DOVE dark chocolate wrappers, to be exact.

This is going to be another hodgepodge post. Sorry guys If I were to make in individual post on each major thing that was going on in my life, I would have a good dozen. Now, don't get me wrong, but, that's a tad too many for me.

On Friday morning, my lil' sis Rebekah went blueberry picking at Sinking Creek Farm. It was beautiful morning... the air was cool and clear. The sunshine was warm, yet crisp at the same time. Cool morning mist rose from the green hills, mountains and stream as we drove to the farm  as if the day were shaking of their nightly robes. It was quite lovely. The little community where the farm was was downright charming. No other way to put it. I must have exclaimed "Oh, how lovely!" a million times. At least.

Sinking Creek Farm

We picked berries for over and hours, and came away with a good bunch of lovely elegant blue jewels. I decided while picking that blueberries were really blue sunshine trapped on bushes, and it was our duty to free them.

On our way back home, we followed those brown historical signs to "a historical bridge," which turned out to be  a lovely old red covered bridge over a creek. We played around some, took some pictures, and then finished out journey home.

My sis and I at the bridge. It's pretty crooked because the fence that I set the camera on was pretty crooked!

As soon as I got home I turned up the oven so that I could try out Ms. Shanda's muffin recipe. Boy, was it good! We froze most of the berries, but we also made a batch of freezer jam and made a cobbler tonight. SO yummy.

Muffins!!!

A few days later, I ate one of those pieces of Dove chocolate, you know, the kind with the shiny foil wrapper with little messages on the inside? Usually they are pretty cute, I read them, and then throw them away (although I do have one in my wallet that reads "Laugh out loud. It clears the mind."). This time, the little message read "make a list of your dreams." I thought Aww. That sounds so nice!  and then I tossed it as I usually do. Later on, though, I thought about it, and decided that I WOULD make a list of me dreams. After all, I've never done that before, and for all I know I might not even be able to make a list! So, here it goes.

1. Be a godly stay at home wife and mother.
I suppose that could be boiled down to two separate things. I suppose that you could say that my number one dream would be to live a life worthy of Hi who lives in me. But, next to that, would to be a wife and mom. I've talked about it on here before, so I won't go into a lot of details. If you ask me what I want to be when I grow up, that's what I will tell you. My major is Nursing, but that's not the biggest desire of my heart. By far.
a) Build a godly, welcoming and safe home. Not too much to explain here
b) ADOPT. That has been a huge dream of mine for years now. There is just a BIG place in my heart for the miracle of adoption.

2) Be a big sister that my younger brothers and sister look up to and respect. I dunno if it is because I am am the oldest or what, but, that is a daily burden on my heart. I want to be an example to my little (well, they are all bigger than me now, except for the six year old!) brothers and sisters. I want to be there for them, to love them, to have a relationship with them, to be someone they can follow and lean on when they need to. Granted, I am a pretty big flop when it comes to this one sometimes, but, I really am trying.

3) I want to FLY.
Not like, on a commercial airline or something (although, I will take that over being stuck on the ground any day!) but actually fly. Yeah, ok, I know people can't fly... but, being up in a lil' Ceasna would  work for me! There is just something about being up there... leaving the bonds of gravity and the single-plane direction on earth to climb up in the clouds... to be a speak in the HUGE sky and go any direction you want. Wow. Me summed up a in quote:  "Once you have tasted fight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you long to return." Da Vinci said that hundreds  of years before people could fly!!! 

4) I want to make an difference.
Boy, that sound's cheesy, but, it's true. I don't want people to remember me after I am gone, but I want the world to be a better place because I lived.  I want to connect with people and make an impact. I want to leave a path they can follow. I want people to see CHRIST through me, and because of it, turn to him. This "dream" may sound a little selfish, but I don't want my life to count for nothing. Life isn't something to just go through willynilly, ignoring this and that, focusing on yourself and your own little world. Reach out to people around you.

Ok, this one isn't really a dream... more of just something I would like....
5) I want to live on a farm
Yes, I really do. If not that, then a least a place out on the country with LOTS of space. I love hard work, and I love to GROW STUFF!! There is something about hard work. The sweat, the tears, the blood, the effort, and then the reward. I sure don't see work as a bad thing. I rather like it. I love the feel of putting on my worn old boots and jeans and going on and gettin' sweaty and dirty working hard.

The recipe called for a TEACUP of berries

Well, I guess that's all folk. For now at least

...sometimes it is all in order and makes sense. Other times it is scattered all over the room and is upside down and backwards and crumpled.

