keeps showing up in my life and it’s changing how I think and feel about so many things.

Growing up as a Christian, in and around the church, I was always taught to never put anything above God. (Commandment # 2) I’ve always learned that if we “obsess” over anything, we are making it an idol and therefore, going against God.

Now, for a very obsessive/attached person like myself, this is hard to hear.

I went through a period of my life where I fasted mainstream/secular music. I gave away every non-Christian CD I owned and listened to strictly praise & worship music.  I felt like this would make God happy with me.

I even went through a time when I considered no longer listening to my favorite band, BarlowGirl. It wasn’t because there was anything wrong with their music at all, but simply because I heard that God wasn’t pleased with me since I was so obsessed over them.

It was a very difficult stage to go through feeling like I had to give up all of my favorite things in life in order to ensure that God was happy with me.  This same belief/mindset is what I have been taught my whole life about liking a guy and “dating.”

It’s been engraved onto my brain that I can’t “like” a boy because I would be putting him before God… which would be… bad.

Well, this weekend I learned something that goes completely against everything I have ever been taught. That is this: God is happy when I am happy.

This weekend was one of the best weekends of my life. I had a really fun time with my family and some awesome people in South Florida. I got back to the hotel I was staying at late Saturday night and replayed the whole night in my head. I was smiling bigger than I have in a long time and felt genuinely and completely happy. I wasn’t stressed, worried, scared, or upset about anything. All of my cares in the world were gone and I was 100% happy.

The feeling I felt wasn’t just me and my “high” on life. I sat there on the hotel bed and realized that God was happy for me. It wasn’t just me. He was sharing in my joy. I didn’t just come back from a huge church service or a youth group meeting, or anything like that. My happiness had nothing to do with any “Christian” moment. The source of all my joy was actually pretty selfish… but for once, I wasn’t ashamed. I wasn’t afraid to be happy for myself. I wasn’t afraid to let my excitement show. For the first time, I wasn’t scared of God being disappointed in me.

This summer, when I was visiting my best friend in Tampa, we went to our favorite band’s concert together with her parents. The whole night was amazing and when we got into the car, we were extremely giddy and hyper. Our smiles were permanent and we couldn’t stop talking about all of the great things that happened that night. My friend’s Dad looked at us through the rearview mirror and was smiling at us, with the same joy in his eyes that was in ours. I wondered why he was smiling so big like we were, and he said he really loved seeing us so happy.

I always think of this moment when I think of my relationship with God. When something good happens in my life, my Dad is one of the first people to be happy for me. (Usually.) He shares in my joy and my excitement. When I’m smiling, he’s smiling. He’s happy for me because he loves me.

God is the exact same way. When something good happens in our lives, we feel like we have to give God the credit right away or else He won’t be pleased, but that’s such a harsh view of our God. God is love. When I make an A on a test in school, my Dad doesn’t want me to give him the credit. He gets excited for me because I earned that grade and because he’s proud of me. When I have a really good day and everything seems to be going right, my Dad doesn’t want me to credit him for it. He’s simply just happy that I’m happy.

I think God is the same way. Don’t get me wrong, I thank God for everything that happens in my life because He’s always there… but this weekend, I found myself thanking Him for being happy for me. I felt SO much joy in knowing that God was smiling down on me. Not because I did something to make Him proud, but just because I was happy. That extreme feeling of happiness that I felt was shared with my God… and I can’t describe how amazing that was.

I’m starting to see that relationships are the same way. I’ve read in a lot of places that God gets jealous of our relationships with other people and we have to be careful to not put our best friends or spouses or partners above Him… but maybe we’re looking at it wrong.

I talk to my best friend all day long. I’ll be texting her when I wake up in the morning, and we text before we fall asleep at night. When we’re together, we spend every second talking. I love her and am so thankful to have her in my life, but I never once think that God would take her away from me because He’s jealous. God isn’t upset with me because I spend so much time talking to her. God is happy for me because I have her! I know that God created our friendship, but not so I could credit Him. God created our friendship because He knew what a great positive impact it would have on my life. When He’s watching me and Alex enjoy our time together, He’s smiling… because His girls are happy.

