It's Thursday Already?

I've been oh so busy with classes, homework, basketball games, and not getting enough sleep. Exhaustion sets in each morning but by the afternoon I tend to feel awake. It's weird how the sleep cycle works. Today I spent a couple of hours shooting portraits of a fellow student for a Photojournalism assignment. We walked all over campus shooting and met some friends along the way. I posted a whole ton of the outtakes to Flickr. My first Christian Worldview Development exam is tomorrow so I spent three hours studying Pneumatology with my friend, Megan. We love learning about the Spirit and his work in the lives of believers, as well as piecing the different stories and books together into one grand puzzle. The professor said that his multiple choice and true/false questions tend to contain only options that sound very much like the correct answers, which makes them really confusing. We studied for a good, long time, so hopefully we'll ace the exam!

A few of you asked about the rain shots in my previous post. We were getting rain last week and this week we are finally getting snow (which we haven't gotten much of all winter). Ohio has strange weather and this year the weather is extremely weird, not only in Ohio, but in the rest of the world, too. Has the weather been weird where you are?

On Sunday night my almost 92 year-old grandpa fell and had congestive heart failure. Now he is in the hospital recuperating and will hopefully be released today. Please pray for strength and healing for him. Thanks!

And now for some Thursday encouragement!

God bless you and your week!

Scripture and a Snapshot: February 5th

The Lord isn't really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. -2 Peter 3:9

I'm holding on to this promise and believing that there is hope for those who have not yet received God's free gift to come to repentance! My heart is especially heavy for my unsaved family members but I have not forgotten all the rest who are still stumbling in the dark. I need to be more diligent about praying more for their salvation. May many more see God's light shining through you and me and may they come to know Christ, the only one and true God. The prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results, (James 5:16) so let's be committed to praying. Pray until you prevail.

Extroverted?

Let me tell you, that's not what I was expecting from the Myers-Brigg Personality Test. As a child, I was always shy and very reserved. Calling anyone on the phone, and I mean anyone, was torture. I couldn't stand the possibility of being rejected. Walking over to my friend's house next door and knocking on the back door, waiting for her mother to arrive and say the fateful, "Sorry, Mel's busy," which was nearly always the case, (or at least to my young self it seemed that way), was almost too much for my desperate heart to take. All I hoped for was to be loved and treasured for who I was. Popularity wasn't what I was longing for; I just wanted love. The song Homemade that I shared in my last post sums up how I felt, and still feel somewhat to this day. However, in the last two years God has blessed me with way too many friends to count and I am grateful beyond words for each and every one of them. My heart still pines for love and even now I feel God filling me up so that I overflow with the love that only he gives. While I do have more friends than ever before, it's still a (nearly) daily struggle to initiate conversations with some of the people I interact with regularly, although when I really think on it, there's nothing to be scared of. God's been working on me BIG time in this area and I'm definitely changing, slowly but surely.

Thus I was amazed when I took the Myers-Brigg Personality Test on Thursday and my score showed me to have the personality type ESFJ. The F and the J made perfect sense in my mind, but the E and the S I wasn't so sure about, especially the E for Extrovert. I've taken the same test twice before, and both of those times my score showed that I was an I for Introvert, which I had always thought to be the case, but lately I've decided that perhaps I have become somewhat of an Extrovert. It's not that I'm afraid to converse with people. I just don't always know how to start talking, but once you get me going, usually I can hold my end of the conversation and I've always had a tendency to get lonely when I'm off by myself for too long. So it seems as if I'm leaving behind some of my Introvert tendencies and leaning towards being an Extrovert, which I'm totally lovin'!

Maybe I wasn't realizing before just how much God has changed me these past couple of years. He has set me free from unreasonable fears and given me peace about who I am. My hair's still messy, I have acne and the scars left from having lots of it in high school, I have thick eyebrows and tiny teeth, and there are girls skinnier than me, but all that doesn't matter. God made me who I am and I am who I am by his saving grace alone, which set me free from sin and made me holy!

Today I'm celebrating freedom in Christ. If you've been set free, you have a reason to praise because there's no longer condemnation! We have nothing to fear. God is for us, and he made each of us just the way he wanted for a specific purpose unique to each of us. And that's why I don't doubt personality changes or anything of the like anymore, because God is able to change us completely!

"Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think." -Ephesians 3:20

The Paper Mama Challenge: Self

Chelsey @ the Paper Mama is having a selfie challenge and I thought I'd enter. She talked about having self confidence and refusing to let mean comments about how you look get you down. Now, I've never had hate comments about my appearance, and I'm sooooo thankful for that, but other bloggers have and it is definitely not kind or considerate. We all have our imperfections and they make each of us beautiful in our own unique way.

My thoughts: Embrace who you are because it's the way God made you and he doesn't make mistakes! Read Psalm 139. <3

Obsessing over…

Black and white photography! I seriously love it so much. Colour photography is great and has its place, but there's something about the timelessness of black and white that captures my heart.

Working on…

Christian Worldview Development questions. I have 20 questions due tomorrow and I've barely even started! Oh, college.

Thinking about…

Sleep! I would love to go to bed right now, but I have to finish my homework...

Anticipating…

Mucho. I am so excited for Spring Break, and Summer! I'm also anticipating my classes this week. Yep, I love college, although I wish my profs gave less homework.

Listening to…

Nicole C. Mullen's album which came a while ago (2000), on Grooveshark. Listening to it brings back tons of memories from the summer before my 10th grade year in high school, when I would listen to the CD for hours and hours on end. My favorite song is Homemade.

Eating…

Well, I'm not eating anything right now, but I did enjoy a couple of cups of Blue Mountain Arabica coffee from PNG and a small bowl of crushed Oreos for dessert over an hour ago. 

Wishing…

Wishing there was a way to put an end to world hunger and sex trafficking today. =(