Song 10:48 PM

The Lighthouse's Tale by Nickel Creek...

is too sad to listen to. but its so good, that i still do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARIr6S_0lAQ

(because i dont know how to post an mp3 on here, heres a youtube link)

novembaha 2:44 PM

This week was my Thanksgiving break, which means I did not have work or school for a week (which = my life is awesome).

I took a much needed 'getaway' and visited biola (i know its not even two hours away, but ill take what i can get), ate way too much, and managed to put off all my homework until today.

when will i learn to stop procrastinating? apparently not today either....

Kenny went to go see The Chariot while we were in LA and somehow Elizabeth and I got roped into having our faces be painted.....oh the things we do for you. well at least they made for a sweet triad thing. :)

Dilemma 5:29 PM

"On the one hand, God loves us; on the other hand, our behavior repulses him. God yearns to see in people something of his own image reflected; at best he sees shattered fragments of that image. Still, God cannot- or will not- give up." -P. Yancey.

This is something that attracts me to God so much. He has something that I find hard to come by. God does not get discouraged and confused, he knows what he wants, and will fight with all of his love for it.

sleep 1:24 PM

you know that pick-up line that goes 'you must be tired, because youve been running through my head all day'? (or something) well, within the last couple hours i could basically say that to just about every person i know. i ditched the last half of my school day to come home and take a nap. then i realized the cleaning ladies were there. so then i went to liz's to nap but after two hours straight of laying there and not sleeping, this is a shout out for everyone i know. i love you, but you are keepin me up.

hallie says hello.

if you think this is funny, we can be friends. If you are reading this, chances are, we are probably already friends anyways. 6:39 PM

What do you call a man with no arms and no legs playing in the leaves?

....Russell.

What do you call a man with no arms and no legs who gets into a fight with a cat?

.....Claude.

What do you do with epileptic lettuce?

....you make a seizure salad!

What did 0 say to 8?

.....hey, nice belt. :)

What did the psychiatrist say when a man wearing nothing but saran wrap walked into his office?

....i can clearly see you're nuts.

What did the police man say to his tummy?

....iv'e got you under a vest!

What is brown an sticky?

.....a stick.

just a few topics for today 9:37 PM

Life is strange these days.

God works in weird ways.

i mean that in a sense that is hard.

i started reading 'Hinds' Feet On High Places' by Hannah Hurnard. just the preface and first chapter destroyed me. its an allegory. maybe the ambiguity of allegories is what did it. but rather, most likely, its just me. is it stupid that i fear for Much-Afraid?

on a different note...our small group got to know their leaders a bit better today. who knew a 'nutshell' testimony could end up being so un-nutshelly? we are hoping for the girls to open up as well. they are awesome, every one of them.

we also had a photo shoot at old poway park. so cute :)

Psalm 23 5:13 PM

I woke up this morning feeling like my head was going to fall off and explode. I knew I was sick, but at this point, I was kind of just consumed with disgustingness. Oh, perfect. Ahead of me was a huge, exciting day that I had been looking forward to...and it was about to fail.

The harder I pushed to convince myself that I could get through the day ahead and keep to my commitments...the more horrible I felt. This was not a coincidence.

If you've heard of the 5 love languages or know what I'm talking about, then you will understand when I say that my most prominent love language is 'physical touch'. I just read a book about this and I learned something. Did you know God loves us as well as disciplines us using our love language? Welp, today : exhibit A.

For the past few weeks I've been running around like a psycho trying to balance all of these things/to-do's/decisions/commitments that all hold real importance to me(except for school. aka the death of me) All of these are things that I'm not willing to, or simply cannot just drop from my life. Its been a mess trying to figure them out. So finally today, God said, mae leah, enough is enough. He allowed me to become just sick enough to where I was no longer able to function to do the things I needed to get done. In the mean time, what made it even harder was that I was letting other people down (cancelling our awesome small group day) and at times since I am too sick to take care of myself, I am forced to let my mother wait on me. I'm not sure if this is actually harder for her or for me.


So yep, God took me out of my own plans today. He rebukes and teaches me that I need to just freaking stop. He makes me lie down in green pastures (or literally in this case, on my green comforter). All of these things that God gave me to do, to balance, were not given to me for ME to do. Instead they are for Him to do through me.


Yes, the things I'm juggling are important to God and I dont believe He wants me to discontinue any of them. But the point is, I'm the one who's doing the juggling, not Him.

Sometimes, its a rude awakening when He will cripple me just enough so I cant do anything about anything. And I've talked about this before (scroll down) and this is one of those moments when God decided to humble me and put me back in place.

He wants me to stay true.

This brother knows whats up 8:43 PM

In order to be sure that we are doing God's will, we should simply develop an attitude of faith, hope, and love. We need not to be concerned about anything else. It is simply not important and should only be regarded as the means of getting to the final goal of being entirely lost in the love of God.
- Brother Lawrence

About a year ago, if you asked me if I thought I was was an optimistic person or not, I would probably answer with the response of, No I dont consider myself to be optimisticand I dont think I am pessimistic either. I am just realistic. Looking back I see what I thought realism was, and lets just say things have changed. Still the labels of optimism and pessimism have not changed for me, instead reality has. Jumping off a cliff (metephorically please) only to see if God will catch you is something that happens in a life of anyone who will be changed. Seeking out God's will, for the most part, always means encountering these cliffs. Stepping off of that cliff does not seem like a realistic descision. But what real reality looks like is not logical and does not make sense to any reasonable person. I wanted to be reasonable at a point in my life. Being reasonable was being smart and safe and wise. Yeah, God showed me otherwise. He is beyond reason and He is beyond what is logical. He doesnt make sense so stop trying to figure things out. Stop pretending like you know what is best.

