VICTORY...thanks grandpa.

A few months ago my grandpa passed away, today he gave me a gift.

I have BIG dreams in life, I want to change this place before I go, I want to make a difference and help people. I want to hold the victims of sex trafficking and let me them cry their stories until there is nothing left to be said, I want to feed the children in this world until they are full enough to run after the dreams they were created to fulfill, I want to love my husband with everything I am and be super woman for my children. I want to be a force to be reckoned with and a friend who can always be relied on. I want to be beautiful and loving and fierce and strong.

But today doubt crept in, I felt defeated, unworthy, and hopeless. Mostly I felt alone.

So what else was there to do? I prayed. I crawled into bed and cried, I wept and asked Jesus why I was still single, why I still have a crappy job, why I felt so small, and mostly just asked him to hold me. He did and I slept for a few minutes. when I woke something had shifted. I didn't feel great, I just felt like I wasn't going to give up. I turned on some worship music and just declared that He was big enough in me to do anything through me and WITH me. His love is so much bigger than anything we could ever fathom. How could I feel alone and unimportant? All those dreams I have of fairy tale romance are already true in my life...the prince I've always dreamed of, gave up everything and died for me so he could be with me. He is ravished by me!

I kept repeating "I am victorious! I am Victorious! I am victorious! I am victory! I AM victory!"

That was weird...why did I say I AM victory...like it was my name? And then I remembered a funny story my family always told growing up. When I was born my grandpa hated my name, he refused to call me natalie and for the first year of my life called me Victoria. We used to laugh about how weird and stubborn he was for doing that. But now, I've taken a different perspective.

Perhaps my grandpa felt something about me ...like that name was just right for me.

VICTORIA (1) Gender: Feminine Usage: English, Spanish, Romanian, Late Roman Pronounced: vik-TAWR-ee-ə (English)  [key] Feminine form of VICTORIUS, though later it was regarded as coming directly from Latin victoriameaning "victory". It was borne by a 4th-century saint and martyr from North Africa. Though in use elsewhere in Europe, the name was very rare in the English-speaking world until the 19th century, when Queen Victoria began her long rule of Britain. She was named after her mother, who was of German royalty.

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VICTORIA (2) Gender: Feminine Usage: Roman Mythology Pronounced: vik-TAWR-ee-ə (English)  [key] Means "victory" in Latin. Victoria was the Roman goddess of victory. From a young age I had victory spoken over me...so, no matter what happens I will remember that I don't need to strive for victory, that in Christ it is just who I am. He who is victorious lives in me so I no longer need to struggle, I AM victory, I AM Victoria. So thank you PaPa for seeing something in me that I would one day need to be reminded of, for seeing victory in me when I was too small to show it.

Our beautiful Generation

This is a a new song...a song of our generation...

think about what answers 

::you have:: 

available to the             ..questions.. 

the people around you 

are asking.

Helplessness Blues

by, Fleet Foxes

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique

Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see

And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be

A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me

But I don't, I don't know what that will be

I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

What's my name, what's my station, oh, just tell me what I should do

I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you

Or bow down and be grateful and say "sure, take all that you see"

To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me

And I don't, I don't know who to believe

I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see

Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak

Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself

What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?

And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf

I'll come back to you someday soon myself

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm raw

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore

And you would wait tables and soon run the store

Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore

Someday I'll be like the man on the screen 

the art of play.

I haven't written in AWHILE! School has been so busy, but in this busyness God is reminding me of the importance of play in His kingdom. I have been so caught up in studying, learning, working, earning, striving, juggling, etc. that when I slow down I just want to sleep or turn off my mind or pray quietly in my room. All of those things are good, but I need to remember that God gave me the ability to laugh and again and again reminds us in scripture to be childlike.

So here, in the midst of my finals week and in the first week of summer for most people I just want to take a minute and remind you of PLAYFULNESS.

On Saturday night I went to see "Midnight in Paris" with my cousin, Heidi. Overall it was a silly love story but it had all the great modernist writers and artists in it ..

      Hemmingway

Dali

                TS Elliot

      Stein

              Picasso

you get the point.

The movie was based around people who moved to Paris to dream and create art. I was so jazzed...I want to do that! Maybe not Paris, but I want to live an adventurous life full of art and spontaneity and beauty!

Anyhow, after the movie we felt like little girls..seriously, we were ridiculous. We ran to cold stone and get ice cream, yum. Drove back to my house, put on PJs, sweaters, and of course 1920s hats and grabbed some blankets and books. We sat out under the stars and read aloud to each other for two hours... poetry and short stories and maybe some of my stuff I'm working on :)

It sounds so silly now, but it was so nice to be swirled up in fun, to not feel the weight of responsibility, to be a child who knew how to play still.

That's all, very simple, just a call for you to have fun this week :) 

Be young at heart.

"And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me..." Matthew 18

mid terms

As mid-terms of my final months in college come upon me...I think I'll put this creepy woman I randomly found on the internet as my laptop's background to remind myself to enjoy these last few months of essays, lack of sleep, way too much chocolate, and crying.

new uses.

random fact about myself: whenever I am cleaning up my car or snack trash from a table I stuff everything I can into water bottle...total waste of time but I love condensing everything.

Water bottles can be useful in a lot of ways. Consolidating trash. Sandals. recycled into new products in factories. Made into art.

How can you re-use the ordinary things around you to change the world?

Hiking in puddles with dogs.

A Sense of Wonder.

This is how God made me feel today:          

              
"They say Aslan is on the move—perhaps has already landed."
              And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning—either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventerous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delighful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer."
-The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. ( C.S. Lewis)