Praise

Praise is something I've done often. Many times it was out of sense of obligation that as a Christian I need to praise God for the blessings He's given me in my life. Often when I have felt the lowest spiritually I will try to keep my longings for change and petitions to myself, and focus on praising God, but it often feels fake. However lately I have come to feel that my circumstances and life are completely out of my control right now. I'm in a holding pattern. Therefore, I feel like the more I think about it and what I can't change the more I begin to obsess and become ungrateful and often blind to what God has already blessed me with. I feel like I shouldn't be ungrateful. I also have recently felt that by not taking the time to recognize and acknowledge these blessings I'm being ungrateful. I know that my faith isn't about all the good things that I can get from God. Obviously struggle is necessary , but I believe that there is something so powerful about thanking God for the non material things, the little things in life that I normally would not consider as a gift from God. I believe that I have missed many of these moments in my life, but I think that for my true spiritual growth, I must be conscience about God working through the everyday seemingly unimportant details. In these small parts of life I hope to find and maintain a joyful spirit.
This is partially inspired by the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp which I'm waiting to receive and read. I also read an entry from Frances J. Roberts book Come Away My Beloved entitled "Learn to Reign" where she writes. "Praise Me, O y People Praise Me Praise me out of a  heart full of love. Praise me for every blessing and victory. Yea, and Praise me when the most difficult thing to do is to Praise. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even your faith and praise is the voice of faith." (168).

Update

It's been a crazy few weeks. I have been working a lot at my new job as well as volunteering for Flagler working on the civil rights archive that will hopefully launch in a few weeks. I also have been working on a presentation that I will be giving next week on my senior seminar topic for women's history month. I'm slightly terrified! I don't think it will be much of a problem once i get up there and start talking, I just hope everything makes sense and that it is interesting. I also have to tweak my presentation because I don't want it to really be just a paper presentation, but a genuine presentation. I am excited for the opportunity though.

I did receive the best birthday present on Friday! I found out that I got into the musuem studies program at George Washington Unviersity! I really didn't think I would get in, and it's just an amaizng thing to get in! I don't know if I'm going to end up going there because it is so expensive, but it would be awesome if I was able to go.

Finally, I have lost 25 pounds on Weight Watchers since I started in July. I have dropped two dress sizes and kinda love to shop now. I am hoping that I can get refocused a bit and really work to get quite a few more pounds off before I have to leave St. Augustine and my wonderful group here!

Done!

Well as of last night I have officially applied to all of my grad schools. There are four total and I am praying that I just get into one of them! I am applying to all of them for the programs either named museum studies or public history. Although they are all similar type programs they have different names for them.
I applied to:

I will find out from the schools beginning in about mid march. I am so nervous, but I no matter what I'm trusting God for His plan. Ideally UNC Greensboro is my first choice in schools for various reasons. I am ready to leave Florida! I love it here, but the program looks amazing, the tuition is the least of all schools, and North Carolina actually has seasons which I love.
So now that this little project is finished, I am probably going to keep plugging along with the class I'm auditing and perhaps edit a paper to submit to a history conference in February. I also have begun to watch videos that will be included in a new civil rights archive at my college, and abstracting the information out of them. I'm about half way through the first interview and it is so much fun! This is really the work I was born to do.

Passion 2011

This year at Passion was interesting. The group of people I was with were really great people and I realize that I am in an extremely different place in my life than last year. However I have really yet to process and unpack everything I learned and experienced from Passion so I'm not sure what I learned, or if something is going to happen in the next few weeks or months and something I heard at Passion will influence that. I'm in this really weird place right now where a lot is happening around me and I think the gist of it is that I'm unhappy.
I'm not a fan of being done with school right now. I'm not a person designed to just work in a job that doesn't involve my degree and field that I love. Which is what I'm doing right now. I miss the excitement of a new year and of mountains of school work as stressful as they are. Yet today I'm realizing that my unhappiness is taking me away from being present in this season of my life. I'm not really a fan of that either.
So I'm working on my attitude with my station in life right now and trying to enjoy the people in my life. I want my focus to be on my relationship with God and with others, and not on me as much. I often focus on my plan and the way I think things should go. However, I have to remember that I am not in control! I just need to rely on God and let Him do His thing, while I respond in such a manner that I carry His name effectively to those around me.

Passion 2011

Today I am leaving for what should be an amazing four days in Atlanta for Passion 2011. This college student conference will be a time of rejuvenation and just spending time with some great people and God. I was fortunate to go last year to Passion 2010 and although it was a very trying time. I also was given a vision for my life last year that I hope will also happen this year. I truly believe that this conference is the most brilliant thing ever created, and having the opportunity to listen to great speakers like Louis Gigilio, Francis Chan, and Beth Moore is just the tip of the iceburg. I also love having the opportunity to really make an impact on the community and world through Do Something Now!

If you have missed the opportunity for Passion 2011 in Atlanta. There will also be a second Passion 2011 in Fort Worth in April. I would recommend this conference for every college student!

Check out the website www.268generation.com for more information!

