My Best Birthday Ever......
made me feel like crap.
If you would ask me which of my 27 birthdays has been my favorite, it would probably have been my 24th, in May of 2006.
It was my first year in Italy on STINT, and after a year of emotional ups and downs, traveling all over Europe, learning a bunch about myself, my teammates, my relationship with God, and the people and culture of Italy, the Summer Project came to help us out and give us a morale boost on campus. Since we were only a team of 4 at the time, and we were so far away from national leadership, it was suggested that we soak up all the leadership and help that we could from the CCC staff that had come with the Summer Project.
Setting the stage:
The girls' apartment that year was 120 steps up the hill (it seemed like a mountain when we came home tired) from the guys' apartment, but usually it was very worth it for our amazing view of the beginning of the Costiera Amalfitana.
Many mornings were spent with me in front of one of those windows overlooking the Golfo di Salerno reading my bible seeking out what God had to teach me in those days. Even when I wasn't reading anything, there were times I would just stare out the window at the amazing view God had blessed us with. Many days I would become fascinated with the goings on at the port or the regattas that seemed to happen every weekend in the spring and summer.
When it came to my birthday, my teammates knew what I wanted to do.....rent a boat and go out on the water for the day. Katy, Nathan, Tim, Drew (Tim's cool rockstar friend), and I went to the port that morning and got ourselves a boat and headed out to sea.....or gulf.....whatever.....
We went along the coast, past Amalfi and Positano, and could even see a bit of Capri when we found the coolest group of baby islands (just looked them up, they're called Il Gallo Lungo, La Castellucia, and La Rotonda off of the peninsula, a bit west of Postiano) with some really cool house on top (we decided its a mob house). We "parked" our boat, went swimming, and then had some lunch that Katy, in all her awesomness, had the idea to pack. I even got a great rendition of Happy Birthday from Drew the rockstar! We toodled around a bit, swam some more, and then headed back. We even stopped in Amalfi to get more refreshments and to add on to the awesomeness of the outing.
Since it was a Monday, it was guys and girls leaders' night where the guys and girls leaders of the summer project went out to their respective restaurants for some leader time, and they had invited us. That meant that my team was gonna go our separate ways and I wasn't gonna get a birthday dinner with all of us together. That news came out on our way back to Salerno, and it seemed like everybody was ok with it....except for me.
That's when my selfishness came out in full force. Even though my teammates had spent money to spend the ENTIRE day with me out on the water, I wanted the WHOLE DAY to be focused on me. I tried to hide it on the way back to our apartments, but I'm never that successful at hiding when I am upset. I ended up telling Tim a little bit about how I felt, and we all parted ways.
We got back and were getting ready to go out with the SP girl leaders and Katy suggested that she make a cake so that we could take it to the SP hotel to have all together after dinner. That made me feel a little better, but not much. I called Tim and told him that I needed to talk to him at Umberto's, our favorite bar in Centro Storico. I went down there and I explained all of my feelings and he explained where him and Nathan were coming from, needing guy time. It was a major cry fest for me, I apologized for trying to make them feel bad (because that's what I do when I pout, don't we all?) and we left saying that we would see everybody back at the 14 Leoni (the SP hotel) after dinner.
I went back home, got ready for dinner, went to Spunzillo, had great food and a great time with the staff girls. As we were wrapping up dinner, Katy said that it would be easier for her to take the cake to the hotel on the bus, so she left us to walk back. When we got back to the hotel, I walked into the courtyard to the SPers, Katy, and even some of our Italian friends yelling "Surprise!!!!!!!" (the guys were late coming back from dinner haha)
I started crying again. I didn't deserve this.
I'm not sure how it all happened, and I'm not sure I want to know, but that night, even after all of the time they spent with me on the water, all the money they spent, the HUGE fit I put up in ALL of my selfishness, they still threw me a surprise party.
I felt like SUCH a terrible person for the selfish way I had been acting that afternoon, but I was overwhelmed with love. My team showed me love that God had already showed them through Jesus. When we were sinners, throwing fits, pouting when we didn't get our way, only looking out for ourselves, God sought after us. God sacrificed his son to bring us to him, ESPECIALLY when we didn't deserve it. My team was the greatest witness to God's love that I had seen directed towards me EVER on that day......the things that I learned that year in Salerno with them were all wrapped together as an AMAZING gift from God with my birthday as the bow on top.
So yes, my BEST BIRTHDAY EVER made me feel like crap......but in the end, it helped me to understand just even a LITTLE more about God and his love for us through the grace that my team showed me. And that made me feel amazingly loved....
This blog is dedicated to my Salerno STINT team 05-06, I hope it finds you well. Thank you for all of the great times we had that year serving God together.
To everybody else, I hope that this reminds you of how AMAZING God is and helps you to share God's love just that much more today :)
I'm scared....
Yeah, its been a while since I have blogged anything, but I didn't have too much to say before....
but I am scared....