The more I write this, the more I think this blog post sounds extremely selfish… but I think it’s just hard for me to put into words exactly how I felt these past few days.

I was so happy over something that was so self-centered, but I felt God share my happiness with me. I knew at that moment in time that He was happy FOR me. When Alex got accepted into the college she wanted to go to, I was so happy for her. It didn’t have anything to do with me, but the fact that she was so overjoyed and that she got what she wanted made me so happy.

For the past 17 years of my life, I’ve always felt like God doesn’t give me what I want, because He doesn’t want me to put those wants over Him. Every time something bad would happen, I would tell myself that it was God making sure I put Him first. If I didn’t get the present I wanted for Christmas, I told myself it was “OK because God didn’t want me to have it.” When I didn’t get to go to a friend’s house, I told myself that God thought I was spending too much time with that friend.

I turned my own God into an angry dictator that didn’t want me to be happy. I actually believed that He wanted me to be upset to teach me a lesson.

I will never believe that again.

When the guy I have a crush on talks to me and smiles at me, I know that God is happy for me. The God who created me in His image isn’t jealous when I have relationships with other people. I no longer believe that God is mad when I like a guy. That’s how he created me! He knows my heart. He knows where I stand and He knows who I am.

Knowing that God shares and takes part in your happiness is one of the most freeing feelings in the world. It’s a moment in life when you truly realize that you are completely and fully loved in every possible way.

Just like Alex’s Daddy was so happy for us giggly girls the night after that concert, God is happy for his children when good things happen to us. Our smiles bring a smile to His face.

Don’t ever be afraid of disappointing God. All you end up doing is hurting yourself. Let go and live life to the absolute fullest you can. Enjoy every second of it. Don’t be afraid of messing up or “obsessing” over things. Enjoy the life God gave you and let Him enjoy it with you!

Blur- Audea [VIDEO]

30 minutes of photo preparing. 1 hour of taking photos and shooting videos. 1 hour waiting for my camera to charge back up. 3+ hours of editing. And 10 minutes to publish. The result? The video below.

Don't forget to check out Audea at http://facebook.com/audeamusic 

Love Overpowers Fear

When we were young, we would oftentimes sit on our Dad's shoulders. By getting on those shoulders, we put ourselves into a position that could really hurt us. But we did it anyway because we trusted our Daddies enough to not let us fall. When a young child gets on his/her Dad's shoulders, they do it knowing that their Dad loves them too much to let them get hurt. It's scary, but the love we know our Dad has for us overshadows that fear of getting hurt.
If we didn't let go of that fear and put trust in our Dads, then we would have never gotten up on those shoulders, therefore missing out on that experience.

The rest of life is so much like this example.

It's so easy to keep from doing something because we're scared. It's so easy to let our fears keep us from living.

My brother and I used to go to this theme park all the time. There was one specific roller coaster that he would always go on... alone. I would stand by and watch because I was so scared of riding it. He'd try over and over to persuade me to go and I would just tell him I was scared and sit on the bench while he had the time of his life. I would sit there and watch sadly, always loaded with regret that my fear stopped me from having that experience with my brother.

After multiple trips to the park, he convinced me to ride it. He dragged me through the line and got me into the seat where I couldn't change my mind anymore. I remember sitting there, waiting for the it to start while the seatbelts locked thinking "What in the world am I doing?"


That 1 minute, 30 second roller coaster ride taught me a huge life lesson.

It is now my favorite ride in the whole park. I love it. I rode it back to back that day and had the time of my life. I was so thankful after riding it, that I had enough faith in God, my brother (and the roller coaster designer) to keep me safe.

Not only that... but the ride wasn't even that scary. When it was over, I was thinking, "That was it?"


That moment taught me that I waste 99% of my life with fear. I spend SO much time being scared of what could happen that I miss some of life's greatest moments. Instead of trusting God to keep me safe and hold me up, I hide behind the fear that there's a chance I might, maybe, possibly get a little hurt.

