yet.

i woke up this morning feeling like someone had beaten me up. i just woke up feeling so emotionally and physically spent from everything going on in my family right now.

some of it is really great...

being engaged, planning a wedding, luke getting a new job, luke and teri's baby coming in 2 months...

some of it is just stressful, not really good or bad...

selling, packing, and moving mom's house, trying to sell luke and teri's house, drew and chris looking for jobs...

and some of it is pretty terrible...

mom having a herniated disc, which led to back surgery and basically being bed-ridden for over a month, and grandmother having a stroke, open-heart surgery, another stroke, and now being in critical icu...

i mean, it's just kind of a lot... and somewhere in there i'm supposed to fit in school and work...

but on my drive back to waco this morning, god reminded me of what i think is one of the most profound passages in scripture--

habakkuk 3.17-19:

though the fig tree should not blossom,

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold,

and there be no herd in the stalls,

yet i will rejoice in the lord;

i will take joy in the god of my salvation.

god, the lord, is my strength;

he makes my feet like the deer's;

he makes me tread on high places.

though i feel like i can't keep up with everything going on... yet i will rejoice in the lord.

though it seems like there's too much uncertainty and there are too many unknowns... yet i will rejoice in the lord.

why? how? because god, the lord, is our strength.

i could go on, but surely i've made my point. i hope this challenges and encourages someone else today the way it has me. your turn:

though... (fill in the blank for your own life)...

yet i will rejoice in the lord.

let the countdown begin.

big news:

chris and i are ENGAGED!!!!

i realize this is old news to everyone who reads this blog (all 3 of you), but i figured it was only appropriate to create a post about it.

he proposed on february 18th, which was very sneaky because my birthday was on the 17th, so everything was disguised as birthday celebration... we had a yummy dinner at 1424, then got coffee and strolled on campus (one of our favorite things to do together)... we sat and talked on a bench for a while... then the next thing i knew, he pulled out a really pretty ring and asked me to marry him!

i thought our plan was to go back to my house for birthday cake with katelyn and walker, but when we walked in, the house was full of people we love--family, college friends, waco friends--it was such a surprise and such a blast! he did such a great job!

now the planning has begun... and we've officially set a date: 10.01.11.

seven months from today!! we couldn't be more excited! let the countdown begin...

community.

on tuesday morning, dr. roger olson spoke at chapel on the subject of community. i didn't have super high expectations, mostly because "community" is so cliche these days and such a buzz word around truett seminary, so i wasn't thrilled about another sermon on the topic.

good news: i was pleasantly surprised.

he defined community as requiring availability, vulnerability, and accountability. after i got passed the fact that all of his points ended in "ility," i realized that he really did nail it. those things are vital in community, and when they're lacking, their absence is all too obvious.

as i listened, i tried to think about when in my life i've experienced the type of community he was discussing. i thought of the several individual relationships in my life that i could throw into this category...

...but then my mind immediately went to hanoi, vietnam.

wow. what an unbelievable group of people. i'm not even sure i could adequately put into words the type of community the 10 of us had that summer. our time together was rich, and deep, and sweet. i could not be more thankful for these people.

my favorite part of dr. olson's sermon was that he described this type of community as a rare gift, and claimed it to be a brief glimpse of heaven, a snapshot of the kingdom of god. i couldn't agree more.

fiesta.

meet katelyn and walker:

this happened on saturday night:

walker: "everything about you, marry me."

(he was nervous. clearly.)

katelyn: "sure, why not?"

(typical.)

with that, the fiesta began... mariachi band included.

it's still pretty surreal that they're actually engaged, but i couldn't be more excited for these two.

it's always fun to celebrate a best friend getting engaged...

...but i've decided it's the most fun when two best friends get engaged to each other.

congrats to two of the most fun people in my life. let's be friends always. duh.

our highest activity.

i recently came across this excerpt from the problem of pain in my daily c.s. lewis readings book and had to share it on here. i think too often i find myself trying to muster up love for god, trying to figure out how to love him in the best way i possibly can--when in reality, to love him is to respond to his love.

If the world exists not chiefly that we may love God but that God may love us, yet that very fact, on a deeper level, is so for our sakes. If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed. Before and behind all the relations of God to man, as we now learn them from Christianity, yawns the abyss of a Divine act of pure giving--the election of man, from nonentity, to be the beloved of God, and therefore (in some sense) the needed and desired of God, who but for that act needs and desires nothing, since He eternally has, and is, all goodness. And that act is for our sakes. It is good for us to know love; and best for us to know the love of the best object, God. But to know it as a love in which we were primarily the wooers and God the wooed, in which we sought and He was found, in which His conformity to our needs, not ours to His, came first, would be to know it in a form false to the very nature of things. For we are only creatures: our role must always be that of patient to agent, female to male, mirror to light, echo to voice. Our highest activity must be response, not initiative. To experience the love of God in a true, and not an illusory form, is therefore to experience it as our surrender to His demand, our conformity to His desire: to experience it in the opposite way is, as it were, a solecism against the grammar of being.

thankful for this reminder of god's inexplicable love for me--a love which demands my love and surrender in response.