obsession.

so i have this slight obsession with books. even though i rarely have time to read, as much as i love it. one of my favorite things is independent used book stores (think powells in a 20×20 room), especially the ones that have dollar piles. it’s like a treasure hunt. in a small book store in sheridan one april afternoon this year i found a tolstoy book for .75 cents. it made my heart very happy. i have this horrible habit of starting like 3 or 4 books and taking FOREVER to finish any of them. The current ones i have started are:

Three Cups of Tea

Tolstoy on civil disobdience and non-violence

out of the silent planet

paradise lost

all of which are mostly dense readings. i also have my list of ones i want to read for the first (or eleventh) time. and my list of those books that i have yet to get my hands on. i can honestly say that i have read maybe half of the books currently on my shelves. which is slightly sad when i think about the amount. so yeah… long story short, my goal is to read more.

you should too. we can read together under a tree :)

peace and love.

expectation.

“working” in the ministry, at a church, means that i am an employee of God. sometimes… i forget this. i find myself every sunday driving to church thinking about, whether my preschoolers have snacks, or if all of my teachers are going to show up, or think about all of the copies i have to make in the fifteen minutes before service starts. i do not come to church, i come to work. during the week, if i meet a new person and start talking about the usual things, school, status and occupation, i try not to say that i work at a church, because it really isn’t work. it’s passion. it’s God.

i forget to come, with the expectation of meeting Christ. i don’t think about the worship i will experience if i by chance get an opportunity to attend service, i do not think about how our pastor’s sermon will affect my day or week, and how God will affect my life. I need to come with exectation. And I need to come with hope... because hope is the absolute expectation of coming good.

peace and love to you.

eleven.

happiness.
is what i am doing right now.

it is one of the last warm days before fall, and i am taking advantage.
sitting outside of a coffee shop that i rode my bike too. barefoot and drinking copious amounts of coffee. reading ancient english literature. it really does not get much better than this.

this post has no point, but really, neither does this blog. :)

love you all,
peace and joy to you.
jess

ten.

de·vo·tion
–noun
1. profound dedication; consecration.
2. earnest attachment to a cause, person, etc.
—Synonyms 2. zeal, ardor. See love.

there is this church. I work at this church, or realistically, I teach and I learn at this church. What I do does not seem like a job. I have dance parties, play with play-doh, become the lava monster, and I have the opportunity to see the face of God in so many beautiful children. As we speak I can hear them down each end of the hall. A pre-schooler who I love dearly (not that I don't love all of them dearly) made my morning with the gasp of excitement and a running tackle of love. This is why what I do is not work. However, this is nowhere near my point. As you have seen above, this is about devotion. There are 4 key values that our church has been striving to achieve as of lately. Devotion is the last one on the sermon list (certainly not least of course) but it is placed on the list with things of equally great importance. Worship, Community and Serving. Devotion, being in the word, is probably the value and spiritual discipline that I struggle most with. How convenient that just yesterday I started my first devotional. My life has been changing significantly these past couple months, going to places that are so far from the heart of God, it has been a constant prayer that I would be stronger in my faith to stay close to God through these changes. Of course God has been more faithful than I ever could have imagine. Devotion is something I have been working on and feel that (although I will always be deepening my faith) this might be what makes my faith mature.

This last week I had a conversation with a very dear friend of mine who I had not seen since she got married in July. It started out as just a normal coffee date... "how has school been?" "what's new?"... you know... as we sat there in a nearly empty cottage, we began to talk about faith. We asked questions of each other, her being a life long Christian and myself only about 5 years. I am constantly curious to know what it would have been like to grow up in a Christian home to know the stories from practically infancy. I learned the entire story of Jonah from seeing the veggietales movie in high school. My faith is a mis-matched tapestry of so many denominations and influences throughout the past five years. She asked me about my views, and how they differed from people my age who grew up in Christian households. And I think they are different, not that I am more open minded or more liberal, although I think i am compared to some. But that, in not nessisarily a bad way, it might be harder for people who learn about God in their adult life to see or hear him because they have gone so long without Him. This is why devotion is important, I am learning to see and hear God, what He wants for me and my life, and how He wants me to glorify Him. I may not be close, but I striving and learning to have a profound dedication to the creator of my life.

eight.

I do realize that it has been quite a while since my last post. An entire summer vacation in fact since the last post was my last day at fox and I am starting class this tuesday. You would think that I could just go on and on about the wonderful adventures that I have experience this summer, but looking back I am not sure that there is all that many. There have been things happening both good and bad, as well as more than anything numerous things learned (that i consider myself still learning about). I am not even sure that I know where to start, so for the sake of organization, i will start at the beginning.

