One Thing

I have been encouraged by my host team leaders at church, and a message they hear from our pastor to pray and search for a word to define this year.  I won't lie, I've never done this before even though I know many people who have.  This year though, I want a word.  But alas, the month is almost over and I haven't really felt like I've found one.  Until tonight.

During worship tonight at church we sang several songs that were incredibly timely and appropriate for how I feel in life right now.  It all started with "We are the Free" (Matt Redman), "White Flags" (Chris Tomlin, and then we got to this one:

I am doing things I have NEVER (literally) done or even been capable of doing before.  I feel better than I can ever remember feeling.  I have cheerleaders.  I have God teaching me miraculous new things from something as normal as healthy eating and working out.  It is a very powerful thing.  I don't exactly know yet how to describe this journey God is taking me on or where I think it will end up.  But for now, one step at a time, this song is motivation enough to keep it up.

So this brings us to my word.  I think my word for this year is VICTORY.

I have fought many a battle in my life--financial, physical, mental.  Some of them are recurring battles in which I have never found victory.  This repeated defeat has left deep pains in my emotional, mental and spiritual life.  It's just how things are, it happens.

But my faith is stronger than it's ever been, and I think this is the year for victory.  And when the war is won, I know it will have been nothing short of the miraculous help, strength and provision of God.

Here are my VICTORY verses that I have found so far:

• For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory.” Deut 20:4
• 
  
• Now this I know:
      The Lord gives victory to his anointed.
  He answers him from his heavenly sanctuary    with the victorious power of his right hand. Psalm 20:4
• 
  
•  I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Phil 4:13

Crafting Like Crazy!

So, This week I've been in a crazy crafting mood-- crochet, decoupage clipboards, and today's project: my personal favorite Owl themed drawer pulls for Maggie's room!

Looking back, Looking ahead.

Tonight--for some strange reason, I decided it was finally time to clean out my facebook message inbox. Let me tell you, it's been a LOOONG time (aka the creation of my facebook account). A few pages in, I found several e-mails from the time when I was living in Tulsa...and a few immediately following. As I was reading them, I remember how devastated I was that MY PLANS weren't working out, and yet a big part of my heart just giggled inside.

I have such awesome plans. I'm a great planner, as it turns out. But it took the failure of my plans to convince me that God's plans were much better. In the two and a half years since I moved back home, I have had the time of my life. It's funny how one day, you can think that you life is over--nothing fun left to happen and then all of a sudden--God. It amazes me how through little situations every day, God reaffirms that I am heading in the right direction. For me, becoming a teacher is about so much more than providing an education for children. It's about using the talents and desires God instilled in me to shape my life into the Life God had planned for me from the very beginning. I don't know about you, but I think that is just basically awesome. :)

...Just my thoughts.

Oh dear goodness...

Want to hear how it all worked out? It's a pretty crazy story. Let's start back at the beginning.

In February, I spent a week in some serious prayer asking for God to show me where I needed to student teach. Basically I had two choices: Move home to Rocky, student teach in Sentinel and work in a really small school but live with my parents for free; OR student teach in the OKC area, and...well, just hope I could find a place to live, but get my feet wet in schools in a larger area since that is where I was hoping to end up anyway. Ultimately, I really felt led to come to the city area and just find a way for it to work.

Application deadlines came, and went. I applied for OKC, and waited and waited and waited to hear back. In the waiting I began to get nervous. Where was I going to live? How was I going to pay my bills? What if the school I was hoping to student teach at rejected me? Had I made the wrong decision?

Finally toward the end of April, the school got back with me. I was assigned to student teach in 5th grade for six weeks, and 7th grade math for six weeks--perfect. Now on to all of the other questions.

Then, life happened. :)

One night, someone showed up at my parents' house and asked if they would be interested in selling their house. Of course. So they showed her the place, she loved it. After a week of prayer, they were ready to hear her offer and begin the search for a new place. The next Saturday we looked at houses--made an offer on our dream house on Sunday, and the seller had accepted by Monday! Now, just a short month later--we have moved into our new home.

It's amazing how once things started moving, how quickly it all came together. Over and over through this all we have been reassured that God's handiwork is responsible. It is so amazing to see how He moves in our lives when we wait for His timing. I cannot wait to see what else he has in store for our whole family with these new developments!!!

Life!

It is amazing to me that graduation is so close! On Saturday, I will don my cap, gown and my hood for my Masters' degree!!! I am so excited, I have been planning for this weekend for almost two months now. My other graduation was just another day, but this one is really exciting and special to me for some reason. :D

I am also super excited to announce that I have my student teacher placement! I will be working in a school in the metro area, teaching 5th grade for 6 weeks and 7th grade math for 6 weeks. As it turns out, I still don't have a solid plan for the summer or where I will live during student teaching, but I have been doing what legwork I can, and trusting God's plan. I know it will all work out. :)

Reflecting

I went to a conference this weekend. At said conference I was told that part of the problem with our lives feeling so crazy is that we don't take the time to sit back and reflect on what is going on in our lives. It's like eating, eating, eating, without ever letting yourself go through the digestion process. I'm not going to say that I'm going to try to journal or blog every day or anything, but honestly what they said seems to make sense so I'm going to try to be more consistent.

I am currently in my last semester of regular classes before going out to do my student teaching. I'm crazy excited. So much so that I'm finding myself with a good old case of senioritis. Somehow I've managed to stay motivated enough to stay just on top of my coursework and job responsibilities, but for the most part I'm highly unmotivated.

