Love, Love, Here We Are

If you love something, you’re probably going to have to let it go at some point. But, you can still be friends. Let me elaborate –

You can’t be a miser with your love. You just can’t. It’s not fair. If you keep the objects of your love too close to yourself, you’re not helping them; you’re just being selfish. You are restricting them from doing the things they want and need to do, whether they are people, animals, vegetables, minerals, books, or miscellaneous. And at the same time, you'll never be able to expand and get out of your comfort zone, because your comfort zone is right in arm’s reach at all times, which is nice, but you never grow that way, because you don’t need to.

You have to be willing and able to give away pieces of your heart and not expect anything back if you're going to feel love. 

I’m not saying that if you feel like you could maybe potentially one day love something, you need to let it go now, because you don’t and you shouldn’t. Love is a feeling and an action (and a virtue!) and if you don’t let yourself have it, you miss out and then you’re a terrible person living a miserable life. 

What I am saying is that you can’t keep everything you love right next to you all the time and forever. You can love it and you can keep it right inside of your heart, but chances are, at some point, something might have to change. The change might not even be that dramatic, but it might be.

One of my most favorite song lyrics ever is from Derek Webb: "Love's no politician, because it listens carefully." I don't mean to pick on politicians, but to focus on the listening carefully. Love listens carefully and considers what the party being loved needs, even if you would rather not, even if it makes you cry.

Letting go of things you love doesn’t mean love is gone or leaving. Sometimes it’s an expression of that exact love: letting go means you’re allowing the object of your love to grow or you’re giving it the room it needs to live its life. Letting something you love go means that the way you express your love changes. And a lot of times that’s sad and hard. I can’t really think of many comforting words to say about it.

If I’d had the option at the time, I wouldn’t have gone to college. High school would have lasted forever and I would have been in youth group forever and I wouldn’t have ever had to move out of my house. And, out of (tough) love for me, my parents made me pick a college and a major and then they kicked me right out of this joint...in a kind and necessary way. And they have supported me financially throughout the whole adventure, which has been most supremely helpful. 

Out of my vanity, I’m just going to assume that my parents wanted to keep me forever just as I wanted to stay with them forever. Both parties in this situation had to show love in a way they didn’t want to. My parents didn’t want to make me leave and I didn’t want to leave. But then we both grow (mostly me; I like to tell people that I blossomed when I got to college) and it was good. I would have remained immature and trivial if I had stayed in my pink basement bedroom and taken high school classes forever (not that I'm never immature or trivial now, but I like to think that I'm less so). When both of us showed that love - the kind that lets go (even though sometimes it doesn't have a choice), we both benefitted in ways we didn't know was possible until we actually did the letting go. 

However, once you let go of something you love, you can still be friends! Generally, just because things have to change doesn’t mean they have to permanently end. And that is a nice thing to know.

Instead of being discouraged by knowing that you have to let go of pieces of your heart, find happiness and hope. Giving away pieces of your heart and loving in a let-go kind of way is like a flower girl in a wedding, and, although it's nicer to have all of the petals organized and consolidated in one central place (the flower girl's basket), once the petals have been scattered by her all over the church floor, the petals are spread out and the whole church is full of beauty and flowery fragrance. The entire church being scattered with flower petals is better than all of them in one specified place, and it's the same with love. 

If you love a person, why would you not tell them? (within reason – stalkers and other creepy situations don’t count) and why would you not tell them often? 

Let love be an bubbly fountain in your heart, because then you can never run out. Don't be a love-Grinch. 

This is quite, quite easier said than done: take it from a girl who cried (and by cried, I mean sobbed my poor, tortured eight-year-old heart out) when she had to throw away broken shoes. It’s so much easier and more convenient to be clingy and stingy and keep things forever, even if they’re broken and if it's for the good of the world that they go into the trash can. 

Let's keep it simple. I have a niece (she's not "technically" my niece, but I have claimed her as my niece and she has claimed me as her aunt, so it's real love). She just turned three and she is so beautiful and joyful. She doesn't live in Clemson anymore, but I get to see her when she is here. One of the more recent times she was here, I told her I loved her very much and I'm sure she thought that was very nice but then I realized she may not know what love exactly is. So I told her: "love means that I want to hug you all the time." And she was okay with that definition. So I am, too, and I think that's how I want to define love from now on. 

It means I want to hug you all the time: whether we live in the same apartment complex or on different continents, whether we've known each other since we were born but we never get to see each other now or we just met last August but now we're inseparable, whether I got you a Christmas present or I completely forgot, whether you like Justin Bieber or Dietrich Bonhoeffer (or both). Love is complicated and hard, but no matter what kind of love it is, and no matter if I have to let you go or not, I just want to hug you all the time. 

Love,
Lauralicious

A Non-Christmas-Related Lecture

I slept for eleven hours the other night (that's a lot of hours and I am aware of that), and at some point during all of those hours I dreamed about getting the planks out of our eyes and how God is the great intercessor and also contact lenses and I wrote it all down when I woke up so that I could blog about it. So this is me trying to figure out what I meant when I was half-awake and wrote down those things: 

In Matthew 7, Jesus says to take out the plank in your own eye before you point out and pick on the speck in someone else's eye. The only (physical) things I've ever had in my eye are little eyelashes that sometimes get stuck on accident, and contact lenses. The plank in my eye is the exact opposite of having contacts. Contacts are there to help me see, and they are small and inconspicuous and clear, and I put them there on purpose, and no one can tell that they are in my eye unless I say something about them, whereas a plank in my eye is a huge two-by-four that is just all of a sudden in my eyeball and I keep whacking people over with it because it sticks out so far. There is quite a contrast between contacts and planks. 

We talked about this passage in Sunday School when I was little enough so that I understand what's going on, but right now my main question is: does having a plank in your eye not kind of hurt? Because I mean...it's wood. Wood is from trees. And it seems to me that it would be at least a little bit painful to have a piece of tree in your eye. But that part was never addressed in Sunday School. 

Maybe I judge people because it does hurt to have a plank in my eye, and I think that if I point out what's in someone else's eye, the pain in mine will go away. However, that's the opposite of the truth. 

