"He is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings the grass from the earth."
-2 Samuel 23:4
Well, I haven't done a post of my picnik edits lately, and I have done a bunch recently so at the end of this I'll put some on here. I feel so old to actually be able to say that I'm leaving for college in two weeks. COLLEGE. Man, I'm old. It's such a cliche, but it really does feel like yesterday that I was seven years old, and all of a sudden I am eighteen and off to college. Don't get me wrong, I really am so excited to see what all God has planned for me (and I know He has a lot planned for me, check out Jeremiah 29:11!) and it will be so rewarding and incredible just to be able to watch His will for my life start to unfold. I am also looking forward to making a lot of new friends. I adore my friends I have now, but I have been friends with the same girls for the past eighteen years, so it will be really new and interesting to be able to become close friends with a new group of people (while keeping the old, amazing ones, of course). One thing I am most excited about, though, is getting to dance with new girls, and learn from new teachers, and work with new choreographers. I feel like this will be a really fun step closer to my future as a dancer, and I cannot wait to get started with it! One thing I am a little nervous about is academics, and just adjusting to real school. I have been homeschooled since kindergarten, and so this will be a HUGE adjustment to go from only me at home, really teaching myself for the most part, to going to a campus with others students, with an actual teacher teaching me and assigning me homework that I have to get done by a certain date. It's all so different than what I have become used to over the years, but I have faith that after a while it will become the new "normal" for me. There's a little life update from me. I move into my dorm in exactly two weeks from tomorrow, which will be August 20th. I can't wait!
Here are the picnik photos I promised... P.S. If you want a picture done, you can contact me via facebook or email { taylor_ellen13@hotmail.com } and send me a picture and words you want on it!
One of my favorite verses...and this picture is such a great reminder
for me that everything, especially my dancing, is to bring God glory,
not myself.
Frank Sinatra song + ballet = the perfect mix
I'm definitely feeling the truth of this statement right now in my life!
You know the phrase, "When life gives you lemons..." The thing is, however, that it's not life that gives the lemons, but God, and God sometimes like to throw us a curve ball.
As humans, we like to be able to control the things around us (one reason why a lot of marriages fail, I believe, but that's another blog post for another time), but you see, God likes to have control even more than we do, but the thing is, that He is all powerful, so unlike when we are in control, when He controls things, it works. But we don't like to give Him control, and we don't like to be without a plan, feeling helpless. So what we do is we like to plan every little detail out, leaving no room for His will at all.
Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
He has a plan for you. No matter how old you are, no matter where you are in life, He has a perfect plan. He has every detail of your life planned out perfectly, it's when we take control ourselves that things start to go wrong. When we take control bad things happen, messes are made, people are broken. But there's something great...God likes to take our messes, our bad situations, and our brokenness and turn them into something beautiful. Yes, that's right, I said beautiful.
Take Mary for example. There she is, minding her own business when one day, out of the blue, an angel appears to her, telling her that she's with child, and that the child she's carrying is going to be the long awaited Savior and Messiah that her people have been expecting for hundreds of years. But that wasn't in her plans! Her plan was to marry Joseph, the carpenter, and have a few children down the road maybe once she got out of her teens, and live a nice life with him. But God threw her a curve ball...He gave her some lemons. She must have initially thought that her world was coming to an end. What were her parents going to say about this baby? Joseph would surely break off the engagement! But God had even that taken care of, and what beautiful things came out of her confusing, seemingly hopeless situation!
Think about Abraham. Here he is, over one hundred years old at this point, God had been faithful in providing him and Sarah, even in their old age, with the promised son, Isaac. Isaac was to be the beginning of generations of offspring for Abraham, and then, all of a sudden, God tells Abraham to sacrifice this promised son. Abraham must have been nearly out of his mind! I can imagine Him after God told him this, "Sacrifice?! You mean...KILL my son? The one YOU promised and provided for me? You have GOT to be kidding, God." But God was not kidding, He was dead serious (no pun intended...well, maybe a little was intended), and He wanted to see how Abraham would respond. God threw Abraham some lemons.
