last night megan sent me a text that said someday you will be happy again (or something like that) and i read it before bed and then i remembered that i can be joyful even if i'm not happy and somewhere along the past threee weeks i forgot hot to be grateful. i forgot eucharisto. jonathan and mary can you believe it?? lame. so i started making a list again of what i am grateful for. today i am grateful for

ryan having insane patience as i tried to learn how to ski, the 3 women that are here for the weekend being chill and cool and my new best friends, getting to be outside and off the mountain (only onto another one but that's okay) hanging with chelsie and kari after dinner and just getting to laugh and be silly in the kitchen all on our own-it was so good, chelsea (new best friend nurse chelsea) is coming tomorrowowwwwowowowowowowwwww and we texted all day and she understands my struggles, i just had a good dayyyyy ayee. now adam and i are watching 8 mile.

tonight justin had his friends over (two chicks from australia and his co-worker marcus) it was good and chill and justin included me in everything which i didn't expect but it was good. it's weird and funny and that justin and i are just like brother and sister. he lost his wallet and played it like he didn't care but he looked at me and i knew he was freaking out. then they all left and justin ran back in and was like I LIKE EMILY and i was like I KNOW YOU DO and he asked me if i did and i said yeah she was chill and he said good i'm glad you like her. and marcus used my scissors that said hpv on them and he called me that and it was so nice to be called hpv again. he was chill, justin said we could hang some more. i'm currently owning him in words with friends.

clearly my life is boring and pointless but today was good and it feels good to have a good day. and lots of encouragement from my sister. life is good.

oh, and last night chelsea told me i should tell god what i want. maybe she said ask, i don't remember. but so as i brushed my teeth i said okay god i really need a friend because i don't have one here and am not loved here and i really need to be and i went back to my bed and had a text from ryan that said please let me know if you need anything and in my moment of being a baby/weak/honest? i said ryan i really need a friend. badly. and he told me we were good friends and brother and sisters in christ and that he was praying for me. so you know, god is good. typical.

tonight chelsea and i talked and she tried to encourage me and i crapped on everything she said. i'm sure she loves me anyway. then i started listening to the juno soundtrack because it usually just lets me jam and i don't have any bad associations with it and i've been listening to the song tree hugger by kimya dawson on repeat.

The flower said, "I wish I was a tree,"
The tree said, "I wish I could be
A different kind of tree,
The cat wished that it was a bee,
The turtle wished that it could fly
Really high into the sky,
Over rooftops and then dive
Deep into the sea.

And in the sea there is a fish,
A fish that has a secret wish,
A wish to be a big cactus
With a pink flower on it.
And in the sea there is a fish,
A fish that has a secret wish,
A wish to be a big cactus
With a pink flower on it.

And the flower
Would be its offering
Of love to the desert.
And the desert,
So dry and lonely,
That the creatures all
Appreciate the effort.

tonight i kind of wish i was a cactus or a fish or a flower or a tree or something other than a girl living in colorado but that's okay.

it's 10 and the boys have gone out and i can blast my music as loud as i want and can find intimate moments with my savior and sing loudly to him.

skyped with 4 of my best friends today, wrote a lot of letters, got some letters, got an email with sarah thomas's life and heart in it which was so good for me, chelsie told me about her boy drama!!! which sucks for her but cool that she shared life with me, ryan and i hung out and talked about god and played a never ending game of war, the boys offered to take me out, and rebecca priest just sent me this message : I am mock interpreting (education interpreting) for Sarah Thomas's class and sitting in class all night, until it was my turn to terp, i kept thinking about you and praying for you.

loved.

grateful for people who love me and point me to christ and listen to me whine and read 4 blog blog posts in one day. so grateful. going to bed with a happy full heart.

my heart is confident in you o god, my heart is confident (psalm 57:7)

three posts in one day? i do what i want.

