llévame de vuelta // take me back

All I can think about since getting back from Mexico is... Mexico.  In my head I am always seeing those precious little faces smiling up at me, and those kids speaking rapid Spanish to me, and then their eyes lighting up when I understand them. I miss playing with my friend Cesia in the hot Mexican dirt (we were pretending to cook things). I miss blowing bubbles with Jessica and Brenda. I miss Briyan's sassy attitude coupled with his sincerity. I miss Erika's hugs and hearing her say "te quiero". I miss racing while giving piggy back rides and then hearing the kids say "¡Otra vez, otra vez!" each time I set them down again. I miss the hot Mexican sun, and the wind, and the palm trees. I miss those few days when I spoke in Spanish more than I spoke in English.

I fell in love down in Mexico. I fell in love with the country itself, despite it's multitude of problems. I fell in love with the Mexican people and their beautiful selves and their passion in everything that they do. I fell in love with their language, and I fell in love with their loud church services, with all the clapping and dancing. I miss being able to buy Mexican pop whenever I wanted to (which is 1,000 times better than any pop America has to offer). I love each and every one of those little kids that I talked to and hugged. And while I was down there, I also fell in love with... love. God's love. I fell in love with His love and its ability to bring so much joy to people who have so little. It was very powerful to witness that during the week I was there... The Mexican people may not have much, but Jesus is everything to them, and they are passionate about it. I felt more alive down in Mexico than I have in a long time. The laughter and love of the kids that I worked with lit within me a fire-- a burning fire of love and thankfulness. 

America is my country, and Nebraska is my home-- it always will be. But I left a piece of my heart down in Mexicali, and it's staying there forever.

A page from my notebook of thoughts

I was up late last night doing some thinking about, you know, life and everything, and I wrote the following in my journal (I thought it was interesting/creative, so I figured that I might let y'all enjoy a piece of my thoughts):


"I am an open book. I am a book waiting to be read, but I'm also a book that's been closed so many times in the past, and has sometimes stayed closed for so long that some of the pages are stuck together. Some of my pages have been ripped out and replaced with a nicer version of what actually happened, because I don't want people to read the true story of what happened, and because I want to replace a bad memory with a false memory of what sort of happened. Some pages have been ripped out altogether and have been crumpled and burned, because no one cares what's on those pages... Either that or I just don't want people to know, so I have instead chosen to forget what they said altogether. In the margins of the pages, there are little quotes and drawings that have been hastily scribbled there, almost as an after-thought of the actual words on the page. The words on my pages are sometimes eloquent and well-put, and sometimes they are incomplete and incoherent, waiting for someone to smooth them out or try to understand them. There are some punctuation and grammar errors  that demonstrate my imperfections and my unwillingness to ever try to be a perfectionist. The binding is beginning to tear and show signs of use, from all the pages that have been turned and all the new chapters that have been started. At the back, there is a section of blank pages that are waiting to be written on with details of my new adventures and lessons that I will learn. So yes, I am an open book, but I am an incomplete book. What you'll find in my pages may surprise you, horrify you, or maybe it will speak to you in some way that only books can. I'm not a book that you can go to Barnes & Noble and buy. I'm one of those books that you can find at the used bookstore sitting in a corner by the window in the sunlight, just waiting to be picked up by someone who is willing to learn about me and discover the secrets and stories that hide on each page. And those are the very best kind if books, the ones that are worn out and a little bit used, and don't look all that amazing on the outside... but once someone has the courage to open the book, it's discovered that a genuine story of life lies between the front and back cover."

I am fierce.

This describes me absolutely perfectly: 

That is me. Small but fierce. 

I am little, but I still:

-Have a huge heart that wants to love people and everything good around me

-Have a mind full of world-changing, blossoming ideas 

-Have a voice. And heck yes I will/do use it

-Can be incredibly stubborn about everything

-Will brave any storm

-Encourage those around me

-Stand strong in my faith

-Stand up for what I believe, and what is right

-Help the helpless

-Give hope to the hopeless

-Live life to the fullest

-Love people and the world like I'm gonna die tomorrow

-Take the optimistic view of life

-Take every opportunity

-Want to change the world

-Will fight any enemy

-Will take on the world.

I may be small, but I am fierce. 

// 5 line poem //

You touched my heart

the way that no one had before.

And when you touched my soul,

I knew that I never, ever

wanted to let you go.

