Smile, it's Monday!

Good morning! Happy Monday :) I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

This morning I wanted to share with you a devotional. Just a little something to brighten up your Monday :)

Whether it’s coming through our window on a Saturday morning. Or shining through the curtains, displaying the day’s shadows all over the room. Or if it’s illuminating the sky on your late evening commute home from work. Wherever we see it, light always catches our attention. It draws our eyes towards it. It makes it’s presence known.  There is something else, though, that makes us very aware it is there. And that is darkness.

Darkness is deep. Like the deep depths of the ocean.

And it can often make us feel as though we are under the waves, with no scuba gear, no snorkel, no rope to pull us back up. Rather we are just floating there.. surrounded by nothing but darkness and eerie silence.

Have you ever been there? Have you ever found yourself drifting off to sea, going deeper and deeper as your breath got heavier and heavier. Life can take us there, and sometimes more than once. 

I have a fear of bodies of water (I’m sure there is a real name for it out there somewhere). I don’t like not knowing or being able to see what is underneath me or in front/behind me when in water. I’m sure someone out there can relate when I say that I feel the same way in life sometimes. The fear paralyzes you and makes you feel as if something bad could happen in seconds. Do I move forward? Do I move backward? What is going on under me? Where will the current lead me? What am I leaving behind me? These questions often go unanswered in those moments of panic. When darkness is thick and silence is all around you. 

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5

The light talked about in this verse in John may not be the same light shining through our windows in the morning. This light is better. Too beautiful and pure for our eyes to see, and for our minds to grasp. How can there be light in such deep darkness? In such heavy silence? Those moments can feel like despair. But you are not drifting alone.

I have had my fair of share of suffocating in darkness. I’ve felt that despair. Those lonely feelings that come like crashing waves. But I’ve come to learn something.

Just because the waves are crashing down, doesn’t mean God isn’t there.

Just because darkness is thick and you cannot see ahead of you doesn’t mean God doesn’t have a plan and a path for you.

Just because silence is so heavy, doesn’t mean God isn’t listening.

It’s hard to be alone, but it’s always in those moments when God reveals himself. 

When we quit trying to fill voids in our lives and fill empty holes in our hearts left there from broken friendships, lost loves, skewed opportunities.. it is amazing what God can and will do within you.

When we’re lost in the darkness, exhausted from the thick heavy air, and we surrender to Him.. saying “God I don’t know where I am headed, I don’t know what is going to happen next, but what I do know is that I am lost, I am hurting, and I am needing you. Come and save me from my own darkness.” When we surrender and seek with all that we have left, he will carry us through the fog. As life keeps throwing it’s lemons I am learning more and more that sometimes you just need to do things alone. With God, of course. But alone. On your own. Just you, your heart, your darkness, and God.

He is the ultimate light. The most beautiful light. The sun that shines in your window can’t save you from the way you’re feeling inside. But God can. That light can. And will.

Remember, no darkness has overcome Gods light. And as we grow in him and spend time building our relationship with him.. that light continues to grow in us. And no darkness can overcome it.

Remind yourselves of these truths, today. 

I hope and pray that this helps you through your Monday, and that you take some time this morning to rejuvenate and prepare to dive in to another week :)

Oh, Paris.

The Little Paris Bookshop was by far one of the best books I have ever picked up. I have never been a big reader, but I could not put this book down! I wanted to read it every second of everyday, and that's what I did.
I think I picked this book to read at a good time in my life. A time where I've learned love and loss and experienced it first hand. Every page and every chapter of this book just took you deeper and deeper into the feelings and emotions that the main character, Jean Perdu, was feeling. Being a person who is an intense "feeler", this book had me feeling like I was Perdu. 

When I finished The Little Paris Bookshop, I was wishing there was more. I definitely recommend this book to anyone and everyone. It is not your normal love story, but I personally think that this one is better.

Good morning ::

Good morning! Happy Monday! 

This is the first post for my new weekly posts called Morning Musings. I am excited :)

So today is Monday. I don't know how the weather is where you are, but for me it is dreary. As it has been pretty much this entire summer (bummer). It's a typical Monday, and these types of days are always a little intimidating. They're the.. spilled my coffee on my skirt, woke up late, have a headache.. type days. Almost always. Darn Mondays.

But today, I wanted to kick this dreary Monday in the behind and just take some time to share with you some things I am most thankful for this morning. Maybe you want to join me, by writing down some things you are thankful for and hanging it somewhere you will see it often today. Just as a little reminder that Monday isn't as terrible as we make it out to be :)

I'm thankful for....

1.) Sunshine: As I mentioned this summer has been pretty rainy and cloudy, but Saturday was the most beautiful sunny day. Not too hot, with a nice steady breeze. I think I sat on my porch the entire day, and didn't regret it at all.

