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

Ode to a Little Black Dress

I met you in a Target over spring break when I was 16 and I knew that this was real love

(I mostly knew this because you were on sale)

Except for I couldn't decide if it was real love in a S or XS, so I called my mom from the dressing room

I decided on XS and on we went from there.

You've been my date to swing dances every summer since then

And accompanied me to graduation parties, both for myself and for others 

Last month you went with me to church in Lexington, then to lunch with my cousins, then you and I drove together back to Clemson, and I realized when I got home that you were backwards

Oops.

But I just wanted to say thank you, LBD, and I love you

And I look very forward to all of our future adventures.

Love,
Lauralicious

"She's Just Being Miley"

Dear Miley, 

I've seen multiple letters written to you by women out of fear that their daughters will grow up to act like you and their sons will interact with girls who act like you. And I really really want to write this to you out of love. Because there's no way it will be effective if it's out of shock or hate or disgust or fear. Those things are not good motivators.

I watched the music video for your song "Wrecking Ball" last night and woah, man. You're definitely pretty okay with showing nearly every inch of your body with the whole entire universe.*

You looked really heartbroken in your music video. And it made me so sad. Please don't be sad. One thing all girls seem to have in common is being heartbroken over boys, be it real heartbreak, or, in my case, a little more hypothetical. I sometimes like to pretend I'm dating this Australian guy who works at my favorite coffee shop, so when I observed last week that he has a girlfriend, I was more theoretically heartbroken than actually heartbroken. But still, it's a common denominator that underlies the hearts of all (most?) girls everywhere. We want boys to love us. And it hurts us really badly when they don't, even when we already knew that they didn't or weren't planning on it.

Miley, I need to tell you something that you may or may not already know. There are super awesome guys out there who will treat you a lot better than any boy who treated you so badly that you wrote "Wrecking Ball." I promise. I don't personally have any specific one in my possession at the moment, but I'm friends with a lot of them and they open doors for me out of the kindness of their super sweet hearts and I really believe that you can find one. Buuuuuut that should not be your mission in life because the purpose of life is not to be dating someone! Life would be kind of lame and most of my friends would have already completed their live's purpose if it was. Just saying. Jesus is better than a boyfriend any/every day. 

I would say you're a little out of control at the moment. A lot of celebrities have been out of control before. Remember when Britney Spears shaved her head? And I don't even know what the deal is with Amanda Bynes. And that's sad, but it's more sad with you because you were always more relatable to me than they were. You're only a year and a half older than me. I watched your show sporadically but enthusiastically (I didn't have cable but when I was at the home of someone who did, I loved me some Hannah Montana) as a preteen and I bought like two of your songs on iTunes, which may not sound like a lot, but I rarely actually spend money on music. But I considered you worth it, Miley. One time your song, "Butterfly Fly Away" made me cry because it was so sweet with you and your dad and sometimes I love my dad so much that I cry. That was one of those times. Also I have had so many dance parties to "Party in the USA" and it is kind of a classic now as far as dance parties are concerned. I still sometimes reference "The Hoedown Throwdown" in everyday life because it's so fun. I legitimately liked you as a person and I thought that if we ever ended up being alone in the same general vicinity, we could carry on a conversation without too much difficulty.

But then things like twerking and "Wrecking Ball" and you perpetually sticking your tongue out and "We Can't Stop" (side note: you need to stop. Which is what this whole letter-thing is concerning; I'm just saying it nicely) and your really weird, super sassy rebellious activities all happened and I feel less of a connection to you. The thing is, I think that all of your inappropriate strange behaviors are a cry for attention, to be acknowledged as a grownup who is an artist and who is not Hannah Montana, and congratulations, Miley, you are now viewed by every person in America (and people in other places too) as a deviant, immoral, corrupt girl who does not have her act together and does not wear clothes a lot of the time. I hope that's not what you were going for. 

However, I still think we have some stuff in common. Like: we both have blue eyes and brown hair. And we're both incredibly depraved.

I was recently thinking about how "qualified" I am as a person. I'm pretty skinny and fairly un-ugly and I love to bake and I'm academically intelligent and I'm a nice person and I do a lot of extracurriculars that I enjoy that also make me look good and I'm a genius writer girl who has revelations in the form of blog posts on a weekly basis (or at least I like to think so). But none of that means anything. It's like Elmer's glue that has dried onto my finger, and as soon as I peel it off, my finger doesn't feel cool and fun like it does when the glue is on it. It's loses its smoothness and becomes ridgy and it smells funny. Strip all of my impressive qualities off of me and I'm nothing. And I smell funny. Not ha-ha funny, but nasty gross funny. I'm no better than you and you're no better than me; we just have different levels of paparazzi following us around. 