We too often forget about the greatest variable in the equation- how great the God waiting for us on the other side is. What He is capable of or just the fact that He is there. He is there. Its like He makes everything okay.

I love that reality is something that is in itself faithful, hopeful, and abounding in love. It gives us a reason to have faith, hope, and love in our lives. I am so in love.

Tennesee 11:02 AM

Was Beautiful.


My sista and I took a quick end-of-the-summer trip to tennessee to visit my uncle. I never really travel to the east coast ever so it was cool to see how different life over there is.

Arriving at the airport and entering the women's bathroom...only to find that it doubled as a tornado shelter, spotting the National Knife Museum, and driving past about 8 Cracker Barrels (the culprit for America's obesity) in one day were all signs that made me realize, Mae Leah you are not in San Diego anymore.

Not as fun as you would think 12:43 AM

A few days ago, I had an urge to re-paint my room. So at about 10pm I went out and bought some paint. Here is the result. green & gray. and a fish face.

...and then I got a foot cramp.
... and then I found a penny.
...and then I killed a man.
...and then I bought a scooter.
...and then I didnt ride it.
...and then I pooped my pants.
...and then I wrote this blog.

Checks and Balances 10:12 AM

I kind of just realized that God has instilled in me a lot of things that are constantly, so to speak, "keeping me in check."

I dont have any specific examples, but always growing up and even up still, I have not ever been really really good at one thing. I'm alright at somethings, maybe better then alright at a few things, and really really sucky at many things. And its true, i cannot deny it. Sure, every once in a while it can get a little frustrating, but I have come to accept it. I pick things up pretty darn slowly, so finding patience for myself was something I have had to do for a while. Still finding myself caught up in the mindset that I am not as good at somethings as I want to be or "getting it" as quickly as I want to be, is humbling in itself.

It is on a daily basis where I notice that in the back of my mind there is temptation for pride (conceit, self-praise...whatever you wish to call it) to leak in, and wait for itself to cultivate. By God's grace (which is sort of perlexing to say here), it is either by consiousness of it or by God's interference of it, that traces of "pride" get disproved pretty quickly. Mind you, when I'm being too oblivious to notice and God decides to step in, being disproved of any reason to be prideful is never too fun. But really, I am greatful that He inserts these little checks and balances into me...and even still right now, I am humbled by the realization of his constant interventions being such a big part of who I am.

Being constantly reminded that I have no reason to be conceitful of anything turns out to be a blessing because everything I do and everything I am has nothing to do with my efforts to propel me there, but only by God's grace that allows me and his mercy that takes me.

Buddy 1:35 AM

So I have this dog. He's kinda awesome. but he pees in the house too much.

But i just luvs him anyways.

No Words 11:05 PM

Because this pretty much describes it...

I'm Delirious? (not the band, sorry) 11:15 PM

Elizabeth would have been in these pics too if she hadnt been such a good student and went to bed already. :(

So taking this history 101 class over the summer has been a huge mistake... but there are some plus sides to it. I guess that would be being able to do homework with friends as opposed to all by my lonesome. (then again there are some downsides to that as well = not so productive)

I was frustrated with my stressful predicament so I wanted to vent. These pictures are after a full night of homework where I was able to finish about half of the work I set out to accomplish. But I could care less about that crap...there are more important things in life.

Warning: These pictures do not portray the successful and productive night of slaving over my school work.

Curse you, summer school.

I Found My Career 10:42 PM

Today. Today was a total blog-worthy day because I actually got the chance to go skydiving! I always knew it was something I wanted to do before I died and I am extremely excited to say that I have been! (but that doesnt mean im ready to die now)

Liz surprised me earlier in the week by telling me that she wanted to hang out and give me my birthday present early.......and that we were going to skydive. (WHAT!) I was crazy excited and couldnt wait to go. Seriously, liz thank you so much, it was awesome.

So anticipation was actually really really fun. We began the journey by signing most of our legal rights away (very redundant with all those initials but still fun). And then we did our tandem training...in Brazilian. yes, our group ended up being dominantly Brazilian (all execpt me and liz) so we interpreted all that good stuff one needs to know about jumping out of the plane safely in a different language. We are still alive. :)

My ears kept popping on the plane ride up. When we reached about 6000 feet, I thought we were ready to jump! It turns out we were only half way up...so more ear popping time to go. Eventually we reached 13000 and jumped out there. I thought that would be the part where I would freak out but it actually wasnt that big of a deal...it was just freaking awesome. We were free falling for about a minute straight and the entire time i was just screaming. My mouth was wide open the whole time so when he pulled the parachute, the left side of my face was covered in my saliva. mmm attractive. Yes, its a good thing he had a video camera all up in my face for it all. oh my, am I looking forward to seeing that.

I am super grateful for an experience like this and thank God that I was able do something this awesome. I'm floored by the riches He has always poured on my life.

So This One Time... 4:36 PM

I decided to give this blog thing another shot and start fresh again. Starting fresh is kind of fun, right? But this time will be a little different from the first... hopefully in the sense that I will actually use it. (I am apparently trying to be optimistic as well).

When I had the ridiculously successful "raindrop chronicles" I noticed how I would always think of things to write but never got around to posting them because most of the things (not internet worthy) I would write would end up in my journal instead.

Therefore, this will be more of a photo blog.

but not.


but sort of.

I will dedicate this post to the blame of my blogging career's failure:

Leaving the words to the pages and the digital pictures to the cybertronic world wide web of virtual awesomeness.

...i dont really know what that means.