2.) New things/opportunities: For a while now I have been looking for a new church to call my home and get involved in. I love the church I grew up in here at home, but I felt God was calling me further. To stretch me and grow me. Last Sunday and yesterday I went to my friends church with her and her family and I loved it! And their youth director actually reached out to me and asked if I wanted to start coming to their youth group and checking it out and getting involved. I am so excited and so thankful that God is opening doors!

3.) Peace: Life's been a little crazy lately. But God has been filling me with such tremendous peace.

4.) Friends: This season of life I am in has seemed to be all about figuring out who my "real" friends are. Everyone says that happens in high school but I think it got to me a few years too late, haha. But I am so thankful for the friends who have stuck by me in the happy times and in the sad times. 

5.) Guidance: Along with peace, God has been guiding me through this season in such interesting ways. I think he knows I like to keep things interesting and different ;)

What are you thankful for this morning?

Thank you for letting me share your morning with you! May your coffee be strong and your Monday happy :)

New Things -

I am embarking on a new journey! Hooray! I love new things. If you read up on my personality type (which is ISTP) you will learn that I am the type of person who needs new things on a pretty regular basis. I hate being tied down in one place, with the same stuff for what seems like forever. Sometimes this can be a curse, and sometimes it's a blessing (or always, I suppose it is always a blessing.). 

So! That being said........

INTRODUCING....

da da da daaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I have officially launched my photography blog. And I am so excited! For quite some time I have been wanting a place where I can share my photos with people other than my Facebook friends ;) I want to make it very clear that this is not at all a place for me to brag or say "look at what I can do!" I simply have a passion inside to share what I love with the world. I am a firm believer in the saying, "it's okay to feel." Photography is my emotional outlet. I know some people don't have that eye for photographs that some do, but whenever I look at a picture, take a picture, or stare into a lens, some sort of emotion is being felt. And I want people to be able to freely feel through my photographs. 

So follow my new blog! Check back every now again. I am hoping on starting a series, or a challenge. Something fun to kick off this fun new journey. 

So, won't you join me? :) 

.:Mm:.

It's kind of funny how the day can get away from you. I had intentions of posting this around 10 this morning and it is now almost 1 in the afternoon. This post is a little irrelevant now seeing what time it is.... but I might as well introduce it! I have been in need of things to prompt me to write. I could write posts about my day everyday, but that's pretty boring especially because I don't do many exciting things everyday. So! I wanted to start a new little thing, called Morning Musings.

Maybe that sounds boring to you or you're thinking, "how is she going to blog every single morning?!" Well, I'm not :) This will only be a once-a-week thing. I will try to do these every Monday morning. And if not on a Monday morning, it will be some other morning ;) 

I enjoy sharing my heart with whoever is out there reading my blog. And I want to be able to gab about new things in life, things I am thankful for that day or week, things I am grateful for, and just all the wonderful things that are happening in life... because life is an exciting thing to talk about. I hope you look forward to reading my musings as much as I look forward to writing them.

Here's to new things! 

.plant crazy.

That's right. I've gone plant crazy. More specifically.. succulent crazy. I want to buy every single one that I see and plant them in cute little pots. Anyway.. as I mentioned in a post a while ago, I recently got a book called Rooted in Design. It's all about plants. I blame it for my new found obsession. As I was reading I saw the word propagate a lot and I had no idea what it meant. So naturally, I went on Pinterest. After searching for a while I came to realize that it pretty much means to breed. The next Pinterest post I saw said "How to propagate succulents." I nearly fell out of my chair. I can grow MORE succulents?! Who wouldn't want that? Anyway....

I read the post and it seemed kind of impossible and the women said it takes time, which requires patience. Patience that I do not have when it comes to plants. But I thought, hey why not give it a try. So I took some succulent leaves that had fallen off my precious babes and I did what the article in the post told me to do. To let them sit in a little water for a day, and then let them sit on top of dirt in a shallow dish or plate. Days went by and nothing happened. My mom asked me what it was and I explained it to her only to find out that she had a leaf off another, bigger, succulent that she just left in the bottom of the pot and it was sprouting roots from the broken end! I was so excited and added it in with the others. The bigger one that had already starting sprouting has been doing the best, and I was losing hope for the other little leaves. But today.... I walked out onto the porch.... wait for it.... AND THEY WERE SPROUTING!! I felt the need to tell everyone know. Thus resulting in this post.

I don't have any pictures from the beginning of the process, but here are a few I took today::

If you have ever seen this online and wondered if it worked, it does! And I think everyone should try it. I find such joy in these pretty little plants, and I think others should as well.