Tim Keller says, "He didn't love us because we were lovely; He loved us to make us lovely." 
So, no, you are not lovely. And you can do nothing to become lovely. Nor am I lovely in the least regard. You and I are not worthy or clean (no matter how many times a day we shower or how expensive our soap is) or honest or good role models or noteworthy or upstanding citizens. We are as bad as it gets. But we are made lovely and elegant and awake and melodic and beautiful by letting Him love us. Maybe you don't know how to let someone love you and not give anything back. I'm not sure I actually do either. It's really hard. But I'm learning. Because "He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by His love; He will exult over you with loud singing." (Zephaniah 3:17) All you have to do is let Him love you. 

So quit this insane wild streak. Do not carry on, my wayward sister. Do not sow your wild oats. (I don't even know what that means.) I don't want to pretend I know you better than I do (because I don't at all really) but I don't think that the way you're living right now is quite your jam. I think you need Jesus. More than that, I know you need Jesus. Because the only person who does not need Jesus is Jesus Himself.

I ride the bus from campus to my apartment because I'm stubborn and I refuse to pay money for a parking pass to drive my car to school. Sometimes I don't get a seat on the bus, which is fine, but when I don't, I usually end up holding on to a strap that is connected to the ceiling. I am not a very sturdy person, so when I'm holding onto those straps and the bus turns or even accelerates or moves at all, I flail all over the bus and my limbs are in everybody's face and it's crazy. I hold onto that strap with all of my might and I still am just quite out of control. I grit my teeth and clench that strap like it's holding my life (because it kind of is, not to be dramatic or anything). It's my anchor. Without it, I would probably go flying directly through the windshield of that bus and that would not be fun. The pastor at my church, David Sinclair, says to "cling to the truth of God's sovereign grace until your knuckles are white." And every time I ride the bus and have to grip that strap with my entire life and soul and mind and strength, I think of him saying that and I hold on a little tighter. 

Here is a visual of the bus strap in case my explanation isn't clear: 

So what I'm telling you is: hold onto Jesus like He is that strap. He is the one thing that can keep you grounded. You cannot control any parts of your life, but if you do not hold onto Him, you will go crashing straight through that windshield and break your face right open and it will hurt very badly. Holding onto the strap doesn't mean that you won't be flounder about all over the place and accidentally whack people and drop your peanut butter jar out of your backpack while simultaneously trying to answer the phone and quiz yourself on dumb science, but it does that mean that you will not die. The tighter you hold, the more security you have and the more relief you will have when the ride (life) is over. I mean, yeah, your hand might fall off once you finally let go, but if you're in Heaven, do you really need your hand? Yeah I didn't think so. 

I definitely don't have any of the pressures on me that you have. Nobody (that I know of) follows me around with cameras and makes up complete lies about me to put in magazines. The things people hate about me aren't posted on major Internet sites. There are no memes campaigning against my existence. It breaks my heart that all of that stuff exists in this world. And I don't know what to tell you to do about that. But maybe just listen to this song for a start? When my grandmother died, I listened to it like nobody's business. When my best friend and my not-exactly-blood-related niece moved away within a week of each other, I listened to it a lot. It always makes me feel better because, "I did not come here to offer you cliches, and I will not pretend to know of all your pain, and just when you cannot, then I will hold out faith for you. It's going to be alright." 

You can get through this. You're okay. I love you, girl.

Love, 
Lauralicious

PS We should totally have coffee sometime :)

*Disclaimer: I'm pretty out of the pop culture loop, so for me to be writing this means 1) you're pretty culturally prevalent if I've heard all about what you're up to and 2) I may be slightly pop-culturally irrelevant, so just disregard anything that doesn't make sense.

The Greatest of These

One of these is my wrist. Can you guess which one?

Hint: the more pale/freckly one. 

1 Corinthians 13
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a [wo]man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

I was planning to just talk about the last verse in this passage, but then I read the whole thing and I was like woah. Those are a lot of good words. 

Basically, every single word in the passage is like, "Hey Laura, you're not as awesome as you think you are because basically everything you do is because you know people are watching you."

Recently, I've been thinking: how would our use of social media change if there was no like/favorite option? People could still see everything they can see now, but it wouldn't be like it is now, like when I'm just scrolling through my feed, liking and favoriting everything I think is kind of cool-ish. I think it would make people more intentional. You would have to make a point to go up to a person in real life and tell them how much you enjoyed viewing their photos from their recent trip, or reading an article that they posted instead of now, when all you have to do is click a button (sometimes I accidentally click them) and suddenly, the person who posted it feels loved. People would be so much more sincere and genuine, because it wouldn't be this half-hearted approval thing. If you liked something, you would tell that person, and if you didn't, you just wouldn't tell that person. It's that simple. 

But actually if you think about it, what would be the point? Without immediate gratification in the form of likes/favorites/comments on anything and everything you ever did on the internet, how would you know if people like you or not? Oh wait, didn't the world exist for a super long time without social media? Oh yeah. It did. Interesting. 

