Tunes Tuesday :: This is the Time

Since I totally completely 100% have this song stuck in my head this morning and still love it even though there is no getting it out, I thought I would share it. Yes, it's Superchick again. :) 


I love the sound of this song, and the harmonies on the chorus, and most of all the point of the song. People, life is waiting. This is the Time, get off your computers and phones, love people, do something you love, appreciate the little things. Don't be afraid to mess up, you fail more when you don't try (and of course that's a lyric from another superchick song ;)).

Superchick - This is the Time  

This is the story of your life
A movie starring you
What's the next scene have for you to do?
Leave the dishes in the sink
Leave your fear there too
Live the story you would write for you

Say Hey! Hey! Wake your heart!
and break break apart, the walls that keep you from being you
And walk, walk towards the light
And don't stop till you live your life
Like someone died for you.

This is the time, to try
Step out, your life is waiting
and as you fall, you'll find that you can fly.

You can find a million words
To build a wall of fear
Safe behind that wall, imprisoned here
Take that someday step today
To who you're meant to be
And turn your dreams to plans so you can breathe

Ask anyone whose time is up
What they'd give for what you got
And how they'd live your life
Live like your life's worth dying for
You just walked out that prison door
and you'll know how to live your life

please please please, remember, today, that someone died for you. live like you know it. we don't get another do-over at this life, today will be gone forever. don't waste it! 

yes, it takes work to live life well - but it is worth it. 

blessings,

emma

Tunes Tuesday :: to love you back

Sometimes {how 'bout a lot of times??} I take for granted, the amazing privilege that we have to know God, to be in His presence, and to love Him back. For me anyways, I tend to just kinda float through it, and not think about it that much. But come on - this is the Creator of the universe, before Jesus died and the curtain split, only one man once a year could enter the presence of God, and that was a pretty risky thing to do. Now, we have constant access to the LORD, and we live in His presence at all times - it is even within us! 

And also? We get to know Him and love Him back. He is the awe-some God, I AM, and we finite humans can know Him!! Not only love Him, but love Him. This song by Jamie Grace helps me to remember that when I forget, I love love love the part that goes:

'And I still can't believe,
That you've loved me for eternity,
And what's so marvelous to me,
Is that I finally get,
I finally get,
I get to love You, to love You back'

So today I want to share with you this song, and hopefully it will help remind you of the amazing privilege it is to love Him back. Cuz guys? this is something we need to do intentionally, with our whole hearts!

From the first sunrise You knew my name,
You knew I‘d fail You over and over,
But still You loved me all the same,
You still love me anyway,

The way You don't give up on me,
You really got a hold on me,
You give me more than I deserve,

You've become my everything,
The only reason that I sing,
The beauty is You chose me first,

And I still can't believe,
That you've loved me for eternity,
And what's so marvelous to me,
Is that I finally get,
I finally get,
I get to love You (to love You back),
I get to love You,
I get to love You,
I finally get, I finally get,

I get to know You more and more,
And make every single day about You,
I wanna live like I can't afford,
To spend another second without You,

The way You don't give up on me,
You really got a hold on me,
You give me more than I deserve,

You've become my everything,
The only reason that I sing,
The beauty is You chose me first,

And I still can't believe,
That you've loved me for eternity,
And what's so marvelous to me,
Is that I finally get,
I finally get,
I get to love You (to love You back),
I get to love You,
I get to love You,
I finally get, I finally get,

To go back to the start,
Back when my heart first met You,
Oh, I heard You were good,
But this is more than I expected,

So I answer the call,
I give You my all,
And lay it at Your feet,
I can't praise You enough,
But I promise to give You my love,

Oh I can't believe,
That you've loved me for eternity,
And it's so beautiful to see,
That I finally get, I finally get,
To love You back,
To love You,(to love You back)
I get to love You, (with every part of me)
I get to love You,
Oh I get to love You, yeah,
I get to love you back,
Oh how I love you... 

On another note - I always knew I liked Jamie Grace - I really liked all the radio singles that she had (those were the songs I knew), but my sister got Ready to Fly for Christmas, so I've been listening to it quite a bit, and gosh, love this girl and her music! :)

2015 :: one word

Happy New Year y'all!! 