What about Ruth? Here she is, recently married with no children, and then all of a sudden, her husband, along with her brother-in-law and father-in-law are dead. The only family she has is her sister-in-law, Orpah, and her mother-in-law, Naomi. What on earth is she supposed to do? She has nowhere to go, no one to turn to. God tells her to remain with Naomi and He provided everything for the two women, and He had a plan all the way to the end, even in bringing Ruth to Boaz.
So really, it isn't about the lemons or why they've been thrown. It's about what you do with them. "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Making lemonade means to surrender yourself and your plans to the Lord and to learn to have complete and total faith in Him, the one who threw the lemons. No matter what things are happening in your life, know that God has a perfect plan for you and whatever the situation is. He can make something beautiful out of anything.
"Going a little farther, He fell with his face to the ground and prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.' "
{Matthew 26:39}
"And He said, 'There was a man who had two sons.And the younger of them said to his father, "Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me." And he divided his property between them.Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need.So he went and hired himself out toone of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs.And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.
But when he came to himself, he said, "How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.' "And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.And the son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son."But the father said to his servants, "Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate.For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." And they began to celebrate.' "
So I have pretty much failed at blogging lately...and I was doing so well. This week I have been wasting a lot of time watching TV, which flipping endlessly through channel after channel I realize is about 99% trash. One show that intrigued me tonight though, was this show on TLC called "My Strange Addiction". You may have seen it, or maybe not, but it follows people who are addicted to things, but not your typical drug or cigarette addiction. On the couple of episodes I watched, it covered everything from a woman addicted to eating couch cushions to a middle-aged woman who wore way too much makeup 24 hours a day, even to sleep in. It was ridiculous. One thing however that they all had in common was that their addictions, whatever they were, had grown so intense that they were consuming their lives. Think about that word: consume. What does that mean? According to dictionary.com it means to destroy or to exhaust.
When it comes to my relationship with God, I feel as though lately I have been in a rut. I'm simply lacking a desire to spend time with Him and lacking that passion within me, the one that is supposed to be on fire for Him and His kingdom. No matter how much I have tried, I see that all my "trying" has been weak. My efforts have failed because I have barely put in effort into it at all. What does all that have to do with "My Strange Addiction" and the word consume? Everything...at least for this blog post.
I leave for college in approximately 5 weeks. I am going to a school where I know no one and have all the opportunities in the world to be a witness to EVERYONE I meet, because everyone I come in contact with will be brand new to me, and my first impression can be Christ. Yet, how am I supposed to do that? Well, that brings us back to the whole "consume" thing. As I watched that show, I saw how their addictions were overtaking their lives, and I remembered that verse that says "For the Lord your God is a consuming fire..." {Deuteronomy 4:24} Just as an addiction can consume a person's life, God can consume it as well. I don't know about you, but I definitely want to be addicted to Christ and have my life be consumed by Him.
But let's go back to that dictionary definition: destroy and exhaust? Yep.
Destroy. Thinking of God destroying your life doesn't sound very promising, but if you think about it, it does indeed. If one is consumed by Christ, He will destroy your worldly life and bring you to a point of concern for your spiritual life. Now, that IS a good thing!
Exhaust. The word exhaust just makes me want to go take a long nap. But really exhaust means that all energy and effort is completely used up. The word exhaust applies in two ways in this situation. The first is that if you are consumed by Christ, all your energy and effort will be used up on serving the Lord and not serving your selfish desires. The second is that all of Satan's energy and effort in tempting you will be used up in vain , because if you are truly consumer by Christ, you will no longer want to go aroudnd sinning.
Starting right now, I am going to start putting so much more effort into my relationship with Christ in order that He might consume my life and set my passion for Him ablaze once again.
It's been a while since I have had a music post, and lately I have been on youtube everyday discovering some awesome music. Here is what I've found or been obsessed with lately.
-taye
Been OBSESSED with this one
With a lot of searching, I have a found a few not-so-heard-of songs by my favorite band Mumford and Sons, this one was my favorite.
During my boredom this weekend, I started playing around with some choreography to The Frames' song "Falling Slowly" and so I looked up some other stuff by the band, this one is great!
