insta friday

i'm becoming a coffee drinker thanks to my husband

in the gold polish mood

cuddling with the kitteh

my husband has such a servant heart <3

getting back to my fitness roots with billy blanks

getting crafty with polish

lemon chicken breast with couscous

after a long rehearsal we went to RA for sushi so that i didn't have to cook

ecstatic over the addition of the wonder years to netflix

another production has begun

a brute beast before him

Psalm 73:21-28
When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered,
I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.
Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Those who are far from you will perish; you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds.


Today at church Pastor Greg spoke his message from this passage in Scripture and it touched me so much because of how much it resonated within my heart.


Throughout my life, even the lonesome times when I haven't followed Him and have found myself far away from Him, I have always turned to Jesus when my heart is bleeding and He has always held it in His hands. In my darkest moments when I don't even recognize myself, He is there to hold me up. He is there to be my strength. Just as I touched on early this week, He is always made strong in my weakness.


During the most sorrowful moments scattered amongst my young life, He always envelopes me in the arms of His comfort. When I deserve it the least He is generous to nurture me and faithful to bring me back to Him.


Pastor Greg mentioned that during this week we should consider how the Lord holds our hand through our brokenness and our pain. Greg asked us to appreciate God's nearness and lean on Him in troubles, rather than hiding from Him or walking away because of shame or guilt. Greg urged us to think about how His body was broken so that we could have security and stability with Him.


Since the women's retreat last weekend I have reminded myself daily that He will never give up on guiding me through my life. He knows the deepest desires of my heart and He knows my gifts much better than even I do. Though I do not know, He knows what His plan is. I can rest assured knowing that whatever the objective for my life is, He will fulfill it if I just wait on Him, if I ask Him and trust Him to attain it, if I am faithful to remember and to believe that He is faithful and just and will bring to fruition His promise to me.


Though others have failed me. Though I have failed me. He will not.
He will never go back on His Word.


I am thankful that though I am selfish, though I am undeserving, though I was a brute beast before Him, though I am endlessly flawed, He loves me. He is jealous for me. He cries for me. He hopes for me. He delights in me. He created me for a purpose. His love for me endures forever.

{I took this photos in Austria this Summer.

Being there, surrounded by the beauty and majesty of the Alps, 

I couldn't help but be in complete awe of His creation}

another weekend with Him

Murrieta, Hot Springs

I've been really reflecting on this past weekend and the wonderful words that each speaker had to impart to us, and all the love I felt for and from my sisters in Christ. I've never been to a women's retreat before. The church I grew up in wasn't exactly the kind of environment I felt safe in to spend a whole weekend doing the women's retreat thing. Also, I found that a lot of the women's activities were too cheesy and too cornball for me, so I just never went. The reasons I decided to go this time around is because I love my church. I love the women I have come to know in my church. And since David and I have only been going here for two years or so, I want to get to know more women.

I signed up only because I knew that one friend was going and I knew that in order for me to go I needed to know at least one person. Thankfully almost all of the ladies from Fusion ended up going and though they are not the sole reason why I had such a wonderful weekend, I am so thankful each and every one of them were there.

The speakers were incredible. Every one of them chose topics that not only correlated with one another (they must have gotten together to discuss their topics beforehand), but they were all so unique and brought something new and special to the table. It's difficult for me to choose just one message that stood out to me because they all spoke to my heart in tremendous ways and I know that I was meant to be there. All of us who went, it seemed, were meant to be there.

Each message was generously sprinkled with verses that gave me such an overwhelming sense of peace and hope for what the Lord is working so carefully and so thoroughly in my heart and in my life right now.

Regarding the thorns in our flesh, those patterns of behavior that we often think keep us from living out His word and His glory. We were so lovingly reminded that though we may plead with the Lord to remove them, He gave them to us in order to fulfill His purpose for our lives, in order for His power to be made perfect in our weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:7b-10
Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 
That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties, For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Ezekiel 36:26

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And the subject which weighs so heavily on my heart, the subject of self worth, of our role in life, of what our purpose is, of what and who we are supposed to be.