This probably doesn't sound relevant to 1 Corinthians 13. But oh it is. I mean I think so. 

Look at verses 1-3. If I do evangelical-looking things to look good because I know people are watching me, but I don't do them out of love, it does nothing to further the Kingdom. If I work at Camp so that I have altruistic and awesome things to put on my resume instead of just because of the love I have flowing from my heart for people with special needs, I'm not doing anybody any good. If I bake things for people because I want them to think I'm cute and domestic and a good baker instead of just straight up I love them and want them to have good food to eat, my baked goods are not effective. Isn't that so sad? I mean, I'm not saying that the nutrients in them aren't effective, because they are, but the love isn't there. And that's bad. Because I'm pretty sure the whole point of baked goods is that they are love. You're better off doing nothing if you're not acting out of love. Either love people and make all of your conversations and activities come out of that love, or sit on your couch at home and do not interact with anyone because you are more pointless than a container of expired sour cream. Just saying. 

Verses 4-7 say that love is: patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude or insistent on its own way or irritable or resentful or rejoicing at other people messing up. So basically love is everything I am not. Love assumes the best in people even when it would just rather go to bed. Love listens to people's problems and lets people cry on it even when it is really hungry and just wants to eat some cereal. Love endures hard situations and doesn't give up on friends even when its friends are dumb and immature and it doesn't seem like its friends deserve love because they're being so terrible and aggravating. But love loves. Relentlessly. Love doesn't decrease or deflate over time, but actually, gets bigger. It's like one of those graphs that has a line that keeps going up and up forever and never stops and always goes up higher. That is what love looks like. Love doesn't disappoint. If you need someone to walk you to your car late at night, love offers before you even ask, because it's watching out for you. Love goes out of its way for the well-being of those it loves. And it loves everyone. Sometimes love is tough, but it is not mean or vengeful. Love shares its wealth. And cookies.

Verses 8-12: love doesn't stop ever. College doesn't last forever, pretty much all food eventually expires and/or rots, cars die, watches stop ticking, nail polish chips, trends fade (remember Myspace? Yeah, me neither), facts are proved false (remember when everyone thought tomatoes were poisonous? Well they're not. They're delicious and very not poisonous), and coffee gets cold. But both the Word of the Lord AND love remain forever and they can't stop and they won't stop (in a completely appropriate and non-Miley Cyrus kind of way) and they just continue to encourage and draw more and more people in to Christ because He is love. Remember that Sunday School song? "Praise Him, praise Him, all ye little children! God is love, God is love." Everything we think that we kind of understand about the world and about ultimate truth and about what it actually means to give grace will be showed to us and will make sense when Jesus comes down to us to take us up to Heaven with Him. The things we halfway understand will be completely clear. We will be able to see then, for the rain will be gone. The rain and the mud and the fog and all that stuff will be wiped away with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and then we won't be confused or trying to wrap our minds around really complex ideas. Because we will understand them. Everything will make sense. It's like in a mystery movie, when the main character finds out one detail of the situation that they've been trying to figure out for the whole movie, and then that one detail connects other details and then everything flashes through their mind and it all makes sense. And they feel relief and and completion and they can finally rest. Because it makes sense now. 

Brandon Heath knows this. I'm pretty sure he wrote this song with this passage in mind. 

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Why? Aren't faith and hope good things that we should have? Shouldn't we believe in Christ and put all of our trust and hope for the future in Him? 

I'm no preacher (really though, I'm not), but what I personally think is that love is the greatest of these because it's the action of fulfilling both faith and hope. Faith and hope are both things that we think (and sometimes feel) to ourselves, but love is the one that is acted out for people to see, to show those around us the love that we have been showed by our Savior. Faith and hope can be taken in a more kind of generic and vague way, but love can't be manipulated. Love is love. It's a noun and a verb. Love is what we are called to do while we are waiting for Jesus to come take us to Heaven with Him. 

The first verse in that passage after this says, "Pursue love, and earnestly desire spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy." PURSUE LOVE. Don't settle for just "like" or "tolerate." Pray that God would give you love (because no matter how fast you run trying to chase it down, you cannot catch it yourself. He will give it to you) and then, because it was given to you for free, give it away for free. Give it away to everybody you see like it's everybody's birthday because a) it might be, you never know and b) because this could be the day that they are reborn. So really you could make it their birthday. Which is so cool. 

Also, isn't this so super cute? It's edible love!

Love is more than "<3" Because love is greater than three. It's greater than four. It isn't a number, or a color, or a block of wood, or an emerald, or a sip of coffee. It is God. God is love. 

Love love love, 
Lauralicious

PS - if you search Google images for "love," you find some preeeetty cheesy stuff. It's comical. But also some cute stuff. So you should just go look at it because it's fun.