... im almost there its on the tip of my tongue and it never goes away...

my sister is coming tomorrow and i am pretty excited to see her. i have also decided that i am not going to persue work at a church but i am going to persue work as a portrait artist and i am going to try and open my own studio in the next 3 years. there is a lot of things in my life that i am not sure about but i finally decided that i have to chase what makes my heart flutter and that is photography specifically of people.

God has been showing me so much these past few weeks mostly about how i am looking at people. Grace is amazing and when God shows it he completly shows it. i am thinking of the prodigal son, the woman at the well, and the parable of the 11th hour. and this is how they come together. God doesnt ask us where we have been or if we are really sincere about coming home. he doesnt make sure that we know what we did was wrong he falls on us kisses our heads and tells us that there is going to be a celebration because we have returned, for whatever reason, to his grace. the woman at the well had been married 5 times and was living in sin but christ tells her to tell everyone that she knows about him. yess lets worship in spirit and in truth not on the baptist mountain or the charasmatic mountain lets just worship God and when we find our loving saviour, or he finds us, then no matter how bad we are in it he wants us to go and tell of the love he has shown. and lastly the parable of the 11th hour is that his grace in all our lives are equal and amazing and we shouldnt get all bent out of shape that our road was harder or we worked more for his grace becuase it was everything we needed.

thank you God for opening my eyes you are my shelter and the lifter of my head.

what doesnt kill me writes the songs that drives you far from me...

i wish that i could find the words to tell you that you have changed and that i see amazing things happening in you. i understnad and i also feel like life wouldnt be worth too much if we were unable to change but we can and we do and like the tide we ebb and flow, ever growing and relapsing moving forward and backward becoming more like christ and falling flat on our faces. you are 24 so dont give up becuase there is a whole life of battles for you to fight and you will win some and loose some but i think its a little early in the game to give up on life. you have been good to me and i would do anything to encourage you.

guilty pleasure...

jasen tags aaron and aaron tags me. 5 guilty pleasures,

5. books, this is a guilty pleasure becuase i buy more than i can read. i own a lot of books and i want more and more and more.

4. girls, really what i mean by this is that i love girls about %75 of them there is something amazing about. God really knew what he was doing when he made women.

3. justin timberlake, honestly this guy could be the next king of pop, he needs to get his act togehter and put out a new album cause usher is killing him.

2. southern california, how do i get there and could i hack it there and do i really want to be there or just out of here. i like the slow pace life.

1. photography, i really want to be a photographer i think that the more i think about it the more i really think that i am going to school to do it. this is a guilty pleasure because i am torn between full time church work and photography, i know they could somehow work together i just need to figure out how.

so i there are my 5 guilty pleasures and i know that you are really shocked by all of them and i really revealed a lot of secret things to you...

so i tag kyle smith because i know that he has a lot of juicy secrets that we all want to hear... if you dont know him but want to find out his dirty little secrets then check him out on my links he is under muffins (its a joke... no really a joke)

Cause I've got a dream for us Running threw my mind Sitting on the beach Looking at the sea

so its been two weeks since i met crystal. well i wouldnt say that i met her, she is the girl who i talked with at the belmonte who told me that she loved me two weeks ago. well i saw her again last night and i asked her if we could hang out sometime. she gave me her number but with a warning. she said that she was having some torubles with her emotions and that she wasnt sure how much she could hang out becuase she wanted to be loved sooo bad. there was a part of me that wanted to tell her that i have a lot of trouble with my emotions cause i would love to be in love or feel loved and there isnt much of that happening right now in my life. i tried to call her tonight to see what she was up to but she wasnt home.

i hung out with marie last night, we went and saw danica at the belmonte. jeremys little brother is the drummer for this band. they were decent but it was real smokey and i got a head ache. there was a bunch of people that i saw there and i talked to them a little and it was loud and i didnt want to be rude so i tried to introduce marie but it was just akward and wierd. so then we went to emack and bolios and had some ice cream and as we were ordering the guy asked us if it was together or seperate and i said seperate but felt like an idiot. man i really didnt do so hot last night. i mean i asked her to go out and then i made her meet a bunch of people and then didnt buy her icecream. jeezy lou weezy i am an idiot. i guess it just came down to the line and i had to decide whether it was more akward to let the girl pay or to say i would like to pay for her and have her argue. i think i went with i feel less stuped letting her pay for herself cause i would rather be ok with the stranger than make everyone feel akward. next time i will just pay for her i guess.