Maybe the reason I judge people so often is to defend myself from being judged. It's like a coping mechanism. Maybe I act like I'm better than other people because I hope sincerely that I am (but know that I'm not). Maybe I judge people because if they go down, I go up. Maybe I act like I'm the absolute measure of ultimate personhood because I need reinforcement to know that I'm a worthwhile human. Maybe I judge people because if I make people feel badly enough about themselves, then we can all feel badly about ourselves together, instead of just me. 

I'm really judgmental.  So much so that sometimes I think that the sins I struggle with are better sins to struggle with than whatever everyone else does. And that's just crazy and wrong. 

Jesus says, "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." 

But I don't know how to take the log out of my own eye. I can't. I legitimately cannot. Even if I knew how to, I couldn't do it. My arms are quite too weak to pick up a dang two-by-four and lift it out of my eye. And if I could just barely do it, I would leave so many splinters all around my eye and face that 1) no one would recognize me, 2) people would probably think my face was petrified, and 3) where would I put it? Let's be honest, I would probably drop it on my foot. And then I would have a broken foot and a splintered face and that's not much better than how I started out. 

Remember how I said earlier that I judge because I want and hope and wish to be a worthwhile person? I think that, in order to have the log/plank taken out of my eye, I have to realize that I am not. I am not worthwhile, I am not perfectly adequate or even a little bit adequate, I am the worst of all the people in the whole wide universe. I say that not to be hyperbolic or dramatic or exaggeratory; I say it because I am. I wish I wasn't but I am. 

When He saves my life, Jesus takes out the plank from my eye, He makes me clean and not sloppy, He makes me warm, and He makes me His. And that's all that I could ever hope to be because that's better than being an adequate person. It's being in the presence of the One who decided one day to invent daffodils just because He could and that is incredible. 

So. God, being the great intercessor (that's the specific wording used to describe Him in the dream), takes the plank out of my eye. He takes it out cleanly and then makes sure to carefully take out any splinters or remaining wood paraphernalia around my ocular area. 

He can't take it out until I let my guard down and realize that I am not qualified to judge people, even if I really don't like what they're doing. I don't know their whole story. When I know that I am the worst of these sinners and am deeply regretful and aware of it and know that the only way that I can do anything even remotely good is by Him, Jesus comes to make me a different person: a nice person who genuinely cares about people instead of just the information that they can give me. And then I don't need to judge. Because I'm made new and clean and I'm fine. And what other people are up to becomes so much less relevant to me. I have no reason to try to push myself up because I'm as content as I can be just where I am. 

I know that it's Christmastime right now and this post is not about Christmas, and I almost decided to save it and post it later when there are no Yuletide celebrations going on, but then I decided to, because I have a plank in my eye all the time: January through December. I was at Walmart the other day observing the franticness of everyone scrambling to pick up cheap presents for people in their lives (was I buying presents? Nope. I was buying mascara and milk), and I was most definitely judging everyone. I was judging the checkout woman who also works at Harcombe, and I was judging the overweight man wearing three separate camouflage articles of clothing, and I was judging the lady in line in front of me for not being able to make her baby quiet. And that's just terrible. I like babies so I don't know why I was being so vindictive towards her in my head. None of those people did anything to me to deserve my judgment....nd then I dreamed about blogging about this so I just had to. So here we are. 

Love,
Lauralicious

Lamenting the Loss of Lovely Lula Mae

Dear friends, 

This week has been hard for me. Not only is it been finals week, but my most dear and sassy automobile friend, Lula Mae, was replaced by a beautiful forest green Subaru with power windows and a key fob. I'm told that his name is Wilfred. 

Lula Mae's name is Lula Mae after my great-grandmother, who is quite hilariously spunky. I love my great-grandmother (we call her GG) much more than I love Lula Mae and for better reasons, but they both helped me to get here today. It's cheesy but true. 

I've always wanted a nicer car. I've had Lula Mae (the car) since I could drive, and we've had some really interesting times together. Not all were good, like the time I hit a man named Derek (he was fine, thank goodness! It was quite traumatic though), but nonetheless we enjoyed our quality time together. 

To me Lula Mae represents an era of growth. She harbored me while I sang to very weird Canadian songs, did an eleven-point turn once in the dark in Six Mile after a high school basketball game, had some weird 70s/middle eastern dance parties, sometimes cried, got multiple parking tickets, had interesting conversations with friends, backed into a mailbox and later a telephone pole, bonded with siblings and roommates, talked to myself a lot, drove to my first Camp interview and then to Camp every week all summer for three summers...and now we have gone our separate ways. 

And guys, I miss her. I miss my baby. She didn't like me very much, as made evident by her jerkiness and her engine light being on for the past two and a half years. To be honest, I didn't like her all that much either. My favorite adjective for her was "dinky" because that's what she was. She was not in great shape in any way. I once tried to describe her as "champagne" colored, but then was told that she's not classy enough to be champagne. She's beer-colored, and everybody knows that champagne is always better and prettier and more classy than beer. I was sometimes embarrassed to be with her (that's mean but true). She made all of these creaky clunky noises whenever I went over a speed bump (and there are five speed bumps to get to my apartment, so that's kind of a lot of creakiness and clunkiness) and didn't like to obey me when I put on the brakes. I complained the whole time we were together. But now that she's gone, I kind of miss her and her crabby self. We were spunky together. Do not get me wrong, because I really really like Wilfred. I've always wanted a Subaru (do not tell Lula this, but I've been wanting to get out of this relationship for the past two and a half years) and now I have one with all of the amenities that Lula Mae didn't have. Wilfred's engine light isn't on, and that is a blessing for sure. 

Since I started driving Lula Mae, I've changed a lot. I'm not going to go through each change I have undergone, but I am no longer a timid sixteen-year old closet sock-skating enthusiast. I'm much more open about my great love for sock-skating and, even better, I'm myself much more often these days.

I'm not saying I want Lula Mae back, because I don't. I'm past that point in my life. I'm just here to say that our time together was more valuable than I could have ever imagined it being until we no longer had each other.

One of my most favorite bands, The Head and the Heart, says, "All things must end, darlin," and it's true. They must. They do and they did and they will. I am here to commemorate the time that Lula Mae and I got to spend together. Transportation was always an adventure with her. 

So here's to Wilfred and new transportation adventures! Adventure is out there! 

