it's almost midnight on a weekday and i'm still up. i don't have to work tomorrow and this in itself is a miracle. i am usually the first to go to bed and tonight i am the last. up in flames by coldplay is playing and it's so good and quiet and calm. i am grateful for this.

grateful for friends and family that pursue me through hard times. that acknowledge the need to fight for truth and community and honesty. they are worth fighting for.

today has been mostly good for me.

cdh-ers are gone, staying with megan friddle and life is slow. i've texted everyone i've ever known to live in this town asking to hang out. zach dickson tells me a lot i'm not good at not doing anything. and being alone. he's right.

i worked
ran 5 miles with zach and ash
crawled in my sleeping bag and watched the oc
went to the coffee shop to hang out with laney
playing a lot of free flow
went back to work
dogs were nice
chased the sunset
coffee shopped
hanging with tyler
being overwhelmed with grad school applications
hanging with the white kitty house tonight, it'll be like summer all over again. its a good life

"i find i'm moving to the rhythms of your grace"

i blogged about this before but i can't find the post and it's good so i can talk about it again.

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.”

matthew 11:28 msg version. 

unforced rhythms of grace. 

keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. 

trying to live in this freedom i know i have felt so many times in my life but don't feel now. 

"know that you are free at this moment but you are always being set free" - matt o.

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i started this blog on monday when i was real stressed out and processing life and i don't have these feelings of unsettled-ness at this moment so i figured i'd publish it even though it isn't finished. 

“Where this discipline of the tongue is practiced right from the beginning, each individual will make a matchless discovery. He will be able to cease from constantly scrutinizing the other person, judging him, condemning him, putting him in his place where he can gain ascendancy over him and thus doing violence to him as a person. Now he can allow the brother to exist as a completely free person, as God made him to be…I can never know beforehand how God’s image should appear in others." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

well, i'll write more about this later but, just know it has changed my life. 

i've had too many thoughts/emotions/desires to blog about too many things lately and that results in me blogging about nothing. if i were to of blogged in the past almost month it may have been entitled

"What to expect when you're expecting"

or

"expectations versus expecting"

both were good titles that took me a long time to come up with.

i've been learning a lot A LOT about the Lord lately. I told Ash and Zach and Justin two weeks ago that I feel like I've learned more about the Lord in the past month and a half than I have maybe since I came to know the Lord and sat in Anna Straight's car and read her philippians 2:14 and loved it so much.

( Do everything without complaining and arguing, ¹⁵ so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright stars in a world full of crooked and perverse people. ¹⁶ Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless.)

I remember telling Anna I wanted to be a bright star. 

I've learned a lot about how I expect things and people and relationships and conversations to be how I want them to be. It all comes back to me. Maggie has tried to psychoanalyze me and figure out why I do this because I have as far back as I can remember and maybe it has something to do with my childhood and maybe not. I'm not sure. I am sure that at some point I should go to counseling to figure it out. I've learned a lot about how those expectations hurt things, people, relationships, and conversations. Sam and I have dealt with these expectations I hold over him a lot in our relationships but recently I've discovered it's not just with Sam it's with everyone. I've also learned that I don't expect the Lord to come. I don't expect him to show up in those people, relationships, and conversations. 

My prayer has been Lord come. Just come. Help break the chains of expectations in my life and in my heart and renew these things that I've held onto for so long and just come. Change the things that I want changed or change my heart about them. Let me hold onto things loosely and you tightly.

 I feel like it's appropriate that i'm learning this now, in a season of advent and in a season of singing songs like o come o come emmanuel. lord come. 

zach and i have had a lot of conversations recently about myself and he has gently been encouraging me to embrace and accept and acknowledge that i'm sensitive and needy and that when i do need something i need to talk about it. again, expectations from people that aren't even vocalized that i can be hurt by. expectations ruin everything. literally everything. so, i'm trying to acknowledge (it's the first step zach said) that i am sensitive and can be hurt and to try to sort out the real hurt feelings from the i'm just being needy and don't need to be right now feelings. i'm tough and that's okay, i'm allowed to be. but i think it's hard for me to acknowledge and process because i don't want to complain because i want to live in philippians 2:14 of not complaining and i don't want to run my race in vain. 

i'm also learning to be a person of my words. today my nose ring fell out and i asked anna for my stud and she had lost if a long time ago and i didn't know that and she didn't replace it and i said it was okay to her then got in my car and realized i was mad about it and it really is okay and insignificant but it wasn't okay and she should of replaced it or told me when it happened. so not that i need to say everything i could ever think to people but like again, its okay if i'm sensitive to something and okay to let people know that sometimes. sometimes. 

lord come. 

farther along we'll understand why.

life is good and sweet and has slowed down. i spent most of last week in the hospital which wasn't fun but i got to hang out with my mom and all my best friends for 3 days so that was fun. last night micah told me my group of friends is stacked and could take care of anything. he's right. i'm lucky. grateful for this town and how it surrounds me and loves me so well. grateful for all of crossroads staff coming to see me, all of cdh constantly being by my side, my mama coming from va and the white kitty house loving on me so hard. this week i went back to work and back to the office and took it easy and had an excuse to and that was real nice. i feel 100% again which is nice to feel human after not for about a week and a half. i've gotten a lot of encouragement this week from people (my house but jeremy esp, and chelsea telling me i'm a really good listener now and that all my effort to make that occur has paid off i guess and a lot of intentional time spent with people (qt with sam this past weekend, emily and anna hanging on my porch, duck dynasty with micah, car rides with maggie, going to the movies with evan) which has been so good for me. also have realized things about myself which is cool and new- that i'm a redneck and a hippie and somehow i embrace both of those atribute and it's okay. also, that i may be going to grad school for social work. wild. wild wild wild. love it. so exciting and scary mostly. next week i'll think about it more.

this blog post was never finished but it's good haha

you know, brooke fraser is really stinking good.

i'm home sick for the 2nd day this week with 3 more sick days ahead of me. i've already cried once from depression about it. i hate having to slow down i hate not having stuff to do i hate having to rest. even though its so good for me. even though i know rest can be productive and doesn't have to be consumed by tv watching (i had to stop myself after my 4th once upon a time episode today to read and spend time with jesus and then read blogs haha) i'm just not good at being sick i don't think. but it lets people show me they love me and i am good at responding to that.

mary slept in the same bed as me friday night even after i had thrown up (not in the bed) but i had smelly armpits.
ashley came after i told her i had thrown up and sat with me
mary let me wake her up at 8 crying and shaking in pain because i couldn't talk and i was so scared how sick i was.
sarah thomas found me some medicine.
gaby lent me her laptop and let me watch gilmore girls.
mary loved me and napped with me.
alexis checked on me every chance she had
alexis packed my stuff up for me and she and ash left the retreat early to bring me home
zach made me rest
i've gotten countless texts from family and friends asking if they can do anything for me
chelsea just offered to buy me frozen peas and now she's coming over to hang out
mary gave me a foot massage. which was weird.
micah made me laugh and let me watch once then when i fell asleep he turned off once and turned on a movie he wanted to watch haha
jeremy did the dishes for me
ashley gave me a candle haha

its just nice to be loved. all those people would do all those things any day of the week for me regardless of my wellbeing. that's nice to know too.