I don't know if it's just the fact that it's summer and I haven't had much to do this week, or if it's just getting ready for college, but lately I have been doing a lot of "reflecting" on my life so to speak, which leads to a lot of random blog posts from me. But anyway, here's something I've been thinking about today and pretty much all week I guess.
-taye
The Only Thing That's Good In Me Is JESUS
I am an encourager; that is one of my spiritual gifts. There is nothing like that joy I get from sending a Bible verse to a friend who needs it, or asking people how I can be praying for them. Ever since the end of my freshman year in high school, I decided that I was going to stop trying to fit in with the world and start living for Christ.
At our senior dinner at dance this year, the company girls all signed a picture frame for each of the seniors, as well as wrote a note to each of us, simply wishing us well as we move on to the college phase of our lives, and just what we have meant to them as dancers and as people in the years we have danced together. I nearly teared up when reading all of mine, and a couple of days ago, I went back and was reading some of the things people wrote to me. A couple of things that popped up included "Christians girl", "great role model" and "wonderful example". Now those are great things to be, and I feel honored that those girls said those things about me, but looking at myself from my point of view, I am not so sure that I would use those terms quite so passionately to describe myself.
I have had the privilege over this past year to be sort of a mentor to a 7th grade girl who dances at my studio, as well as goes to my church. At the end of the school year she wrote me a note. The note made me cry, because as well as me being an encouragement to her, she has been such an encouragement to me as well. But, there was one line in the note that said "every morning I wake up and ask myself how I can be more like you." More like ME?! I wanted to look her in the eyes and ask her if she was looking at the same girl that I was.
I am not a bad person compared to the world's standards. But being a Christian is not about not being a bad person. God calls us to be holy and perfect, just as He is holy and perfect. I am so F A R from perfect it is not even funny. To be quite honest, I struggle so much every single day just to keep at the front of my mind that I am supposed to be living for Christ and not giving in to my selfishness. As much as I hate to admit, most of the time I give in to my selfishness. I struggle every single day to fully know with all of my being that God is the only thing I need. Everything else comes second. Yet, I still struggle and fight with the thoughts that maybe if I had the perfect ballerina body or maybe if I was dating that guy I have liked for months now that just maybe then I could be happier. But I have to keep telling myself "no". One thing I really hate to admit is that so many times when I have asked friends every week how I can pray for them, I never get around to actually praying for them. Sometimes I have even lied and said I have been praying for them when I haven't.
All these things are just a few things I struggle and fight with every single day, and things I fail at every single day, and yet there are SO MANY MORE things just like them that I struggle with as well. It seems that no matter how many times I ask God's forgiveness and no matter how many times I tell Him that it will be different, I simply cannot be holy due to my sinful nature.
The thing that gives me hope though, is the knowledge that my God is making me new everyday, and that He does still forgive me after all my failures and mistakes. That He still loves me unconditionally, in spite of the fact that I cannot be perfect, though I will continue to try because He calls me to.
"You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
This morning, as I was pouring my coffee, that cheesy little jingle came into my head:
"The best part of waking up is Folgers in a cup"
You know how it goes. It got me thinking what, to me, is the best part of waking up? Why is it that I get out of bed every morning to face the day before me? So I just starting thinking of some things in my head, and I promise you, I don't think I've ever written a legit poem in my life until now, but here it is.
-taye
The best part of waking up isn’t Folgers in a cup,
It’s knowing my God reigns and that He will never change,
That He has the power to conquer my foes,
And that He has the knowledge of days no one knows.
I know that He holds all my times in His hand,
And in the other He holds the whole world as it spins.
Day after day I am certain to fail,
Yet He holds forgiveness for all of my sins.
When I seek Him, His face I will surely find,
When I seek with all my heart, all my strength, and my mind.
On the cross He did bear all my sin and God’s wrath,
And then darkness came and covered the earth,
Yet darkness cannot keep Him and death has no hold,
For salvation and life shall follow Him home.
Though struggles I face and may be hated by all,
He gives me a promise, an eternal reward.
The earth on which I stand is not my home,
To the end I will endure, until I worship at the throne.
