'Tis the Season

It's Christmas time already! If you know me, you know that Christmas is one of my most favorite holidays. I look forward to it because I get to spend time with my family all while celebrating the birth of Jesus. This Christmas has been a humbling experience for so many reasons. One reason in particular shed quite a bit of light on what Christmas is really all about. It's so easy to get carried away with buying and giving gifts, and sometimes we forget what this holiday is really about. It's easy to focus on the materialistic things of Christmas. My prayer for myself for these past few days has been to help me to not lose sight of the "reason for the season" (for lack of a better phrase....I know it's a corny phrase, but it's true).

I'm out of school until January 9th. Though I am in need of a break, I will miss my sweet little 4th graders. I'll be working hard to get things in order for this next semester. It's hard to imagine my first year of teaching is halfway over. It's had its ups and downs, but nonetheless it's been a wonderful experience. I'll be doing literature circles when we start back, and I'm so excited about them. I've been doing a good bit of research about them. If you read my blog (do people even read this?) and have some knowledge of literature circles or even ideas, let me know! Like I said, I'm very excited about starting these in my classroom.

I'm using this break to catch up on my crafts board on Pinterest. I feel as if it has been neglected lately.

If I don't write until after Christmas, Merry Christmas to you and your families. I pray that you have a safe and wonderful holiday.

New Job and A Thought to Consider

Okay, Okay. I know I said I wanted to become a better blogger. I tried doing a 30 day blog challenge. That challenge lasted about 8 days, then I was just finished with it. I think I've come to accept that I will more than likely blog only when I have something to say. I have 2 things to say right now.
1---- I HAVE A JOB!!!!! I am one of the newest 4th grade teachers at Ward-Stewart Elementary. I interviewed at this school the Friday before I graduated. The principal called me 2 weeks ago to offer me the job, and of course, I took it! Now, I'm not going to lie, a part of me was feeling a little anxious (I refuse to say worried), but I knew that if I continued to pray, that God would bless me with the job that HE wanted for me. I am so very thankful to my God, and it never ceases to amaze me how my God comes through.

2---- I was going through some old messages a friend and I sent back and forth to each other. This particular friend is someone who is very dear to me, and we often talk about God's will in our lives and other deep things about faith, and what it means to be a Christian. In this particular message, I told him about a passage in this book that I read called God's Blog. This was the passage:

"Here's a thought for you to consider:

People are put in your path almost every day. Some are quite unobtrusive and you might not even notice them. Many are somewhat undesirable, and you don't want to notice them. Some are right in your path, and you are forced to at least acknowledge their presence. But you make the connections and those connections never die. The thread just keeps unrolling through time- touching everyone, tying everyone together. It won't stop until you walk into eternity. That's why EVERY DAY MATTERS and EVERY PERSON MATTERS."

Think about this passage, and what it is saying. We are all connected to each other in some way. Even if you don't know me personally, you and I are connected by you reading this post. I think that's pretty amazing. God is constantly placing people in our lives when He feels we might need them. We may not get the reason He has put them there, but eventually it will reveal itself. This passage always makes me smile when I read it. I think about all the people God has placed in my life, and how if they weren't in it, I wouldn't be the person I am today. Each person we meet, even if it's for the briefest second, shapes us in someway. We become a better person when we smile at someone we don't know. We have the ability to make someone's day a little brighter. We should all be striving to make some type of connection to someone.

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 3: Your first love.

My first love? Well, that's a hard question to answer....actually not really. The first time I was introduced to love was on the playground in 3rd grade. My childhood sweetheart kissed me on the cheek and I was on cloud nine. At 9 years old, you like to think you know what love is. Now fast forward about 14 years. After much persistence on his part....asking me out on a date 3 times, with me telling him no, only to agree the fourth time he asked me.... I can honestly say this is the man God put in my life, and this is the man who I am so much in love with.

Stefan makes me laugh, smile, and giggle. He constantly pushes me to be a better person and a better Christian. Together we continue to grow in our relationship with Christ. Sure we have our moments, but every couple does. We work it out when it gets rough, and at the end of a long day he is there to greet me with a smile, hug, an "I love you", and a kiss. Yes I know this is sappy, but in all honesty this man is my first real love. It also helps that he is as big of a Mississippi State fan as I am:

He makes my heart smile and I'm so thankful he puts up with me. 

New Beginnings

So, part of my New Year's resolutions was to update my blog more. It's Day 9 of January, and this is my first post. Off to a great start, already. Much has happened since my last post in August. God has really been working in my life.

First of all, I looked into many different options for my career in teaching. I looked into applying for Teach for America and started an application, but have since halted that process for now at least. Another option I looked into was Teaching English as a Foreign Language. I felt that this experience was a great idea to look into at least. But for some reason, I could not bring myself to finish any of these applications. It turns out, that God has so much more planned for me than I could have imagined.