May:
Moving back home was hard, I wasn't sure when I was going to be able to leave again, and since my family drives me a little bit nuts, I was needless to say concerned. But, moving home was my only option so I did it. The first couple weeks of being at home was so incredibly stressful, not with my family really but knowing that I wasn't going to go back to Fox and figuring out how to tell them that was a different story. It also meant I had to figure out something else to do this next year which was a little bit of an unfamiliar thought. It was not easy having the conversation with my mom, some people would think I was throwing away the past three years of my life. That was not how I saw it. The past three years at fox has made me the person I am today and I would not have traded it for anything. It was decided that I would start at PCC this coming school year, and so we began the process.

June:
I, in all complete honesty, do not remember much about the month of June. It seem to go by so fast. My friends were all home from school now and this meant I was never home. Thus, very little drama. All I really remember is that I spent an entire day with laura driving up and down the oregon/washington coast and it was heaven. Also, tilikum. Enough said.

July:
July began with the 4th in St.Paul. For those of you that don't know, I work in St.Paul, and they have a big rodeo every year on the fourth. I had been planning on quitting my job there for a couple months, but I decided to do it after the fourth since it is our biggest business day of the year (ps. as of now i still work there, but i am being worked out). it was a really exciting day and an awesome way to kick off the month. July also meant middle school camp. I LOVED my middle schoolers and it gave me a chance to start reconnecting with some of the people at my home church. It has become very important to me to do this because they are a part of my family. I am going from living with Christian roommates and attending a Christian School, to living with my agnostic parents and going to a very secular PCC. It is a little bit of a scary thought. But anyways, the girls in my cabin at camp were absolutely amazing and I love being able to see them around. They are going though so much stuff in there lives that 13 year old girls should not have to deal with and it breaks my heart. This month was also when I started working more on my photography, starting with Laura. It is definitely something I want to continue doing.

August:
oh dear me. All summer there has been so much drama in my extended family, and being as I live 200 miles away, I only get to hear about it and not see it. That changes in August. The second week in august is always the Douglas County Fair, and it is always a family event. With cousins in 4-H (Which I did till late high school) we get to stay at the fair all week. It is actually pretty fun, the cold (if any) showers, the massive amount of bad food, and the smells of all the animals. I pretty much live for it. And as much as my family and I don't see eye to eye, I love them and love being able to spend more than a day or so with them. It was a little dramatic, but I won't bore you with details. I spent most of the time with my cousin and her husband (which is totally exciting all on it's own, cause she is pregnant, and due on my birthday, and we are close so it makes me practically an aunt!). yeah, so august = drama. Not to mention it being super hard. Starting in the middle of august all of my friends started going back to school, including everyone at fox, which was probably the first time I was a little sad I was not going back. It also made me realize that I don't really have a life or many friends in beaverton. My life, for the past three years, has been in newberg. And still very much is. But I have been making some new friends and they are all pretty awesome! Another august event was the Luis Palau festival, it was massive and you all know about it, but I think God really began something in me that weekend. Not at the festival, but in a woman named susan that I met late at night after the festival was over. She was homeless and deaf, but such the sweetest woman ever. She wanted to know Jesus. God has been working in me so much this summer, teaching me to trust in Him, which has been so important just in these last couple weeks.

September:
I realize this is getting long, so if you decided to skim, this is probably the most important month (FYI). This has been the hardest month in a really long time. If ever. And it isn't even over yet. I have never constantly prayed so much in my life. But there has been so much that I have needed to give to God and it still continually surprises me how faithful He is (because being Human and broken, I apparently don't learn the first time). He has been there through my relationship with my family and others, and through my brother starting college (He moved to PSU yesterday.... yikes!). He has been with me through tragedy after tragedy and even in my own stupid mistakes. Right now, I think He is guiding me to India. I am not positive, but God seems to be taking care of everything that would be holding me back (funny how that happens when you are supposed to do something). I continue to learn more and more about Him everyday, and that gives me a shining moment of peace in a whirlwind of Chaos. Even if sometimes the Chaos is a little fun.

Hopefully, I will remember to keep whoever reads this updated. But updating to no one is fine too. Sometimes I think this is more for me than anything. Things should be getting even more interesting. But I'll let you know.

Peace and blessings.
Jess