Then, when I miss the moment, I regret it. And those rare occasions when I face my fears, I typically end up realizing that there wasn't much to be scared of in the first place.

This is true in relationships as well.  My best friend and I have this conversation all the time. We're so terrified of giving our hearts to someone or "liking" someone. We're so scared to have feelings for another human. We fear all of these wonderful feelings because we don't want to get hurt. We don't want to put all of our heart into something and then have it end up broken into a million pieces. The pain that could come out of an experience keeps us from ever even having that experience in the first place.

God is my Dad. My fear of giving my heart to someone and my fear of that roller coaster that day are both equivalent to my fear of falling off of my Dad's shoulders. Until I let go of that fear, I will never get there. I won't succeed and I won't learn to love if I don't let myself put all of my trust in the One who is holding me up. We have to figure out that God's love will always keep us safe. His shoulders are the strongest ones, and He won't let us fall off. But we'll never experience all of life's great moments, until we trust Him enough to get up there.

I can honestly say that there has not been one moment where my fear has taken over that I haven't walked away in regret. Each time I let my fears overpower my ability to live life, I spend days and weeks wishing I could go back and change it.

I am so scared of the future. I am terrified of what could happen tomorrow. BUT, I can't let that fear keep me from living my life.... because in the end, I will regret it.

My God is big enough and strong enough to keep me safe from all the hurt and the pain in the world. And if I happen to fall off of His shoulders and get a scraped knee, then it's still okay because He is there! He's there to keep me safe, but He's also there to pick me back up when I fall down.

I know He will protect me. I know this because He loves me. His love will keep me safe. And that same love is more powerful than my greatest fears.

I think I'm starting to realize that the fear of getting hurt, hurts me a lot more than what I was initially afraid of.

I feel like a tiny, short, 3 foot tall kid in a crazy crowd of tall people. I feel small and inferior and I can't see or experience much of what is going on... I'm scared. It's time for me to let go of my fears and trust my Dad as he lifts me onto his shoulders. From up there, I can see the world... and I can fully start to live and experience life. Without fear. 

It's Me

When writing papers for school, I try to stick to the facts and keep far away my personal views and opinions. This past week, I had to write a biography for a scholarship I was trying to apply for. My first draft was straight facts about my life, my education history and a little about my hobbies. The lady reviewing the applications read my biography and basically told me to rewrite it and add more about "me." Obviously, since I want a chance at the scholarship, I took this awfully seriously and ended up putting way more of myself into a "school" paper than I ever have before. It was terrifying. But I'm pretty glad to say that i'm proud of the result. I have read it out loud to myself more than 2500 times today, and I feel like I portrayed myself exactly how I want to be viewed. I figured I would share on here just the final section of the biography, which discusses my future college/career goals.

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I plan to continue my education by transferring to a University as a Psychology major. I have been a very indecisive person most of my life, never really knowing what I wanted to do. I’ve switched back and forth between various career options and majors multiple times. But, there has always been one thing that has never changed. That is my immense love for people. My heart immediately breaks when I that hear someone is going through a tough time. I hurt when other people are hurting. And I will do everything in my power to make someone smile when they’re having a bad day. I know what’s it’s like to feel insecure and worthless. I’ve experienced the feeling of hopelessness when you think that nothing you do is good enough.  It’s exactly for these reasons that my ultimate goal is to eventually work in a treatment center for girls with eating disorders, mood disorders, and addictions. It’s these girls that need someone to feel for them and these are the girls that need love the most. These are the people my heart breaks for and these are the people I want to help. I want to show them their value and turn their heartbreak and hurt into joy. People often times say they want to grow up and change the world. I feel like by helping others find joy and worth within themselves, I can do just that: change the world one individual at a time. One of my greatest inspirations is James Barnett, the founder of ‘Clothe Your Neighbor as Yourself’, which is a non-profit organization that sells t-shirts and uses the money to clothe people in need. He said it best when he said, “Only by 'doing' can we begin to offer hope and love to a world who’s cup is half empty.” If I can spend the rest of my life using what I have learned and experienced to help others then I will have reached ultimate success.