Pressing On

Change.
No one likes it but life changes. You gotta let go of what you're holding onto and accept what the future is going to bring. I just love these verses from Ephesians:

"And I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power taht is at work within us to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever." (3:17-21).

It's crazy that we can think things were just so good and God has blessed us in so many ways, but when we accept change He will be able to do more than we could ever imagine. Think about it. He will give you something that is nothing that you ever dreamed of. You can ask for something super over the top and He will give you something even better. It's so crazy. On one condition: that we follow Him and surrender our own set paths to His leading.

I was at ADORE on Thursday night here in Victoria and the speaker was talking about how we really need to declare that "JESUS IS LORD". Jesus is our Saviour, but He is first and foremost our Lord. We are to surrender our lives everyday for His glory and plans. Sometimes I think that we get held up on the fact that we can know that we are saved yet we live our lives according to the world. That is not what God meant for us to be. He wants us to make every action and decision of each and everyday under His guidance, with His will in mind. Who are we to make plans to succeed in this world by plowing down God's people who are in the way in order to get on top? He has a path designed for each one of us. It's a hard thing to step into His way and just say "Everything that I have and am is Yours. Do with me what you want." I mean I am really struggling with that right now. I can surrender parts of my life that are easy for me to give up, but not those other areas where I think that I have things under control. We need to give up ALL of ourselves to God and He will work wonders in our lives. When I can do this, I know that God will give me more than I ever dreamed of. And the hope for this unimaginable future is what keeps me pressing on.

A Mixture of Events, News and Daily Happenings

Greetings,

I hope that my mom and dad are having a great time on their cruise, because they are going to have a lot to deal with when they come back. I fully expect something to happen to Brianne still (not that I want anything to) and then they gotta deal with all three of us. haha. It's kind of funny. When it rains, it pours.

Aside from that I received some good news today. I went to physio and I was telling her that my IT band hasn't hurt since before Christmas and that things were going well. She says my strength is awesome and alignment of my patella and other fibres is getting better too. I still can't run without pain but I am just living with that now and so I just go hard on the bike. Well not hard really. People have been telling me that I need to slow down and I have refused to listen, but I am beginning to reap the benefits of no pain when I just rest so I have been resting a whole lot more.

I have been going to the gym 4 days a week doing weights, so two days arms and two days legs and boy does it burn. But I must say that I feel great after. School is the same old deal. This week though for my biological oceanography class we are going out on a little boat and taking samples of the water for doing tests of productivity in the ocean. It should be really cool, in more ways than one. It's all day from 8-5 and so I am probably going to be a frozen turkey when I get back.

This last weekend I traveled to the mainland. On Saturday Leia and I went to Metrotown to shop and then to Science World. Science World is so cool. I would go again but try and go when there were less people. We saw the Human Body IMAX which was incredible. I mean you know that stuff, but to see real food being digested or the real movement of our ear drum, not just a model diagram was so cool.

I came back yesterday and watched football all day. I was happy that the Pats won, they played pretty well, but the Packers. My, my. What were they thinking? They totally didn't come out to play, it was hard to watch. The Giants wanted it way more and their receivers and running backs are just so powerful and good. As much as I hate to say it because they beat out my Cowboys, I did like watching them play. I don't like Eli Manning at all, but the rest of the team is good. Brett Favre made some huge errors and didn't come out to play. I thought that they played like they did against the Cowboys, where they just thought that the long pass would work and just kept doing that. Well, it didn't and it cost them the game. But man alive Tynes, the kicker for New York was so up and down. Missing 2 winning field goals at the end of the fourth quarter forcing overtime. Then he makes a long kick to send them to the Super Bowl, talk about a roller coaster. Well rest assured I will be cheering for New England on Feb. 3. I am pumped to have a little party, with all the good eats of Super Bowl Sunday with Jess and maybe Leia who is coming out to Victown for my birthday on Friday.

This week should be pretty easy since my bio. oceanography classes are cancelled due to the boat cruise and nothing is due. Next weekend I have 2 midterms, but I need to make time to study this week because this weekend I think that I am headed back to the mainland to take in some CBC basketball. It's their last home games and Serena will be there and is dying to see me and Melissa is missing me a whole bunch too. It'll just be Sat and Sun that I'm there but it will be action packed. I'm looking forward to it.

God is so faithful. I don't know a better way to say it other than that. He has been guiding me, teaching me, and just directing my thoughts and ways to His the last little while. It has been amazing. Now it's my turn to be faithful back to Him and I'm fully prepared and excited to do so.

Well have a good week. Later days!

Everytime I Breathe

Greetings,

I know that I have blogged rather recently, but I had to share this song with you. I have listened to it many times a day for the past week. It's just so good.

Everytime I Breathe - Big Daddy Weave

I am sure all of heaven's heard me cry
As I tell You all the reasons why
This life is just too hard
But day by day without fail
I'm finding everything I need
And everything that You are
To me

Chorus:
Everytime I breathe You seem a little bit closer
I never want to leave
I want to stay in Your warm embrace
Oh basking in the glory shining from Your face
And everytime I get another glimpse of Your heart
I realize it's true
That You are so marvelous God
And I am so in love with You

Now how could I after knowing One so great
Respond to You in any way
That's less than all I have to give
But by Your grace I want to love You not with what I say
But everyday
In a way that my life is lived

Chorus:
Everytime I breathe You seem a little bit closer
I never want to leave
I want to stay in Your warm embrace
Oh basking in the glory shining from Your face
And everytime I get another glimpse of Your heart
I realize it's true
That You are so marvelous God
And I am so in love with You

Wrapped in Your mercy I want to live and never leave
I am held by how humble
Yet overwhelmed by Your majesty
Captured by grace and now I'm finding
I am free
You are marvelous God
And knowing You is everything

Chorus:
Everytime I breathe You seem a little bit closer
I never want to leave
I want to stay in Your warm embrace
Oh basking in the glory shining from Your face
And everytime I get another glimpse of Your heart
I realize it's true
That You are so marvelous God
And I am so in love with You

Hopefully you can listen to the song sometime because it's even better with the music. I love it. Peace out and have a great Sunday!!!!