Love,
Lauralicious

Salvation and School Supplies

I went to Walmart the other day and school supplies are on sale you guys! So I've already bought most of what I need for next semester. I feel so prepared. And that is a nice feeling. 

I love school supplies and office supplies a lot. It's because I love being organized. Does that mean that I am an organized person? No. It does not. My brain is always scattered. I think that is exactly why I like the things that surround me to be somewhat organized. 

I like paperclips and pens and thumbtacks and staplers and highlighters and scotch tape and sticky notes (I really really love sticky notes and use them all the time for everything) and page marker tab things and Sharpies. The whole works. I love it all. 

I was studying for a sign language exam last night, and I used a page marker tab thing (I don't know exactly what to call them) to flag a page for myself for later.

Here is a visual! Look how useful they are! 

Then later, I accidentally closed my book, and if it were not for that orange tab sticking out of the side of my book, I would have had to spend hours, if not days, searching for that one page that describes the proper way to ask a yes/no question in sign language. So I was thankful for the tab/page marker. And then I ended up using it over and over again because I had to keep going back to that page (but now I can successfully ask a yes/no question in sign language, among many other things!). 

When I am studying and feeling stressed, stress automatically translates into my emotions, so in addition to feeling stressed about school work, I feel melancholy and agitated at the same time. It's very weird. Last night, I was feeling this way. I was feeling sad about humanity, and then I realized something joyful. Maybe it's my crazy coming out, but I think that I am like one of the tab/page marker things. Jesus puts a tab on my page and comes back to me over and over until my page is dog-eared but He just keeps coming back to me because He loves me. He has called me by name, and I am His. 


Fear not, for I have redeemed you;  I have called you by name, you are mine.
... For I am the Lord your God,  the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
... Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.

..."You are my witnesses," declares the Lord, "and my servants whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He."
...
11 "I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior. I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you; and you are my witnesses," declares the Lord, "and I am God."
... I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

 - Isaiah 43

This has potentially been my shortest blog post ever. It just looks long because of Isaiah, but those are not my words (they're Isaiah's words; I just really like them).

Just remember: you is kind, you is smart, you is important. And that is because Jesus makes you that way. Without Him, you're a blank page. Blank pages are highly frowned upon. They are helpless and terrible, and blank pages can't write themselves. Even if they try. They just can't. 

Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith, and He writes on our page and puts a tab/page marker on it - on us - on you, on me - so that He can keep coming back to us, again and again, because we are precious in His eyes, and honored, and He loves us. He says it Himself. He will not remember our sins, because that's what He decided to do. Because He is great and awesome (not awesome in a "oh that's cool" kind of way, but awesome in a "awe" kind of way. He's the best and ultimate kind of awesome). 

That's even better than already having school supplies for next semester. 

Love, 
Lauralicious

Camp is Love. Love is Camp.

I keep a lot of things in my backpack: folders, notebooks, a calendar for 2013 and one for 2014, a container of homemade granola, a little book in which to write down the sporadic thoughts that invade my head and insist on being remembered, pencils (they live a really fun pencil case I got from Walmart - it has Rex from Toy Story on it), some different colored pens, highlighters, a compass (the geometry kind, not the North/East/South/West kind), my laptop and charger, a jar of peanut butter, a quite dull knife borrowed (stolen) from Harcombe (so I can eat the peanut butter), my iPod (I bought it used in 2006 and it still works just fine so that's pretty great), sunglasses, chapstick, and my heart.

My heart was given to me at Camp this summer by a little Sertoma camper, whose name I cannot share, but just know that she was amazing and adorable and I love her. She called me "Mama" and I let her. It came so naturally. In the midst of busy times, when all ten girls were talking as loudly and as quickly as they could, if she said, "Mama, can you help me tie my shoes?" I would hear her and know that she was talking to me and then help her tie her shoes. She was so slow at tying her shoes so it really sped up our whole group if she had some help. I loved getting to be her pretend mama. 

She had the cutest little freckles on her nose and cheeks. When she was scared at night, I sat on the edge of her bed and rubbed her back like my mama used to do to me when I was scared at night. I loved all of my girls that week, but she and I connected really well. 

On Friday night, when I was packing up her stuff for her, making sure that she was going home with everything she brought with her, I took her coin purse (that actually had knicknacks in it, but no coins) out of her top drawer to pack in the bag she was taking home. She was sitting on the floor watching me pack up her stuff for her and occasionally, when I asked, helping me out. Before I could put the coin purse into her bag, she took it out of my hand and started looking through the knicknacks. She took out a red velvet plush heart that said, "Be mine" on it. It looked pretty tacky.

And then she gave me the heart and then it became my heart. This was during the last week of Camp, and ever since Camp has been over, I've been thinking about it and her, my little blond Sertoma girl, my hypothetical daughter. I call all of my campers, in both Hope and Sertoma "my babies," and I mean it because they are my babies: even for those who have been coming to Camp for thirty years longer than I have been alive. They are all my babies. 

I wanted to be able to look at my heart every day so it now lives in the side pocket in my backpack (the pocket with the peanut butter, not the pocket with the iPod and sunglasses and chapstick just for clarification). I felt like that would be a better place to put it than on my sleeve because having my heart on my sleeve is just a little much. In the side pocket of my backpack it's still visible and I eat a good amount of peanut butter so I look at my heart and think about Camp multiple times per day. 

And guys, I miss Camp so bad. Here in the real world, when my face and hair look awful, I feel obligated to care and make an effort to look better, but at Camp, I feel totally comfortable no matter what I look like or how long it has been since I last showered. I have a bright blue polka-dot bow that I love to wear in my hair and I wore at least once a week during Camp, but every time I wear it here, I feel a little more obnoxious and like it's not okay to wear a bow to class. 

I'm prone to burst into song at any random point in time inside of my head, but at Camp I can burst out into song at any random point out loud and everyone around me will join enthusiastically. And if they don't, I will tickle them until they do. 

At Camp, if I don't get a chance to use the Internet for a very long amount of time or don't answer my phone for a while (or maybe at all), that's okay. People understand because they know I'm at Camp, and they know (or at least I hope they do) that I'm doing my life's calling and trivial things like technological communication and social media are the least of my worries.

