Rejoice, my friends, for The Lord is good!

And He is jealous for me
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden I am unaware of the afflictions eclipsed by glory
And I realize just how beautiful You are and how great your affections are for ME.

On this beautiful afternoon, I sit at my piano belting out these beautiful words. Belting them out when I should be in school, but instead I am home by myself and full of Advil, M&M's, uninteresting terms of biology, and still wearing that dreadful back brace. But that's ok. I'm doing pretty swell.

I've been thinking a lot about what I want this blog to be about, and what I don't want it to be about. I have been thinking about the words I want to say and how to say them, and what I want those words to portray about myself and about The Lord. Still haven't figured what I want this thing to be about (indecisive is my middle name), but I have figured out what I don't want it to be about. I don't want it to be about complaints. 1 Thessalonians 5:16 is the shortest verse in the Bible, but one of the hardest to apply to life. "Rejoice always". In my mind, we have two ways we can live life: we can rejoice a l l t h e t i m e, or we can sit and wallow in our own sorrow and complain. It's HARD to rejoice all the time. It's the last thing in our minds when things don't go our way in life (which, let's face it, is all the time) But The Lord has called us to be joyful, and joyful is a pretty sweet thing to be.

But anyways. Back to my piano and my sunny afternoon.

There are pictures hanging on the walls in the room that the piano is in of me and my two brothers as itty bitty kids. As I sang my little heart out to The Prince of Peace, I rejoiced over my life. I rejoiced over my brokenness,and how cool it's gonna be when I understand why some of the things that are happening right now are happening, and how the brokenness will become beauty. I sang for the little things, for the big things, for love, for hope, for my loving grandparents, for my beautiful and genuine YoungLife leader, for my sweet, sweet brothers, for my parents who are and have always done everything in their power to keep me at my happiest and healthiest, for my boyfriend who I don't brag on enough, for my friends at their best and my friends at their worst, for new seasons of life, for spare time, and for trust. Trust that is in the future and what it will hold for me, but more importantly who holds it for me. Wowza. That's a comforting thought.

I don't have everything together. In fact, there isn't much that I do have together. But I take delight in that, in the same way that Jesus takes delight in my pitchy voice and in my sinful self.

And that, my friends, is something to rejoice over. 

We are broken, we are bruised, but we are blessed. I write this blog as a promise to myself that I will live this life and focus on the good that is God.