In some ways it's hard to believe that 2014 is over already, and in other ways it feels like it was a full year. When I look back it feels like it sped by, but then when I think about it, I feel like it was a full year, and I really did appreciate and live in the moments far more than I have ever done previously. {except perhaps when I was a kid, because one of the super awesome things about kids is that they aren't really capable of not living in each moment.}

I've been working on a post to recap my word{s} {lol} for 2014: Here & Now, for quite some time, hopefully it will be published soon. Stay tuned for that. ha!

But for today, I want to share the word that I chose for this year, 2015.  

seek.

I want to seek the LORD this year, more then I have ever before. 

• I want to seek God and His will for my life, and for my future. 
• I want to seek God and the gifts + graces, big + small, that He gives each day. 
• I want to seek God and His character so that by His grace I might become more like Him. 
• I want to seek God and His grace because I so desperately need it myself, + so that I might generously extend it to others. 
• I want to seek God and His presence and all that He is so that I will know Him better, + be ever closer to Him, that I might discern His voice from all others, be satisfied only by Him, + keep my eyes fixed upon Him.

 I want to spend more time seeking Him than I do on small silly selfish fleshly things like I do right now. 

That's what I want this year. 

Do you have a word for 2015? What is it? Do you make new years resolutions?



Also, on the subject of my December Goal, which was slow for Advent and make the most of the Christmas season, I feel like I did that pretty well this year. :) I may or may not make a January Goals post later. We'll see. I have so many post ideas floating around in my head, and so many posts that I wanted to make in December that I never did...  like a Dressember fashion ideas post, and some advent stuff, among many others. like my 2014 word recap.

On a slightly related note, today was the first day for pants again and I'm alovin' it! ;) We also came up with this funny idea that I am not doing, wearing jeans all of January and calling it Jeanuary. lol

please excuse the mess lol

  

Thoughts on Running

Sooo... I just signed up for my first half marathon last week (!!!!!). So excited and nervous. For the past few years I have run a 5K every spring, but this year I am running the half.

So today I thought I would share a few thoughts on running, some quirky things that work for me when I run, some quotes, and a couple songs that I always listen to during the hard sections of every run. Any thoughts or tips you might have for running a half would be much appreciated!

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I've always run the 5K with my friend, and this year when our race had its annual sale, I asked her if she was going to do it. She said she was going to race, and was thinking about the half. I will admit to being skeptical at first, thinking of the lack of training I had put in the last few winters and knowing there's no way I could run 21km right now!

But we figured out that the reason I haven't likely trained the last few years is because training in the winter requires motivation, and if I can just run a 5K anyways without doing much training, why go out in the cold or suffer on the treadmill?? So because I now have a goal that I currently can't achieve, and I signed up for this race I can't subconsciously excuse myself from training.

And I will admit to always having the desire to run a half somewhere in the back of my mind, but there was another part of me that knows it's totally crazy and I needed my awesome friend to help me make this commitment. :)

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So this is the training plan that we're doing. Even though we're both already runners we are doing a couch-to-half plan because then we can ease into it ;)

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A couple of super random kind of weird things about me and running:

• A piece of minty gum or a mint helps me to run better. I don't really know why, I think it has something to do with minty-ness making my breath feel fresher, making it easier to breathe or feel less yucky or something, and it gives me a really small easy jaw movement to half focus on. It's weird, I know.
• For me, when I feel like I'm running slow, I do less walking, even if I'm actually running faster than usual. And if I'm running slower than usual but it feels faster, the desire to walk is greater. So I usually try to run fast and make it feel slow. lol ;) 

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There are a few go-to songs that I put on when I feel like I need to walk, or right at the end to help me finish well, right now, the very best one is My Lighthouse, by Rend Collective. 

 And the live version is even longer so sometimes I like that one. lol

Another great one is Never Ending Love Song by Peter Furler, and Greater Is He, also Peter Furler. 

and Steven Curtis Chapman - You Are Being Loved

Other than that, I don't really think I have any particular songs that I like for running, I just listen to whatever music is currently my favourite. 

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And can I get an amen???!!!! ;)

 

I think I need these shirts ;)

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Anyone else have any tips for running? Any funny quirky things? 

 

blessings,

Emma

31 Days :: {28} :: wrap-up/conclusion

Hey there friends! thanks for stopping by! This is the final post of my 31 Days series on Celebrating Life. If you'd like to see all the other posts so far, you'll find the introduction here or the posts all here :)

So I made it. I wrote every day in October {except Sundays}, on the topic of Celebrating Life. And I learned. so. much. 

