I did good this month! Only one week where I exercised three times, versus four times (FYI, I count my week as Wednesday through Tuesday, since I weigh in on Tuesday nights!) SO proud of myself! Anyone else use the cheesy sticker method for motivation? I have it hanging in front of where I work out and it does help to see all those happy smiling faces!
“We are not made from the sum of our weakness…we are
the sum of the Father’s love for us.” --Pope John Paul II
I realized that I never posted about the Rock & Worship Roadshow! Um. So. Much. Fun.
Basically, this tour is unique in that it brings together a range of Christian artists for a low ticket price of $10. I went to the show last year in Biloxi with Mrs. Debbie and Jazzy, and this year, we all went again, with the addition of Amelia! :)
I had a couple of rough days spiritually the days leading up to the concert. It was one of those weeks where I felt overwhelmed and buried under stuff I needed to do and the loneliness of being alone. I was praying my way through it, but I *so* needed that time of worship. I mean, truly, I needed it. It cleared my head and gave me a renewed sense of seeing in action what we can do when we all work as one for the Lord. I mean, seriously, even in the times when I feel like we have so far to go, it’s times like those that I realize, we are not crazy Jesus freaks, we are the norm.
Lecrae ROCKED my world. Seriously. I mean, I have been listening to his rap for a while (heck, I even use it in my talks I give in youth ministry), but he nailed it and went so hard that night. Truly an inspired young man, giving it up all in the name of Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes…” How can you not love that?!
Tenth Avenue North also ROCKED my world. I love their albums—they are one of those few that I have that I can listen to the whole thing straight through over and over. They were so amazing live and I truly can’t wait to see them again. I mean, come on, their songs speak to my soul. Clearly, God wants me to see them live again. ;)
Ya’ll, love worship. Listen to it with your heart and your soul like I do and I know the Lord will speak to you through it. (All the bands on the tour rocked it, so go check out their stuff—I highly recommend them all!)
Hi guys…checking in on a relaxing Sunday at home. Few things to do here and there, but mostly, the day has been spent relaxing, catching up on some ministry business, and watching a couple of movies.
I just started watching Julie and Julia. Have ya’ll seen this? Such a great movie.
The movie is based on the lives of two different people (true stories, btw), Julia Child and Julie Powell. Julie Powell is a blogger who decides to cook every recipe in the Julia Child french cooking cookbook (over 500 recipes) in a year’s time, and creates a blog about it. Julia Child, of course, is a famous cook, but this is the story of how she became ‘famous,’ while married and living in France.
As I watched the movie, the thing that struck me most of all was happiness. Julia Child was *so* happy. You know those people, that are just happy people all the time, and you wonder, “How?” How can it be that someone is *always* that happy? Julia Child illuminated that happiness.
I struggle with that, but yet, as I was watching the movie, that was my heart’s desire. I want to be the person who finds happiness in all things and people. I want to be someone that anyone can call and that person will know they’ll get a word of encouragement or laughter from me. I want to be the person who can walk into a room and get the moodiest of moody people to just crack a smile.
I think that happiness comes, obviously from Christ. The YouCat tells us “God has placed in our hearts such an infinite desire for happiness that nothing can satisfy it but God himself.” (281) I think that in my prayers for a good life, a happy life, a content, safe, and blessed life, I need to pray for that courage to be happy. For the ability to bind the negative, the ugly, or just the bad parts of this world, and to only be able to see the good things. It’s a matter of perception, really. I mean, do I choose to be happy?
In my house, I have this sign hanging up in my kitchen. I see it everyday. I want to live out that feeling to everyone around me, all the time. The thing that I think about most is that it’s almost a verb—I mean, you have to BE happy—you have to CHOOSE that way of life and set forth on that journey. The destination of happiness can only be found after we do one thing: SEEK GOD. St. Augustine tells us “only He who made man makes man happy.”
