Why you buggin??

52 Week Project 2012 ~ Week 25
"Better late than never, heh?" #catchphraseofmylife

Last Saturday night, my boyfriend Pat and I set out on a mission to catch some lightning bugs. With over forty years of combined experience, I must say, we had pretty good success. Trying to get a cool picture of those tiny little critters, however, was a totally different story. I don't know how many pictures I took that night, but this was the only one that turned out. 

That's a lightning bug on Pat's finger, in case you were confused. Looks pretty freaky huh? Let's take a closer look....

Okay...whether you call it a lightning bug or a firefly, it's definitely one creepy looking insect. Let's zoom in one more time...

Wow! I'll bet you'll think twice the next time you want to catch a lightning bug, huh?

Daddy's Girl

52 Week Project 2012 ~ Week 24
Beloved Child of God

This adorable little girl's name is Sydnie. She just so happens to be my boyfriend's one year old niece, and we had the blessing of spending some time with her last weekend. On Sunday we stopped by her house to deliver some pictures to her parents that we had taken of her on the boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ. I couldn't help but snag a few more photos of her before we left that day though. Seriously. Look at that face! No camera can stay tucked away for long with Sydnie in the room.


When I look at this picture, I can only imagine the kind of love that this child's father has for her. I'm reminded of the love that I've received from my own father: unconditional, self-giving, sacrificial love. This love has made me desire to honor, please, and respect my dad in response to the kindness he's poured out on me throughout my life. Although no human love will ever reach absolute perfection, I think the purity of my dad's love for his children sure comes pretty close.

I wanted to dedicate this post to my dad as part of his Father's Day present, but it's already Wednesday night so it's a little late. Better late than never though, right? I love you Daddy!!!

I would've posted sooner but the past week and a half has been so filled with painful headaches and migraines that I haven't had the energy or concentration to write. I have endured a lot of trial and testing this week and have confronted the recurring questions and seeming inconsistencies that so often accompany the long hours spent in bed with unrelenting pain. I've mainly been challenged with the idea of how an all-powerful, all-loving God, our Father in Heaven, can allow his children to suffer all kinds of pain, sickness, and distress. I'm not just talking about the common cold or typical knee scrap, but the serious stuff. The stuff that keeps floors upon floors of children occupying rooms in hundreds of children's hospitals around the country: unexplainable pain, incurable illness, insatiable anxiety, failed treatments, harsh medicinal side effects....the list goes on, making it increasingly harder to reconcile the two realities of this painful life with a loving Father God who has good plans for his children. I'm so easily tempted to succumb to the thought that if God is really all-powerful, than He is obviously unwilling to heal because complete healing has not come.

With my focus solely on the present pain that I'm suffering, this seems like the most logical conclusion: that for some reason, God does not want to heal me. What a sad, depressing, and nearly heart shattering statement! I know I'm not alone in that thought either.


Our conception of love requires protection from pain at all costs; yet the greatest act of love that the earth has ever known required that God allow his only son Jesus to suffer the greatest pain of all, dying a cruel death at the hands of the ones he came to save. Isaiah 53:4-6 states:

Surely he took up our infirmities

    and carried our sorrows, 

yet we considered him stricken by God, 

    smitten by him, and afflicted. 

 But he was pierced for our transgressions, 

    he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,

    and by his wounds we are healed. 

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, 

    each of us has turned to his own way; 

and the Lord has laid on him

    the iniquity of us all. 

Most of us tend to feel like we're entitled to a good, long, healthy life. We get mad at God when bad things happen. We think that if God is God, He needs to do something about all the evil, pain, and suffering that's tearing this world apart. When we don't see Him doing anything to make things better, we turn our backs on Him, harboring our feelings of bitterness and betrayal, which morph into despair and hopelessness in a matter of weeks, days, sometimes even hours. Digging our own graves, we blind ourselves from seeing God's masterplan of redeeming this broken world and everything in it. He didn't design creation to look like the mess we're used to seeing. God doesn't want anyone to suffer pain for all of eternity, although that's honestly the punishment that our sin deserves. But that's why Jesus suffered for us; paid our penalty and took our place. As a result, we all have the opportunity to be healed completely from the sin that sickens our wretched earthly bodies. Whether that healing happens this side of Heaven in a way that we can see or not is beside the point: by his wounds we are healed.

Next time we get frustrated and angry over the pain and suffering that we see and experience in this life, I pray that we'll quickly be reminded of Jesus' words he uttered in his last breaths as he hung on the cross, "It is finished!" As children of God, we can rest assured that this place is not our home; we're just passing through. While we're here though, I don't think that God will allow us to endure any suffering that He does not purpose for good. No pain goes wasted on God's watch. We just have to wait with the hope that God provides and trust---through the tears---that Daddy knows best. 

After all, God is love, and love never fails. 

Breaking Through Reality's Limits

Last week was so busy that I did not have time to post, but after taking well over 500 pictures, I had a hard time picking just one to write about for week 23 of my 52 Week Project. This one stood out to me though. 