Please please please go and read the Chapter entitled 'Cold Tangerines' from Shauna Niequist's book Cold Tangerines, you can do that here {scroll down a little bit and it will show up in blue printing}. Because I tried to find a couple of paragraphs from this chapter to highlight and share here but I have to admit that the whole chapter is underlined in my copy. Actually, I highly recommend reading the entire book ;)

I've tried to figure out what exactly I want to accomplish with this official wrap-up conclusion. And it's been hard. 

But I think I finally landed on something. I just want to encourage you {& me}. Encourage you to celebrate. Because it is so worth it. Even when it's hard.

Believe me, I know. When you get to the end of the day and you find yourself all snappy, and achy and tired, it's hard to celebrate. 

When you're bored crazy, it's hard to celebrate. When you're sad, mad, disappointed, hurt, frustrated, it's hard to celebrate.

A lot of times, it's even hard to celebrate when life is going good and it's a great day. 

Ouch. And that's the one I struggle with oh so often. Because I just let myself onto cruise control and it no longer matters if anything is worth celebrating, and nothing in my day has a real point, and I'm just breathing and moving but not really living. 

And so when Shauna write this in her book, it resonates with me. It calls to deep within me and says, celebrate. Make that effort. Because tomorrow will soon be today and when you look back on what will be yesterday, will you wish you had lived more alive?

"I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift, who will use it up and wring it out and drag it around like a favorite sweater." ~Shauna Niequist (Cold Tangerines)

 And it's not about waiting to celebrate the big moments in life. It's not about waiting to become whoever or whatever it is you think you are becoming. It's about celebrating this very life that you have today.

"But this is what I'm finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I'm waiting for, that adventure, that movie-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidwalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets - this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will ever experience.
I believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without even realizing it.
 
I don't want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That's the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don't even see it, because I'm too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting." ~Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

 And so today, I am encouraging you, calling you, appealing to you, pleading with you to please, open your eyes and intentionally look at all the beauty around you to celebrate.

"The world is alive, blinking and clicking, winking at us slyly, inviting us to get up and dance to the music that's been playing since the beginning of time, if you bend all the way down and put your ear to the ground to listen for it." ~Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

Shall we?

complete post list:
{1} :: October Goals and Pre-Intro
{2} :: introduction 
{3} :: beautiful 
{4} :: tangible beauty 
{5} :: today... 
{6} :: Tunes Tuesday :: 10,000 Reasons 
{7} :: we need it 
{8} :: hidden beauty 
{9} :: don't wait
{10} :: sleeping in 
{11} :: laughter 
{12} :: Tunes Tuesday :: Carrie Underwood
{13} :: 31 Days love
{14} :: in which I sort of tell you a story
{15} :: intention 
{16} :: intention, part 2
{17} :: Today...
{18} :: Tunes Tuesday :: Something Beautiful 
{19} :: intention, part 3 
{20} :: the root of celebration
{21} :: believing it 
{22} :: link love 
{23} :: family {beautiful people}
{24} :: Tunes Tuesday 
{25} :: celebrating when it's hard
{26} :: Today... 
{27} :: quotes 

linking up with Elizabeth :) 

31 Days :: {19} :: intention, part 3

Hey there friends! thanks for stopping by! You've found us at Day 19 of my 31 Days series on Celebrating Life. If you'd like to see all the other posts so far, you'll find the introduction here {includes post-list at the bottom} or the posts all here :) 

Soo.. the story is here, part 1 is here, and part 2 here. I thiiink this will be the last part. ;)

So you may have read the other posts, and been like, Emma, this is cool, but I thought that your series was about celebrating life, not living with intention. Please please explain exactly how this connects. And so that's what I'm hoping to do today. 

We are not, by nature, thankful people. Because of our sin nature, we will not, unintentionally, give thanks, which is, incidentally at the root of celebrating life. {did you catch that? sorry for the run-on sentence.}

We celebrate life as a way to say thank-you for each glorious moment - because even the 'un-glorious' moments, truly are glorious. We celebrate as a way to say thank-you when we live life fully, making the most of this sensational gift of life. 