I talk about Camp like I should talk about Jesus. I talk about it so much that it that the people around me know my stories before I tell them and are familiar with a good amount of Camp songs (especially the birdie song, my very favorite). I make sure everyone knows about my feelings for Camp and how it has made me into a person with a heart of velvet plush cheesiness. And I love it that way. If I mention something about Camp to a person I'm talking to and they seem confused, I know that I've done a terrible job letting them know what I am about.

The other day I got to have lunch with some people from another camp (I'm not cheating on Hope/Sertoma, I promise! I was guilted into going and then they bought me a McAlister's four cheese griller so what was I supposed to say to that? I said yes and have remained faithful) and hearing them talk about it was really cool. Their camp sounded great. If I didn't have a Camp to which my heart already belonged so wholly, I would consider working there, but I do, so I won't. I am perfectly content where I am. More than simply that, I actively want Camp to always be a major part of my life, even if there comes a time when I can no longer be there every day all summer long and sometimes random days during the year. So yes, I guess you could consider this me defining my relationship with Camp. 

Thank you, Camp, for giving me my heart. I will use it to the best of my ability to be kind and unassuming always and to share with people how great you are, and also how Jesus is the only way I am able to stay alive alert awake enthusiastic, loving, and whole.

I had a plan for my life, and Camp was not in it. Mostly what was in it was sleeping and reading, which are good things, but not as good as Camp. And then I worked at Camp sporadically for half of a summer, and now I am in the process of ditching the plan (it's much harder to do than it is to write) because God has made it evident to me that the things He plans for me are far more superior than the things I plan for me. So the new plan: love Jesus, love Camp, love peanut butter.

Love, 
Lauralicious

The Thing With Feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops - at all
 - Emily Dickinson

When I was in elementary school, I was a Girl Scout. Our quite interesting troop of girls had a lot of adventures together. One time, we, along with our dads, took a camping trip. And by "camping trip," I mean we all spent the night in tents in one girl's grandpa's backyard. I love camping and I love my dad, so I enjoyed it a lot. We played games and told scary stories and roasted marshmallows that night, and in the morning we had a treasure hunt. I like treasure a lot. Notice that the verb "like" is in the present tense because I do still very much like treasure.

So here's what we did: there was a creek in the yard where we were, and we were given shovels, strainers, and buckets and told to go at it...and I did. I dug and dug and didn't care about how dirty my clothes got (they were so dirty when I was finished. I'm pretty sure my mom refused to let me in the house when I got home later that day) or how graceful or smart I looked. I just cared about finding treasure, and I found so much. There were very brightly colored jewels and I knew when I found them that I was a very rich and lucky girl. I felt like a princess. Then I was told that the jewels weren't real and that my ownership of them did not automatically turn me into royalty. That was kind of hard and sad for me, but I got through it. I continued to believe for the next few years (yes, years) that those plastic dollar-store jewels were naturally occurring in the creek bed where we had been digging. One day I asked my dad if he remembered that camping trip we took with the Girl Scouts and how that girl's grandfather's house had gems in the creek, and my dad thought I was really dumb because apparently the jewels had been planted by the dads before we started digging for them, meaning that they were not naturally occurring in this man's backyard. However, I still like to think that I found real-life treasure that day. It would have been fun to say I was in the Girl Scout troop that discovered precious gems in a creek off Lake Keowee.*

What I want to share about is mica. While I was digging that day through the sand with so much dedication to the discovery of something Great, I kept digging up mica. Mica isn't very exciting, especially when you are intent on finding precious gems. But it's persistent. And, especially in a creek bed, mica is shiny and likes to be noticed. It isn't treasure, and you are aware of that when you find it, but it's still something, and mica is there when you realize that you are not going to find real gems...whether you realize this in the moment, or years and years later. The deeper I dug into this creek bed, the fewer jewels I found, but no matter how far down I dug, I could still find mica. It was plentiful, but not in an annoying or exasperating kind of way. Finding something is better than finding nothing, even if the something you find isn't what you were looking for, which is why finding mica wasn't so bad although it wasn't quite as cool as real-live gems.

I've recently realized that I consider hope to be like mica. Hope isn't grand gestures in the form of fireworks or diamonds or daffodils (although I have no oppositions to any of those things, especially daffodils), but it's ordinary, small moments of encouragement. Hope is subtle and you sometimes have to look for it, but I like it that way. 

I work at Camps Hope/Sertoma at the Clemson Outdoor Lab during the summers and I am a big fan of it. I like to consider myself a proponent both of hope as a general concept and of Hope as a Camp. Working at Camp has taught me a lot about how to love people who are not necessarily so happily lovely all of the time, how to be loved by others, how to find hope when I'm lying on the floor with a constipated fifty-six year old woman (by singing "You Are My Sunshine" over and over, because she is my sunshine), and an inexhaustible list of quite a lot of other things. 

Camp has taught me that hope is a choice. 

And so, with that, I felt like it would be appropriate if I had one of these bracelets, to remind me to make that choice often, as in every day. All the time. 

So I bought one. And I wear it all the time. I love it. It makes me think of Camp, which makes my heart warm and happy.

However, this Monday, I was grumpy. I try to not be grumpy in front of people generally, because that does not encourage anyone or build them up, but Monday I was straight-up crabby. It was to the point that I went to the ice cream store on campus and leaned on their counter and begged them in a whiny voice for ice cream. I just really felt like I needed some sugar to help me survive the remainder of the day, and it really did help. 

But before the ice cream, because I was so grumpy, I was walking around just glaring at people who tried to smile at me from across hallways and in classrooms, etc. People were trying to be nice to me and I just wouldn't have it. I was angry at my body for needing sleep. I was mad that I couldn't go sit in All In and write all the time instead of sitting in the library and studying all the time. And then I had a thought: When I am grumpy like this, how am I representing hope? Not well, I can say that much. The people I glared at could see the bracelet on my wrist, and I was not being a good proponent of hope to them at all. I was being a hypocrite.

So this is how I would like to represent hope in the future:

1) as something that is living - "According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3) - without Jesus we would be so dead, and He, our literal living hope, gives us life. And we know that Jesus is eternal, so this hope is never-ending and that is so comforting to my heart. There is nothing that can happen to me anytime in my life that Jesus will not be there for.