-a.v.g. 

piano & faith

I was playing the piano the other day, and just for fun I decided to get out some of my old piano pieces that I hadn't played in a while. I knew that I would not be able to play them with as much skill as I had when I first learned them, but I was not expecting to be as bad at them as I was. As my fingers stumbled over the keys and worked to remember the notes that they once played so easily, my mind wandered a bit (as it usually does), and I began thinking about how our faith is similar to playing the piano. Our faith is something that should be continuously growing and becoming stronger. Faith isn't something you can "take a break from". Faith is constant, faith should never falter. We can't just put God on the shelf for a while and then come back to him later and expect to pick up where we left off. With piano pieces, you can't put them on a shelf, pull them off a couple months later and expect to just pick it up where you left off. No, you have to re-learn the things that you already learned in the past. I think it's like that with our Christian faith, too. If you put God on the shelf for a while, you're going to backslide and that means that later, when you come back, you're going to have to re-climb the steps that you already took in your faith, you're going to have re-learn what you had already learned. Leaving God on the shelf for a while does you no good. In fact, it does you harm, because instead of being able to progressive in your Christian walk, you have to re-walk the steps that you already took earlier.

bits and pieces of my thoughts

This past month, I've probably done more thinking than I have ever done before (or at least that's what it feels like). I've thought about [almost] everything - life, the government, goals, the Supreme Court, God, disappointments, love, failure, beautifully wonderful people, purpose, stories, joy, theology, sorrow, and sunrises. It would be an impossible thing for me to lay every single one of my thoughts down in a comprehensible form. There is so much that goes on inside my head that I simply cannot find the worlds to say or express. But here are a few pieces of what I've been thinking about (yes, they're kinda random) ~

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People. Wow. People are amazing. Talking to people and hearing their stories makes me feel all q894tyh9osdjshjladfj inside because people are beautiful and wonderful and everything in between. Some days my mind is blown when I remember that God made people and he made each person unique and with their very own personality and their own heart and their own soul. If that isn't cool then I don't know what is. This past month I have seen people find joy in the midst of sorrow. I have seen people persevere when things seemed impossible. And I have seen people conquer the demons that they didn't think were conquerable.

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I was driving to school one Monday morning and the sun hadn't quite risen yet, but I could tell that it was just about ready to come over the horizon. Right before it came into view, the sky was a clear, cold, pure blue, with just a few whispy clouds scattered around. Then the sun came up over the horizon and it was like all of a sudden everything was bathed in a warm golden light, and the sky was filled with light, and the underside of the clouds turned a brilliant orange, which contrasted radiantly with the still-blue sky behind it. It's during moments like that when I think, "There is no way that evolution is possible because a) there's no way sunrises could have evolved to be this pretty, and b) there is no way that we, as humans, should have evolved so as to be able to stand in awe of such beauty and even begin to appreciate it".

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I do believe that feeling like you've been a disappointment to someone is possibly the worst feeling in the world.

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Sometimes when people compliment me, or say I'm a nice person, or "wow you're perfect", I just say "thanks!" when what I really want to say is "Yeah, sometimes I nice. And sometimes I can also be mean and unthoughtful and there are times when I regret doing/saying things. I'm not a perfect person, and I'm far from it. On the inside I'm a completely broken person. I sin just as much as everyone else... I can just be really good at hiding it sometimes. I need Jesus just as much as everyone else." Don't get me wrong - I do try really hard to be nice and love everyone, but I definitely don't do it absolutely all of the time.

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Everything about this quote: “If you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you." --C.S. Lewis

^Go read through that quote again. And again. And again. Wow. I mean we've all heard that before... but Lewis puts it so perfectly. 

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I miss cool summer nights when I could just go outside and look up at the stars and marvel at how close they seemed even when, in reality, they are unfathomably far away. 

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I am constantly torn between the desire to stay here in Nebraska, which has been my home my whole entire life... and go out into the world and go everywhere. Visit every continent, learn about the history in each place, climb more mountains, meet new people, and try new things. I can't decide if I want to stay or if I want to go... it's not that I don't like adventures, but I'm afraid to leave for too long because I always fear that people will forget me or that everything will change while I'm gone. Plus there are plenty of adventures just around here.

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This: 

 "Outside of the will of God, there is nothing I want. And in the will of God, there is nothing I fear." -A.W. Tozer

 

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just a quote

"I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking." - George Macdonald