while you were...dancing

It has been a while since I was able to post--for a couple of reasons, I have been away from the computer. Most of those reasons involve pointe-shoes, bruised toes, and extreme exhaustion, and others involve a lack of writing-inspiration!

While I still haven't quite recovered from the spring ballet, I do feel so much more relaxed after its completion, and i'm getting my inspiration back.  Wow, it is spring break, I just taught my last baby ballet class for 2 weeks (wow, I hope they remember their recital dance when I return), I get to see amazing friends this weekend, amazing family in the coming days, and I am beyond excited.



in the past few days, this is what has happened:



this one got married



this one turned 23

this one turned 17

this one visited

this one slept on my pillow

oh! and allie and i managed to talk on the phone for a consecutive 5 hours.   should have met each other in chattanooga instead...

life is good! until next time!! em

 





oh happy day

Please read sweet Laura's blog to see what Happy things happened today.  God is so good, as is his timing and plan.  Allie has been such a faithful heart these past few months and it is truly encouraging.

http://justlookupward.blogspot.com/

forgiving love

currently obsessed with this song and Chris August in general. Every time this song comes on the radio, I am reminded of how forgiven I am and how we are called to forgive others. sometimes in my life i get caught up in the shoulda woulda couldas and get legalistic about love. i think, i CAN'T possibly forgive him for dropping the clothes there again, or I TOLD you to take the dishes to the sink, or PLEASE don't even try and talk to me about THAT, or YOU know that i need this right now, and every other silly sin I can pin on someone else...

then i hear this verse in my head.

oops.

7x70 times

I'm no mathematician

but I haven't reached it yet

there is no limit to God's grace and forgiveness

and being like Him there should be no limit to ours.

a very wise man (my father) told me once that the most successful  people  have the shortest memories.  counterintuitve? perhaps. but the point is, you have to forgive and FORGET, wipe that slate clean and move on. hit the reset button and put the right in front of the left.

forgiveness its a beautiful thing. without it, think where we would all be. take me one step closer to that unconditional love stuff please.

oh and don't forget about forgiving yourself. xoxo Em

oh well.

sometimes you just gotta laugh and say oh well:

-princess Ariel complete with red wig etc. this morning at Highland Villiage--that was ME. running around in a 2 piece finned costume at 3/4 year old birthday party. entertainment.

-wore two different socks to dinner tonight, knowingly. why would i care?

-applied acrylic nails for 5 dollars and proceeded to glue all my fingers together and then had to tear all the nails off because i felt like i had claws.

-mailed an envelope with three stamps instead of one-just to make sure it got there. who knew there was such a thing as too many stamps? return to sender.

-made cookies at midnight 2 nights ago,  just for the dough and then burnt the whole thing and ended up crying on the kitchen floor about how kurt didn't appreciate my love of chocolate.

-have been driving on empty for the past 2 days, hoping that Kurt would take my car out and get me gas. it hasn't happened yet.

-ate at waffle house on thursday night because we didn't have milk or bread because i hadn't been to the store in approxmately 2 weeks.

-told kurt that the basil ganglia was obviously that dangley thing in the back of your throat. wrong. its in the brain.

-wore two different pointe shoes today, without even knowing it.

-verging on running out of clothes because the laundry is piling up.

& you know what all that is okay.  if there is anything this far-from-perfect wonderful guy has taught me

scared?

its that life isn't perfect and it wouldn't be fun if it was.

 he confronted me the other day with something that really hit home.  he said, emily, look me in the eye and tell me you know youre not perfect. so i looked at him and said, kurt, OBVIOUSLY i know im not perfect. i am so far from it.  he said ya, but you honestly believe that if you try hard enough, you could be.

wow. that hurts! i think that a lot of times that is true. marriage. so here i am laughing and inviting all of you to too, at my silly silly mistakes and praising God that he is big enough - and strong enough - and has got the whole world perfectly in his hands. xoxo Em

tattle tales

oh baby ballet.  the stories i could tell on you.

today, little gracie who stands on number 8 looked up at me with great concern in her eyes.  she said, the girl who stands on the L , teacher, she is not hewah (here) today.

i smiled to myself, realizing that she meant number 7 & realizing she meant her friend sophie. her mistake was cute, honest, and to her that 7 might as well be an L or countless other things.

for a 3 year old, its miraculous to observe anything terribly concrete & hold on to it from week to week.  what about for us?  what are the things in my life that are really 7s but I have them turned into upside down L's.

God probably looks at me all the time and shakes his head, smiling at my silly mistake. i know i'll get there one day and see that the things I had viewed as problems were really blessings & the answers to the real problems were right in front of my eyes all along.

"Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely."

1 Corinthians 13:12

"then he caught hold of me"

on Wednesday Kurt and I finally had a much needed together-day--after our first semester together--it was time for a Christmas break, and a break from Christmas even. . .well all the hulabaloo anyway--.

We went to see Chronicles of Narnia and I remembered why we worked so well. . .everytime Aslan came on the screen, as silly as it sounds, we both just let the tears run. Isn't it funny that a sweet old children's story can tear at your heart that way? i love the passage in the Dawn Treader book, in which Eustace discovers that he must be transformed not by himself but by Aslan. I remembered my dear Elena friend reading this passage aloud at some point, and when I saw it on the big screen the importance of the moment, as well as its meaning, came flooding back to me.  Though we try and try to transform ourselves, scrape away our ugliness, refine and reform, it is to no avail unless Jesus is also a part of this transformation. I can't say it better than C.S. himself (go figure) so if you care to get lost in a little Children's magic, and Christmas magic, read on :

love and merriest of 26th of Decembers,
em

Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

The the lion said - but I don't know if it spoke - 'You will have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

The very first tear he made was do deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know - if you've ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.

Well, he peele the beastly stuff right off - just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt - and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was Ias smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me - I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on - and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again. You'd think me simply phoney if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they've no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian's, but I was so glad to see them.

teachable me

for the first time in many years, today was NOT my first day of school. no backpack, no snack packed, no new outfit, no jitters, no sleepless night before.  nope schooling is OVER and DONE. . .but is the teaching?

this is the spirit I have pondered for the past few days.  Dear friend LYDIA RICE sent an email regarding the new things she is doing in Peru, and how she "prays for a teachable spirit." WOW! That really made me think if my spirit was teachable or not. If you know me, you know that I have a set way of doing things.  It doesnt always make sense but its comfortable.  The EM I am is comfortable the way she is.  Change?  No thanks! You're going to correct me?? Tell me you're kidding.  Show me how to do it and I will smile and nod, and then do it my way.  WHY is that?? Wow we have really hit on something here, and I'm not sure if I like it!

So today I pondered that teachable spirit.  And at lunch I noticed a new waitress tagging along with an experienced waiter, and at WalMart of all the places, my cashier volunteered that today, was his first day! I said, first day? Really?  That must be challenging.  First days are always rough!  He said, "Yep, but its just one of those things everybody's got to go through." It sounded to me like he had a teachable spirit, a spirit willing and ready to learn. 

My new friend Barbara, introduced to me by those wonderful Ferris-es, said to me, "Life is always changing."  How true.  With change comes new things, (as discussed a few posts back) and with new things comes LEARNING.  No matter how old we are, let us never stop learning.  Me especially.  And even though I am not going to my first day of school with my lacy socks and a bow in my hair, I am pretty sure I am learning more now than I ever had.  Thank you to a God who never gives up on our capacity to learn, and Lord, please grant me a teachable spirit.