Merry Christmas

This has been a fun and rather eventful/different Christmas.
With a lot of changes and various situations my family has gone through in the past few months it was a bit different. But it was still a great day and I feel like this was the best day of family time that we've had in a long time which was really nice after a very long and stressful semester.
However, as always I remember what the true meaning of Christmas is all about and will enjoy being in my home church tomorrow morning with my family. Hope you had a great Christmas as well and here's to a happy new year!

Secret Santa

As a history major at a small liberal arts college it is really easy to have a bunch of classes with certain people. Well there is a core group of 5 that have become really close especially this past semester so we decided to have a secret santa since we can't afford to buy everyone a gift! We exchanged gifts tonight and I got the best gift from my good friend Melissa. Out of the 5 we have spent the most time together and know each other really well. As a history major and future museum curator I love old stuff! In fact last weekend we all went antiquing together. I have always wanted kitchen type stuff, but since I don't have my own kitchen I really didn't want to buy kitchen stuff. So instead Melisssa got me some for Christmas and it's all so cute I love it!!

The best thing are these milk bottles in the crate! They are sitting on my bedside table cubes and I am planning to go out and get some sort of flowers to stick in them! They are my favorite part.

I also got this sign that tells you how to make a lattice top cherry pie which I think is just so adorable. It is also pink which as everyone should know I love!!

A vintage potato masher that although i never intend to use will look adorable hanging on the wall one day.

And finally this vintage dish towel which is so cute!

I will be spending the rest of my evening chugging some Diet Coke and studying this.

The lovely GRE which I will be retaking on Monday. Although I am dreading it, I do feel slightly more prepared this time, hopefully my score will reflect that!

Graduation

I am officially a college graduate. Last week I graduated from Flagler College with a Bachelor of Arts in History with a minor in Political Science. It was a really fun day and I was so glad I was able to spend it with family and good friends. It is really weird to know that I am done and do not have to go to school anymore and is going to require an extreme amount of adjustment. Even though I plan to go to Grad School, I still have about 7 months of free time. I am in the process of working on and finishing up my grad school applications as well as studying for the GRE which I am taking on Monday. However, I have enjoyed the opportunity to sleep in and do things I haven't had the time to do in a while (like laundry). Enjoy the picture movie, they aren't all great pictures but they are fun and give you a little taste of my graduation.

What have I gotten myself into!

So I basically fail at blogging about Europe. I don't like to blog about it if I can't get the pictures up and Belgium pictures are the trickiest. It was a crazy day and they are just a bunch of random monument pictures. But I'm going to get them soon. However my life has been consumed by school this past month. Senior Seminar is in full swing and I'm working on my lovely topic, which I changed the focus of two days ago. I'm writing about Nurses and other Women who served in Vietnam during the war. I orgianally was going to focus on their involvement with Vietnamese civilians, but now I'm going to argue that Vietnam was a transitional war for women's roles in war kinda thing. Oh man I have no idea how exactly it's going to work yet. But it'll be fine in fact I think it will turn out better than before.
In other news I am taking the GRE on Saturday. I've been dreading it for months and now I am finally taking it. Unfortunatly I haven't really studied for it so I am hoping that I do well. I will be able to find out my score on two of the three sections right away because it is a computer based test so that is nice. I will know whether or not I need to take it again. I'm hoping for not, but I have a feeling that I will need to.
Other than that I've just been hanging out in between the mountains of school work. I started the Beth Moore Revelation study at church which is amazing and I'm super invovled with Fusion still. Hopefully I'll blog about Belgium and Germany soon!

Books!

So this week has been filled with books! I've ordered my books for school and they have started trickling in and I'm having to find places to put them. I've also had a very challenging summer with the Lord. I have definitely been touched by the Holy Spirit many times and things are moving and shaking here in St. Aug at my church. I'm really excited for the avenues that God will use me this year. But I haven't really had a good time this summer with a regular time with God and Bible reading and such. So I decided to seek out the help of one of my mentors for book recommendations. She recommended several to me and I decided to go to Barnes and Noble to see what I could find. I only found one that she recommended and boy has it been amazing already.
The Power of a Praying Woman by Stormie Omartian. Apparently this book has been around for quite a while, but it still packs quite a punch. I love it already and I've only read the intro and chapter 1. I'm really excited for the journey that this book is going to take me on.
I also impulsively bought Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I had heard of the book and then went to Passion 2010 conference and heard him speak. I really liked him and have wanted to read this book ever since. Plus many people have recommended it. I'm looking forward to starting this book and also being challenged in my walk with God.
My final purchase but not at Barnes and Noble, Amazon. Was Come away my beloved by Frances Roberts. This is also a book that was recommended to me and has been around for a very long time. I do not know much about it except for that it is pretty amazing and I can't wait to get it!

So those have been my recent book purchases. I will be doing my next Europe post soon. My short adventure in Belgium that was very interesting. I just have to get the pictures organized then it's on to Germany and Austria. This has been a very memorable summer and I cannot believe that school is only a week and a half away.