My Dash

In Erwin McManus's new book, "Soul Cravings", which I am in love with by the way, he talks about how although we are all designed by God so uniquely and all have different stories, we all have in common "the dash", which is the line between the time of our birth and the time of our death. So mine looks something like 1985- (unknown). As humans it's easy to take for granted this gift of life and that our time is precious here, but it still doesn't mean that we should live our lives constantly worrying and wondering of when our time will come to an end eiether. There should be a balance, and like my favorite actor legend, James Dean once quoted "Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today", which Erwin also quoted.. we have the same poster in our house- very cool i thought.... I think my deceased Hollywood crush has a point.

I was thinking about my dash, and what I want my grandchildren to know about me, what I want my loved ones to say about my story, my life that's included inside that dash... I want it to be something I would be proud of and something that God has written.

My parents found an old box of my mother's pictures from her early 20's, it was amazing what pictures can tell you about someone just by seeing their reaction while looking at them. I had never seen a picture of my Grandmother before, I've never met her, but have only heard about her many times through my Mother and her extended family. The tears that my mom cried from looking at these pictures were bittersweet.

I saw the picture of her and I knew it was her, because she has been in my dreams multiple times. I knew that my grandmother was a very religious woman, that she loved to sing and dance, that she loved my mother deeply, that she loved to wear a lot of jewelry, and that she had a hard life and wasn't loved in the best way by her husband. I knew that she had problems with alcohol and was married to a man that treated my own mother in a horrible way, that still makes me very upset and very untrusting of the male gender in some ways... but none the less, knowing this woman and what she was like and that gave my own mother life makes her incredibly special to me.

Although my mother has had to overcome a lot of things from her past, her dash is a story of God's grace and pursuit of her heart and abundance of blessings enfolding my mother and what has been included in her story. My mother has made choices that have tremendously impacted my life and the life of my sister and the generations to come.... it is the ripple effect at it's finest and I am eternally grateful.

So back to my dash..... I want to remember this, that although only 21, and still considered young, I look back at the journey so far, my "dash" so far has been incredible, and it wouldn't be the same, I can't even picture what it would have been like if it wasn't for God's provision and the love of my parents. I feel guilty asking the Lord for many more days and years filled with desires of mine becoming a reality, dreams being fulfilled, falling in love with a man that pursues me with all his heart, a marriage that is God glorifying and passion filled, because I have already been blessed with many healthy, joy and love filled days.

And as for love I want something real, I'm not going to just settle for the "look". I've had dreams of a baby boy... I wonder if that would become a reality, only God knows. Regardless, I yearn to be a mother, and want to raise my children in such a way that they never doubt God's love for them, or my own and that when they leave they feel they have an unconditional amount of support and love behind them.

I want to fight for the daughters of Eve in this world, to bring hope to women that have lost their hearts somewhere in Satan's decietfulness. I want to be a vessel of love, to counsel, to encourage, to care, for those that feel no one else believes in them. I will fight for them.
I want to glorify God with my gifts, I want to write.....

These are all wants, desires, they get me excited though, they get me excited about each new day, what I will experience, who I will meet, what stranger will become my friend, what glance will stir something in my heart, what song will perfectly illustrate what I'm feeling, what scent will flash a memory in my mind...

I will never forget the quote in "Under the Tuscan Sun" that goes something like, "Building the train tracks before they knew there even was any train" I guess I am living my life something like that right now. Praying the Lord is preparing my heart, purifying it, molding it, growing in it a continual love for His Son, so that when I do marry I will always know who my First Love is so I'm able to love and respect my husband with my all, and on an every day basis just grow closer to Him more so I can be sensitive to the Holy Spirit's guidance, to be a good friend, daughter, sister, aunt... a light...which is happening right now.

This is my dash.... what do you want yours to look like?

I like this...

listened to a podcast from Rock Harbor Church in L.A tonight..
thought what he talked about was so important and not brought up enough...

God doesn't care about getting "better"
God cares about giving you a new heart....
we do way too much work trying to be the person we should be... but you are already there... God wants your heart.. the heart in you NOW.
By taking out your heart, the enemy takes you out..
Christianity isn't about your behavior
Christianity is about your heart....
the greatest loss I have known is the loss of the heart..
God will give you a new heart
You Are Whole...

Jesus wants truth in our innermost parts.. and if you are still hurting from past events, Jesus is going to make you face that pain and lead you to healing and forgiveness.. bring your heart to Him

Above all things gaurd your heart, because it is the wellspring of life...