Its sorta been my life recently, mirrored in some STRANGE (terribly strange) way by Jackson Stewart on Hannah Montana's situation on this past week's episode....(yeah, don't ask)
But....
I'm scared.
I am scared of how diabetes will affect my life.....aka ruin it.
I am scared that I am the dumping ground for whatever wacked out disease that is in my family tree.
I am scared that I will never get out of Fernandina.
I am scared that I will never get to go back to Italy to do ministry.
I am scared that I will never get a job that will lead me to somewhere good.
I am scared that my parents will never be ok with my life choices.
I am scared of never having any good friends in whatever city I end up in.
I am scared that I will never be able to support myself.
I am scared of asking people anything important.
I am scared of never being good enough.
I am scared of being rejected.
I am scared that I'll never get a job that pays better than $10 an hour.
I am scared of not being ok with God's will for my life.
I am scared of talking to my parents about my life decisions.
I am scared that I will fail.
I am scared that I won't have the courage to take advantage of an opportunity that I have because I will be TOO SCARED TO.
So, that's my life right now......
For God did not give us a
spirit of
timidity, but a
spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.
-2 Timothy 1:7
That's what I am working on......
Ok, so I am a slacker....
I need to blog more.....maybe I shall be inspired this week.....I have so many random comments!!
Expectations....
So, I intended this to be a post about how my expectations have shaped my life since they have been on my mind a lot recently....
And I realized, I hadn't blogged since February!!! Part of the reason is definitely the expectations I had to write a blog of the same awesomeness.....how fitting for the subject!
There are so many different types of expectations.......
It started out as me coming to grips with the fact that I love Christmas Eve even more than Christmas, just because of the excitement of what's to COME.....I sort of get a little let down on Christmas morning, cuz I have to wait a whole 364 more days for that excitement of the unknown again.
Another one I got to thinking about is my movie expectations.......I actually was excited to realize that the most hyped movie of my life (or at least from what I can remember), The Dark Knight, actually lived up to my expectations! It was amazing......
Probably the most meaningful, or important expectations that have shaped my life are expectations about my future.....
The strangest phenomena I have seen in my life is my expectations I had moving across the world on STINT.......I found it strikingly odd that when I decided to move across the ocean to Italy I had no clue what I thought was going to happen. I figured I should have at least SOME expectations, what I was going to do, what it would feel like, what I would learn, but nothing.....
When I got there, everything was a blank slate....I didn't know where I was, I didn't know how to communicate, and I for sure didn't know how it was going to be living and working with only 5 other people that knew my world. I learned a lot of stuff, about me, God, and other people.....My whole grownup life up to that point had been in another country.
I'm not gonna lie, we went through a lot of crazy stuff, and I am not even totally sure it all has been dealt with yet.........but I said "what the hey" and signed up for another year. Life there was all I knew, I knew that God could use me there, and I was excited to see how much more I would grow in the 2nd year...
That's when my expectations came into play....
I had a meltdown at briefing 2nd year because my expectations were THROUGH THE ROOF.....I was afraid about what might and might not happen......I held on to anything familiar that I could find to keep me in the past.....(even literally....there was a point in time I grabbed onto Nate and wouldn't let go)
My 2nd year was drastically different than my first. I know we're all different people (along with different expectations), so 10 different people going through the same things would produce MANY different emotions and VERY different experiences. I bet that if I went through 2nd year w/o the first to ramp up to it, I would have a COMPLETELY different experience.....
I really think that I put too much weight on my previously existing expectations and grabbed onto them for dear life and didn't let the slate be as clean as it should have been for a new experience......By doing that, I latched my feelings onto my expectations and let them take me for a wild ride.....
I'm not even sure any of that made sense....
But as of right now, that's where I am......it took me almost 2 years to get to a good place to heal some of my first year scars, and almost a week after my 1 year anniversary of my 2nd year return I am starting to head down that road to find out what really happened.....and to find out what God has in store for me from my 2nd year of STINT.....
please pray that I can figure this out....
I mean.....what if I die?
One of my fav pics I ever took in Italy, Wade (Rome), Audra (Salerno), and Marissa (Rome)
So, as many of you know, our dear friend and an awesome gal who loved Jesus died this past weekend........Marissa Ahamad
She was an amazing woman of God, and even though I could count the occasions that we saw each other on my fingers and toes, she was such a huge part of my life (as all staff in Italy during the time I was there) that I feel a loss.....even if we hadn't seen each other in over a year.
Now I don't mean to make this a recap of how amazing she is, because for one thing, I'm not good with words, and another thing, I can think of at lot more people better fit to do that than I.....but I do want to share my thoughts and feelings from the time I found out she was sick till today.
In the big scheme of my spiritual life, there was nothing better than Italy for me and God. The crazy situations, the intense emotions, and the times of realizing our depravity that STINT takes people through is an experience like no other.......and anybody who goes through it knows that only the people in that club will ever fully understand what went on while you were gone.
