for the first time since i've been LA, it's rained. normally by this time in the morning, it's in the 8o's. But right now it's a delicious 63 degrees. the grayness and perpetual misting brings a quiet sanctity to the morning. i love mornings like this. i don't want the calm quietness to break with the business of the day.

prayer thoughts~
God: I'm speaking to you when you wake up and stumble to the bathroom with your eyes half closed, I'm speaking to you through out the day, I'm there, I'm with you. but you often can't/don't hear me because how often is your mind really silent and your spirit still. your mind is humming with your world, your self.

those words caught my attention and for a moment i really understood those words of a lover that doesn't feel listened to, that feels their beloved is not really present with them. it's painful when you're sharing with someone and you feel your words are not being absorbed on their own merit but are only received as reflections of the listener's thoughts.

it's been a while since i've really focused on quieting my spirit before the face of God. But it's really so simple-isn't it. Be quiet and for one moment don't think of yourself and what you have to say but point your ears upwards and wait. Incredibly simple and almost basic etiquette for any relationship but amazingly easy to overlook in my relationship with God.

Lord, I'm sorry. I'm present with You. I'm here with You, too.

Welcome to Saudi Arabia (otherwise known as Pasadena). Yes, it’s been 100 degrees the last 3 days. Yeah and I feel like an air-conditioning refugee. There’s no air-conditioning in my building and usually it’s not that big of a deal. But when the weather is like this it is truly unbearable. I actually get nauseous if I stay in my room during the day.

Lord, please make it stop.

So after work I pick up my stuff in my room as quickly as I can and then take off for somewhere where I can camp out in a/c. I feel like I’m snowed in except I’m “heated” in.

It’s global warming I tell you!

I’m going to be running in the Long Beach half-marathon in October with a bunch of people from Mosaic. We’re doing it in conjunction with Worldvision to raise money for AIDS victims in Ethiopia. I’ll be posting more info on that later.

I haven’t been in the habit of running since I experienced grad school and Vermont winters. So I’m trying to jog at least 5 days a week (in the early morning, of course) so I don’t damage something when I run 13 miles.

Blogging is my Therapy

I miss blogging like I mean it. Blogging used to really help me sort out my thoughts. It was a place where I could be irrational, raw, ungaurded. I think it had to do a lot with how I started blogging in the first place. Long, long ago on a blog planet far, far away the only people that read my blog were my most intimate friends who could read between the lines and knew me first and foremost. My blog was a secondary source.

But these days I often get blog constipation and find myself worrying about what people would think if I wrote what I really wanted to write. I would venture to guess that the majority of the people that read my site don't even know me apart from the blog world. So I've just decided that I'm going to attempt to regain my first love and throw off my blog anxieties! *uhemm*

Okay, I'm off. I'm heading out to a training in Seattle with the organization I'm going to Turkey with.

Prayers appreciated and hopefully I'll give you an update when I'm back (one week from now).

blog drought
i would love to write more but i just haven't had the space or internet time i need to really get into things the way i'd like. i have faith this will change soon when a couple key things fall into place.
1) get a new laptop
2) finish the bulk of my support-raising stuff

as of now, all my computer time is used working on the latter and then by the time i want to do some serious reflecting I'm out of energy and out of time at the local library.

but how bout some highlights?
*i've been watching the Anne of Green Gables movie series. haven't watched these jewels since before puberty. i can't believe how much they've been making me cry. i just cry straight through them. i think part of it is their nostalgic value but i also think i relate a lot to Anne.
*nannying like a ninny (translation: i often work 9 hours a day. can you say "i love baby einstein!")
*learning from Him about holding loosely to material things and holding tightly to Him (ie-missing laptop)
*August is here...already!
*connecting and preparing...ya know...

please pray for the return of my laptop! more details later...

to Him who is able to do more than we can ask or imagine!

Very excited about:

*Ten Thousand Villages free trade store that recently opened in Pasadena. Today was the opening day and I just happen to stop by. It was great. There was a family playing African music and they actually happened to be Christian. When I walked in they were singing, "Lord, I want to serve you". Apparently, they are the founders of a small non-profit dedicated to issues in Africa.