Look what the wind blew in

My first week at school has been pretty good. I was flying on such an emotional high for the past few days, that today was sort of like a huge bomb just blew up in my face. Of so I thought. I went to turn my computer on this morning and everything was set in default mode as if it had restarted and all of my documents, pictures, and music were gone. I updated this driver for my computer which has been giving me grief and left it alone til I got home from school at 5. I turned it on and Voila! everything was back to normal. So today wasn't that bad of a day after all, providing I had 3 classes and a lab. I am with my friend Lauren for that lab so that's a good thing.

After having been to stats a couple times I decided the work load was too much and since I didn't need it for my degree I dropped it. So I am now taking: Biology of marine invertebrates and biological ocenography on Monday and Thursday and on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, I have Organic chemistry, chordate zoology, and plants and people. Chem is giving me some problems since I don't remember anything from my second year, but the rest of my classes are biology so it's not a lot of work and they are fairly interesting as well.

I have already climatized to the weather here which sucks because it's so cold and I always wear 3 or 4 layers to school. Nothing was as cold as last night though. I had an optional field trip down to the low tide at 9pm to collect some invertebrates. Jess came along for fun. It was so windy and the tide was 10 m higher than it was supposed to be because of the windy front that was blowing in. We did collect some shore crabs, urchins, and sea cucumbers which was cool.

Now to the heart of the matter, the NFL playoffs. The general population of the province of BC is rooting for Seattle and so I am not. I know a lot of players so it's fun to watch them, but I am no "follow the crowd" type of person. So I hope that Green Bay wins. Plus it would be sweet if Favre could go out on top. I really want Dallas to win against New York too. They have beat NY twice this season already so it can and will be done. Although Tony Romo scares me with his erradic decisions and shakiness, Dallas's offensive line is amazing. Hopefully TO gets back and healthy, they need him. On the AFC side, New England will win and I will be happy to see it. I would love to see them win the whole shbang just because they are a great TEAM. I don't like Indy and never have so I would like to see San Diego win, but I highly doubt that's going to happen. Never know though. So I pick: Green Bay, Dallas, New England, and Indy.

Well I wish I was heading to BRIT this weekend with my parents and Brianne. Man, she's so lucky. I'm sure that my mom will take a million pictures and my dad will point out all his old teammates and tell us stories about his buddies. It would be cooler to be there, but no can do. I hope that they have a great time. Well, I'm off. Later days!

Happy New Year!

Greetings

Hopefully everyone's Christmas and New Year's was good and festive. Mine was great. Being at home for the holidays was just awesome this year. I hadn't been home all semester so it was so nice go there for a couple weeks. We played lots of games, did some puzzles, watched a lot of movies, and hung out with people.

I loved the snow too. I drove the quads for the first time since we got them a year or so ago and I had a blast. Brianne and I were just cruising on the slough and through the back couple acres of our property. I got to drive the mini cooper which was awesome too. We hung out with McComishs a number of times and I would have to say that Jon and I won the majority of the games that we played. I am sure that David and Leia would argue that pretty adamently but oh well. Brianne played on both teams for some games which was great so that we had an extra guesser for the questions. We did get a practice version of Dance Dance Revolution which is fun to play but after 2 rounds my knee was killing me, so no more of that.

Too much food was eaten as well. My mom was going hard core with the baking and cooking of meals. I loved it though. I got all my favorites and after pretty much every meal I said "I have been waiting 4 months for this." A bit of an exaggeration, but I sure appreciated all that she made. It was also great to see everyone at church and talk to some people there. I am glad that my blog does have some avid readers haha!

Now it's back to the hum drum of school. I was sort of excited to get back to school after seeing all of my marks from last semester, but that excitement died out the first day of class. I did pretty well last semester and had some positively surprising results from some exams that I didn't think went that well. This semester is looking to be really busy with all this extra lab work and two non-biology courses: stats and chemistry. I like those subjects, I just can't remember the stuff from 2nd year. It was awhile ago. I'm still going to be volunteering at the old folks home on Mondays for this semster. I really enjoy it so I am glad that I can be doing it. I am excited to watch some Vikes basketball games this semester as I didn't get to see any last semester. Usually I am at all of them, but I was helping with youth, I went to the mainland a lot, and I don't think that they even had that many home games.

Speaking sort of on the topic, I'll probably be making a trip to the mainland pretty soon to see Joe. It has been awhile, so I'm excited. Joe is back in Abbotsford already, but doesn't start classes til later this week. Lucky. I'm gonna try and stay at Leia's a lot more this semester because I barely ever saw her. Plus then she can drive me to and from the ferry, haha, since it is technically Mom's car. I guess Leia does pay for the gas though.

Anyhow, I don't have anything of real great importance here. I am planning on watching the football games this weekend. Yay playoffs. I hope that Seattle wins against Washington but if they have to play Dallas next week, Dallas better not muff up the game like they did last year. I have high hopes for Dallas going to the Super Bowl against New England but if they play any of their playoff games like they have their last few games, they will for sure lose. Green Bay in the Super Bowl wouldn't be too bad either. As long as New England makes it and NOT Indianapolis. Later days!!!