Usually when I blog I have some sort of "plan" or "story" to go by so that my posts are more of less "organized." Today, however, I am just going to write. More for my sake than for readers, I suppose. I do have one more workcamp post to put up, so, I promise that is you bear with me as I stray from my norm I will get back on track soon

The past few weeks have been pretty rough for me. The past two in particular. To make a very long story very short, our family left out church after being involved there for nearly 30 years. My dad was the volunteer youth leader for nine years, and he and mon both taught Sunday School and children's church and were AWANA leaders. It was very very difficult, but, we knew that it is what God wanted up to do and we had a strange sense of peace even through the nearly unbearable pain. It is more or less all over now. We seem to be healing as a family in our own separate ways, yet together at the same time. If nothing else, our family has grown closer in ways that I never thought possible, let alone probable!

The hardest part about all of this was not being able to talk to anyone about it at the time. For a while, just mom dad and I knew, not even the rest of the family. It was very difficult for me not to be able to share this painful burden with anyone. It was as if I were carrying around this crushing boulder on my chest, smashing the life out of me, but ti was invisible and no one knew it was there. I did eventually tell my amazing friend and prayer partner, and although it helped in unmeasurable ways, it was still hard to have this "secret" with me. It was very hard to deal with already, but, having to do it alone was even harder.

After having to hold up under all that stress for so long I am ready to just chill for a day. I need to get my paper work back in order after it being thrown all over the place for so long. My brain has been running around at a million miles and hour, and, like one of my friends and I have concluded, it has been running into walls and bouncing back and just kept on running. I wouldn't say that I have reached my breaking point, because, I haven't. God gave me amazing peace through the pain and I made it one day at time my his grace and his grace alone! Each painful day he gave me all that I needed to make it through. So, I'm not crushed or dead or have lost my marbles, I just need to unwind.

That being said, today is FRIDAY and I have the WHOLE day off. Wow. I am excited. I am still in bed, just because I can be. I ate a Panera blueberry bagel in bed, and have been laying around ever sense. I will get up, eventually, but right now I just want to do nothing. Just for a day. Usually I feel lazy when I am not busy doing something, but that will not be the case today. God and I need so time to heal up and calm down and get back in order. Beth needs some "be still and KNOW that I am GOD" time.

It really is crazy how stupid I can be. I'm not beating up on myself, I'm just being honest. Here I have just witnessed God amazing grace and peace as he  faithfully brought me through the past few weeks. I have seen him work in ways that I have never seen before and have grown deeper in my faith. My relationship with him has gone to knew depths as I experienced him carrying me through these difficult days. And yet, here I am, with him, drowning in his love and grace, and I am losing faith again. Just like that. How ridiculous. You would think that after seeing him work in such amazing ways I would be slow to doubt. Nope. Welcome to being human, I suppose.

I have a good friend leaving for Iraq in under two weeks. He'll be gone for 18 months. I'm not really scared that he'll die or anything, just because I know Who he belongs to and Who is looking out for him. If it is time for him to go home, then, he'll be in a better place anyways. I am just having trouble accepting that he is leaving and that he is going to be GONE for that long. I guess in the big picture 18 months isn't that long, but, I'll be a semester away from being an RN, I'll almost be 21, and who knows what else will have happened by then. The only real emotion I've felt over him leaving (other than dumb denial, which I am not sure is an emotion) is a little anger. Kind of like "Hey! That's my friend! You can't just move him over to the other side of the world for that long!" I was thinking about it, and, it sounds really really selfish, but, I think that it might be harder to let someone you love and care about go over there as opposed to you going over there yourself. So, that is just something else that has been wearing me down a tad. I'm being stupid, and I know it, because if I hand it over to God and just trust it to him, then, he'll give me all that I need to make it through. I think my problem is that I am having trouble accepting that all this is going on in the first place.

Well, that's about it, I guess. The big things, anyways It feels better to have "talked" about it in some form or fashion. I've realized that it is a lot easier for me to share about how God has worked in my life in the past, but, I have a lot of trouble sharing about what he is doing now. That must be because it sure can make me "look bad" at times, like I don't have it all together, and I don't exactly know how it is all going to turn out. Here comes that little FAITH word again.

All my "mental paperwork" or organization or whatever you want to call it may be scattered all over the "office," but I know who my Boss is, and I know that even though it's all messed up it is still all there. In His office. In his control.