2 Corinthians 12:8-10

New International Version (NIV)

⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 corinthians 12:10 msg

I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.

i just texted my friend josh who besides sam is maybe the wisest boy i know and said joshua i don't know that i'll survive this state and he said you also weren't supposed to survive age 2 and you did it. way to punch me in the face josh. thanks. i told him that was easier and he said was it? and you are wiser now. sometimes i doubt that. good to hear anyway though. here's to a new day tomorrow.

two weeks down. 14 seems long. today i am sad. no one is home (kari and chelsie left and didn't tell me where they were going or ask if i wanted to go) and i just skyped with mary and ashley and laughed and now i'm crying a little. that's okay. i'm blasting set a fire by will reagan and the united pursuit band and singing it loudly.

there's no place i'd rather be

there's no place i'd rather be

there's no place i'd rather be than here in your love

so set a fire down in my soul that i can't contain and i can't control.

i want more of you god. i want more of you god.

i just counted and actually it's 16 more weeks. i hate my life. i don't actually. ashley made me say i don't hate my life i don't hate my life i don't hate my life over and over on skype. then she told me to call my roommates stupid heifers behind their backs. her advice may not be so sound.

i just don't know what to do. i work hard, i serve the rest of the staff well, i'm considerate. i ask questions and get one words answers. i try to make conversation and i get shot down usually.

lord show me what this season in my life is for. today mary reminded me that i'm exactly where i am supposed to be but i dunno. i mean i know it is true but i don't get it. i know the lord is in colorado and i'm trying to pray and trying to take every thought captive and trying to present but man, i don't know. i don't want the next 16 weeks to be hell. i don't want to go through whole days without speaking english and barely speaking sign language. today i read an article on national geographic about these two guys who walked i think to the north pole (maybe it was antarctica i read a lot of articles today) and they did the whole like 4 month journey in the dark of winter. the article was written before their journey and they said they were most afraid of being in the dark for 4 months. literally no sunshine. i have sunshine, i have mountains and snow and blue skies and beautiful orange sunsets but i still feel in the dark. not with the lord, i know he is with me, but in the dark with this culture and these people and that i'm just going to leave in may and never talk to these girls again and we will have slept next to eachother for 18 weeks and have it not mean anything.

i know i will prosper here, i know i will grow, i know i will have hope that i haven't had before in things, i know i will seek the lord with all my heart because that's about all i can do while i'm here. besides clean 60 mattresses with bleach every other day. but today, it is hard.

i'm reading hebrews right now and today i read hebrews 11. sometimes i get tired of reading the bible so i only read stuff i know i like and i know i like hebrews. i've been reading it in the message version that i got from young life as a christmas present and its been so good. hebrews 11 is like "the faith hall of fame" but that is a stupid name. it's all about all these people who did what god commanded them to do and stepped out on faith even though it was scary as dookie. sometimes i read this chapter and i get real pumped that like yes god delivers and his promises are true and he does all this cool stuff. but today i read it and got kinda bummed that like i don't know many things i've done on faith. i went to gardner-webb, 7 hours away from home and not knowing anyone, and i moved to colorado, 30 hours away from home and not knowing anyone. i don't think those deserve entry into the hall of fame. but then i just stopped to think about it and god doesn't have a hall of fame. he loves me just as much as he loves moses. maybe he just trusted moses more, i know i sure would i'm bound to mess things up and i couldn't lead anyone anywhere. uhhh this looks like the promised land okay let's hang out here. but god loves me for my faith that i do have. for loving others and choosing joy and choosing to live a life after him. and i am still encouraged that all the promises he made to people back in the day such as ^17-19By faith, Abraham, at the time of testing, offered Isaac back to God. Acting in faith, he was as ready to return the promised son, his only son, as he had been to receive him—and this after he had already been told, "Your descendants shall come from Isaac." Abraham figured that if God wanted to, he could raise the dead. In a sense, that's what happened when he received Isaac back, alive from off the altar.

so that promise was true and all his promises still are. even the silly ones that i know are true. he is good.