God we so need to get past ourselves and what we do, and we need to get to the place where we say Lord how do you see me?
So much is at stake, nothing less than this is Christianity.. purify us.

If anyone is thirsty let him come to me....
-- Rock Harbor Church

Poems from Reine's Heart

"The day you find love. The day you find happiness. The day you learn to trust. The day you learn to forgive. The day you know God. The day you know yourself. This is a wonderful day. A day that could not, should not be forgot. Carry this day with you. Carry what you found, what you learned, and what you knew. Let go of the regret. Let go of the hate. Let go of the guilt. Let go of the sorrow. Bury it beneath your feet. Rise up and face the day."

"it's funny how we feel that it's our right to be loved. but really, what right do we have to think someone should take that step, that risk, that jump into loving us. it's not easy. loving someone that is. full heartedly. everything thrown in. think about it. loving someone. it's a beautiful thing. probably the most precious thing god gave us. but with its beauty comes risk and hurt. should we really expect someone to take that leap for us? are we being selfish? or are we truly worthy? the way i see it is...well god gave us love. he loves us and we certainly don't deserve it. so if we strive to be more like him, why become shy with love? if we love others like he loves us, it will create a cycle. a cycle that will give each of us the right, the worthiness, the courage to take that step, that risk, that jump into love."


"angels. they're real, i promise. i do not put my word on many things, i promise. so when i do promise something, bet your life its true. but angels...they're pretty amazing. we all have our angels. angels that make sure you don't fall asleep and miss your life. angels that carry you when you stand too firm. angels that sing to you in quiet mornings. angels that piece your heart back together when it's been broken. angels that laugh at your jokes when no one else will. angels that slow you down when you forget to watch sunsets and talk to animals. angels that teach you how to love. see i told you they're real. but god also gave us another kind. two kinds of angels, i promise he did. this other kind....well they're pretty amazing. these angels give hugs. these angels are your sister, your friend....they could be the guy at the car wash, the guy askin' for money on the street corner, the guy you pass everyday, but have no idea who he is. he could be an angel. would you know? do you know? well i know a few, i promise. they've touched my heart. lead me to my maker, my savior. given me love, taught me how to love. supported me, encouraged me. just thinking about them makes me smile and even makes my heart skip a beat now and then. they're angels god let live among us. they're angels god let us get to know. and they're angels god let us fall in love with. they're angels i thank my angels for."


"home. it's a common word, full of meaning and memories. but what is home? is it the place where you were born? the place where you grew up? the place where your family is? home holds a lot more than we give it credit for. to me home is a combination of things. my home is where my love is. the people i love, the people who live in my heart, who mean the most to me. the people i thank god for everyday. the people who know me, the true me and love me anyways. the people i know i couldn't live without. the people who have influenced me and helped make me the girl i am today. the people i strive to be like. the people i pray for. the people i long for. the people i miss terribly when they're gone and celebrate when they're near. the people i'd hold onto forever. the people i'll never let go. this is my home. they are my home. "

Fight For Your Heart, Conquer the Battle of the Mind

"The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still"- Exodus 14:14

So often I forget how strategic the enemy is, and how deceptive his ways can be when creeping into the depths of our hearts and the thoughts in our minds. Satan is so much more obvious in other countries because they are not made up of such a materialistic society and do not have the high end technology that we have.
In the U.S Satan has to be so much more careful in how he attacks the spirits of those that love his enemy, the King and lover of our souls who we so often forget has authority of our souls. The enemy sees the seal that marks God's children and will go after them in any way he knows how, especially those that are moving and are on fire for the Lord. I guess take it as a good sign in a sense when you face opposition, because you are being reassured that you are right in the middle of God's will, frusturating the crap out of the one that wishes to destroy what you are helping to bring to life.. helping to unveil the truth to those who are blind.. blinded by the evil one.
I have noticed in women especially, including in myself how much Satan attacks our minds, entering into our thoughts and bringing in thoughts of doubt, confusion.. thoughts that say "You are not good enough", thoughts that say that "God doesn't have the best in mind for you", all thoughts that are not from the Lord, and not of your spirit because you are of the Lord, and these are LIES. These thoughts bring anxiety, they are intentionally there to destroy and kill your spirit from being the person that God has created you to be. You are a threat to the enemy and he knows it, so will do anything to keep you from being all that you are made to be, and from keeping your heart alive.
I've learned that just how men struggle visually and have to tame their eyes, so do women need to learn to hold their thoughts captive to the Lord and use scripture to overcome the enemy every time he creeps in with a bad thought, conquer it with the truth.. he has no hold over you if you do not let him. As women we represent more of God's emotion, so it makes sense that he would come after our minds..
Isaiah 26:3 is a great verse.. I encourage you every time you start feeling attacked, or start having thoughts that bring you down, make a concious effort to realize they are not from the Lord, and to pray that God will take hold of those.

