leeyounger:

“Don’t start the day saying how much better you’re going to do or how much harder you’re going to try. Stop trying to be awesome. Instead, start the day talking about how completely you’re going to surrender to Jesus and depend on Him just to make it through.”

—

Lee Younger

ten things im thankful for right now.

[01] i had a lovely birthday. i felt celebrated, loved, and blessed by the people in my life. i spent my day with people i adore doing fun things and it was perfect.

[02] Gods provision and faithfulness. and that when i have an off day all i have to do is talk to Him about it and he knows just what i need to feel better or to understand better or just to feel comforted, whether it be a word or a friend or a sunny day.

[03] three. more. weeks. of. school. ever.

[04] the challenge to be more thankful.

[05] beautiful things being made from dust. not only in considering human creation, but that our God uses all things for His good. that a wonderful spring can come from a hard winter.

[06] country music. and it almost being the season when its the only music anyone should ever listen to.

[07] vegas in a month with my best friends.

[08] getting away with wearing yoga pants to work. also having a job and money to pay for things that i need.

[09] a love that never fails, never gives up, and never runs out. even after ive failed, given up, and ran out.

[10] the holy spirit that lives and breathes and moves in me.

(Source: groundedonthedaily)

something cool happened the other day.. this is how i shared it with some of my best friends:

Just got home from a super long day, opened my journal and poured onto a page about how hard it’s been for me to find time just to sit and pray in all of my busyness of school and work and life, and how it’s just crushing me lately, and especially today.
Put down my pen and prayed over it for a few and then opened Jesus Calling, in case you haven’t seen today’s, there is a line that reads, “Stillness of soul is increasingly rare in this world addicted to speed and noise. I am pleased with your desire to create a quiet space where you and I can meet. Don’t be discouraged by the difficulty of achieving this goal. I monitor all your efforts and am blessed by each of your attempts to seek my face.”
SO ENCOURAGED. I just wanted to share that with you guys because God is so fricken cool and I love y’all a lot.
Hope you’re all having great weeks and are encouraged by little things that God places in the busy days you have planned for yourselves.

God is good. and so incredibly faithful.

I was also encouraged by this verse in psalm 23: you have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from. true to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction. I think these past few months have been intended for me to catch my breath, to learn and grow from the hardness of this past winter, and to be prepared for this season coming up. its been a time of rest and learning to hold tight to truth and light and stand on it. 

Today’s entry in JC mentions that thankfulness should be as natural for us as breathing, which inspired me to take some time to write out things I am thankful for. This is what i wrote: Today I am thankful for four years spent at an incredible university that have made me a more insightful, more relate-able, less worldly, more faithful, less angry, more reliable, more accountable, less stubborn, more aware, more thankful, more.. or maybe less.. directed person. And has most importantly allowed for time and space to grow and breath and learn, learn what I don’t want to do and who I am not, all of which has fueled my desire to become the person that God created me to be.

Live in Light. Stand on Truth. Never be afraid. Never doubt. and Never think it will all be easy.

Jesus Said Life Only Works His Way. Whoa. How Could He Say Stuff Like That?

leeyounger:

Fairest Of Ten Thousand #158

Matthew 7:24

Why do you think certain people don’t want anything to do with Jesus? Is it because their lives have been so hard and they blame God for their troubles? I guess there are probably a few folks out there like that. Is it because they have been burned so much by  mean and judgmental churches and Christians? Sure, there are probably even more of those, I guess. There are probably thousands of factors that contribute to keeping certain people away from the Lord, but I bet you anything that the number one reason non-believers don’t want to believe in Jesus is simply this: They don’t want someone telling them what to do in their life. They want to do their own thing. They want to please themselves, and let’s be honest, Jesus wants to be in charge. There’s no getting around it - He wants to run the show. I mean, Jesus said some pretty audacious stuff. One time He said that if you build your life on anything besides Him, it’s like building a sand castle - it’s guaranteed to fail. Wow. How could Jesus say something so bold and sweeping like that? I mean, He literally said that life His way works, and life without Him simply doesn’t. Why is this? Well, it’s simple. Jesus invented life. He created us. He gets to decide the rules of how life works, because He created life, and He made us in such a way that we absolutely and completely need Him to make it. We all have storms to face and He made us so that we can’t face them without Him. He made us to need Him and life only works when we admit that truth and run to Him.

To see more posts like this one about Jesus, click RIGHT HERE.

i fail at posting on tumblr regularly. but ive been busy. so incredibly busy with events more socially and spiritually important than posting on this silly page of my thoughts and images that i find worth sharing.

in two weeks im turning 22.
in five weeks im graduating from college.
in six weeks im going to vegas with my six best friends.
in seven weeks im moving back to oregon for the summer.

im not as afraid as i once was.

these are things ive enjoyed reading lately::

Can Rejection Be Good for You? by Chris Abel

Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be by Anne Lamott

Tyler and Trayvon by Bill Keller

Fat, Ghetto, Slut & Other Words to Quit Using by Mike Foster

aaand almost every post on THOUGHT CATALOG, of course.

