Beauty From Ashes

“God can take what Satan meant for shame and use it for His glory. Just when we think we’ve messed up so badly that our lives are nothing but heaps of ashes, God pours His living water over us and mixes the ashes into clay. He then takes this clay and molds it into a vessel of beauty. After He fills us with His overflowing love, He can use us to pour His love into the hurting lives of others.”

- Lysa TerKeurst

photo via weheartit

Anyway

People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. 
If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. 
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. 
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. 
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. 
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

-Mother Teresa 

Keep Believing Life Can Be Brighter

I know that life is busy and hard, and that there’s a crushing pressure to just settle down and get a real job and khaki pants and a haircut. But don’t. Please don’t. Please keep believing that life can be better, brighter, broader, because of the art that you make. Please keep demonstrating the courage that it takes to swim upstream in a world that prefers putting away for retirement to putting pen to paper, that chooses practicality over poetry, that values you more for going to the gym than going to the deepest places in your soul. Please keep making art for people like me, people who need the magic and imagination and honesty of great art to make the day-to-day world a little more bearable.

And if, for whatever reason, you’ve stopped– stopped believing in your voice, stopped fighting to find the time–start today.

- Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

Things They Should Teach You In School

• How to love someone.
• How to tell someone they’ve hurt you.
• How to apologize without defending yourself.
• How to tell someone you don’t love them anymore.
• How to resist impulse spending.
• How to be polite and assertive.
• How to ask for help.
• How to take responsibility for your own happiness.
• How to have empathy for others.
• How to surround yourself with people who add value to your life.
• How to live within a budget.
• How to have a good attitude.
• How to repair damaged trust.
• How to appropriately handle anger.
• How to forgive someone who breaks your heart.
• How to follow through with commitments.
• How to admit mistakes.
• How to let your passions shape your profession.
• How to find a stress-relieving outlet. 
• How to make new friends.
• How to pursue the truth.
• How to be a good sibling.
• How to choose the right spouse.
• How to have confidence.
• How to have age-appropriate style.
• How to find creative solutions to problems.
• How to have convictions and stay open to new ideas.

My Soulmate Is The One Who Made My Soul

I never knew I could love someone the way I love God. I am so self-focused at times, only paying attention to the anxieties and desires of my own heart. I’ve carried that selfishness into too many of my relationships. But God’s beauty and grace are so big that it doesn’t leave much room for my selfish demands or insecurities. With Him, I become unaware of my darkness because His light illuminates everything. He makes me see that beautiful things are happening all around me.

I write often about my relationship with God for the same reason anyone writes about someone they love. Love changes your heart. And when someone else is responsible for making you more passionately engaged in life, you feel overwhelmed with gratitude. You want to take that love and turn it into a song or a poem or a blog post– something that might plant a seed of inspiration in someone else’s life someday. You want everyone to feel the elation you feel.

I don’t expect you, whoever you are reading this, to have the same thoughts, opinions, or religious views as me. We each walk our own paths and I think everyone’s story is uniquely beautiful. My hope for you is that sometime throughout your journey, you find a love that makes you see the beauty around you. A love that makes you drink in the colors of fall and the taste of sunshine. A love that inspires you to fill a canvas with every hidden hope in your heart. Whether you find it in your Creator, or a person, or a painting, or a book; don’t stop until you find that love. You deserve to find something that makes you look outside yourself and realize that hope fills every corner of your life.

[photo reblogged via weheartit] 

Whatever You Are, Be A Good One.

Girl,
You are sensational.
What you have to
say is important.
It is relevant.
You are undeniable.
You are capable.
Indescribable.
Revolutionary.
You are beautiful.

-Gala Darling

Twenty-four.

Twenty-four is a weird age because my friends and I are all in different places.

We are single, dating, engaged, or married. We are purchasing homes, renting tiny apartments, or living in our parents’ basement. We are pursuing degrees, realizing dreams, working at dead-end jobs, or unemployed. We are saving money, living paycheck to paycheck, or accumulating debt. We are walking with God or walking away from the religion our parents forced on us.

We are figuring ourselves out. We are making choices about relationships. We are deciding whether we’ll leave something good for the possibility of something great. We are battling fears of commitment, or fears of being alone. We are falling in love with others, or falling in love with who we are in the world as individuals.

We are deciding what the rest of our lives will look like.

And me? I’m reaching. I am reaching for the courage to dream a little bigger. I am reaching for friends who think that God is awesome and life is beautiful. I am letting go of relationships that make me feel like less than I am. I am shifting memories to the back of my mind and making room for better ones. I am embracing the parts of myself that I love and confronting the parts of myself that need improvement.

I am realizing that I don’t want the next few years to be easy. I want them to be filled with beauty and breaking and everything else it takes to have an extraordinary life. I want whatever it takes to become a woman whose life is centered on Jesus. I want whatever it takes to become a wife who never stops finding new ways to fall in love with her husband. I want whatever it takes to become a mom who sets up a tent in the backyard and stays up late roasting marshmallows with her kids so they look back at their childhood and see happy things. I want whatever it takes to become a friend that other people can count on, no matter what.

I love being twenty-four because it means that the days ahead will be filled with love and courage and growth… I’m ready for it.

Summer Goals

♥ Avoid gossip.

♥ Be sincere. Be dorkily earnest.

♥ Remember the big picture.

♥ Show love towards everyone (including myself).

♥ Show gratitude. Everyday.

♥ Treat people as if they were what they ought to be & help them to become what they are capable of becoming.

“When you give up on your dreams, you put God in a box. After all, you are His creation. He made you for a purpose. Therefore your life cannot be limited any more than God’s love can be contained.” 
–Nick Vujicic

Your turn, lovely readers! What are your goals and dreams right now?

May God Bless Your Socks Off Today

I love you all. ♥ ♥ ♥

On Creating Hope & Celebrating Life

Sometimes interactions with strangers impact me more than relationships I’ve spent years building.

The various volunteer projects I’m involved in introduce me to strangers nearly every week. I become attached to these people, even after only meeting them once. I wish I could say that I get attached because I make a profound impact on their lives, but that’s not true. I’m a face in the crowd and most of them will forget me as soon as I walk out the door.

But, they make a profound impact on my life.

These strangers uncover the good things in me. The sincere, unguarded, optimistic parts of myself that get lost somewhere beneath the sarcasm and other protective shields I put up. These beautiful people give me more than I ever give them. They help me find the places of my heart that have become calloused with disappointment. They reveal the blessings in my life that I never bothered to notice.

Last week I felt completely discouraged and worthless, but I went to my volunteer shift at the hospital anyway. I was asked to keep a young woman company. She’s close to my age… and paralyzed from the neck down. As soon as I met her, I dropped my dejected attitude and became what she needed: optimistic and hopeful. I became her hands as I fed her dinner and colored pictures for her.

This girl probably won’t remember me, but I think about her all the time now. I think about how she asked me to dial her mom and hold the phone to her ear. Even on my worst day, I can pick up the phone to call my mom. Or go for a run. Or drive around aimlessly. I cried the entire drive home from the hospital because God blessed me with beautiful, functioning hands and I never even thanked Him for them.

Service is not just about helping other people; it’s about healing your own soul while you help others. You may think that you don’t have anything to give, but I promise you that if you give what you can… God will keep giving you more to give away. The more I get involved in the lives of strangers, the more I want to be involved. They unknowingly teach me about the really beautiful things in life and they help me see the really beautiful things in myself.

God gave me hands and feet. God gave me today. And I’m happy to have them.