“God wants us to be happy. But where does the source of this hope lie? It lies in a communion with God, who lives in the depths of the soul of every man.” --Brother Roger Schutz
“Happiness is not in us, nor is happiness outside of us. Happiness is in God alone. And if we have found him, then it is everywhere.” --Blaise Pascal
Lord, let me know happiness in a way that I never have truly and fully known. Let me know that you will bring it and show it to me in the people and places and things around me. Let me trust that you, above all, are the source of that freedom. Open my heart to receive it.
Rock and Worship Roadshow was last night in Biloxi…blog post to come soon…but, please, let me say my God is AWESOME!! Blessings are flowing, my friends!
Got a kick seeing this outside of mass today when I went to St. Patrick’s. No Mark sighting (*sigh*), but this was fun and made me smile. Gotta love New Orleans! Never know what you’re going to see!
Anyone who knows me, knows that I love a good quote…I was searching for something that I could write this one down on, and I thought, hey, my blog is as good as any other place. So…here goes…
“I kept waiting for someone to make a difference, then I realized, I AM SOMEONE.”
My cousin sent me this picture of my Godson, Conner…she said he told her that it’s his favorite place to hide. He closes his eyes really tight and says “You can’t find me!'”
Seriously. I have the cutest Godchildren.
Another one of my favorite blogs is Hither and Tither. It’s a ‘lifestyle and travel’ blog from a young couple that live in NYC. Needless to say, their blog fills my NYC addiction with little updates of all the fabulous-ness that IS New York. They also have great travels to all sorts of fun places that I just tuck away in my ‘one day’ file.
They posted these pics today from the first big NYC snow of the season. They’re so magical! Gotta love Instagram…can’t wait until they get the App for my Android phone! (In case you didn’t know, Instagram is an iPhone app that takes pictures on your phone but sort of puts different layers of filters on them to make them vintage looking. Awesome.)
Well…as you know, I have the Mark Wahlberg obsession. I know he’s in town filming a movie right now, with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Russell Crowe. I also know that he has gone to St. Patrick’s church on Camp St. Those two things being known, I decided that I was going to find him. Hence, Mission: Mark. Sidenote: This brings me back to my high school years when I had a huge crush on Fred Durst, the lead singer of Limp Bizkit (don’t judge me, I *loved* him and loved that band) and I was on a mission to find him, as well. That story turned out to be one of the most depressing days of my teenage years. Long story short, he was in town on this tour thing to find a new guitarist for the band. I was there, he was having people come on the tour bus to talk to him, sign stuff…I basically got to where there was TWO other people in front of me, then me…and his manager came out and said they had to go and I sadly watched the bus drive away. :( I could have cried. I mean, SO close, yet so far away.
ANYWAY…yesterday, I went to St. Patrick’s for mass. I had a rough Sunday night and Monday I was sort of needing some Jesus time, for sure, anyway. I found the church and I walked into just quaint majesty. I say quaint, because it’s a huge cathedral sort of church, but, it’s so much smaller than the normal church I go to for daily mass, St. Joseph. As I was sitting, eyes sort of half turned towards the back looking for Mark (hey, can’t forget the mission…sorry, Lord), I did get hit in the head by Lord. Gotta love that.
When I was sitting and praying, you slowly see just people come into the church. People of all sorts…businessmen, people with kids, older people, and it hit me right then. I’m sitting here waiting for Mark, but yet, Mark is just like me. It really hit me that we all, even though we’re sitting far apart, with pews of space in between, we’re really all there for one purpose, and that’s to seek God and give him glory and honor and praise, or to find solace in his gentle voice and love. When I think about Mark and him being on television and movies and all of that, it sort of all goes out the window once we think about Christ. We truly are all brothers and sisters in Christ. None of us have any more power than the other. The president could be sitting beside me at mass, and Jesus wouldn’t love him any more than he loved me. The world’s most richest man in the world could be two pews behind me and it wouldn’t matter, either. Mark Wahlberg--actor, producer, superstar--is even with me--regular old Linzi with the admin job that no one understands--when he turns his eyes to God.
I sit here and think about something Mark Hart said in a book once. He said in the first line of the Lord’s Prayer, that what we need to remember, right then, is truly that he is ‘OURS.’ He loves none of us more or less and we all pray the same prayer to the same Father that shows us all love, mercy, and compassion. It is in that first line that we remember, we are truly all the same.