Here's what Shauna has to say:

"I live according to my faith when I love a meal that has been prepared carefully, when I notice texture and color and taste, when I let the flavor and scent of something fresh from the ground surprise me and bring me back to life. I demonstrate my theology when I dance all night with people I love, because this life is worth the best celebration we can offer up to it. I thank God every time I eat crusty bread and garlicky olives, and when I smell clean laundry and hear that little squeak of fingers on a guitar. For me, what God said when he made the world is a prayer: It is good. This world, it is good. The beauty of a perfect green apple is good. The first steps of a child are good. Watching my grandparents dance in their kitchen is good. It is good. 

I have to remind myself that it is good. I have to create hope in my life, because there's something inside me that has radar for the bad parts of life. I walk into the kitchen and all I can see are crumbs on the counter, and I look in the mirror and don't even see my face, I just see all the potential wrinkles forming. I have a dark, worst-case scenario sensor, and it takes over."

{And here's where it's really hard. Because that thought continues and it's really amazing but I can't put her whole book here {otherwise I would, because I love it so much, and I think everyone should read it!!} so I have to pick somewhere to stop, but please go and read the next couple of paragraphs right here. She has so much beautiful to say about this!} {Or you could read the whole chapter... I think I underlined every word of it in my copy.}}

"When I live purposefully and well, when I dance instead of sitting it out, when I let myself laugh hard, when I wear my favorite shoes on a regular Tuesday, that regular Tuesday is better." ~Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

 

So, in conclusion: to celebrate requires a conscious choice. To make that choice, you need intention. Celebrating is a way to say thank-you to God. He loves it when we celebrate life! 

But how many times do you walk past that clean laundry without noticing the scent? How many times do you eat good food without really tasting it? It takes intention to see all those things. Practice it! :) 

love emma

linking up with Chantel and Elizabeth :)

31 Days :: {16} :: intention, part 2

Hey there friends! thanks for stopping by! You've found us at Day 16 of my 31 Days series on Celebrating Life. If you'd like to see all the other posts so far, you'll find the introduction here {includes post-list at the bottom} or the posts all here :) 

On Thursday I told y'all a story. Yesterday, I started talking about one of the things that I've been learning because of it. Today, I'm gonna keep on with that thing - intention.  

 The hardest part that I have found is starting. It takes slowing down and pausing. But if you have been coasting along, through habits, perhaps aimlessly, maybe at a high speed, how do you even remember to slow down and pause? For me, that often means setting alarms just to pause, and give thanks. Or maybe do something special, something like taking the time to play a game, or taking kids to the park, or having a little 1 or 2 song dance party, or anything that means you're not on auto-pilot anymore.

And I hope what you'll find - I know what I've found - is that the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Is it an oxymoron to say that living with intention can be a habit? Because I think, maybe it can. 

One of the benefits of intentional living are things like feeling more satisfied with your life: instead of getting to the end of the day and wondering what you even did and if there was a point, you can know that you took the time to do things on purpose, which means there was a point.

And once again, I'm going to say the same thing... come back on Monday and we're going to continue with intention. Maybe we'll even make a week of it? ;)

So today, do at least one thing with intention?

blessings,
emma  

linking up with Chantel and Elizabeth :)

31 Days :: {15} :: intention

Hey there friends! thanks for stopping by! You've found us at Day 15 of my 31 Days series on Celebrating Life. If you'd like to see all the other posts so far, you'll find the introduction here {includes post-list at the bottom} or the posts all here :)

So remember yesterday I told you a bit of a story? Yes, well today I'm going to share the first lesson that I am trying to learn from it. 

Right after that first day happened, and I realized that I was going to need to be getting more sleep in the near future, some things hit me. I would need to change some things up. My waking hours would decrease, which would, by default, mean that I would be able to fit less things into my day.  

But how to have make sure to get all the things that I need and want to get done, done? That calls for something called intention. Intention is "an act or instance of determining mentally upon some action or result." Which I think is just a semi-fancy way of saying, to choose to do something, purposefully. 

Because it's so easy to let minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and yes, even years slip by filled with little mindless time-fillers, and we can turn around and say, what was the point to that day, month, year? 

This is something that I have been passionate about for a while, this was my lock screen image for a long time:

 

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But I guess I wasn't doing enough putting it into practice so God decided to make me jump right in. 

Do you have any tips for living with intention?

Come back tomorrow and I'll keep on with intention, because, now that I'm writing, I'm realizing that I have more to say ;)

blessings, friends!

love emma