I should tell you now that I am a planner. I'm sure, if you read this, you have probably already thought to yourself "This girl plans WAY too much." But that, my dear readers, is what I do. It's like I have a back-up plan in case God's doesn't work out.....which is an absurd thing to have because God's plan always works out the way HE intends it to, not the way I intend it to work out.

So, going back to my "teaching career plans". Like I said, I never got around to actually submitting the applications to either of these programs. Part of me was apprehensive about doing so. I can't really explain why, which is why I believe that it was God's way of telling me to hold off on it.

In October, a friend that I have known for about a year and a half, asked me on a date, which after four times of turning him down, I decided to give it a try. We are now going into our third month of dating and I would like to share with you that it has been an amazing three months. I truly believe, and he can tell you too, that we are in God's plan for each other. For so long I was the person who agonized over why it was that all my friends were dating guys and I couldn't get one. I finally stopped complaining and prayed about it, and prayed, and prayed. It turns out, I was looking in all the wrong places for the type of guy I thought I should be with, and God was showing me the one he picked out.

I know you may think this is quite cheesy and mushy, but I'm quite happy because I've finally let God take control over the relationship part of my life. It hasn't been easy, but the wait has been worth it.

To add to the things that are new in my life: I'm the new worship leader for my church's contemporary service Pathways. Today was my first day, and I was very nervous, but was told I did a pretty good job. I pray that the Lord's will is done in my leadership of the worship portion of the service. I'm looking forward to this next chapter in my life.

God Moments

I'm sitting at the Wesley foundation on the porch swing. One of my most favorite places to be on this Earth. It's a place where I like to sit and reflect. Today is no different. I was studying for the Praxis II that is coming up in a couple of weeks and I look up and the sun is setting. For some people the sunset isn't really that big of a deal, but for me, today and everyday, the sunset is a Godsend. I just sat here on the swing and took it all in. The fact that our God created this beautiful thing for us to look at each day is just something so wonderful I can't even fathom. As I'm sitting here I realize that I'm not worried about being productive. I'm taking in the sunset, the sounds around me, and the occasional silence where no cars are passing by, which is a rare occurrence given that this is a university campus.

Today was different. I'm not even sure how, but I feel God in a way that I haven't felt Him in a long time. I'm happier today and more content since last Tuesday where I was in such a weird mood that nothing was going right. I'm finally letting go of the worries I've had because I know for sure that God is going to take care of it all, and I have no need to worry about that.

My God moments occur when I least expect them to. But then again, that's how most God moments are. They usually occur when I'm with my family or sitting at the Wesley. This past Saturday was no different. I had the wonderful opportunity of keeping my cousin for the day. It's one that I rarely pass up. To see the world through a child's eyes is so humbling and innocent. I took my cousin to the Drill Field and we strolled and blew bubbles. The kid loves to push her own stroller, so I carefully helped guide her down the sidewalk as she pushed. At one point she stopped, looked at me, took my hand off the stroller and said "No, no". I had to smile at her need for independence, so I let her push the stroller by herself but I stood close behind to make sure it stayed on the sidewalk After a few failed attempts of her strolling off the sidewalk, she looked to me for help and we continued to stroll down the sidewalk with both of us pushing the stroller.

As I was driving her back home I thought about how we as Christians are sometimes like children who are gaining their independence. We like to think that we can do it all by our self, take control of our lives, etc. We let God guide us to certain points in our lives, but then tell Him we can do it ourselves, and like any Father, He steps back and allows us to do it on our own, but He stands close by. When we go a few steps and realize we need guidance, we look to Him and He always helps guide us back on the "sidewalk". There's never any "I told you so's" exchanged. It's simply a matter of picking us up and brushing us off and saying "I love you, follow me".

That's really all that was on my mind tonight. I usually don't like to post things unless I have something meaningful to say and tonight I did, so here it is.

Peace and Love,
Laura Kate

Weekend

This past weekend, I had the incredible opportunity to attend Statewide Wesley 2010. For those of you who read this and are not sure what that is, it is a retreat where different university Wesley Foundations come together to glorify God and have fun with each other. This year we were blessed to have Todd Agnew as our worship leader. He talked about worship a great deal and what it means to truly worship. (I think he read my blog post on that very topic, because he basically said everything I talked about! :) Totally kidding on that one.) We also were able to participate in the Stop Hunger Now Program. Stop Hunger Now is an organization where groups can come together and package meals for children who are in areas where starvation is one of the leading causes of death among children. Here are a couple of facts about hunger :  

25,000 people die every day from hunger and related causes.

Every 6 seconds a child dies because he or she is hungry.

There are other facts listed on the Stop Hunger Now website, but those two are the main ones that stuck out to me. No child, or person for that matter, should die because they do not have enough to eat. We produce enough food in this world in order to feed hungry people everywhere.

