Beautifully Free

I have been recently going through a new devotional this past week and it has been so amazing. There was one particular page that just blew me away. After reading this my eyes were opened and ever since I have seen myself in a new way. Here is a little from the devotional:

What does it mean to display the splendor of God? It means that we were created to have true beauty, inner beauty. It's sometimes easy to strive for outward beauty, because that's what the world wants, but God wants us to have true beauty.

This is the picture I get of my true beauty: I see my beauty radiating from the inside out. That when I love God with all my heart, soul, strength and mind (Matthew 22:37), it will naturally spill over to all my relationships and every area of my life. It's as if God's light and beauty is in my heart. And it is being pumped into every cell of my body, my brain, my muscles, and my organs through my bloodstream. And as long as God's Spirit is living inside of me, I will have that beauty radiating from the inside out. People will see the light in my eyes. They'll be drawn to the joy in my smile. And they'll want to find comfort in my friendship.

After reading this, I felt free. I ran and looked in the mirror and usually I automatically find somethings wrong with how I look, but this time I just saw a beautifully created girl, redeemed by the amazing grace of God, with a huge smile on her face. The next morning, getting ready for school was fun. I no longer had to deal with the hassle of trying to find clothes that looked good on me, but more so just picking out what looked cute and fun to wear. Lately, I have been striving to work on my inner beauty, which originates in my relationship with the beautiful Creator. It is a lot more satisfying let me tell you! I am so thankful for a wonderful God who makes me beautiful. It is crazy to know that with God, I can never be ugly. Now without pride or vanity, I am able to stand up to say......

I AM SO BEAUTIFUL 

Here are somethings that I found extremely beautiful this morning. 

Feeling Like Beyonce ;)

Everyone knows that I love Beyonce so in honor of her here is my Countdown!

Countdown

Only 10 more days til I'll be at College Group!

9 more days til I'll be stuffing my face at Thanksgiving

8 more hours until Generation Church tonight

7 cents left on my SPU points

6 more classes left til finals

Averaging 5 hours of sleep each night

4 new desserts added to the Gwinn Menu

3 more weeks til  Deck the Hall Ball and Brandon coming to visit

2 holes in my boots that I'm wearing.... wet feet...

1 happy girl with her life

Katt and I when we went to a pumpkin patch

If I haven't said this enough.....

If I haven't said this enough, I really do love SPU. My life is filled here with some wonderful people. I truly appreciate the spontaneous bursts of joy that I experience here almost every day. I love my little Gwinn family, 2nd East, and all my new friends! Life is soo good! Another thing, I feel God's presence here and it the most amazing thing ever. Walking around campus, I feel like God has included me in His little secret and I am able to see the inner workings of how He is moving in SPU. I see creation, whether from the squirrels scampering about to the falling leaves dancing in the wind, and it sings God's praises. I witness my friends becoming closer to God and it spurs me to pursue Him more too! (Marshall I am so proud of you and I look up to you! Thank you for being such a great friend and keeping me accountable.) I hear God speaking through my PA when she encourages us and gives us advice. There is so much more, but I experience God's grace every day as I continue to constantly fail. -.- I just feel so blessed with this amazing life. I remember those depressing days just a couple of months ago when life was at its craziest. I would sometimes just lay there and cry wishing I was at SPU. Even though I lost so much this summer, God is faithful. He has brought me from those nights when I felt like I had nothing and was nothing to these days in Seattle where my feet are being warmed by the sun as I sit here typing about how glorious life is right now. I definitely would not say that I am completely over what happened this summer, but I am slowly getting there.
Enough with all the talking! Let me show you some glimpses of my day to day life here at the wonderful Seattle Pacific University.

After a night of dancing with friends :) We are thinking of going to a salsa club next!

I get to wake up to this tree every morning. It is so colorful and beautiful!

Sorry if this scared you, but this is my friend Marcella and me! I was Frida Kahlo. We are crazy together!

I love this class so much, but the book is SOO BORING! I cry a little every time I have to read it.

Landry looking adorable waiting for my friend to get back from work.....in her bed. 

One of the many food adventures with the amazing Landry! This time we went and had some amazing cupcakes from Cupcake Royal. Delicious let me tell you!

So this girl is freakin amazing and I love her so much. (even when she is sassy) This is us sending up our love cookies to the boys floor. They were enjoyed and devoured by my now good friend Chris. Crazy how things like these turn out. :)

And that's all folks! More blog posts to come soon. Don't worry ;)

Few of My Favorite Things

This is a list of people at SPU who continuously fill me with Joy:

(in no particular order)

-Shelby Spear

-Erin Pearce

-Marcella Weber

-Professor Davis

-Jason Jay

-Mariah McCarthy

-Landry Desmond

-Katt Holbrook

-Alyse Bradway

-Chris Vertefeuille

- Susan Haldeman

-Noelle Ciaciuch

If you are on the list, you are such a blessing in my life and have made it ten times better. I owe you so much because you have given me something priceless: your amazing friendship. You guys have my heart.