(i am way late to work...good thing my boss isn't here and ryan is still in the shower)

kari, chelsie, justin, adam, keenan, and i are all in the same room which has maybe never happened. kari and chels are skyping their friends justin is on facebook, i'm blasting alexi murdoch and the boys and i are singing loud. positives of having deaf roommates. i'm surprise kari and chels didn't run out of the room screaming when the boys came home but i'm sure they are talking smack about them to their friends. such a cute little house family.

tonight i got to skype with my parents, megan and noah, erica, chelsea, kaitlyn, stokes, now erin wilson. i love my life.

today i made a joke on one of chelsie's facebook pictures and apparently she learned i was funny and likes me a lot more now and we've been just cracking jokes all night. ahhhh walls coming down. we just drooled over all the toms online (megan i wish you were here!). i'll take the baby steps. i'm excited to get back to work, rest has been nice for sure but i feel bad sitting in the office just eating cookies all day and not doing work.

i read a lot of libby ryder's blog today and thought about my sister a lot and how close she is to being done with chemo and how exciting that is and how i'm still sad about it but how far she's come. i love her and miss her a lot.

a girl at gardner webb died today. i knew her but not closely but she was an amazing woman of christ. she had heart failure in class and died later in the hospital. selfishly i'm grateful i'm not at school because i struggled so much last semester with death and dying and have no desire to face it head on but my heart wishes so badly i was with my community to mourn.

now i'm about to go to bed watching up all night and the boys are stoned and eating a lot of peanut butter.

my life seriously feels like the show The New Girl. I came upstairs after painting the basement and keenan adam and justin were in the kitchen and keenan was literally hanging from the rafter doing pull ups and justin said HANNAH BANANA IS HOMEEEEEE and adam said oh great here is trouble. my life is so funny and weird. i'm grateful for them. i just walked in and keenan was washing out my ensure cans and adam was breaking down the box they were in. grateful. kari also shared her gummies with me tonight at the gas station so things are looking up. i paid for the bathroom cleaning supplies so chelsie didn't have to because she's the one that cleans anyway. tonight i miss my brothers and my sister a lotlotlotlotlotlot.

one week down....fifteen to go. we had a women's snowshoe retreat from thursday until this morning. it was so good and exhausting and wild. the women were all 50 + in age and were all rich and complained a lot and were pouty but left us each 100$ tip so hollaaaa. we had staff stuff this morning but now I'm off until wednesday afternoon when we start getting ready for 60 youth group kids coming saturday-sunday. praise god they are staying less than 24 hours. stuff with roommates has gotten better, i sent chelsie a facbeook message telling her i just wanted to love her well and be chill for the next four months and she was really receptive. she was like hopefully your asl will improve...hahahahaha. i told her to just make me sign more because i can sign i'm just too shy to do it and out of practice. hippie boys are good as always, keenan and i hung out a lot yesterday and just got to know each other and that was cool. I've gotten to talk to my family and friends a lot this past week and that's been so good. and I only cried twice (i'm so lame). i have a new best friend named chelsea who comes on the weekends to be the camp nurse. she's hearing and sarcastic and hilarious and we instantly fell in love with each other. i'm so sad she's only here on the weekends though! right now I am sitting in my bed listening to brooke fraser and watching the massive amounts of snow fall out my window and it feels soooo good to relax. god is here and i don't feel so alone.

Matthew 11:28-30

^28-30"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."

today ryan took me on errands with him after i cried for like an hour infront of him haha but we passed this beautiful huge perfect mountain and he looked at me and was like dude god created that like it was nothing and then i said yeah but he put so much more effort into us and i thought to myself that means i'm beautiful. sometimes i forget that. thanks god for huge mountains.