Every day you awake, know that you are breathing because Christ is not done with you yet, that He is presently fulfilling His purpose through your life, through your heart. Take notice of your heart and your mind.. give it all to the Lord, for it is His.

"I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe"- Ephesians 1:18

"You will keep perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you"- Isaiah 26:3

"For he himself, is our peace"- Ephesians 1:14

Forget Former Things

"Sometimes without concious realization, our thoughts, our faith, our interests are entered into the past. We talk about other times, other places, other persons & loose our living hold on the present. Sometimes we think if we could just go back in time we would be happy. But anyone who attempts to re-enter the past is sure to be dissapointed. Anyone who as ever revisted the place of his birth after years of absence is shocked by the differences between the way the place actually is, and the way he has remembered if. He may walk along old familiar streets and roads, but he is a stranger in a strange land. He has thought of this place as home, but he finds he is no longer here even in spirit. He has gone onto a new and different life and in thinking longily of the past he has been given thought and interest to something that no longer really exists. This being true of the physical self, how much more true is it of the spiritual self?"- McBride

I love this quote... I love that McBride reminds me of what Jesus talks about all the time in the bible, how His Father, is the God of "I AM", which means God is with you in, God is your reality that surrounds you in the present, not God of "I WAS" of your past. This is so comforting to know that God is with us always, every moment of our lives, right NOW.

I know also that I will take this journey that McBride talks about, the feeling of returning to a place that has been your home for so much of your life. I know one day soon I will be leaving, one day yes for eternity to my real home, but also returning back to my town where I have grown up, the place that has many stories of my childhood, and teenage years, the place of comfort and security, where I feel like anywhere I go there will be someone I know.. a place I know will be hard to leave. I fear leaving for the sake of missing my family and friends, but I also fear what I will feel if I don't leave, the huge part of my heart that desires to explore new places, meet new people, feel challenged & having faith that God will provide and show up in incredible ways, and also to see more of this beautiful earth He created for us to enjoy.
Donald Miller's quote sums it up completely: "And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you:
Leave." – Donald Miller “Through Painted Desserts”

Books I Recommend

"Here & Now"- Henri Nouwen
"Blue Like Jazz"-Donald Miller
"Searching for God Knows What"- Donald Miller
"Through Painted Deserts"-Donald Miller
"Waking the Dead"-John Eldredge
"Wild at Heart"-John Eldredge
"Captivating"-John Eldridge
"The Art of Being"- Constance Rhodes
"Grace Walk"- Steve McVey
"Walk On"- Steve Stockman
"Velvet Elvis"- Rob Green
"Soul Cravings"- Erwin McManus

Take Notice

I grieved for the heart tonight… I grieved for the sake of loss… of missing someone that you can’t replace… a friend of mine lost his father and I thought the only joy he must feel right now is knowing his father is in Heaven… and I thought how even in the midst of knowing this there must be a void… and how wrong it is that children have to watch their parent suffer…. I got mad at sin, I got mad that because of sin cancer entered this world… I thanked God that nothing even death can’t separate us from Him, and the desperation for every human soul to have the peace of knowing where your eternity lies.. for I am anxious enough, that if I didn’t know that I would go crazy….

I had a conversation today with a friend about relationships.. and how when God allows two people to come together, that in Him there is no reason to break up, yet people do all the time for reasons that don’t always make sense, other than it all comes down to sin… somewhere in someone’s heart something was not right…. Christian or not a heart will suffer ache, loss, nostalgia, a tear that will take some time to heal, leaving it a little more jaded than before.
And although the heart still has consequences to the rollercoaster that it has been on and simply is just in need of some to rest… to have God’s healing.. God allows heart ache, but He is also the creator of healing, and in His timing He heals and restores your heart so it can love again, and grant you the grace to fully love someone again, love them well.. and have the courage to let a person love you in return for all you really are…

I don’t know how God does it… His heart bleeds from us all the time, yet he takes risks with us every second.. from the day He created us and gave us life He took the risk in giving us a choice… a choice to love and a choice to choose to love Him in return… this leaves me in awe of Him.. yet He is the creator of Love, a love that is incomprehensible , a love that is unconditional, unlike everything else in this world.