had some pappys today and i am pretty sure they have the best pulled pork in town! if you are in springfield or you come and visit me than we should eat at pappys. school starts in two days and i am not excited...

if you start wtihout me, say my name as you begin...

i have been going to panera in the mornings before i go to work becuase i like bagels coffee and linda! linda is this old woman who works at panera and lest semester i went in there every day and got to know her. we decided this week that we were going to fly to hawaii after i graduate and just spend the rest of our lives in paradise. she is fun and is for sure one of the main reasons why i love panera! i mean even if the service sucked i would probably go there cause i like the food and stuff. but she is great.

i enrolled at the bbc and already have been told to shave cut my hair and take out my earings. i cant wait for the next four months to we over. though i am a bit nervouse about what is going to happen after wards.

today i met this nice lady at panera whose name is gina. she was so nice and she called me a doll. that made me feel real nice. at first i thought she might be flirting a little but then we talked about her boyfriend and life. i think she was just bored at work and i was being a chatty cathy. anyway life is good and i look forward to a semester of getting to know the panera ladies!

think back on a better time, like watching water in a rising tide

last night i was eating dinner at wendys because they have a nice dollar menu. the woman who took my order took a break and sat by me. i was reading *a new kind of christian*, which my sister got me for christmas, and yvonne the woman who was sitting across form me asked what i was reading. i told her the title and as soon as she heard the word christian she began to brighten up. she said you know what i am tired of i am tired of the freaks having all the rights. no body ever better tell my kid she came from a monkey.. if someone at her school ever tells her that i am going to own the springfield public school district you remember my face cause ill be raising hell. i think that it is rather curious that the thoughts and attitudes of springfield christians are the ones that should be changing. who knew...

so you wont forget this voice inside my head...

yeah this must be your lucky day cause here comes some more pictures!!! some from saturday with danielle and some from jeremy and jayme layne. i like these a lot and i hope that you enjoy them also...











these are from jaymes band the social, this is from the hardcore show that i went to on saturday night which was by the way amazing!! ok well it wasnt amazing and mostly it just makes me wonder why hardcore is so popular right now but you know it was a show and the social played, which by the way is not hardcore and was in the middle of the show. hummm i dont get it.







here are some more shots of me and danielle well what i really ment was here are some shots of danielle that i took. and a picture of my house. or jeremys house where i will live.





waiting on the bus maybe?


these last two are my favorite shots that i have taken in a while and make me want to be a portrait photographer more and more. so if i keep this up who knows what the future looks like.



and the best for last i thinhk...

ive seen chrsitmas lights reflect in your eyes...

like i said saturday was fun here are teh pictures to prove it. i sorta want to get a nice little digital point and shoot cause this was way fun!

































who knew holding a camera and takin gpictures of your self could fill up an entire day with fun! i bet that you are all jealous and you wish that you could come and take pictures with me also. ok you can if you want. ill just be here waiting.

theres a thousand sparrows falling in a thousand shades of black...

yesterday pastor kevin talked about one of my favorite passages though it was from luke and i preffer matthew. woes to the pharisees... woes to me... and springfield is getting to me. though last night was probably one of the best nights i have had in a long time... brew co with some friends... made fun of the people on mtv made... bonfire with some friends... blowing up cans of beans in the fire... kaleb getting chilli all over the hood of his truck... talk to freddie about life and girls... sleep at 3... looking for love in all the wrong places.

i once knew a girl in the years of my youth...

i have been thinking about the message that pastor kevin preached on sunday. the first sunday he spoke about being poured out like a drink offering and last sunday he talked about he lamps of our eyes. the drink offering has to do with being entirely consumed and used for G-d by G-d and the lamp has to do with letting G-d have access into all the parts of your life. and i know those dark parts of myself like the back of my hand. and i have been thinking about my desire to be honest and to live a life of brokenness before G-d searching for wholeness, this can only be accomplished through honesty about my dark parts. why am i so scared to be transparent, why do i think that it would be terrible if people knew i was as messed up as i know that i am or as they know that they are. maybe grace means less to us because we like to think that we are already perfect, maybe it would begin to look more right and more amazing if we let it be what it reallys is or if we looked at ourselves as we really are. maybe this is what my boy james was talking about when he said that if we hear teh word but it doesnt change us we are like the person who looks in teh mirror and forgets what they look like. so for this year i am setting out to take a long hard look at myself and explore the depths of my darkness and pray that as i find the deep dark places christ comes with me and brings light to them. so that the light of the world becomes a light fully shining inside of me.

