I am officially 22 years old. I celebrated my birthday on Monday, the 7th, and had a marvelous day. My day started off with thoughts of discouragement because of the fact that I had no birthday plans. Those thoughts quickly changed when my dear friend Ryan texted and ended up coming over. We spent the majority of the day drinking hot green tea, playing words with friends on his iPod, and just being in eachother's company. He is one of my favorites because of this fact. Ryan and I do not have to do anything that costs money, or anything super cool when we hang out. It is usually just a time of relaxation and good conversation. My birthday was also filled with plenty of cupcakes. Both of my roommates who were home on my birthday gifted me cupcakes. Ashley made lots of mini-cupcakes and lit them for me to blow out. Jessie bought me my first The Cup cupcake. It was very worthy of praise...of the food type. My brother and sister-in-law ended up coming to Springfield that night and taking me to dinner at Cheddar's and to Orange Leaf! Love them! My day ended with my sweet small group girls. I am blessed to lead them in studying the Word of God. The Holy Spirit really made his presence known to me that evening, I was very thankful. My birthday ended up being very encouraging and lovely.
I got a new job! I am now an employee of Wal-Mart! I have been very blessed in how fast this job came along. After applying last week, I just called to check on my application on Monday, and had my first official work day yesterday. I work in the dry grocery department, and am loving it so far(day 2 today). I am the only girl in my department, but am very welcomed....by most of them. My job is to put food where it goes, find out where it is if it is not there, and make sure it looks good. There are many other things I do, but those easily summarize it. Today, I kicked over a bottle of vodka, and it busted. Oops.
The Lord has truly been blessing me. In the wide scheme of things, I am not the rich or gifted in by worldly definition, but I do not need to be. The Lord is taking care of my finances, working in my friends who are truly open to His plan, and is opening my eyes and heart to his desires. The latter has been a process. I feel as if I am the bad person, wanting something greater than ourselves, and not stopping to mingle with those that are stuck in the routines of this world. My eyes have been open to see sin that most people my age do not care to kill, and my heart has been breaking for the people that are merely forgotten in the busyness of the people who "have everything together" in this busy world. i want to live like Paul did, counting everything as loss compared to knowing Christ, and I want to run after the one who is lost, leaving the ninety-nine who know and have. I want people to come alongside me in community, fighting for my sanctification, and me fighting for theirs. I want Christ to be glorified in my first and foremost.
Another way the Lord has blessed me this week is in seeing the grass today! If you don't know anything about why, I live in Missouri, and about 24 total inches of snow have been dumped on us in the last two weeks. I must say, it was fun while it was fresh and pretty, but I am tired of it now.
Here are a few pictures of the last 1.5 weeks...
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Megan, Jocelyn, Jen(my third roommate) and I played in the snow on the first day of the blizzard last week. It was super cold, but we made the most of it. |
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| Ryan and I built this 1,000-piece puzzle on day two of the blizzard. |
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| This is Ashley's wonderful cupcake creation. |
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| My first The Cup cupcake! Peanut Butter...yum. |
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| I got this sweet picture of my niece, Marlo, the other day. She is two and I will be living with her in August! |