In participating in the program, we were able to package 16,000 meals that will be sent to places like Haiti. 16,000. That is a lot of meals and a lot of children that won't go hungry. If you're reading this, I encourage you to get involved in this program somehow. It is something that I am extremely passionate about. I am part of a Hunger POD (Practicing Outward Discipleship) at Mississippi State University. We are bringing the Stop Hunger Now program to the Wesley Foundation on campus March 28th, though it's not limited to just Wesley Foundation attendees. We are working on fundraising and are still planning some details.

Things are going well. God is working in my life and I am in awe of the things He has done. He has blessed me with wonderful friends, old and new. I have been praying about ways I can help the world and I feel that He has called me to help with hunger-related ministries. I like doing good for people and I love serving God that way. It constantly gives me a reality check and I realize each time that I have everything I need. I have clean water to drink, I have a roof over my head, and I plenty of food. Everything else is just excess, things I have but don't necessarily need. That's a word we say often: Need. Think about that for a bit.

I'll post more tomorrow.

Peace and Love,

Laura Kate

Worship...

I'm a thinker. It's what I do. I'm always thinking about something. I either over analyze or under analyze and anything in between. In the past few weeks, I've been thinking more in depth when it comes to my faith and what God has shown me (it's quite a bit to be honest, but it's so wonderful to see what He is revealing to me). I feel this closeness that has been absent for a little while, and it's such a wonderful thing to be. I really think this blogging thing is helping me grow because I'm able to see how God is working in my life. The new school year has brought many new things. We have 2 new preachers at the church and they are simply wonderful. I do miss Jason and Stacey being there. (Even though she's my aunt and I get to see her on a pretty regular basis.) I'm in a new apartment by myself (love it!) and we are getting 2 new additions (my uncle and aunt are expecting twins!) to my already wonderful family. God is so wonderful and good. He times things just perfectly. So with all of these things, I am, of course, thinking...as mentioned above.

Over the past couple of days, I've been pondering on what it truly means to worship, and when we worship, are we doing so with our WHOLE heart? Although worship is not ever limited to just singing, and can be in any form and fashion as long as you are glorifying the name of God, the singing part is what I'm going to share tonight.

I'm always thinking about some thing or another, but worship and praise are always on my mind. I was at the Wesley Tuesday night and we sang one of my favorite hymns, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. During the song, I had a friend turn to me and ask me what the line "Here I raise my Ebenezer" meant. I couldn't answer him, and it made us both wonder if anyone else knew what it meant. Another question that arose in the song is the meaning of the word "fetter".

Now, before I elaborate on what either of these actually mean, I want to first make my point. Sometimes I feel as if we sing worship songs just to sing them. We don't actually take the time to take the words in and reflect on their meaning as we are singing them. I'm totally guilty of it, as we all might be at some point in our worship experiences. To me, it is so important to not only truly mean the words we sing, but actually KNOW their meaning, which brings me to the Ebenezer line of Come Thou Fount. Up until last evening, I had no idea what the word meant, though I had thought about what it from time to time. Once I had finished my research that took all of about 10 minutes, much thanks to Google, I found the answer to what I was looking for. Now I'm not going to go into all the detail that this site went into, but I will enlighten my wonderful readers with bits and pieces of what I found. The passage is 1 Samuel and it says this "Samuel took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer—"the stone of help"—for he said, "Up to this point the Lord has helped us!" —1 Samuel 7:12, NLT. The explanation of the Ebenezer stone is that it represents a fresh beginning and it reminded the people of God's help and his everlasting mercy. It reminds them of their faithfulness to God.

Tonight we had our weekly praise band practice. At the end, my friend and I were walking to his car and I mentioned the above to him. He made a good point that the songs that we use in our worship at our church always have meaning. The songs should be engaging. They should be meditated on and thought about. For me, when I'm practicing or when I'm actually leading worship, the songs I sing have to mean something. The words have to be there and I have to focus on them, and if I have no idea of the meaning of specific words, how can I truly worship? I think things like this in songs need to be discussed, as in why this is in there or what it really means in the song. This gives the congregation some insight to why the song was chosen or why it is a worship song.

There's really no huge explanation to the word "fetter", except that it is a physical restraint used to keep prisoners from running away.
"Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee"
The word "fetter" in this context is not necessarily a literal binding, but a spiritual one. Many times we wander away from God, wanting to do things on our own and this line is us saying "Keep me close, because I don't want to wander from You, though I know I will."

I'm signing off for the night. I'm very tired, so much of this entire post might be redundant, and for that I am sorry. Go in peace, worship freely, love each other unconditionally.

LK

Everyone is going places. As in moving to other states. Sometimes I feel trapped here. Other times, I'm perfectly content. I'm ready to finish school. Then move to New York City.