Emily Dickinson in her poem says that "hope...sings the tune without the words/and never stops - at all." You know what's cool about that? Jesus. Jesus is cool. Because He "never stops - at all," either. I like Emily Dickinson so much. I don't know if she felt the same way I do about Jesus, but I think she accessed that feeling of hope that He provides. She shows this in her use of the hyphen on the last line of her poem. She says hope "sings the tune without the words/and never stops" and she could have stopped there and gotten her point across. Anyone reading her poem would have been able to tell that hope is a long-term situation. But by adding this hyphen on the end of the line: "- at all," she is showing that she had to add something else on to the end of the line so that it would be communicated to anyone who read her words that she doesn't just mean that hope lasts a long time, but she means that it is a permanent state of mind. It doesn't stop - at all. Hope lasts forever, because Jesus is our hope, and Jesus doesn't die. My God's not dead; He's alive! He's alive! 

2) as something to find great joy in - "Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." (Romans 12:11-12) - That's a lot of things to do. But if you work backwards through those things Paul says to do, it's a little less daunting. Being constant in prayer draws me close to God, and it is only through prayer and a very intimate relationship with Him am I able to be patient in tribulation (also being patient in general isn't quite my strongest suit ever). When I am close with the Lord, I rejoice in hope because it gets me through dark times...actually, it gets me through all times. I serve the Lord through and because of the patience and joy that He gives me, and thus am (trying to be) fervent in spirit and not slothful in zeal. I have a fire for Jesus. It's a small fire, and He's the one who lights it and stirs it and keeps it going. The biggest thing, however, is hope, because Jesus is the hope that I find joy in. He is the hope that gives me patience in tribulation and He is the hope I pray to in the morning when my alarm goes off and I get very sad because I would rather be asleep. Jesus is what gets me through all things.

3) as a component of faith - "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1) - You know what's interesting? That hope and music are similar. You cannot see either of them. You can see evidence of them existing, like you can see musical instruments being played and you can see sheet music and you can hear music all around your ears and heart, but you cannot see actual music. And hope is the same. You can see the things that bring hope to people, and you can see people rejoicing and being inspired in and by hope, but you cannot visually see actual hope. 

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, but it doesn't mean that I always get what I hoped for - it means that I trust in Jesus to bring to fruition the things that glorify His kingdom, and if I can be a helpful (albeit quite broken) vessel in doing that, then I will, as much as I can. It's easier said than done. But what I'm saying is that hope isn't easy, and neither is life. Jesus is both of those things and he makes them possible. 

If I focus my mind on these things: having and believing in a living hope that does not disappoint, finding joy in the hope that Jesus is, and following that hope through so that I have a stronger faith as a result of it, then I am wearing my bracelet well. But if I am not, then I should just take off the bracelet because it is misleading to all of the people around me (even the people who know already what hope is). As a follower of Jesus, I get to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And I want to glorify God by being an example of hope to those around me: the straight-up, stripped of fanciful things, honest and vulnerable hope.

Peace out, Girl Scouts!

Love,
Lauralicious

*Disclaimer: the Girl Scout story is more for entertainment purposes than it is actually informative/relevant

Now Go Put on Some Socks

Once upon a time, it was January 16, 2013, a Wednesday morning.

It was during that week that it was raining and raining and it wouldn't stop. I have a hard enough time maintaining joy when it's cold outside, so the rain in addition to the cold was treacherous for me. I had been in the library doing some homework and accidentally drinking black coffee and I was headed across library bridge to print out some stuff in Holmes and then go have lunch in Harcombe. 

When I walked outside I got so sad because it was raining again and I had French-braided my hair that morning and the rain meant I had to put my hood on my head which would mess up my carefully done hair, which I know is pretty trivial, but I'm just saying. I like my hair. I put my hood on and started walking. I was wearing Chacos instead of rain boots which was just a bad decision for my toes. It was cold and raining, and that can put an end to any good mood for me. I was exhausted and didn't care about anything anymore. I put my hood on my head out of anger at the sky for its insistence to spew cold liquid on me but I didn't zip up my jacket or fix my hood when it fell off. I was really mad.

I saw a guy a few steps in front of me holding an unopened umbrella and in my head I fussed at him: "Are you crazy, man? It's raining and you haven't opened your umbrella? What good is that doing for anyone at all?" But of course I said nothing out loud.

And then suddenly he was next to me with his umbrella opened and over my head. I laughed kind of nervously and said, "Thank you," because I'm polite, but then I didn't know what to do or say after that. We walked together in peace and silence.

He asked me where I was going, to which I replied, "Holmes. Do you know where that is?" And he did, which was nice. I asked him where he was going, and he said, "I didn't start out the day with a plan, so I don't see why I should have one now." I found this surprising, because this is college, and you have to plan out your time, because if you don't, you'll just do fun stuff all the time, which is fun, but not productive. I always have a plan. I am a planner. But he was not, which I respected and appreciated.

Being under the umbrella with him allowed me to see him a little more closely: he was African-American and he was wearing dark, baggy clothes and he had a piercing in his right ear, but only his right ear. 

We were walking but not talking. What do you say to a random guy you've never met who holds a black umbrella over your grumpy head? I didn't know the protocol for this situation. It didn't bother me at all that we weren't talking but I felt like I should say something to be polite, so I introduced myself. I said, "I'm Laura." He said it was nice to meet me but he didn't say his name, so I had to ask him, and he said, "My friends call me Truth." 

1. It was weird that he said his friends called him Truth, but never actually said what his name was. 2. What kind of name is Truth? I decided that maybe I misheard him.

We kept walking and not talking. I didn't try to initiate any more conversation. And then he asked me if I liked nature. What kind of question is that?

I had to discern whether or not I actually liked nature, because nature is really big. I know that all of my friends really really like nature, but I've always been more of an inside-reading-a-book kind of girl, but then I realized that I absolutely like nature. A lot. I decided that my most favorite thing about it is the sky. I really am a big fan of the sky, and I like it the most when it is not heartlessly ejecting cold liquid on me. 

So I told him that, and he seemed relieved to hear that, which I thought was kind of peculiar, but this was already an odd conversation so it didn't bother me too much. We were about halfway to Holmes at this point.