His love that will never change no matter what we do or not do, His love has nothing to do with how well we perform, or what we look like, or what our personality is like, or even how good of a person or Christian for that matter we are… His love is steadfast and eternal.. all He asks by demonstrating this for us, is that we Love well.. Love others that He has put into our lives, enjoy them for how they are uniquely designed… and by doing this we experience God’s love, the pieces of Heaven that come to us in the smallest moments…. A love that I will never be without, a relationship I will never stop fighting for…. nor will ever loose, because He has never stopped fighting for you and I, nor will ever give up on our hearts…

..No fear in Love...

"I want to be known and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely, like me. My love, do I know you? What is this greater gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other? What do we not connect? Will we be forever in fleshing this out? And how will we with words, narrow word, come into the knowing of each other? Is this Gods way of meriting grace, of teaching us of the labyrinth of His love for us, teaching us, in degrees, that which He is sacrificing to join ourselves to Him? Or better yet, has He formed our being fractional so that we might conflude one great hope, plodding and sighing and breathing into one another in such a great push that we might break through into the known and being loved, only to cave into a greater perdition and fall down at His throne still begging for our acceptance? Begging for our completion?"
- Donald Miller "Blue Like Jazz" Chapter on Love


"Fear" by Sarah Mclachlan

"Morning smiles
Like the face of a newborn child
Innocent unknowing
Winters end
Promises of a long lost friend
Speaks to me of comfort

But I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much to lose
Here in this lonely place
Tangled up in our embrace
Theres nothing Id like
Better than to fall
But I fear I have nothing to give

Wind in time
Rapes the flower trembling on the vine
Nothing yields to shelter it
From above
They say temptation will destroy our love
The never ending hunger

But I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much to lose
Here in this lonely place
Tangled up in our embrace
Theres nothing Id like
Better than to fall
But I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much to lose
I have nothing to give
We have so much to lose..."

so I know my friend Josh would find this annoying that I just put an exerpt from a chapter up here and a song lyric, but I felt these two went beautifully together... from what this song means,and the hope in love that Donald Miller talks about I think is a beautiful combination that is very inspiring.

Greatest Conviction

Being the Beloved

...in such a perfectionist driven society, in our American culture, and even in the Christian culture where it seems especially as a woman that the lie "You are not enough" whether you are not beautiful enough, smart enough, Godly enough, skinny enough, funny enough, etc.. is constantly told to you through the media, peers, churches all the time, at the end of the day it is the most freeing feeling to know that as a daughter of Christ that you are are already loved unconditionally.

This is so powerful to me, especially because so many other types of love are conditional. It is such a weakness even as a Christian fully knowing that I am fully known and fully loved unconditionally-- to still desire to feel valued, liked, loved & worthy of love in the eyes of those who are only have the capacity to, outside of Christ- love conditionally, and I realize the danger in this temptation, especially as a people pleaser of making idols out of those around me and desiring their validation.

In the book "Here & Now" by Henri Nouwen, he talks about how Jesus was tempted by Satan to prove that that He was worth being loved. The "tempter" said to him do something "useful" ( turning stones into bread), or "sensational"(throwing yourself down from a high tower), or do something that brings you "power"(paying satan homage). I feel like we too are tempted by Satan every day to do these things in order to win admiration and affection from others, but like Jesus, so we should too should respond to these things by saying" I don't have to prove that I am worthy of love. I am the Beloved of God, the One on whom God's favor rests" . This freedom of not having to prove to others we are worthy of love, frees us to be ourselves, to love others deeply, to have compassion, to not judge, and to not fear being judged.....

If I've learned anything in the past year, especially after the ending of a relationship where I felt parts of my heart were publically exposed & naturally judged -- I've learned it's impossibly to make everyone happy, that you cannot and do not have to explain or justify yourself or your heart to everyone, and that no one no matter what their authority may be their judgement is still manipulated by the world. God Himself is the only person's opinion you should care about, and after putting Him first, He will take care of the details in everything else.

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves"- Victor Hugo