God Bless my Underwear

As we venture around these trails, laugh out loud, tumble, stumble and wreck hardcore, nature seems to speak comfort to us as we continue to shred tread and head to bed...

This week has been exhausting to say the least. After my month and a half of recoup from the last three years of student/camp life, I find myself both loving the way I feel and hating the way I feel. I love the way I can just fall asleep and really be out cold. I enjoy knowing that the little ones are getting tired out by me and myself by them, with our daily adventures. I hate how my mind wanders to wanting sleep and zoning out while riding the lift playing "A my name is..." Along with counting the hours at times until I can go home and take a hot shower. Those thoughts are rather rare compared to the thought that made me laugh loud today... As we cruised down Delaware (a more popular blue square) I wondered to myself what each by-standard on the side of the trail must be thinking, what they will tell their families when they saw this little purple jacket, pink face masked, speckled helmeted, cruisin little ball of sass belting out "God bless my Underwear! My only pair!  I adore them! But I tore them! On the seat of my old rocking chair!" (in the musical sing-a-long selection of "God Bless America").

Or another thought of how much I love it when a 7 year old little woman who is as tall as my hip but can get lower than low in a carve that could make Ted Ligity say DAAAANG, with a powder blue helmet and hot pink goggles, beat boxing as we dance at the top of West Slope.

Getting blown away on the coldest of days. Chatting and joking while waiting for the feeling to come back into our cheeks and little fingers. Hot chocolate drinking fools who love, love, LOVE building snow castles and even after sprawling out across a trail after an epic wipe out, seeing their smiling giggling faces after racing to check on them, their words are usually as follows..." That...was...AWESOME!!!"

These little buggers teach me more than they know. And I am blessed. Sitting after a long but stellar day of skiing, I continue to wonder how I am so incredibly blessed and brought to these situations in my life and why? Why should I be the one who gets to have all the fun? The laughs, the jokes, the smiles, the love?

I don't know but I pray that He keeps pouring out of me, what I see pouring out of them.

Frozen Precipitation

I Skied the morning away in the bitter wind. All while tucking down straight aways with bits of majestic flakes finding temporary hiding places in goggles and boots. Admiring the snow globe in which I was so blessed to be in, good company and enjoying one of the many things I love about seasons, conversation. Topics floating from subject to subject in between floating to destinations.

Skiing is probably my all time favorite sport besides running along with countless others. There is something specific about alpine that just moves me in so many directions of thought, motion and heart. However it's not the snow, though it is beautiful. It is not the gear, or the slang talk of riding some wicked "pow pow" (if that's what you could even call it on the East coast). It's not finding loop holes to be able to ski for free or putting warm "comfy" boots on after they've spent a night in the hot room. I love this sport so much because of the people who share the passion with me. Gravity, force, adrenaline, spirit, body, breathe. These are just a few things people can relate to. To be sitting on a lift with people who get that same amazing feeling, that spiritual uplifting from playing in the Lords creation, fully being apart of its raw beauty, I get chills even though I left the mountain hours ago. There is something so unexplainable about standing at the very top of that trail, looking out over so many different things, feeling the cold air on your lips as your breathe in winter at it's finest. While massive flakes that you fall in love with all over again as they brush against your exposed rosy cheeks and nose. Hearing your own heart beat as the deafening sound of bliss and silence enters your ears in the midst of impacting skis to snow letting your toes lead the way.
I know there are many who understand and many who will one day understand. It is another home for me. With family to whom you can relate on many different levels. Appreciating the little things like the squeaks in the snow and smiling eyes behind tinted lenses. The feel of the carve and knees scrapping corduroy (those rare moments).  There are many things in the midst of this community that I have learned, experienced, loved, hated, laughed, cried, lost, found and just simply been blessed to have encountered.

I am finding that the more passion you have for the things that surround you, by truly enthralling yourself in the seasons you are given, you gain a lot more than you realize...You learn to embrace so much more than you can imagine during this short stay.


So I came home today to realize I was in the mood to clean...I'm telling you, I was a cleaning machine! I've found that when I am home my room is a disaster zone, when I'm not home I am usually an extremely neat person. Clothes folded, dirty laundry where it should be, vacuumed, swept, and organized. My room has been a war zone lately. Christmas gifts scattered and wrapping paper battling book shelves with a lamp post being used as a lovely coat rack. As I continued reading 12 Extraordinary Women, I suddenly had the erge to go crazy. I finished the paragraph, and headed straight to my room and began to sort. I got rid of so much stuff vacuumed the ever loving heck out of that carpet and threw a load into the washing machine. It was crazy how much stuff I had gone through and how much I still could go through...Since then I have lost my ambition.