Although, maybe it is best to note that un-motivated to me really just means "inappropriately motivated". I've had plenty of time to think up possible scenarios in which I work all summer, and somehow miraculously have enough money to support myself through student teaching. I also have been thinking about where I want to go to church when I move. Where I will student teach, how that will work out. How my dream of actually passing the Spanish OSAT really could come true. You know, other fun stuff. :)

Also this weekend I heard a quote that is kind of changing the way I think about everything. It says "When we fear things, I think we wish for them...every fear hides a wish." Thanks David Mamet for obviously reading my mail. I think this is such an interesting and yet super true assessment. So many times in life, the very things I say I don't want to do because they are "too scary" end up being the things I feel most led by God to do. I'm not saying that in the sense that God is mean and makes us do stuff we don't want to do, I'm saying that in the sense that when you really trust Him he allows you to go through this beautiful process where your greatest fears become your greatest desires and passions in life. I practically ran away from being a teacher when I was in school before because I was terrified of being unfit to help kids learn and grow. I'm still terrified by that prospect and yet I'm convinced nothing in the world will ever be more "right" for me than being a teacher. I'm terrified of other things too, and although I doubt there will be many people reading this, I don't feel comfortable talking about them in a public forum.

So, I guess if you do happen to be reading this, what are you wishing for? :) I hope it's something God-sized and laughably impossible, because that's exactly what I'm afraid of.

Fall Break

People told me that going to Africa would change my life. How pompous of me to think them wrong. I’m having trouble fully processing the things that I saw and experienced while in Ethiopia, but I can say with certainty that no where I have been has moved my heart as much as that place. In the past week, I have had the privilege to hang out with orphans with a passion for God and a zeal for life that is rare back home—even among people who have practically every opportunity handed to them. I got to enjoy coffee with hookers, who apparently thought our visit was special just because we weren’t afraid to look them in the eyes. I was able to hold a precious baby girl who was came into this world along with her twin brother only ten days ago—their home? A leper colony. I got to play with a little baby named Moses, who must be destined for great things because Satan seriously wanted him dead. Plus I got to meet a kid who lived in the dump and then through sponsorship, got an education and went back to his home and has helped get over 250 kids out of the dump and into a boarding school. I got to hear a choir of teenage boys sing their hearts out to God—I think it’s the closest to being in heaven singing with the angels that I’ve ever been.

And to think, this is merely a glimpse into a small portion of the things that happened over my “fall break.”

I’m guessing, my processing isn’t finished, because this is all I have to say right now. More to come.

Thoughts

Since I last posted, I have decided to go on a mission trip. What's insane about this all is that it's during Fall break (which we don't actually have at the school I work at). It feels almost irresponsible in a perfectly God kind of way. Originally, I was so wrapped up in school that I didn't get started on fundraising right away. Then, before I knew it--I had 5 weeks to raise $2,500. Yikes! God miraculously provided and now my trip is completely paid for! PLUS, I have the money to pay for the shots I am getting on Wednesday and I have shirts and gifts to take over as well from various people willing to donate stuff rather than money. Man, I am just amazed. :) In less than a month, I will be flying out of OKC headed to Ethiopia with my good friend Bre and some Tulsa friends Kevin and Sue. Sweet!

Also since my last post, my beautiful new little sister has come home from China. Maggie is 3. When I say that I mean she is very three--vibrant, loud, silly and stubborn. Only she is vibrant, loud, silly, and stubborn mostly in Chinese. It's quite an adventure, but I can't imagine a better fit for our family. Maggie is so much fun to have around, and now she finally knows my name so when she sees me she says "Toni" instead of "Hi, Maggie" :D



In other news, I had a stunning realization yesterday. I graduate in May. I'll still have a semester left, but the official ceremony is in May. Wow. Last Fall when I started it seemed so distant I didn't know if I would actually end up finishing, but now I'm just two short semesters away from having finished all the coursework for my Master's degree. Once again God is cool.

God has really been working on my mind lately. When I decided to go back to school, I chose an Elementary Education goal because I thought it would be the most fun and rewarding career path. Now something in my mind keeps saying that I'm not going to be teaching elementary, I'm going to work in a middle school. I find that thought utterly terrifying and yet, I'm slowly beginning to accept it as another suprising reality of my life. Of course, if God happened to put me in an elementary job, I wouldn't turn it down. :) hehe.

I guess this post is really of no importance. It's just a mere retelling of the goings-on. But Ok, I'm done. :)

Wow.

There are times in life where God and His hand seem so far away. You trust that they are there, but you just can't feel Him. Then there are times where God shocks and astounds you over and over in a miraculously brief amount of time.

This week has been the latter of those 2.

More to come...

I am getting increasingly bad at this...

It's currently summer break. I haven't posted since Christmas break. In case you didn't notice the pattern, it seems that I'm incredibly busy during the school year. In the past week I have wrapped up my first year working for WOCS (awesome!). I am also done working at Burcham for the school year, and I have moved from my apartment.

My new apartment is great, it's a 2nd floor unit that used to have 2 bedrooms. Now basically I have a GIANT bedroom/office and the rest of the place is fairly nice too. :) I'll try to post pictures soon, it's crazy but it already feels more homey than my other place ever did.

In other news Maggie is coming home soon, and I can't wait! I'm very sad to say I will be unable to go to China with the family this time around, but I'll be taking summer school and won't be able to miss class. :(

I think those are all of the really pertinent updates for now. I promise I'll try to think of something more meaningful and post more often.