i think that i have found a new church and i am very happy about that.

its living proof that people need to be together...

dont be drunk with wine but be filled with the spririt... and this weekend i feel as if i have seen this played out for me twice, i dunno maybe one time wasnt good enough to get it. i will just tell you saturday night i hung out with some drunk people and it wasnt very fun, in fact it broke my heart. sunday morning at christ community we took communion and it was good to think about christ and his shead blood and how it makes me whole, brings restoration to all parts of my life. fast forward to sunday night at second baptist cause christ community doesnt have sunday night service and again we are taking communion and i thought about how i like that fact that catholics take communion every service and i wouldnt mind doing it that way. aftyer church i met up with kaleb at the springfield brew co. and we had a beer and some pizza. there were also a bunch of guys there playing pool so i hung out with them also, kaleb does like to get to bed early. so we were just hangin out with the boys and adam goes and talks to these girls who come over and shoot some pool with us. i heard adam say that he was from drury and since he doesnt go to college i thought that was kinda wierd. the girls ended up talkin with some of the other guys and kevin told them he was from bbc im proud of cali kev telling them the truth. i told them i was from bbc also and that most of these guys have girlfriends and they are jerks and would still try to hook up. they had been drinking and i thought i was having a really honest day so i just spilled the beans. the guys with girlfriends didnt care, im not sure they would have told but they didnt care, except adam he still got the girls number though, what a bastard. so dont be drunk with wine but be filled with the spirit... i like it when things make sense, when i can see examples of all of this working out in my life.

look beneath the floor boards for the secrets i have hid...

6 years in this town and still on friday night i end up alone waiting for someone who wants to hang out. waiting for someone to get off work and say that they would love to spend time with me. waiting isnt my thing so i settle for downtown i suppose in my mind the second best thing to being with someone who wants to be with you is being around a lot of people you dont know. getting lost in the crowd and feeling like you are part of something bigger than yourself. i drove past the belmonte building to make sure that it was open before i parked and it was so i drove around the square and parked on teh street. its not that i am self conscious but i walked all the way through the building to the bathroom and skoped the place out as i walked through the crowd looking for someone i know, mostly jeremy, but he wasnt there. i found a few familiar faces and after i said hi i just leaned against the column in the middle of the building and watched the band play. i looked back every few minutes to see if anyone i knew had come in and there was a girl sitting next to my friend mckenzie and i made eye contact with her once and she waved so i waved back and racked my brain, who is this how have i forgotten her, when did i meet her, why cant i remember anything these days. after a lot more looking over the shoulder at the door she got up and talked to me between bands. she was so nice and very attractive and she knew some things about me but i was still drawing a blank. i wasnt worried or anything i just kept talkin to her, she looked at me like it mattered what i said. another band was getting ready to start, before she sat down she gave me a hug. i thought since i couldnt remember her that i would just go for the generic short hug but i loosened my arms and she didnt let go. i felt like i was losing my breathand i couldnt breath and she says with her face close to my ear that she loves me. i would like to blame all the smoke from the scensters and their pipes on my eyes getting a little teary but those words resonated in my lonely little heart and i almost lost it. i swore that i heard music and i sware that it was death cab " youll be love youll be loved like you never have known..." and everything seemed right. suddenly i didnt feel alone this girl had some how gotten into my heart and i think that she might have know all the secrets i have ever kept and a burden was lifted off o fmy shoulders even if it was only for a minute. that burden then tranformed into weight and it was heavy on my heart as i havent stoped thinking of that moment since it happened. im not sure if i will talk to this girl ever again but i hope that she knows in some way she brought love into my life and i dont think that i will forget it.

is this love of ours alive....

back in springfield. back to work. found a job fast but i must admit that i am feeling a little guilty about it. i work at a place that does tax returns for people who want their money but dont have their w-2's yet. its basically a hi interest loan so are we helping the people by giving them their money faster? or are we just helping them repeat thier cycle of failure. the more i think about injustice and how much God hates it the more i wonder if this is the place for me. after all %200 apr on loans isnt so great. i guess the poor get poorer and teh rich get richer.

i think that sunday i am going to go back to christ community church. i started interviewing with the church in brawley. so thats pretty exciting. although having to answer a million questions about what i think and how i am going to change the world isnt my favorite thing. i guess that it is necessary though since i want to work at a church.