He told me I smelled good, which is definitely weird. In high school, one of my friends used to tease me and tell me I smelled bad all the time, which legitimately hurt my feelings and made me feel insecure about how I smelled, so I was quite surprised and encouraged by this very specific compliment from this guy who didn't know that about me. I noticed that he smelled gently of cigarettes.

We were passing people on our walk who had umbrellas or rain jackets with them, and they all looked depressed and mission-minded and unhappy, which he pointed out. He sounded sad about it. I mentioned that it's difficult to be cheerful in weather like this, and he agreed with me but still remained affected and saddened by the sight of these people. It was as if they weren't thinking about anything more important than getting where they were going, staying as dry as possible, and avoiding thinking about deeper things, like how they felt about nature or how the person next to them smelled. It was as if they had no joy. 

We reached Holmes. He walked me right up to the front door, and I made sure to be genuine when I thanked him, because I genuinely appreciated his kindness to me. I asked him his name again, and, again, he said, "My friends call me Truth." 

I said it was nice to meet him, and a girl from my hall was holding the door to the lobby open for me, so I had to go. As I was about to turn away, Truth said, "If I don't see you again, never forget this conversation." I said, "Okay," and went inside. 

That was one of the most unusual interactions I've ever had with another human. I think that either he was quite a melodramatic creepy guy who tells self-conscious girls that they smell good, or Jesus sent him to me to say, "Hey Laura, the world isn't about you so quit feeling sorry for yourself, but here's a nice guy to share his umbrella with you. Now go put on some socks." I prefer the latter.

It has been ten months and I have not seen Truth since, so I'm telling this story to remember the conversation like he told me to. So that's what happened. The end.  

Love, Lauralicious

I Love to Laugh

Y'all, I get really weird when I'm off sleep. Like really weird. I have emotional breakdowns and I yell at people and I can't eat and for the past few days my face has been oddly pulsing/spazzing in an effort to make me go to sleep. And all I can think about is swings. Not mood swings, but the kind of swings at the park.

Do you remember how much fun swings were? They were always my favorite thing to do at the park because you could feel the wind on your face and you were moving and playing but you could think at the same time. You could sing while swinging. I sometimes used to read books while swinging low to the ground. You could do it alone or with friends. Swinging was the best. I still do it whenever possible. 

I loved swinging. I could go so high and it was so terrifying and exhilarating and I couldn't stop. One of my friends fell off of a swing and broke his arm, but that didn't bother me at all. I kept on swinging because of the joy it brought to my heart. 

And do you remember learning to pump? One of the reasons I decided I wanted to be a teacher when I grow up is because I loved teaching other kids how to pump. I felt like I had this lump of helpful knowledge that needed to be shared, so I imparted my wisdom onto little kids and taught them how to do it. 

Guys, I just want to be a kid again. I miss feeling revelationally inspired at the end of a good and powerful movie and then running around with my arms out wanting to change the world but not knowing how.  I miss playing pretend every day with my best friend. I miss the privileged feeling of being allowed to stay up until nine to finish a book. I miss tree houses and invincibility. I miss having baby sisters, because now they're both old and not babies anymore. I was the last kid on my street to learn how to ride a two-wheeler, but once I did we all had so much fun riding up and down the street together. I miss that. I miss rollerblading in the rain at night singing songs. I miss reading the American Girl magazine and taking all of their quizzes and wearing exorbitant amounts of purple lip gloss. I miss falling asleep in the car and my daddy carrying me to my bed. I miss having feet fights with my little brother and playing Barbies in the basement all by myself. I miss Arthur, my favorite show. I miss not being allowed to drink caffeine after 4PM. I don’t miss riding the bus home from school, but I do miss making clover chains at recess and I miss my mom buying me a Lunchable on the last day of school every year (the only day a year I was allowed to have a Lunchable). I miss dancing in my room with my CD player to Hilary Duff and Jump5. I miss eating honeysuckles in the backyard. I miss playing in our woods that weren't really woods but felt like a huge forest. I read a book every day when I was little, and I miss having time to do that and I miss stories.

Grown-ups and teenagers and people older than me always told me to enjoy my time being little. They told me it only gets harder from there. And they were right. But I couldn't have enjoyed childhood more than I did. 

I enjoyed it the most when I wasn't actually trying to. When I was in those moments, running around, playing in leaf piles and pretending I was an Egyptian and trying to make mud bricks and wearing clothes that I thought were stylish (but weren't at all and made my mom roll her eyes at me a lot) and tap dancing on the bathroom floor every Sunday morning while I got ready for church and eating cookie dough without worrying about how it would affect the volume of my stomach, when I wasn't thinking about how I was going to have to learn decimals soon in math or how sad I was going to be when my best friend moved to Europe in a few months or how one day I was going to have to do all my homework on a computer and not have time to read books is when I loved being a kid. I felt full of joy - so full that I could spill over and not have lost any joy at all. 

My dad always told me to wear a brick on my head so that I would stop growing. But I didn't want to stop growing. I wanted to be a big girl and I wanted to go to middle school and I wanted to have a cell phone and I wanted to live in an apartment and I wanted to do all of these big-kid things. But my dad was right. He knew he would be. And for that reason, he gave me a brick a few years ago - just something to look at when I'm sad about not being a kid anymore. It's in my closet at home (I'm planning on getting it and bringing it back to my apartment next time I go home) and now that I'm old I do wish I had worn it on my head when I was little enough for it to be effective. 

I keep on doing all of these things like paying my own rent and making my friends take medicine when they're sick and washing my own dishes and cleaning up after myself and then saying, "It's kind of like I'm a grown-up!" And then I realized that I kind of am. I'm definitely getting close. I turned nineteen and a half on Monday, guys. That's a milestone. As my dear friend JC (who turned nineteen and a half the day after I did) pointed out to me, now that we've passed nineteen and a half, we're closer to twenty-one than we are to eighteen. And that is scary. When he pointed this out to me I yelled at him (over text) and said, "I won't grow up! You can't make me! They'll never catch me alive!" 