22 degrees is cold. yesterday and today i was supposed to find a photo printer but couldn't find one. instead i found: a dead stuffed bear that gave me a heart attack, a box full of 90's cds that i am going to burn onto my computer (Men In Black soundtrack-yes please) a room full of axes (I REALLY COULD BE IN THE HUNGER GAMES) and a shoebox full of sling shots. last night i watched charlottes web and swiss family robinson with adam keenan and justin. then i hung out with my roommates a bit and the puppies. then everyone else went to bed except justin and i. we just sat at the counter on facebook talking about music, life, tattoos, things we love, loves lost, medical stuff. he was drunk so i don't know if he remembers it. such is life.

"you know i've lived on this f-ing mountain too long when i think snooki is hot"

"WHOA YOU HAVE AN OWL TATTOO? owls are super sweet nature spirits around here that is really special"

bloggityblogblog. I'm at work and my boss Lesa is in Denver for the day and my other boss Ryan is asleep. His alarm clock went off for an hour but i wasn't trying to break into his apartment to wake him up. So I'm sitting in the cafeteria with my roommate Chelsie who is probably on facebook. (she was, we just became friends!) So I live in colorado. Weird. I have 2 roommates, Chelsie and Keri. They both went to college together and Keri has worked here many past summers. I also live with Ryan (who I just saw so I guess he woke up). He's Deaf and super great and is easy going and includes me in everything. I also live with 3 dudes who don't work at Aspen Camp but work at a camp down the road teaching autistic kids to ski. They are Justin, Adam, and Keenan. Total ski bums all have dreadlocks and drink PBR and make me laugh a lot. I think they will be my saving grace because I get to talk to them and not in sign language.

The first night (sunday) was major sucky but the Lord made it super good. My phone doesn't work here so I was phone less and had to take my dad to the airport and felt really lonely and scared and sad and rode back with this man named George who drove to the airport and cried the whole way home. The moon was big and beautiful and bright and I stared at it the whole time saying okay God make this good make this good let this be good and it was. I got home to Ryan and Mario (he works here too he's deaf and 43 and tells really funny stories) and Mario's two puppies that understand sign language. I was still crying so I made a real cute first impression. I unpacked and calmed down a bit and Mario told me that him and Ryan were going to Walmart to buy a dvd player and I quickly asked if I could come so I could buy a phone. Went to walmart, we ran around, they let me ride on the cart and Ryan and I talked about God. SO GOOD. Then we just hung out, I was real tired so I went to bed after skyping Mary. Yesterday I just had training all day and kinda felt overwhelmed at not being Deaf but everyone else being Deaf and struggled a bit. It was okay though, I started doing my job (I'm Program Director so really I just do a lot of tasks every day to get ready for upcoming programs this Thursday thru Monday is a Women's Snowshoe Retreat. So I get to learn how to snowshoe and go friday-monday!)

It's cold but so stinking beautiful here that it kinda doesn't matter. It's maybe 12 degrees right now but the sun is out so its okay. The Lord is good and I do have peace and it is such a blessing to have Ryan and the 3 hearing dudes in my house and I'm excited for the friendships I hope to make with my roommates. Life is good and cold and funny.

tonight, I have peace. I think it came in the form of my sleeping bag (the second one purchased today-the first was too small). As I laid in my sleeping bag on the kitchen floor with Scout crawling over me I think I felt peace for the first time in a long time. Something inside me just clicked and said it will be alright. As the night progressed I talked to some of my friends on the phone and through texts and they all just know my soul so well. Emily acknoweledged my emotions of sadness and of apprehension and just really saw my heart. Michael encouraged me that God was leading this crazy adventure and it would be okay. Mary texted me a verse about being sealed with the Holy Spirit (and then we took an unbreakable vow to pray and encourage each other every day). Chelsea and Nacho prayed for me. Stokes wished me Merry Christmas because she was at the airport. Jonathan encouraged me about my sleeping bag and told me I would be back soon. I've heard all these encouragements before (basically every day of my life since I decided to go to Colorado) but tonight they were real and true and made my heart smile. I remembered Joshua 1:9 and read it over and over

Haven't I commanded you? Strength! Courage! Don't be timid; don't get discouraged. God, your God, is with you every step you take."

I am not going alone.