even the rocks cry out!

REJOICE! salvation is near. Rejoice! for you have been given the oil of gladness. Rejoice! for the light will overcome the darkness. JOY! for the sackcloth has been torn. Joy! for the Heavens cry out with song. SING! for good news has been proclaimed to the poor. Sing! for freedom has come to the captives. SHOUT! redemption draws near! Shout! you have been given a garment of praise. Sing! for what was devastated will be rebuilt. SING! you have been clothed in righteousness. Joy! for your head has been lifted of shame. JOY! for you have been made clean. Rejoice! There is no need for despair. Rejoice! you have been crowned with beauty. REJOICE! for eternity is written on your heart and HE has come that you might know him!

"these things i have spoken to you that in me you might find peace. in this world you will have trouble. BUT be of good cheer! for I have overcome the world." ~

isaiah 64
ecclesiastes 3
john 16

sweet home.

We are so grateful for our time here and for being here in the big city. We know we are supposed to be here. And we have great friends. A sweet church. A cozy home. And we are really enjoying ourselves. In the same breath, it's a particularly nostalgic and illuminating time of year remembering all we left behind at home in the far away land of Texas. Five months is not that long of a time to be away but as families begin to come together, I am longing for certain familiar things or even simple luxuries we no longer have living in this faraway city.



I miss real Tex Mex. The kind I ate almost every single day because it was part of the culture of Austin.

I miss having a washer and dryer in our place. It is a wonderful wonderful thing, let me tell you. We do have a laundromat not too far away, but to have it right under your finger tips? Please, enjoy yours for me.

Speaking of luxuries, I miss the wonderful and spectacular invention called... the dishwasher! Seriously.

I miss space. Wide open space that declares freedom. And the sky. I miss the sky.

I miss the warmth and friendliness that is part of the Texas culture, though not always genuine, still it is reflective of kindness, the kindness that comes as fruit of a grateful and loving heart.

I miss my nieces coming to the office with the excitement and joy and wonder only they could bring in. They were always in awe of the space and thought that my office was the only place in the world that offered Starfall.

I miss my nieces. I miss snuggling them into me, my nose resting on their heads, praying for God's safety and protection over them, promising to do all I could to keep them safe.

I miss my family, sister and brother. my parents. I have the best parents, really.

I miss their dogs!

I miss our dear dear friends, whose lives and love poured into both of us and has shaped us by His love and grace.

I miss our sweet church.


We have been given much here. We have a fellowship of great friends and people who love the Lord. We get to do all of our own dishes. And, Texas, you are etched in the wrinkles of my smile and the soles of my boots (hiking boots, actually).

to know joy

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky

When I was 18, I betrayed a friend. I started dating her boyfriend (it was terrible of me and don't ever do it, btw). I then dumped him a couple of weeks later to find that he had gone straight back to her. And it went back and forth like this for a while. I was devastated and broken, depressed, and upset with myself for the rest of the year. One day, I was sitting on a trampoline enjoying time with my favorite 9 year old when she started singing this song, "I choose to be happy." And her words, those simple words, changed me. It started an upward climb as for the first time in my short years I realized Happiness is a choice. Just a choice. Not something that happens to you but something decided.

I would like to say that the years that followed were all filled with the choice to be happy, but I would be lying. I chose to wallow in sorrow and self pity a couple of times. A couple of years. I had emotional baggage as we ALL do. I experienced life, as we all do, with all of its ups and downs. Sometimes the downs were traumatic. Sometimes in the trauma I chose to avoid dealing with it.

One time though, after being broken up with, I chose joy. I chose to look at my "terrible" circumstance and praise God for all the good things he has done in my life. I praised Him. I stopped looking at my sorrow and loss, and looked to my God. Someone told me for the first time in my life, "You are glowing". Someone who I looked up to and didn't know my circumstance. I faced my problem, wept, and chose joy.

I've quoted this before; as Abraham Lincoln said, "Most folks are as happy as they make their minds up to be." It's really true. I would also add that joy is something deeper than just happiness. Happiness only skims the surface of what joy is. Joy is looking in the face of tragedy and saying, I rejoice. And again I say, rejoice. I know what comes my way, whatever my lot, I have reason to be full of JOY. I will say, when I lost my friend last year, it was tragic. I was devastated. I've had other losses that brought sorrow, too. There is nothing wrong with experiencing sorrow, entering into sadness. But when it turns, and you'll probably know exactly when that is as I did, when it turns into bitterness and self-pity, when you can no longer see hope, then it is no longer good.

In those moments of sorrow and loss, I have had to look on to hope, on to the joy in my life, on to remembering all there is to be thankful for, all there is to rejoice in. For in those moments, hoping and rejoicing have brought me peace. They have reminded me that though sorrow and loss happen, I have a choice. I can wallow in them and be discontent and un-comforted, or I can look at them and say, there have been so many blessings, there is much to enrich my life with, and there is so much to hope in.

As a Christian, I have a great hope, a great joy in knowing Christ and trusting him and his promises. One such promise of the Lord's is from the Old Testament, "I will never leave you or forsake you." It is a promise I hold true. Another is of his love for his children. Shakespeare captured love beautifully when he said , "Love is not love which alters when it alterations find or bends with the remover to remove. Oh, no. It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken." (Sonnet 116)

He loves his children that much.

"Whatever my lot thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul." ~Horatio Spafford (whose story and life were wrought with sorrow and inspired the hymn quoted)

"O the deep, deep love of Jesus, love of every love the best!
’Tis an ocean full of blessing, ’tis a haven giving rest!
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, ’tis a heaven of heavens to me;
And it lifts me up to glory, for it lifts me up to Thee!"

~Samuel Trevor Francis

How wide and long and high and deep is the love of Jesus Christ.

You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed the sack cloth and clothed me with JOY.