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provengrace
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Name: Holly
Country: United States
State: Tennessee
Metro: Nashville
Birthday: 2/21/1983
Gender: Female
Interests: Photography, Traveling, Coffee, People, Reading, Cooking, Babies (but not cooking babies), and learning new things.
I'm not neccesarily good at any of those things though.
Expertise: Being me. That's the only thing I can do.
Occupation: Accounting/Finance
Industry: Computers (Internet)
Message: message me
Member Since:
9/10/2005
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SubscriptionsSites I Read
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| i've moved.goodbye xanga. i'm keeping you for commenting purposes.
otherwise...
http://hfrees.blogspot.com/
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| it's been a few crazy days.church was great on sunday. while the main topic of the sermon was focused on what community means, there was a side-quote that really stuck out to me. this is not word-for-word, but basically it was that we often spend too much time asking god to fix our problems rather than worshiping him regardless of the circumstances.
so i thought about it sunday. i prayed about it. i began to wonder what this would look like in my daily life.
monday was gorgeous... 72 and sunny. i work from home on mondays, so i thought i'd head over to fido (local coffee shop) and grab a latte and work outside and enjoy the spring-like day. so i got ready, got in my car and headed down the interstate. and then my car decided not to keep going down the interstate. instead it decided to go only 20 mph. so i pulled over. i ended up having the car towed and looked at by my mechanic. her transmission was shot. so i panic. i hardly have any savings and everything in my checking account i need for all my normal bills. so i googled the price of getting a transmission fixed for a '93 toyota camry and i start seeing prices around $3000. i panic even more. and then i remember sunday. and i try my best to stop asking the "whys" and the "hows" and instead i worship. granted, i'm human and so i fail miserably at this, but i tried.
this morning robert (my mechanic) calls me. he found a transmission and he can fix my car for $700 total. this is easily less than half of what i was expecting to pay. it's still a major "ouch" number, especially in light of my current financial situation, but it's a lot lot lot better than i expected. i feel a huge sense of relief.
and then reality sets in. i'm reminded that $700 is still hardly doable for me and i begin to freak out again. and then i remember sunday. and i remember what he's already done for me. and i remember matthew 6:25-34 (a friend had recently mentioned it). and again, i do my best to not worry and instead to be thankful, to worship.
and then a friend informs me that she has $150 saved up for something she had planned, and those plans fell through, and she offered to lend me the money. and then my mom calls; my brother's car died on him too, he needs a whole new engine put in, and it'll cost $1200. my mom then tells me that my grandma is going to help both my brother and i get our cars fixed.
god is good, is he not?
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| spring awakening.spring awakening is the name of a musical that i desperately want to see, specifically with kyle riabko starring in it. but that's not going to happen.
it's also how i felt today. i took the day off and spent it with some much needed fido time (fido = local coffee shop, book-in-hand). i finished my book ("traveling mercies" by anne lammott).
today is about 65 and the warmth and the breeze and the hint of spring remind me again that change is part of god's glorious design. driving around town with my sunroof open, i was feeling reminiscent of my childhood days spent with my friend libby, spinning in circles on the front lawn until we fell down, and then lying there feeling as the world kept spinning around us.
next i plan to tackle "velvet elvis" by rob bell. i have started it three times now. though i enjoy what i've read, i have not been able to get myself past the first section, as there is so much to digest.
i love dr. pepper.
i'm contemplating the move to blogspot. stay tuned.
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| keeping score.i am making it a goal for each year to be better than the one before.
that being said...
january 2008 < january 2009
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| hope.strangely, our only hope for discovering our own purpose might lie in looking at great challenges beyond our comfort zones.
the struggle is to get off the starting line, to move beyond caring and speaking and begin doing. the challenge is to take the walk.
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she had five children, all of whom had died from AIDS. she was now caring for her 11 grandchildren by herself, because her husband had also died from the disease. as an afterthought, she said she too, was infected with the virus. yet despite her situation she made time to volunteer at the hospital. there was no sense of self-pity. she knew she wasn't unusual. she said that stories like hers were common. everyone she knew had been stripped of just about everything they had but hope.
driving through soweto i noticed that the main road was four lanes wide and freshly paved. everything else in the area was in utter disrepair so i asked the driver if there was anything special about this particular road. he looked over his shoulder and told us the road led to avalon, the cemetery.
the driver said that while this particular road was a major thoroughfare through soweto, on weekends traffic came to a total standstill because of all the funeral processions. grave diggers worked 24 hours a day and acres of land had been cleared to accommodate all of the bodies.
we stood by the car and i noticed a row of graves that were much closer together than the others. some were freshly covered and others were just empty holes in the ground. i was about to ask why they were so small when i stopped myself, realizing the truth. they were for children.
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we were searching for the answers to our own words of hope.
i find hope and it gives me rest
i find hope in a beating chest
i find hope in what eyes don't see
i find hope in your hate for me
have no fear when the waters rise
we can conquer this great divide
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from the book "take the walk: a journey towards action, awareness, and hope" by hanson.
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