quick update

Quick bullet-like update of my life:

*it is awesome.

*I am still living in Flag and doing an internship in Sedona.

*I leave Flagstaff after 6 1/2 WONDERFUL years in two and half weeks to go to.....Phoenix. It almost kills me every day, but then I tell myself there is something good ahead. I just don't know what. These are all pictures from around Flagstaff.

*God is doing really sweet things in my relationships right now with several different friends.

*This past weekend was the BEST in a long time. Perfect perfect weather; lounging outside with friends; Crystal visited from Tucson; spent a few hours outside with Jesus, a guitar, and a new friend; Rusty was in town; played guitar at church; exercised and actually had FUN; didn't think about school once; hung out with the Scotts twice in two days! Really good moments all.

*We bought a harness and LEASH for my cat, Jasper. Yes, you read correctly. More on that when there IS more on that...

*I am reading several good books right now, including "Jesus with Dirty Feet", "The Shack", and others.

*I am going to Salt Lake City this weekend with Rusty to attend my friend, Jon Umbriaco's wedding! I became friends with Jon when we traveled to Thailand together twice and spent four months total living at an orphanage in the northern tribal mountains near Chiang Rai. He is a deep friend, and he has been blessed with a wonderful woman to marry! The ceremony is on Saturday, we'll be gone all weekend!

That's all I got energy for today, but I hadn't written for a while, and I thought maybe some people would be lost on just the simple logistics of my life because it's an in the air sort of life right now. Hope this helps keep everyone in the know! Peace!

Acts 4:20

"For we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard"...(Acts 4:20)

This week has been completely and utterly radical. I must speak about it to the glory of God!

I have to preface the telling of God's awesomeness in my week by first reflecting on the state of my relationship with him recently.

Throughout college, even graduate school, and up until the end of this summer, I have been blessed with extraordinary amounts of TIME to spend with God. Regretedly, I have taken this for granted some of the time, but for the most part I have loved and enjoyed this period in my life. Hours in the forest, cliffside to the Grand Canyon, or at a local lake were spent playing my guitar, meditating over Scripture, asking God about the future, soaking in his character and trying to let him teach me who I am in him.

Time in the morning before class, in the early afternoon when my day had totally finished, retreats and missions trips. It was impossible to ignore the Spirit's leading and presence in such exotic circumstances and environments.

Then, on August 18th, I got hit with my first reality of adult life. Goodbye, TIME. Sunday the 17th, I was still a student and I had all the time in the world, as usual, to be with the Lord. Monday morning, my internship (aka real life) starts...goodbye to that luxury. Suddenly it was a struggle to find half an hour. In the span of 24 hrs I went from hours in the woods to 15 measly minutes in my truck in my work parking lot. How did that happen!?

At first I was extremely discouraged. How worth it could 15 minutes a day be? How could God ever do anything with that, and would I ever benefit from it? I felt demoted to a lower kind of relationship with him.

And then I found out how much of a lie those thoughts were.

HERE is the Truth:

-God is powerful enough to do something glorious with the time I have.

-I will benefit from seeking him, no matter how pressed the circumstances.

-I am just as much if not MORE in relationship with him daily now than when I had the luxury

to go on these exotic retreats and adventures from time to time.

-He is sufficient to fill me daily.

-He deserves glory for who he is and what he has done.

God has taken that 15 minutes a day and expanded them to feel like hours. He has taught me more in the past month about following him day by day than any other time I can remember! He has taught me the power of consistent relationship with him, and the necessity of being filled by his joy DAILY, not in huge fill ups and then times of emptiness.

THIS is why my week has been so exciting. It stems from this regular meeting with Jesus and attempting to follow him throughout the rest of the day in a real way.

One of the books I am currently reading covered this passage in the Bible:

"He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice" John 10:4

It inspired me, along with an earlier section of the book, to ask God simple questions and actually listen for his voice. So, I practiced this week. I asked Jesus at the beginning of the day and throughout the day, "Where are you leading me right now" or "What do you want me to do today?" and then I tried to hear what he said.

The radical part: he has actually said things. I heard them. I DID them. Something incredible happened each time. He received glory.

A simple sequence, but so BEAUTIFUL when I actually participated in it this week. Over and over I would feel like he wanted me to do something, I did it, and like, completely unbelievable things happened because of it! People were encouraged, given joy during despair, found hope where it had been seriously lacking, relationships were strengthened or even built out of thin air, people were made to feel valueable for the first time in a while, two in particular saw God more clearly than ever before. I mean, all in a week! What?!?! God, what would happen if we all did this all the time? Asked you what to do, LISTENED, and DID IT!?! I think we would be blown away with so much excitement and praise, we would wonder what we have been doing all along.

"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing." James 1:22-25

A good chuckle for Friday

Hey everyone,

Here is an exerpt from a book I am currently reading. The title is "Everybody's Normal till You Get to Know Them"by John Ortberg.

He is talking about how many people can be so serious that they don't want people to see them make mistakes; but how sometimes making a blunder can bring folks together in funny ways and be the real joy in life". Then he gives this example:


The church where I work videotapes most of the services, so I have HUNDREDS of messages on tape. Only of of them gets shown repeatedly.

This video is a clip from the beginning of one of our services. A high school worship dance team had just brought the house down to get things started, and I was supposed to transition us into some high energy worship by reading Psalm 150. This was a last-second decision, so I had to read it cold, but with great passion:
"Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament!"
The psalm consists of one command after another to praise, working its way through each instrument of the orchestra. My voice is building in a steady crescendo; by the end of the psalm I practically shout the final line, only mispronouncing one word:
"Let everything that has breasts, praise the LORD."

A moment of silence. The same thought passes through four thousand brains: Did he just say what I think he did? In church? Is this a new translation I can get at a bookstore?
Then everyone in the place just lost it. They laughed so hard and so long, I couldn't say a thing. I finally just walked off the stage, and we went on with the next part of the service.

I have been teaching at that church for eight years. Of all the passages I have exegeted and all the messages I have preached, that is the one moment that gets replayed before conferences and workshops over and over.

So, everybody LIGHTEN up today and enjoy whatever silliness comes your way! Thank God for laughter and Fridays, especially when they are combined!

Come on Dbacks!

I have been failing miserably at finding time to write posts, obviously!

Life has been fairly busy these first few weeks of my internship. I have now completed three weeks out of eight (almost half way!), and it is still going very well. I love the people I work with, and I love the patients more. They are still teaching me alot, both about physical therapy and about life. Today I read this verse in the Bible:

"Even though the outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal." 2 Cor. 4:16-18

and I can really see that in certain patients. Though their outward body is perishing quickly, inwardly they are being renewed day by day as a result of their relationship with Christ. They have their eyes on the eternal, which far outweighs the temporary external. It is awesome.

In other news, I visited my family in Phoenix last weekend for Labor Day! I shared pictures of Europe with them and we saw the Dbacks come back to crush the Cardinals in a fantastically exciting game at Chase Field on Monday! Now if only they could get some bite going tonight (as they are currently getting SCHOOLED by the Dodgers in a really important game)! Everyone think good thoughts.


In the near future, I have much more interning and much more capstone writing to look forward to! I am also going to the wedding of a great friend in Salt Lake City, and I will hope to enjoy fall as it is basically UPON us here in Flag! Temps have been in the 40's when I go to work in the morning. Brrr!

Hope you are all well. Have a good weekend!