My view on ladders and life...

                   My life of late has been busy,

                                                    but busy in a weird way...

A good three quarters of my summer has been spent away from home.

Between Summit, vacationing, spending time with family.

I really don't know what the weather was like in New York this summer.

Now Ohio and Tennessee on the other hand...

I could tell you exactly what the weather was like there.

On this first day of Autumn, I look back over my summer, and think...

It has been a good but challenging summer.

It has been full of new adventures, new faces, new experiences,

now some of these experiences I never want to experience again.

But I know that every experience,

and every thing that I have experienced this summer is all part of a bigger plan...

Even when I can't see what that plan will be.

This has been my view of late.

The caption of the photo above is very true. In many different aspects of my life, it is very true...

My view literally has I have been on a ladder a lot more then I normally am, as I have been helping rip old siding off our old/new house and put on new vinyl. It has also been the view of my spiritual walk. I am sure this needs an explanation.

'You feel like your walk with God is like being on a ladder???'

Well, no, not exactly, but there are some similarities.

First of all, you must make sure that you ladder is on level sturdy ground. You must be set upon "the Rock of Ages." And as soon as you are sure that your ladder is on firm level ground, you start your ascent, just starting the climb up a ladder can give you a thrill, you get that, "this could be an adventure" rush to the head, and your heart starts racing just slightly. A whole new exciting world with just one step off the ground.

As you climb you discover new things about yourself,

such as your fears, where you are afraid you will fail or fall.

It can be a truly terrifying spot... especially when the breeze blows and the ladder quakes just slightly. That is when all your fears are revealed in their full light. And it can cause you to freeze in your ascent to the top. Now it is when you are frozen to one spot that the most work can be done on the house that your ladder is leaning against. I mean you can't work when all that you are doing is climbing. It is at these frozen areas in your walk where you can get out the hammer and the crowbar and you can start accomplishing the work that you were on the ladder to do in the first place. I feel as if I am in one of these frozen areas on my way up the ladder. In fact I feel like God has allowed my ladder to be shaken. Which having your ladder shaken by someone can be the most terrifying thing one can ever experience, it sure will make you sure footed though. ;) It is a time that you truly get to know yourself. And hopefully a time when you can work on areas of your life that need attention. A time to get out the old crowbar and hammer and start prying away the old beat up layers of house, to reveal the original work of the carpenter. For it is only when the old battered pieces of protective layers are gone that the house is ready for the new protective layer of vinyl to be put on. What a mess it would be if we tried to just ignore the old aluminum and just started putting on the new siding... what a mess. It is a long and sometimes painful process. But oh, so worth it. Because someday the ascent will start again, move one hand, one foot, the other hand, the other foot, until finally you can go up one more rung on your ladder, and so starts the adventure once more. One rung or...

one day at a time.

Just take it one day at a time.

Our house before

And so ends my ladder object lesson to myself. It sometimes is just therapeutic to write stuff out, so if you read through it and were like, 'she can live on her ladder if she likes, but I don't really think life is like a ladder, she is a little whacked.' That's okay, this is the kind of post that comes out of me when the hour is getting later and later, and I am listening to Emile Pandolfi Radio on Pandora (piano ballads) Listening to piano music tends to make me a little reflective. ;) And sometimes strangely... emotional. But that is besides the point. Back to our house transformation, and enough about how piano music affects me.

During

Our house literally looks like it had a face lift.

I think it actually looks more sure of itself and cheerful with its new 'garments' on.

And I don't have a better after picture yet. So this will have to do.

Our house just needs a porch swing for the front porch to be perfect... Time to get into that wood shop that I have been talking to much about and start working towards making a swing.

Just hanging out on the ridge.

