Perfectly Imperfect

The picture I posted of my signed guitar was on #education!

Sat, 18 May 2013 11:00:04 -0500

What up!

today-isawindingroad: heartbeatofatwentysomething: theohpioneer...

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:49:42 -0500

heartbeatofatwentysomething:

theohpioneer:

The Proposal Story:

Ever since Mackenzie and I started dating, I’ve been giving her handwritten letters, sealed with a wax seal. I wrote her the first letter about a week after we started dating on a solo hiking trip, and I realized then that my life had changed forever. The alone time that I usually enjoyed, the silence of the woods, and the solitude of being miles from another living soul was no longer enjoyable, and I found myself constantly thinking about how I’d rather be sitting on the couch next to Mackenzie, watching some pointless TV show or movie and just enjoying each other’s company. I considered hiking back out that night so that I wouldn’t have to spend a single night in a different town. I decided to stay in the woods that night, but that’s when I wrote the first letter. I continued writing her letters throughout our time dating, and for Christmas I built her a wooden box to keep those letters in. Little did she know, they were a part of the story I’d been planning since the beginning.

Fast forward 8 months to the weekend of my 24th birthday. I told Mackenzie I wanted to take Monday, February 11th off and just spend the day together doing things we enjoyed.

On most Mondays, we eat brunch at Toast in Davidson, and afterwards we’ll take some time to walk around the Davidson College campus across the street and pretend to be college students, and we go sit in a courtyard and talk. The day started out with brunch at Toast, and was filled with other fun activities. On our way home after our day together, I started to be noticeably anxious, to the point where Mackenzie says I was making weird noises, laughing at everything she said (even if it wasn’t a joke) and asking weird questions. I have no memory of this. I was anxious, because when we pulled off at the appropriate exit, I took an unexpected turn, and drove onto the Davidson campus, and said “There’s one more thing I’d like to do…” and we walked up to the courtyard we often visited together, where soft lighting came from the surrounding lanterns, and the box containing the letters sat on the park bench. At this point, she knew for sure that I was up to something.

In the box were all the letters I had given her over the course of our relationship. Some of them I had sealed with a wax seal, some of them I left on her windshield, some of them were attached to gifts, some of them were love letters, some of them were short notes telling her how much I enjoyed and appreciated her. As we walked up to the park bench on February 11th, 2013, I told Mack I wanted to read through the letters I had written her, and at this point I started to lose feeling in my extremities.

We began to sort through the letters, and I picked out all the letters that were sealed with wax in an envelope. At this point, I gave her one more letter and told her to read it there on that bench. My hands were shaking as I began ordering all the letters I was holding into the sequence I had planned, because starting with the very first letter I wrote on that camping trip, throughout all 13 letters that were sealed with wax, I had hidden a secret message in the first letter of each of those letters. Every note I wrote her began with a specific letter, that when arranged in the order I gave them to her spelled out the question “W-I-L-L Y-O-U M-A-R-R-Y M…” and she was reading the final one that began with the letter “E.”

She finished reading the final letter, and I put it in the back of the stack I was holding, and told her to read the first letter of each letter in order from first to last. She flipped slowly at first: W… I… L… L… Y… O… U… and her speed picked up as she began to realize what she was reading. M… A… R… and by the time she reached the R’s she started to cry and shake her head and I moved off the bench and down onto one knee and asked the girl of my dreams if she would do me the honor and pleasure of being my wife. The best moment of my life so far is looking up into her watering eyes as she realized that I had been planning this since the beginning, and she had been holding this message the entire time without knowing it, and now it all made sense, and she said yes.

This has got to be one of the best proposals I have ever heard.

^Seriously.

Ho-ly.

today-isawindingroad: lucasithink: It kind of breaks my heart a little when a kid wants a balloon...

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:43:40 -0500

today-isawindingroad:

lucasithink:

It kind of breaks my heart a little when a kid wants a balloon but their parent tells them that’s “the wrong color”

Like when a little boy asks for a pink balloon and their mom says “no, give him a blue one.”

Serious childhood flashbacks…

We indulge my baby brother’s obsession with the colour pink. If anything, we hope his future dates get a kick out of all the pictures we have of him in high heels, carrying purses, wearing makeup, sporting a headwrap, and lugging around a pink blankie. I know we sure do.

I don’t get why people try to put kids that young in boxes. They have so much time. LET THEM BE! At those young ages, they are the most creative and the most open to the world and the most innocent. It’s so so so so wrong to cause offense to the little ones.

AMEN.

Photo

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:41:16 -0500

Audio

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:39:53 -0500

"…A strange art, music; the most poetic and precise of all the arts, vague as a dream and exact as..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:36:53 -0500

“…A strange art, music; the most poetic and precise of all the arts, vague as a dream and exact as algebra.”

- Guy de Maupassant (via tierradentro)

Photo

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:36:28 -0500

lostintheunexpected: Sleeping at Last- I’m Gonna Be (500...

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:32:07 -0500

lostintheunexpected:

Sleeping at Last- I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)

Photo

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:31:30 -0500

One of the many cards I received today. And totally how...