Thank, you, Lord, for showing me that. But, don’t worry, I am still on Mission: Mark. I just now have a little different perspective about the two of us. I think more than ever, it just shows, he could be my next bffer. Just sayin’… ;)
Sunday, I got together with my bffers for the first of the 'monthly' bffer days. (Yep, it's one of the things on the list!) It was a HUGE success! I have to say, again, how much I love those people...seriously...love. I think the Lord has this beautiful life he's given us to just be shared with each other and to find joy and love in it everyday. He wants us to take the leap and do things we've never experienced, go places we haven't seen, because by doing those things, He shows us himself. It inspires us, it fills us, it just gives us peace.
Okay, so onto the details...we went to Global Wildlife Center in Folsom, LA. I shared a little about what it was in another post, but basically, you go into the middle of nowhere (hence, Folsom), and it's this huge piece of land that houses over 4,000 different animals like deer, kangaroos, giraffes, buffalo, bison, llamas, zebras, antelopes...it's crazy.
When you go, you purchase a tour ticket and then you can also buy 'feed.' Well, I was a newbie, so I thought one cup of feed was enough. Em informed me, not the case, we had to get the family sized bucket! So, we did that and got ready for the tour! They put you onto these big 'safari' covered wagons that have benches on each side. They have four different wagons attached, so we had plenty of room with a few other families on our wagon.
First stop was with the deer, antelope and zebras. When I say deer, I say HUNDREDS of deer...they're all over, covering each side of the wagon, looking and waiting for us to throw feed to them. I personally felt bad for them, because they're all waiting for that one morsel of food and then fighting with each other to get it! LOL...but, I'm sure they're well fed. One thing to note is to NOT feed the zebras...they're apparently mean and will bite, so they're pretty much the only animal on the tour that we couldn't feed by hand--you really had to watch yourself cause they'd sneak up on ya and try to get your food/cup while you weren't looking--ask Erin!
After the first 'feeding' stop, we went further up the property and saw a couple of giraffes. Unfortunately it was morning and the giraffes weren't real keen on coming too close. They say that they rarely come close up next to the wagons, anyway, but, it was still cool to see them and get a couple of pics.
Llamas were next up--gotta love the llamas! They're too funny and were the first real 'hand' feed for all of us on the tour. They slurp the food right out of your hand and are just too funny sucking it up off like a vacuum. The funny thing is that they're scared of the deer (even though they're bigger!), so they sort of bounce close and bounce back and keep coming back for more. They totally made me laugh--some have this poofy plume-y feathery tail that just looks like they're flaunting their stuff, bouncing their butt up and down. Too much. We all got a big kick out of the them.
Now, we keep moving up and around the property--this shot shows how all throughout the tour, alot of the animals just follow us and the wagon...it's like some crazy Lion King thing where all the animals just move in masses around us. Definitely crazy to look back and to the sides and just see them going in a huge pack with us.
Ya'll, if you've never been, RUN, take the family, take the friends, whoever, and go to Global Wildlife. It was awesome. I HIGHLY recommend it. You'll never get that close and personal to the animals at a zoo and the people that worked there were friendly, sweet, and really informative.
Might I also suggest a stop to Five Guys Burgers on the way there or home? We went to eat lunch there after...Em and I had never been (love doing all these new things!), and it was a great burger. Might not have lived up to my beloved Shake Shack (hands down, number one, all-time fave!), but it was pretty darn tasty. They have hand-cut french fries, all the free shelled and salted peanuts you can eat, and yummy burgers galore. I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of my burger for you--I was too hungry to think about it!
While we were together we made plans for February Bffer day...can't wait to tell you all about it!
I love the Rat Pack and the 'singers and standards' era...I would have loved living back then where glam was everything and romance seemed to be polite, sweet, and old-fashioned. The clothes, though, the clothes...love, love, love those dresses and the shoes and the little purses. Dainty, girly--so my style.
Saw this quote from one of my faves and had to blog it so I could remember it!
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