While I was cleaning though, between ripping up old bank statements and super old receipts that you couldn't even read they were so old, I found this list of rather interesting facts...Apparently when I had worked at Kohls (yes...yes I did) I found out some really random information from who knows where, but just happened to stumble upon it 4 years later! Yikes

"Things They Don't Teach you in School":
1. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
2. The longest syllable word in the English language is, "Screeched".
3. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
4. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
5.There are more chickens than people in the world.
6. An Ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
7. No words in the english language rhyme with: month, orange, silver, or purple. (Sorry Barney)
8. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
9. In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
10. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
11. A Polar Bear actually has black skin, and clear fur.
12. More people are killed by Donkeys than in plane crashes each year.
13. Shakespeare invented over 1700 words used in the English language.
14. No president of the United States was an only child. (Is Obama?)
15. The average Chocolate bar has 8 insect legs in it.
16. Eskimos use refrigerators to keep food from freezing.
17. A ducks quack does not make an echo.
18. Woman nearly blink twice as much as men.
19. A cockroach can live nine days without it's head before it starves to death. (Sick!)
20. A snail can sleep for 3 years...(How do you even know?...Was he snoring?)

The random things you find amongst old memories...

"We should enjoy here while we're here...'cause there's no here, there!"


ooooo!!! Touche my friend...touche!

Hearts on Sloppy Sleaves.

I am a nut case...simply said. Emotionally I have been completely all over the place! As I left lunch today, driving away with what felt like an empty heart. I am so tired of this. I am so tired of my heart and my brain yearning for it to be different. I am tired of the way things were. I am just tired. When I'm tired I enjoy listening to music that fits my mood. Roaming from Ben Harper's Forever to Jack Johnson's Home, I contemplated crying at how crazy this phase has gotten me or to laugh because it's all just a bit absurd with hearts on sloppy sleeves mixed with tree house paint and grass stains...I am in a whirlwind of life, and there's nothing stopping it.

As I left the bank, I looked into my rear view mirror to see a very fragile woman who I had helped open the door for at the bank only 10 minutes earlier. One car stopped to let her pass. She waved with her over sized knit royal blue mittens with a huge smile, thanking the driver so kindly. She looked around the car to see what other cars were coming and who else would stop for her. As the next one did she also waved with her massive mittens as she scuffled her little legs across the rest of the intersection. I don't know why...but I began to cry. It could have been the fact that Kim Walker's How He Loves us was playing on my ipod, but I lost it. She was so gracious, so thankful and had such a beautiful smile on her face from the moment we met eyes till after I drove away. I'm sure she's still wearing that smile as I'm letting my thoughts flow through my finger tips to type this right now...as we speak.

It's been the little things lately. Commercials that are less than 10 seconds long get me teary eyed. Like that payless commercial where the girls running in slow motion and tackles a guy who's getting out of a cab... He came home from the armed forces....watching Finding Nemo!! Common! ....I am a hot mess......

So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns
violently inside of my chest
I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way...
He loves us,
whoa, how He loves us

The past is the past...
Forgiveness is forgiveness...




"My heart stumbles on things I don't know,
My weakness I feel I must finally show"

Gray Days.

My feet and hands are cold today. As I think about this I remember something being said that because my feet and hands are cold, it means all of the blood that should be rushing through them is rushing through my heart with love. I'd like to believe this. My heart has been aching all day. My indecisive mind and things I should do. My mind and thoughts have been getting the best of me. It's a very odd thing really.

Should I...Shouldn't I? I feel as though I don't have any ambition. I want to enjoy it all but there's a rather big part who would rather just stay hidden and not venture and discover today. There are many things that I have taken in and things that I have let go in my time of being here. I feel more disconnected than ever this afternoon from myself and everything around me. And yet, I wish to do nothing but warm my hands and feet. I believe that my toes are icicles... My core feels as though there is an ice cube in the pit of my stomach that wont melt. and currently the things around me are frozen and asleep.  I have noticed in the midst of all this cheer, my disliking of cold weather and windy moments...

But this book. This book sitting beside me. It's so hard to explain. The words, they certainly don't come from my perspective. Raining down on me like a summer days shower. Sun shining through the darkest of clouds, seeking comfort and refreshment. As cold as it is, it is a reminder of being able to feel. Not only the sunshine, but the rain. To not only feel the nip of Jack frost but truly feel the bite of this life and how raw it really can be at times. All while still wondering why signs on roads say "bridge may be icy" even on the hottest day of summer. 

I must strip these complex layers to feel bare and vulnerable. To fall and know that I am not invincible...again.

....Joshua 1:8-9....


 Heavenly Father: I believe that your grace is more powerful than my label. I believe Christ died to pay for the sin my label represents. I believe that you've offered me a new label: "forgiven, accepted and loved." Teach me to live my life in accordance with who you say I am.

Sunday

A way to describe my Sunday... Not only was the sun shinning, not only did I get to rejoice in worship with strangers at church, not only did I get to go for a run this evening surrounded by dazzling lights... Today I got to hang out with a good friend making Christmas cookies whose Mother also happens to have been my 1st grade teacher. So indeed it was an awesome day being 24 years old and getting to sit down in community and chat with my 1st grade teacher. How many people can say that?!

I am so truly blessed to have such wonderful community flow into my life. Prayers are answered for sure and I am so thankful for all of it.

...My lungs feel good today.