(Source: mystandards)

Me: Just stopped at a rest area and stood outside for a few minutes, sky completely clouded. But for two minutes the sun came out, so bright that i could see my shadow. God is Good.
Jess: It always makes me really happy when people stop and acknowledge the little winks and smiles God blesses us with everyday! Open eyes. Pure Hearts.
Me: I think that’s what joy is all about.
Jess: You’re someone who just gets it Cassie.

sooooo encouraged by this conversation.

today i meant to wake up early but i was still tired when the first alarm sounded so i slept awhile longer and when i did finally get up i was very well rested. i spent some time getting ready for a good day and then packed up my back pack and left my home on the northside for the library that is downtown. i like spending time at the library downtown. i like the big windows that look down on the river and the weird people who also spend time at the downtown library and the kids who sit down at my table and ask me for a pen and how to properly spell Mario. i parked a number of blocks away because i knew i was going to stay for more than two hours and i had to cross four streets to get there. i like walking around downtown and feeling the speed of cars and the looks from the people and the busyness of it all.

after i spent a majority of the day at my table at the library downtown i came back to my house and didnt do much of anything.

then we had thai for dinner.

so begins a test of myself to see if i can accomplish this long-time goal of mine to post words of my own once a day. every day. i read today a reason for writing even on days when one doesnt feel like writing makes one a more honest person.

the problem is not that i dont have anything to write, i have so much to write. this page would be a much better portrayal of my life if what was in my brain on a daily basis could just be recorded here. and i’d honestly like that. i spend a lot of time in my head, i think a lot, and i enjoy that. usually when im driving or in class or the shower or places i dont have access i think about what id write if i were to tuck my thoughts of the day into a tumblr post. and then it doesnt happen. so heres to making it happen.

im coming off of a week spent away. a week of friends and love and jesus and renewal and laughs and feeling free. a week of being surrounded by souls who understand me on a level deeper than most of those that i typically spend my time with. a week my heart had been longing for in the wake of a hard winter. it was perfect. we did a lot. we caught up a lot. walked a lot. ate a lot. drank a lot. laughed A LOT.

it was the perfect break between these past two months and what im facing in the next two. ive been refreshed. good conversation and time well spent talking and being quiet and reflecting and being known.

and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. romans 8:28

melissaj:

““Some people, they can’t just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me… I don’t know. I didn’t want to fix it, to forget. It wasn’t something that was broken. It’s just… something that happened. And like that hole, I’m just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remembering and getting on at the same time.””

—

Sarah Dessen

(Source: coello)

wewontbequiet:

“When we worship the Lord, we release the emotional or mental burden that weighs us down. It is swallowed up in the awesomeness of God. When we keep our eyes on Him and worship, we will always see His plan for our lives work out all things for our good.”

— - Joyce Meyer (via jewelinthesand)

Forgetting The Sting Of Your Pain

leeyounger:

Do you remember that time when you were 3 years old and you fell on the pavement and busted your lip, your elbow, your knee and the palms of both your hands? That was your first big injury. I mean, up to that point, nothing had ever really hurt like that. It was a bad fall and there was a lot of blood. In those moments after the fall, the pain was the only thing happening in the whole universe, right? It was all you could feel, and all you could think about. Do you remember it? Can you reach back into your memory and reconnect with that pain? (And I don’t mean calling to mind a recent injury and applying its pain to the 3 year-old fall) I mean, can you remember the actual pain you felt after falling on the pavement at age 3?

Go ahead… strain. Try to remember it. 

You can’t. That fall happened a long time ago and you’ve slept since then. You stopped bleeding, your injuries healed and you went on living your life. Since that fall, you’ve laughed, cried, grown, learned and experienced all kinds of stuff! That injury is such a distant memory that you simply never even think about it. In fact, you wouldn’t be thinking about it right now unless I brought it up, right? 

Check out what the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:17 - “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

You see, as people who know and love Jesus, we believe in heaven. We believe that in the very instant we close our eyes on this world at the end of our lives, we will open them onto the face of Jesus Himself, and we’ll spend eternity in unimaginably amazing paradise with Him. When we get there, we’re going to see all of this life and all of its many troubles were only an instant compared to what lies ahead of us. In that very first moment when we see the face of Jesus, we’re going to realize that everything hard we had to go through was nothing compared to what Jesus has in store for us. 

Now, that doesn’t mean your troubles aren’t hard. That doesn’t mean your pain isn’t real. It doesn’t mean your sucky circumstances don’t suck. They do suck, your pain is real and your troubles are hard - which is amazing because, if all our pain is “light and momentary” compared to what Jesus has in store, and all our troubles are real and sucky and difficult, then just imagine how amazing heaven is going to be! Wow. It’s apparently so freaking incredible that it has the power to make people call their problems “light and momentary.” Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a place so amazing that victims of prejudice, injustice, genocide, hate, poverty and all other forms of evil will call those troubles “light and momentary” and mean it?! The glory of heaven is so great, it actually has the power to make us forget the sting of our pain.

Dang. That’s where I want to be, and because of Jesus, that’s where I will be. If you love Him, you will be too. And once you’re there, even you will say that this life’s troubles were “light and momentary.” Even you will forget the sting of your pain.

oh man, good stuff.

(Source: leeyounger)

i found myself reading this post yesterday afternoon and was very comforted and encouraged by a few things Unka Glen writes. this is his response to the faith being like a roller coaster, specifically in respect to times of being down, or feeling far from God:

In those moments, you don’t have to feel bad about not wanting to read the Bible, or talk to God. In that moment, you can absolutely go to God and say, “for today, I don’t want to talk about anything, I don’t want to learn anything, I don’t want to grow, I just want to curl up in your arms and rest. I just want to be with you and hold this ground I’ve gained.” There are times when that’s the exact right prayer to pray.

There’s a time for moving forward, and there’s a time to rest and just be with with God. This dwelling together is where all our righteousness comes from, it’s what puts the gas in the tank to keep going. This is where a stable commitment comes from.

i felt these few sentences speak directly to my heart, and especially to the state of mind that i have been in the past couple of weeks. im in a spot where all i want is to rest in Him, and hold on to all of the wisdom and clarity ive received in the recent months.