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:43:14 -0500

One of the many cards I received today. And totally how I’ll spell my name from now on! Flowers from the principal and my grandma. And a pin from third-grade Sarah. What a fabulous last day at Johnson Elementary School today. #ilovemyjob #teaching #musiced (at Maude E Johnson Elementary School)

tumblrgym: Sports Balls Replaced With Cats For Heathnor and...

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:34:04 -0500

tumblrgym:

Sports Balls Replaced With Cats

For Heathnor and Kaleb.

fashizblackdiary: From Maryzo Designs’s collection “Pink...

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:32:39 -0500

fashizblackdiary:

From Maryzo Designs’s collection “Pink Loyalty” (Freetown, Sierra Leone).

So. Beautiful. Holy. Nuggets.

This post is not about porn

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:32:04 -0500

unkaglen:

Anonymous asked: Can I ask about pornography? I feel like I’ve fallen so many times, how many times will God forgive me? Am I really sorry if I continue to do it? How many times can I spit in Gods face? [edited for length]

Unka Glen answered: Well, you actually have about a zillion things about you that need fixing or tweaking or adjusting, right? In fact, nobody ever dies a perfect human being. So it’s kind of an endless list of things to work on, and that’s true for all of us.

So right away we know one thing for sure: God is infinitely patient. We know that God will never be dealing with a perfect human being. From birth to death, He will be dealing with some kind of wrongness from each of us. If He couldn’t tolerate all that, none of us would be here.

He tells us that love is patient, and kind, and that it keeps no record of wrongs, and then He said, “I am love”.

But WE keep a record of our wrongs, don’t we? Despite Isaiah 43:18 telling us, “forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” We live in that past anyway. We make it about our performance when our performance didn’t get us saved and it certainly can’t keep us in good standing with God.

So if we let it drop when it comes to our past, we’re still in the present looking at a zillion sins, knowing that even in our future, this list of sins and imperfections will still exist. And there’s only one way to handle all this: one at a time.

If I tell you to paint a house, you can’t paint all the rooms at once, right? you start in one place and you end in another. You plan it so that you literally don’t paint yourself into a corner. Same thing with your spiritual life, you’re meant to wisely start in one place, and end in another, dealing with one thing at a time.

It’s SUPER IMPORTANT that you get this list of things you need to deal with in the right order. And in your case, this is your real problem: you’ve put porn at the top of your list. And so I must ask you, why? Is it of major theological importance? Does it effect your witness? Does it ruin your life in some tangible way? How did this get to the top of the list?

You and I know the answer is: the emotions of guilt put it there. Here’s what you need to know about that: guilt is a tool of the enemy, and it always entraps. In your case you’ve been convinced that looking at naked people is the exact same thing as “spitting in God’s face”. It’s obviously not. This is a lie.

So we should have thought of GUILT as the thing to put at the top of this list! Our guilt tells us theological lies. It keeps us from sharing God with others in an effective way, because we either share our guilt-ridden lives (and who would want to sign up for that?), or more likely we don’t share Christ at all, because we feel unworthy. In the end guilt is ruining everything.

Why isn’t guilt at the top of your list?

Not only isn’t guilt at the top of the list, it’s not even ON your list! Worse still, it’s actually the thing you’re using to decide what order the list goes in! Guilt was the setup. Guilt was the trap. Porn just happens to be the thing you were willing to feel guilty about. Once you’ve been convinced that you’ve “spit in God’s face”, then you can’t go to God and ask for help, right?

And the separation is complete.

You think it’s the porn that did the damage. It was the guilt. And here’s the thing about that. Quit the porn, and the enemy with tempt you to feel guilty about something else. Now, by contrast, if you quit the guilt, then you have all that mental energy, and all that renewed connection with God, to fight the porn thing.

You see, when you get that list right, each item you work on builds a momentum towards solving the next thing.

All ready for the program last night! #teaching #musiced

Wed, 15 May 2013 06:51:53 -0500

All ready for the program last night! #teaching #musiced

During the fourth grade music program today, my co-op surprised...

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:11:05 -0500

During the fourth grade music program today, my co-op surprised me with a gift. She painted an old guitar and had ALL the students and staff sign it! And then! At the evening program, our principal gave me a bouquet of flowers! What a blessing Johnson has been to me the past 8 weeks!!! #musiced #teaching #ILOVEMYJOB (at Maude E Johnson Elementary School)

contexted: void

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:51:43 -0500

contexted:

void

Photo

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:47:29 -0500

visualgraphic: Beautiful Things by Andrew Frazer

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:45:59 -0500

visualgraphic:

Beautiful Things by Andrew Frazer

missdeejers: tights-and-capes: veryscarykrystal: talkaboutspac...

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:43:15 -0500

missdeejers:

tights-and-capes:

veryscarykrystal:

talkaboutspaceships:

Couple has really awesome Batgirl/Nightwing wedding cause they’re awesome.

(source: http://imgur.com/a/XSADm)

Well, I just don’t think this can be beat.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Ideas…

Kaleb, I thought you might appreciate this.

Unka Glen: The end of fear

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:34:26 -0500

Unka Glen: The end of fear:

unkaglen:

How much of your life is ruled by fear? How many decisions, how many of your actions, how much of your lifestyle is all about fear? That might be:

The fear of rejection

The fear of failure

The fear of poverty

The fear of loneliness

The fear of being on bad terms with God

Now imagine that…