Check it out! It's on Lake across from Borders.

*The Pasadena House of Prayer! So exciting... They have corporate prayer from 8pm to 10pm weekly (except Thursday, Sat and Sun.) and anybody can just stop by. Lovin it. It's very close to the Lake and Washington Blvd. intersection. And you can also make an appointment to have a couple people pray over you for an hour.

*Super quote of the month, maybe even super quote of the year!

suburban post-modernist

Calvin and Hobbes seriously makes me laugh everyday (I read a comic strip a day)

You know you need that in this crazy world....

i'm back from catalina! what a fun little island! pics to come....

Holy smokes! Happy 5th of July...

I awoke in the middle of the night with a strange noncommittal cough and while stumbling around my room looking for some water I noticed an unusual fog outside my window. Later at breakfast I overheard someone say the low mist wasn't fog but left over smoke from all the fireworks.

You see I live at the foot of the San Gabriel mountains and all the smog, smoke, whatever gets stuck here in the foothills. Lovely. But despite this, so far I really like living in Pasadena.

Anyway, what I was really going to say was does anybody (who lives in LA) have a sleeping bag and/or sleeping mat I could borrow? I'm going camping with my sister from July 10th to the 13th, so it would be great if I could borrow that stuff before then.

check out kimyung's new blossoming business online!

http://www.originaletees.com/

zee old school homies at TM

here they are. dear friends i hadn't seen for almost ten years. notice that they've each grown a posse during the interim between our meetings.

aren't they beautiful...

moriah and elvis

elvis and i in nashville

elvis, mo and i had a great time in nashville. it was amazing to be in nashville with mo. first of all, mo is a great musician and is in-the-know when in comes to the blue grass scene in nashville.

and most importantly it was fun and meaningful to reunite after not seeing each other for ten years!! i still can't believe that it had been that long.

me and momma

yes, my cross country trip was more than just endless desert. i saw many wonderful people. this is sandy's baby shower in b-more.

i was able to see a lot of the people i affectionately call my "wedding friends" at sandy's shower. these are gals and guys that i met at sandy's wedding. i've uniquely bonded with these people (i think it's mutual :-) so it was fun to see them again.

i also stayed with my dear friend al in dallas. it's always fun to hang with her fam (silly us-we didn't take any pics!).

June graduates!

congrats to my sister who graduated with her MA in marriage and family therapy this month.

desert danger zone

this is the rest area that i thankfully stopped to check my tires at before i entered hours of uninhabited desert. i had two flats and waited for hours in my car for AAA. they never came and eventually the sheriff helped me get to a hotel. the nearest town was wicket.

i became fascinated with these tiny desert highway towns that scrape out most of their living by servicing travelers passing through. i would look around at what seemed like a couple deserted dried out buildings and wonder why people even stay there.

when i chatted with the guys that were changing my tires, i felt at times that we could barely understand each other. i couldn't understand their mumbled country dialect and they probably couldn't understand my mumbley city dialect. i felt more like a rich city girl at that time than i ever have in the States. i wanted them to know that i wasn't that type but i suppose to them i was no matter what i thought otherwise.

a week after i got home from my trip cross country, i watched the animated film "cars" with my sis's fam. it was like watching an animated expression of the adventure i had just been through and it actually touched on many of the issues i had been reflecting on regarding "progress" and rural communities.

edit: the title of this post doesn't mean anything. it's just the silly title i gave this pic and i accidentally let it carry through to blogger.

oil aliens

i was strangely mesmerized by my slowly teetering oil sucking companions that were along my road side for hours in west texas.

random freak storms in the desert

this was also somewhere in the desert of west texas or arizona. it was super hot so the random rain showers were a surprise.

welcome to nowhere

driving through the desert of west texas or maybe it was arizona at that point. notice the "desert trees". it was my first time seeing cactus like that. i felt like i was in a road runner cartoon. :-)