Ephesians 2:10
For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Philippians 2:13
For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.


Jeremiah 29:11-13 
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
"Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.
"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."


It's funny to me because that last verse, Jeremiah 29:11, was our "Senior Class Verse" in high school. Back then it meant less to me because at the time I was planning a future for myself. Now here I am, 10 years later and this verse means so much more to me. I find myself in a confusing transition. The plans I had made for myself never panned out. The older I got the less I knew exactly what I wanted and now I find myself lost, not knowing at all what I was made for, what my purpose in life is, where He wants me to go, who He wants me to be, who He created me to be.
There is a saying I've heard many times that goes something like this: "You want to make God laugh? Make plans."

The biggest lesson I learned this weekend was to wait on Him. To have patience, a virtue I was not blessed with. To be confident in knowing that He has a perfect plan for my life. He has a future lined up for me that is better than any plan I could have summoned up and it's already in the works, whether I choose to realize it or not. I may not have any clue what it is and that may drive me crazy, but I can't dwell on it. I need to let Him take me there. I need to give it to Him and wait on Him to fulfill His promise to me; to give me a future and a hope.

I also was humbled by the worship. I am weird about Christian music and modern worship songs. which I briefly talked about in this post. They tend to not speak to me, maybe because I don't let them. I generally prefer hymns, probably because they remind me of my grandparents. I may also have an issue with contemporary worship music because of the church I grew up in. I NEVER connected to it there. It didn't feel authentic or genuine to me.
So as I sat down next to one of my friends for the first message and realized that we'd be worshiping (hello, Andrea, why wouldn't we be?), I kind of grumbled to her telling her how much I feel I can't relate to it and though she agreed and though I felt less alone about my problem, God worked on my heart. By the end of the weekend the music became a necessity for me. I needed to sing those songs. One song in particular touched my heart like no other worship song has ever done for me. It could be the words, or the melody, or the combination of the two... or it could have been that God had softened my heart of stone to be able to receive it. But I couldn't hear it and not sing it.

How He Loves


He is jealous for me
Loves like a hurricane
I am a tree bending beneath
The weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden 
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory
I realize just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me


Oh how He loves us so
Oh how He loves us
How He loves us so


We are His portion and He is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean we're all sinking
So Heaven meets earth
Like an unforeseen kiss
And my heart turns violently
Inside of my chest
I don't have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way that


He loves us


Oh how He loves us so
Oh how He loves us
How He loves us so
~ John Mark McMillan

Needless to say, the next time there is a women's retreat, I am signing up right away.

the weekend

I didn't go to Dub Dub this week because, well to be honest, I just didn't feel like it. It wasn't because I had a bad week or anything like that, I just needed a break. Sometimes it just causes me to have a lot of emotional stress to weigh in and this week was emotionally difficult for me so I let myself have a break.

BUT, I totally forgot that I won't be weighing in this week either because I'll be out of town for the weekend. Sooooo, I actually should have gone yesterday. Oh well.

On Saturday Dave and I decided to go to Disneyland. We hadn't been in a while and it happened to be Dave's last day to go before we renew his annual pass, it was also raining that morning so we figured it'd be nice and empty. We went on Star Tours for the first time since they updated it. I'm not a fan of 3D so that was a bummer, plus our "missions" were unsatisfactory. I'm bummed at how much the first three episodes were incorporated into the update. I'm also a little old fashioned and don't like change, so just the fact that it wasn't the old Star Tours that I had grown to love was a bummer as well.

Other than that we had a fantastic day. We love going to Disneyland because we usually just have a great time, even if we're just walking around hand in hand or people watching. We just love it.

David snapped these of me on the swings at California Adventures

Last week Kacie and I finished working on the Fall display at our church, something that I was very happy to be finished working on because it was quite a lot more work than we had originally anticipated, but I'm very proud of it and the work we put into it. We worked long hours and may have lost some fingerprints in the process thanks to the hot glue, but it was worth it because it turned out better than I thought it would.

 The boards were made of coffee filters (thousands actually) on the top

and white washed blocks of wood on the bottom

I hope you all had a lovely weekend!
~Andrea