So Proverbs 31:25 says, "She laughs at the time to come." Another version says, "She laughs without fear of the future." And since I can't go back to childhood (which I would prefer to do), that is what I'm going to do. It doesn't mean not planning ahead or laughing at the future in an effort to mock it, but it means enjoying the moment you're in. If you worry enough about the future, your laughter and happiness chords will shrivel up and die (probably). 

I like to personify non-human objects, and apparently so did Matthew, the guy who wrote the book of Matthew, so we probably would have gotten along well. He says, "Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself." He gives tomorrow a human trait: worrying, and at the same time, relieves us from having to do our own worrying. I appreciate that greatly because I am a world-class type-A worrier. 

So what I am saying is yes, sometimes you might have to skip hanging out with fun friends so that you can do homework, and yes, sometimes worrying happens. And sometimes bad/sad things happen. But when you laugh, do so without fear of the future. Enjoy happiness. Squeeze the juice out of the good times and praise God for them and for the joy He allows you to feel as a result of them. But don't forget to be responsible. Also, you are never too old to swing. Swinging can seriously take me from a bad mood to a good one (because of adrenaline and endorphins and other science words I learned as a result of growing up, so maybe there are benefits?) and it lightens my heart. And light hearts are better than heavy hearts any day.

Love,
Lauralicious

Everything I Know I Learned from Anne

Everything I know I learned from Anne of Green Gables. 

I don't really have one favorite book. I have about thirty four favorite books. But Anne of Green Gables (and the other seven books in the Anne series) is definitely one of them. Also I like the accompanying movie almost as much as I like the book. The movie is different from the book for sure. And the second and third movies completely change the story of Anne, but they're still great, because they are Anne. Anne with an E. Whenever I watch Anne of Green Gables, I swoon excessively because of Gilbert. Just look at him. Sometimes if I spend too much time alone, I get really sad that he's not real and that I can't marry him next week. Or the week after. Or ever because he's not a real person.

"He was a tall boy, with curly brown hair, roguish hazel eyes and a mouth twisted into a teasing smile"

Here are the best things I've learned from dear old Anne - 

1) Bosom friends is a real thing.

Neither Anne nor Diana had any idea that the other existed or that they were about to be in each other's lives, but then suddenly they were and they solemnly swore to be bosom friends forever. And they kept that promise really well. Bosom friends are the people with whom your heart connects so well and that is a thing to be celebrated and embraced heartily. It's like your hearts are magnetically attracted to each other. And once you meet, nothing can tear you apart. Not New Zealand or boys or lactose intolerance. You don't have to be the same age. You just have to have the same heart and then your hearts are connected forever and ever amen. BONUS: you can have multiple bosom friends (I definitely do).

2) And, similarly, romance doesn't have to mean boys.

Anne and Gilbert don't really get together until the second book (although it is obvious that they need to from their first meeting onward). I sometimes get it into my head that love means boys but it doesn't. It means love. Anne looks at flowers and sees affection in the way that they are made and the way that they interact with the sun. She does not need a dumb boy to experience romance. Before she and Gilbert were together, "Boys were, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good comrades."

3) Imagination is a wonderful fabulous thing. 

Use it. Dream it. Love it. Anne and I do. Anne names all the scenes in her life, like the Barry's pond: "Lake of Shining Waters," etc. Her life is so enriched by imagination and it is how she coped with her life before she came to Green Gables, because her pre-Green Gables life was not so hot. She gets herself into so many unfortunate situations as a result of her imagination, and her life is so funny and never boring and therefore exuberant all the time as a result.  

4) Growing up doesn't mean you're not fun anymore.

When Anne goes off to college, Marilla is so sad because the little girl she adopted not on purpose and accidentally fell in love with is leaving and no longer needs her, but Anne says, "I'm not a bit changed - not really. I'm only just pruned down and branched out. The real me - back here - is just the same. It won't make a bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly; at heart I shall always be your little Anne, who will always love you and Matthew and dear Green Gables more and better every day of her life." And that is exactly how I feel about growing up as well. Growing up means that sometimes life is just no fun and it's awful and you don't sleep so your eyes unfortunately and not purposely look like a stoner's and people want you to do stuff for them all the time and it is no longer required for your development that you play so you never get to play and then you are miserable. But play anyway! In addition to fulfilling your grown-up responsibilities. At Camp we like to say, "be childlike, but not childish" and that's how I want my grown-up self to be. Responsible and joyful. Mostly joyful. However, keep in mind that "one can't get over the habit of being a little girl all at once." 

Little girl Anne and (almost) grown-up Anne

5) There doesn't have to be similar blood between you for you to be a family.

Matthew and Marilla were brother and sister, and then Anne came and the three of them made a little family. There wasn't exactly a mom or a dad and it wasn't any kind of normal family, but they were absolutely a family. And I love that. 

7) Apologizing is necessary (especially if you break a chalkboard over someone's head).

When Anne blew up at Rachel Lynde for calling her hair ugly, Marilla didn't allow Anne to do anything fun until she apologized. She also had to apologize to Gil after she broke a chalkboard over his head. And I respect that she did that. I love Anne's passion and how real she is, and I'm so glad that she apologizes after she does foolish things. Apologizing is (very) important. Even though everyone in the world would love Anne if she hadn't apologized (because who doesn't love Anne?), it's necessary to do so because it shows that she cares and she admits when she's wrong (which is really hard for her). 

8) On a related note, it's never "just hair."

Hair matters, especially if you're Anne. It's not a bad thing to care about your hair. Just don't obssess or injure anyone's skull over it. 

9) Be present. 

I love the way Anne is so present (but not always so present that she puts the right ingredients in her puddings unfortunately). She's very present socially. She cares so deeply for people and for things (and for her hair), which is sometimes unfortunate because it tends to leads her to do foolish things like breaking chalkboards over people's heads or walking along rooftops and spraining her ankle, which is probably not ideal, but that's just who Anne is. I love her for it. When you are present and there for your life, you love it and enjoy it so much more.

10) Be yourself because you're beautiful and wonderful and I love you.

Guys, Anne is my hero. And I like to think that I am her. She is sometimes discouraged by herself, but not so much that she tries to subdue herself. She knows that this is just how she is. She embraces her boldness and her tendency to get in the most interesting of situations. She's a huge mess, but she knows it. And me too! Or so I like to think. Anne is just so much herself and she taught me to embrace my own self.