What better place to hang out after ripping stuff off the sides of the house then the roof? Josh didn't help but he ended up being in the picture 'cause he brought his Pepsi out onto the roof and that happened to be when Mom came out to snap some pictures. He at least gave me a sip of his Pepsi. ;)

My thr3e weeks: Summit (Part 1)

How do you sum up three weeks of awesomeness? You cannot do it in one post, I can tell you that much. So I will be doing a few posts on my last 3 weeks. Some of the content will be taken directly from my journal, so bear with me.
July 4th, Day 1: (Diary entry 1) "Chattanooga, T.N. here I come... Christine's alarm went off at 5:15 this morning. Dad greeted me with a "Happy Birthday!" and an omelet at my bedroom door. I donned my red, white, and blue star-spangled shirt, Dad grabbed my 48 lb. suitcase, Mom grabbed my really heavy carry-on, I gave Christine a hug and we were off. We made it to the airport by 7:00 am and I was through customs and at my gate waiting at 7:30. The flight was uneventful which is good. The only thing that happened worth some notice, was, as I sat down in my seat in the very back of the plane, I looked down and I had egg and cheese clinging to my shirt, breakfast left-overs. I quickly wiped them from my shirt and thought, "is this as embarrassing as egg on my face?""
~~~ Making it to the college campus late afternoon on Sunday, I then settled into the dorm room
met my room mate, ate dinner, and then I headed to orientation. Looking at the schedule I knew the two weeks were going to be exhausting. This is what the first full day looked like:

• (Diary entry 2:) ~ "5:40 - get up, get stuff out and be ready to take your shower at six. Read your Bible, take a 12 minute shower. Get ready to go to breakfast.
• 7:00 - Walk down to breakfast in cafeteria
• 7:15 - eat breakfast.
• 8:05 - Classes start. Ben W---'s does a couple sessions with a couple of breaks.
• 10:20 - Scott K---- does a couple of sessions
• 12:00 - lunch
• 1:00 - Another session with Ben W.
• 2:00-5:00 - free time to join in with the group activity or whatever you want to do.
• 6:00 - Optional-open forum with Scott K. I go play pool with a girl in my small group.
• 7:00 - Worship with Josh B---'s then last session for today.
• 9:00 - Get out of session, and walk to dorm to take your contacts out, that are starting to bother you after wearing them since six-something. Write in journal.
• 9:45 - small group meeting, which goes to 10:30
• 11:00 - Lights out."

Pretty much this is what everyday looked like, just different speakers and different topics. Over 72 hours of teaching and many different topics were covered. It was a truly awesome challenging time.
~~~

On Saturday after being at Summit for almost a week, Kami (my room mate) and I decided to join in a hike through Pocket. It was a beautiful day for a walk/run in the heart of Tennessee. I think it was a six mile hike, and it was extremely warm for this northerner. It was fun though... and Kami and I realized we were dressed alike which was pretty funny.

The two weeks went by very quickly... and before we knew it we were sitting in the last sessions... Friday night they had a graduation ceremony which we got to dress up for, which was cool. Kami and I were reunited with our families, and we both stayed in the same hotel Friday night.

This was my small group... we would meet every night and discuss the stuff that we were learning. Jessica (the one standing next to me) was the small group leader, and she would direct stuff and ask questions. We had fun together, they were a cool bunch of girls. It is weird to think that our paths might never cross again, after spending two weeks together I feel like we should live closer... it is kind of a strange feeling, knowing that they live a long way away, and I might not see them on this earth again. I am thankful for the time we had together though.

Well, that just about sums up my time at Summit... there is a lot more I could write about worldviews, and post-modernism... but I think that is better in person, and it would take forever to talk about even half of what was taught there. So this will be my last post on Summit, but family vacation (part 2) is coming shortly...

wait and trust... my thoughts...

"Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He will strengthen your heart:
Wait, I say, on the Lord."
~ Psalm 27:14 ~

I have discovered that a lot of life is spent waiting. When you are young you have to wait your turn to jump rope or play a game... As you grow older you have to start waiting for more important things, which also means it gets harder to wait for them. Life seems to go very quickly from waiting your turn to climb on the teeter-totter, to waiting to see who God is going to put on with you, to join you on life's big teeter-totter. And on this see-saw you spend a lot of time waiting. Waiting for a job, a closing on a house, or for a doctors diagnoses. How well do we trust during these times of waiting? I know I flounder... I know I have doubts... I know I have times when I say, " I don't want to wait anymore, somethin's gotta give!" It is at times like this that I read the Psalms and God gives me the above verse to read. How awesome is it that out of all the thousands of verses in the Bible, He leads us to the one that speaks to us at the exact time we needed it. So, to all of you that are in a season for waiting, "...be of good courage, and He will strengthen your heart, wait, I say, Wait on the Lord."
just wait.