Okay, so the above statements were written yesterday morning, before my Bible study yesterday afternoon. Can I just say that God works in so many different ways? This afternoon Linda, the wonderful woman who is leading the study, introduced the book we will be working from during these next 6 weeks. The book is called Get A Life. It debunks the myths that we as women feel like we have to live by and things that we believe must define us. It's purpose is also for gaining a sense of contentment with the things that surround you. The cliche "The grass is always greener on the other side" is never enitrely true in most cases. We're always looking for something better than what we have. I still do want to move away and start a new life in a different place, but right now I need to learn to be content where I am. Moving to a different place is not a way for me to find that contentment that I desire so much. The point I'm trying to make is that we can't ever be content somewhere else, until we are content with the place we are at now. It's okay to want and desire things for the future, but until those things come along, and they will on God's time, we should enjoy the things where we are at now.

This Bible study is definitely what I need and it's come at such a good time in my life, because right now I'm so restless being in Starkville. I love it here, but I feel like it's a relationship that's gone on too long and I need something new. But when reading through the first day's study, I realized that God is using me in some way and maybe, just maybe, that purpose has not been fufilled to it's potential. When is fufilled, I'll know. I'm trusting God with this. It's hard for me to do that because in my earlier post, I admitted to be a control freak about my life, when in all honestly I don't have to be that way about my life at all. God knows what He's doing. He really does.

I'm going canoeing with MSU Wesley Foundation tomorrow. I haven't been canoeing in a really long time, and the last time I went, my paddle ended up far away from my canoe. It will be fun to see how this goes.

LK

The First One

The purpose of this blog is just to share what is going on in my life with people. My thoughts and rants, but also to share what God is doing in my life. I'll do a brief recap of how my life has been since this summer. My summer held a lot of "first-time" things. I went out of the country for the first time. (I guess you can call Puerto Rico out of the country, even if it's technically part of the US? For now we'll just say I went out of the country.) I went for a friend's wedding. It was truly a beautiful place to have a wedding. The evening of the ceremony, God's hand was in it all. From the love that surrounded everyone there to the beautiful sunset over the ocean. The pictures I'll put up don't do any justice to what it was really like. One of the first things that amazed me about PR was how friendly the people were. They were so friendly and wonderful to talk to. The concierge at the hotel always had a smile on his face as he opened the doors and greeted people. I remember having a conversation with him. He talked about his love for working at the hotel. He even mentioned that a couple of hotels from the States had offered him jobs, but he turned them down. His reason being "Every morning I can greet people here and look outside to what God has painted right here for me." I was amazed at his reasoning and it made me wish I could be more like that. Here was a man who loved his job, because he could interact with people and see God's creation right out the door. He said he didn't have a need for anything else. As he told me all of this I sat there and thought to myself "Why can't I be more like him? Why can't all of humanity be more like him?" I think that we always have to be doing something in today's society. We always have to be productive. I'm guilty of it. I plan everything and I mean EVERYTHING. I rarely ever just take the time to let God handle it all, yet when it all blows up in my face He's the first one I run to. I can hear Him say "I told you to let Me handle it. Here, this is how I wanted you to do it. We can fix it though, so don't worry." It's an on-going struggle that God and I have. I'm such a control freak about certain areas of my life, but I don't have to be. I want so badly to just give it all to Him because I do know, and I do believe that He will plan everything for me on His time. The PR trip really opened up my eyes to the things that He has put right in front of me to enjoy.

On a slightly different note, I now live by myself, in my very own apartment. I feel like a big girl. I really didn't think I could do it, but it feels exhilarating to know that I am capable of living on my own. It gives me time to think about everything: my life, my faith, my beliefs, etc.

I'm trying to simplify my own life. I no longer have cable. It's not a necessity. I'm actually happier without it. I mean sure, I miss some of my shows, but I have friends who TiVo things and we watch them together, or I watch it online. I try not to use internet as often when I'm at home. It's worked well so far. I'm becoming more environmental. I actually recycle. It makes me feel like I'm really helping the world, which I am, along with millions of others. I encourage anyone and everyone to recycle. It's a big deal. We get one planet. That's it. One. Be nice to it, treat it like you would your favorite thing.

I'm pursing my photography more. You can check out my photos on my site http://www.evelynkatephotography.smugmug.com. Look through the photos. Rank your favorite ones. You can even buy one if you want to, or you can just contact me and I'll be more than happy to take photos for you. I like it. It's fun for me. When I look through that lens of my camera, everything is good in the world. I see God's creations for what they are and so much more. He's blessed me with this talent and without His direction, I never would have found it. I praise Him daily for it and the other gifts He has blessed me with.

That's it for tonight, even though I have so much more to say. That's what this blogging deal is for though. Go in peace, and know that you are loved by a God who is so amazing and wonderful that He gives us second, third, fourth and so many more chances than we truly deserve.

Laura Kate