Awestruck

Sometimes we just need to be reminded of who God is. Today God reminded me of who HE is. On my wall I have a banner that has around 30, give or take, adjectives of who God is to ME. They fell down the other day, well more like I took them down in my sleep lol. I just hung them back up a little while ago and a couple of them stuck out to me. 

Pure....

LARGER than my problems.....

Beautiful....

The Lover of my Soul....

and My Loving Father......

 I just sat on my bed for awhile looking at those words and they resonated with me. At first they were just a cute little decoration, but now they are a daily reminder of just who God IS and what I am NOT. There is one thing that I definitely am though,  not worthy. 

So here is my challenge to YOU, yes you reader of this post, take a few minutes of today and think about or write down some adjectives of who God is to YOU! Trust me, it is worth it. 

HAPPY NOVEMBER 1ST! =D

Here are some pictures of the little banner. (sorry for the bad quality)

Searching For Myself....

Seeing this as my 18th day of being here at SPU, I have been through a lot of internal struggles.  There have been a lot of "Where the heck do I fit in here?!" moments. Back at home, I knew that I was a certain thing to one friend, or number 10 in my class rank, or a leader in the church, but here no one really knows me. I constantly wonder what I am putting out as who I am, which made me think of the question who am I? So this has been looming over my head for the past couple of days and it has caused me to be a little depressed. Fortunately, my lovely community at SPU has played a big role into helping me discover who I truly am.
      In my politics class (who would have known) my professor taught us about philosophy and how it is all about questioning everything. Not just questioning authority, but questioning the root of the actions that we do. He then also told us to measure everything to the idea of mortality. For example, Do I want to spend my life doing (fill in action here) knowing that one day I will die? Crazy deep, right?! So I have been really evaluating EVERYTHING that I have been doing these past couple of days. Some of the revelations have been really hard to swallow, but it makes my heart happy to know that God has been revealing these things to me.

    Also, tonight in group we went through a couple of verses in Joshua chapter 1 and God's command to us rang through the room. "Be strong and very courageous." The speaker told us that God called us to be   set apart and then he said some super deep stuff that I would mess up if I even tried to repeat it. But he revealed to us that we are now a part of Israel and that even though we are not preparing for battle like the Israelites, we need to be courageous to be set apart. That hit me like a ton of bricks because I had been trying to blend in and in that process was losing myself. After the speaker talked a little bit more, he gave us a time for quiet reflection. In my quiet time, I prayed that God will give me the courage to be able to reflect God's call on my life to be set apart. As I was praying that, I seriously had this overwhelming feeling of God's anointing on my life to be set apart.

So my challenge to you all is to reflect on if you are living a life separate of the norms of the world or if you are living a life that is conformed to the perfect will of God. If not, I repeat this to you "Be Strong and VERY Courageous." Take courage and take the first step in walking in God's will for you.

 ⁷ “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. ⁸ Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. ⁹ Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Joshua 1:7-9 


Please enjoy the song :)

So There Was A Blonde, A Brunette, and a Redhead.....

      This quarter I have the lovely opportunity of working in Gwinn Commons, which is the cafeteria at SPU. I actually enjoy working in Gwinn because you get to see almost everybody in the school at their best and  worst. It is downright hilarious. They all come in with a hungry look in their eyes, scanning for the best plate of the day. It really does crack me up. Also it is so amazing being able to talk to people while I serve them. Gwinn is where it is at!

     So you may be wondering what this has to do with my title of the post, but I promise you it is relevant! On the first day that I worked my official shift at Gwinn, I was given the opportunity to serve people at the Classics Station. At Classics, you have your home cooked meals and comfort foods such as meat and potatoes and the like. Classics is always a popular station. So there I was at the station working with Amy and we had a huge crowd of students waiting in line all hungry and slightly irritated may I add. We were working so hard to get the food plated in a timely fashion, but we still had quite a line. We were working along when to our surprise we ran out of food. There were no plates in the burner and the chef told us that the food would be ready in 3 minutes. 12 minutes later, we had probably close to 70 students in line and grouped around our station waiting for their dinner. As we looked at each other anxiously and scared at the ravenous mob that was forming in front of us, I came up with an idea. Time to stall. So for about 5 minutes, I did what I do best; I cracked jokes and talked. I told knock-knock jokes, blonde jokes, and interesting pieces of news. One that I told that I now regret is the story of the bull semen on the freeway, but it got people to relax and laugh. After I went through my third joke, people were asking for more jokes, but by that time the food had arrived and Amy and I started busting out those dinner plates like no tomorrow. For this reason, I love working in Gwinn. I love being able to talk to people, ask them about their day, and hopefully put a smile on their face. I am so grateful that God has given me the gift of gab and this job.