11) Love in real life is different (and better!) than love in movies. 

This is actually from Anne of Avonlea, the second book in the series, but I'm still using it because it's great: “Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps...perhaps...love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath. ”

12) Be adventurous.

Adventures are SO FUN, guys, like accidentally floating down a river pretending to be the Lady of the Lake and then almost drowning only to be saved by Gilbert. That is an adventure. "Having adventures just comes natural to some people." And even if adventures don't come naturally to you, have them anyways. Adventures are the best. One of my (many) life mottos is: "Adventure is out there!"

I could keep writing about Anne, but I might be the only one who loves her (and Gilbert) this much. So this is where I will conclude.

Anne doesn't love Jesus like I do (but I'm willing to forgive her because she's fictional), so she doesn't tell us to love Him, but I want to tell you to. Because Jesus is the reason characters like Anne can exist. And He is the reason that we can exist. And He is our joy. 

Love,
Lauralicious

Because A Thankful Heart is a Happy Heart

The other night, I had the most imponderable pleasure of going to a Wayne Kerr concert. Who is Wayne Kerr, you ask? Well I will tell you. He is a singer guy who led worship for my middle school summer retreats and we had so many good times together. He signed one of my t-shirts and it's probably still in the bottom of my closet somewhere. He sang this song a lot and I loved it (you can probably just listen to the first five seconds of it and get the gist of the whole thing). It was so great. 

But then I wasn't in middle school anymore (thank goodness) and I blocked out most of middle school. And then, last Sunday, Wayne Kerr came to my church and gave a concert and it was awesome to be reunited with him and there were about 12344523 middle schoolers there so the atmosphere felt the same even though I'm old now. 

At the concert, Wayne said something that made me think. I mean, I was already thinking, because my brain is always thinking, but what Wayne said was thought-provoking enough that I changed what I was thinking so that I could think about what he said.

He asked us to say a quick prayer of thankfulness to God. He said, “We are not thankful enough people.”

And the first thing I thought after he said that was, “Well, I am. I’m super thankful and I’m nice all the time and what he just said doesn’t apply to me because I make an intentional effort to be thankful always.” But I was wrong. It applies to me more than anyone else, because my thankfulness isn’t always genuine and if it isn’t genuine, it isn’t worthwhile at all.

Also I realized that when I want something, I feel like I deserve it. Like to do well in school. I say, “All I want is to make the best grades possible all the time and to be personally sought out by President Barker so that he can tell me how inspiring I am” or “I just want to never have to study, yet still beat everyone in all of my classes and all of my professors to think I’m a genius angel girl who thinks critically but not in a way that undermines their authority” and that’s a terrible thing to want because by saying “all I want” or “I just want,” it seems like these things should not be so difficult to provide and then I refuse to let myself be content until I receive those things and that’s a horrible and miserable way to live. Because what I want isn’t to simply do well in school. What I really want is everything good in the world at my disposal all the time and that’s very not realistic or what I need because if I had everything, I would never learn or grow.

What I am genuinely thankful for is people, mostly. I’m thankful for good friends who listen to me when my crazy comes out (mostly all the time), I’m thankful for food that I can eat that does not upset my stomach, I’m thankful for an allowance from my most gracious parents so that I can buy said food, I’m thankful for having a car with which to transport myself from location to location (even if it is dinky and dented and sketchy and old and moody…we’ve had a lot of good times together and I’m going to be sad when we have to be separated, although I do look forward to the future when I have a car that decides to drive and work most of the time), I’m thankful for coffee shops where I can sit and blog and drink caffeine (I love All In unconditionally, even though today they have no internet, so I’m writing this here and then I have to go somewhere that has internet so that I can actually post this to the internet), I’m thankful for Jesus who saves my life so that I can be relieved from the pressure I give myself to do everything ever. I’m most thankful for that.

Veggietales is my favorite show because 1) it’s about fruits and vegetables, which I love to eat, 2) it gives those fruits and vegetables human qualities, and I love to give human qualities to things that are actually not human, 3) it’s highly entertaining (ever seen the Belly Button Song? It’s really great and hilarious), 4) it teaches me valuable lessons that I keep throughout my life. I watched it often as a child and 5) it makes the Bible relatable to kids. Like Esther. I knew the story of Esther pretty loosely as a child, then I watched the Veggietales version of it and I understood it because they made the story detailed and vivid. I’m not saying it should replace the Bible because nothing should, but it’s a good supplement, especially for kids. And I’m a kid most of the time.

I have a lot of favorite Veggietales songs: His Cheeseburger, The Hairbrush Song, The Bellybutton Song, The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything, The Bunny Song, The Water Buffalo Song, The Dance of the Cucumber, Good Morning George, The Song of the Cebu, I Love My Lips, Where Have All the Staplers Gone?...and the list goes on.

But one of the more serious ones is one that I feel applies to me right now. It’s The Thankfulness Song (have you noticed that most of their songs are “The _____ Song” ? I have. I think it’s funny).

Because a thankful heart is a happy heart

I’m glad for what I have

That’s an easy way to start

For the love that He shares

As He listens to our prayers

That’s why I say thanks every day

Writing the words to this song make me realize two things: first, that I don’t say thanks every day and I should, and second, that I really need to watch Madame Blueberry (the episode this song is from) because I haven’t seen it in a few years and it’s really great.

Psalm 107:1-3 – "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south."

He is better than good grades (although those are important) and longer-lasting than anything else I can think of because He is the longest-lasting because He endures forever.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 – “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus through you.” 

This shows me two things. The first thing is that I should do what it is telling me and be thankful to God in everything I do and every situation I find myself in, even if that situation is not what I wanted. The second thing is that I can’t do it by myself and God knows that, which is why the verse says, “this is the will of God in Christ through you.” It doesn’t say, “Hey. Do this. Bye.” It says, “Try to do this but you can’t do it by yourself so I will help you. In Christ Jesus through you.” I’m a conduit of Him and that is a great comfort to me because trying to do everything is frustrating and not possible.

So. Give thanks in all of your circumstances and lean on Him to help you do so and to get you through all situations. Be thankful because it brings so much joy! And joy is a delicious thing.

Love,
Lauralicious