I have never been in such a large group of people who I felt so close to by barely even trying. We all loved God, we all wanted to share that love for God with others, and we knew how important it was to support each other while we tried to change the world. You get 40 people together like that and see how dear to each other you become. Even if I never see any of them again, all of the people who shared Italy with me in my 2 years are SUCH a big part of my life, they don't even know......
On that note, there's a big emptiness in the Marissa space of my Italy puzzle......
When I found out on Sunday night, I tried to not let it get to me, after all, I wasn't her teammate for 2 years, I wasn't in her family, I wasn't even one of her friends from back home.....did I have a right to? I knew other people were way more affected by her absence than I was, but the Marissa space of my Italy puzzle was now missing daggummit!
But then I started to think.....since she was a part of my "Sharing God with others" life, I have never been so sure of where she was going than anybody else I have known to die.....then I started smiling. I got even more conflicted, with the sadness of her being here, in the KNOWN, and the joy of her being in my UNKNOWN.......where she is no longer in pain, and she is the perfect being that God made her to be.
That got me SO EXCITED. Like she's the first piece of my Italy puzzle in the eternal glory that is HEAVEN. She is WITH God, our CREATOR, the one who cares for EVERY hair on our HEADS, who went through the torment of being CRUCIFIED.....I could go on for a while.....but I wont ;)
She put a face on being with God.....She put a face on following him through trials here on earth to get to eternity........She put a face on knowing that the hereafter is a million times better than what I can ever imagine at this moment........She put a face on looking past earthly dreams to grasp God's dream for us........
Tonight was 7|22 at Buckhead......I hadn't talked about this with anybody who didn't know her, ya know, because of that club thing.......I had tried to keep it all in most of the time, but I just think it all piled up and fell on me tonight. Jeannie Stevens talked about waiting on God and how we hold on so tightly to things that God wants us to loosen our grip on so he can do amazing things. And how that matched up to my mind partially was if I was Marissa......what would I had wanted to do with my life....cling to things I wanted, or let God have everything and let him bring me his joy and love......who WOULDN'T want the 2nd option? I feel strange for letting one of my friend's deaths be an inspiration for me, but make something REAL to me, and it rocks my world......
Then they played this song (which will forever remind me of KEB)
Everlasting
Your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending
Your glory goes beyond all fame
In my heart and my soul
Lord I give you control
Consume me from the inside out
Lord let justice and praise
Become my embrace
To love you from the inside out
Everlasting
Your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending
Your glory goes beyond all fame
And the cry of my heart
is to bring you praise
From the inside out
Lord my soul cries out
So I let this dig deeper into me some more and what I think I hold onto the most is what plans I have NEXT.....after this job, or this project......I want to make sure I will be ok after this stage is over. My job at the Braves has JUST started, and what, I'm already thinking of what I can do to make sure I have SOMETHING after that? No, God knows.......he will take me where he wants me to go.........even if I don't have a clue,
"Delight in the Lord, and he will give you your hearts desires" Psalm 37:4
and my motto of first year;
"Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for him to act" Psalm 37:7
I would rather spend the rest of my life seeking God and his heart rather than worrying about my next step, preparing for MY plans......because....
I mean.....what if I die?
Marissa in Positano
So why am I blogging about my shopping trip?
no clue....
BUT
I am excited.
Yesterday, I went to Phil's Shoes for their discount buy one get 2nd for a penny sale.....and now I own all 3 olympic medal color shoes......bronze from Italy, and then 2 pair I bought yesterday silver flats and gold heels from BCBG.....
The only reason I mention the shoe brand is that today, as we were shopping at St. Johns, we passed the BCBG Max Azria store and I mentioned to my mom that it was the same shoe brand that I bought yesterday. They were having a sale, so we popped in. I found a pair of wool khaki/brown pants with a sticker of $208........with a 70% discount, I bought them for $62!!!!! I was planning on buying some editor pants from Express, and they would have been MORE than that! So I needed some black pants too and proceeded to Express....but I was detoured by a Banana Republic sale.....and I bought black pants for $38!!! Wow.....yeah....I know that some people won't be impressed by this news, but I was excited. So we finally made it to Express where I bought 2 button downs.....
So.....here's the rundown of all of my new work wardrobe/really fun clothing as of late
Target:
4 pairs of shoes
Phil's Shoes:
2 pairs of METALLIC shoes
Steve & Barry's:
Sarah Jessica Parker clothes and 2 jackets
St. Johns:
2 Pants and 2 shirts
YAY ME! Yeah, I sound like London Tipton :)
I promise.....you will totally be more proud of my next blog.....
Try this....
I dare ya :)
www.gizoogle.com
Many mornings were spent with me in front of one of those windows overlooking the Golfo di Salerno reading my bible seeking out what God had to teach me in those days. Even when I wasn't reading anything, there were times I would just stare out the window at the amazing view God had blessed us with. Many days I would become fascinated with the goings on at the port or the regattas that seemed to happen every weekend in the spring and summer. 