52 Week Project 2012 ~ Week 23

For starters, I've never seen a storm cloud like this before in my life! On Thursday evening, my boyfriend Pat, two of his cousins, and I walked up 110th street in Stone Harbor so the boys could practice their golf swing by the ocean. I tagged along of course, hoping to snag some cool pictures on the beach, but we didn't stay for very long. Once we reached the sand, we spotted this crazy cloud off to our left. It had lightning bolts shooting down from it and stretched twice as long as what I could capture in this photo. For nearly ten minutes, I focused my camera and all my attention on this cloud, attempting to catch a shot of the lightning.

Little did we know, as we stood fixated on this cloud to our left, that an even larger, darker, scarier storm cloud was forming right above us.

This picture doesn't really convey the apprehension we all were feeling at the time, but those clouds were moving fast enough that we unanimously decided to call it a night and head home.  

My experience that night on the beach reminds me of how often I become so focused on the stressors and upsets of life that I fail to recognize the more serious spiritual warfare taking place all around me, thus leaving myself unprotected from Satan's attacks. 

There is so much more to this life than life itself. As the finite beings that we are, we often have great trouble looking past our present circumstances. We secretly desire more, but we fear that our longing will never be satisfied because we've grown so accustomed to a limited reality of life. And so we make our best effort to survive on the tiny morsels of temporary happiness that we can salvage, hoping they'll suffice, but knowing from past experience that they can never quite last long enough. 

In the same way that I failed to see that dark storm cloud above me on the beach because I was focusing on the strange, long cloud, we won't ever see more than our present circumstances if we don't turn ourselves around and look up. Only by the grace of God and his incredible mercy can we even begin to understand the mystery of the unseen spiritual reality that surrounds us. We need to become more aware of the limits that we place on reality and be open to how God will break through them. Until God's work is completed, the battle against evil and our own sinful nature continues to rage; yet, we must not forget that God's plan entails redeeming the whole world, so we can be sure that things are changing---even when the storm clouds roll in---and in the end, all will be changed for good. God never abandons the work of his hands, but promises to finish with the mark of perfection.

With this in mind, we need not fear the battle. For our Lord already has won the victory, and He has given us everything we need for life and godliness. As 2 Peter 1:3-4 states, "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires." What a blessing it is to catch glimpses of God's grand scheme of things. 

A couple weeks ago I wrote a poem for the dove in our front garden. This week, I'm making another attempt at the whole poetry thing because I feel like prose can't adequately express the dynamics of my experience this week. 

"I Long for You"

I long to desire You above all others,

to seek you first, forsaking the rest.

Though now my heart still roams and wanders,

Your arms are where I know I belong, where I fit best.

I long to know You and to be known by You

in the most intimate way that transforms my soul.

Though my body is weak and my thoughts ever fleeting,

My spirit cries out, "Lord, take me home! Just take me home!"

I long to please you Lord in everything I say and do,

to bless your name, oh Great I Am.

Though I have stumbled and fallen many a time,

You cleanse me once again with the blood of the Lamb. 

Couch-to-5-K

I bought these sneakers with the hope that they will symbolize the start of a new stage of my recovery.

52 Week Project 2012 ~ Week 22 #HotPinkAllTheWay

Before I got sick, running and I had always enjoyed a love-hate relationship, filled with some joyous, some not-so-joyous memories of never-ending track work-outs, driveway sprints, and Camp Lauren. Most of the time, someone else had to push me to run. Or rather, in some cases, pull me off the couch. Thanks Laur! Although I didn’t always have a self-motivation to lace up my running shoes, at least I was able to still do it and run a good race.

There were a few occasions when I was still really struggling with my health that I tried running again, but my head pounded with every step, making the entire process and the rest of my day torture trying to deal with an insane migraine.

It’s one thing to complain about not wanting to run or feeling sore afterwards, but it’s a totally different, almost defeating, thing to know that even if you wanted to, running was out of the picture. I guess it's sometimes true that you never know what you got til it's gone. . . 

Today I began a exercise routine called The Couch-to-5-K Running Plan for new runners who want to progress from their sedentary state to running three miles, all in 2 months! I’m giving myself some extra time though. My goal is to be able to run 3 miles by the end of the summer.

After jogging/walking for 1.75 miles this morning, I just feel the usual aches of exercise. The really great part is that I didn’t get a migraine from the work-out AND I was able to complete it the right way. Compared to what I had done before, it wasn’t that hard of a work-out at all, but after not being able to do much of anything these past three years, it felt like a good enough sweat for me! Hopefully I'll be able to keep it up and finish what I've started. The fact that I'm on week 22 of my 52 Week Project seems like a pretty good sign to me that I have what it takes to commit. Ask me in two weeks how I'm doing. . . ;)

I'll leave you all with a running verse for inspiration: Hebrews 12:1 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.