Life

Jews for Jesus

- Melody 1 Comment

Today is Palm Sunday. I’m barely getting this post in on this day, but I did it! 🙂

I’ve been excited for this Palm Sunday service for a week ever since Bro. Bruce talked about it in our college bible study last Monday night. I got up this morning and in Sunday school this morning Mom reminded us we had nursery duty. Well, dang. But of course, God never disappoints. 🙂 We had 2 year olds, and frankly, they aren’t very well behaved most of the time. Trying to corral a herd of them is like trying to herd a bunch of flies and make them sit still for five minutes. But, this morning was different. We had eight kids and one of them was a girl. Besides the usual “don’t do that”, “don’t touch that” and the occasional “don’t put that in your mouth”, they were quite good. We got them to actually (and quickly, mind you) sit down and do their craft for the morning without struggle! Amazing! (I still don’t want twins, though.)

At home a roast lunch was waiting for us. Yum! Great family fellowship time and nap time on the couch. 🙂 Jason watched basketball all afternoon. I love love love Sunday afternoons. Sports on the TV, mom drawing in the chair by the window, short naps on the couch, and just a relaxed atmosphere. 🙂 My sister once said that research showed that one’s heartbeat actually beats slower on Sundays. How neat!

Karol Joseph, the leader of the Brooklyn, NY branch of Jews for Jesus, came and spoke like she does every year. She is an incredibly smart woman and SUCH an inspiration. She was born Jewish and raised that way only to become a Christian in 1988. But, I’ll leave the link to tell you the rest. 🙂 After church, we were invited to fellowship with here at a church family’s home. I never really knew what  Jew was or what they believed. I didn’t know how complicated all of it was. How being converted from Judaism to Christianity pretty much expelled you from the synagogue, family, jobs and your livelihood. It was mind-boggling to me. I couldn’t imagine being separated from my family.

Needless to say I totally learned so much that I’ve longed to know but really had no one to ask. (the internet isn’t always reliable. am I right?! :)) She’s going to be at the college tomorrow during my 9.00 am class in a New Testament class on the other side of campus. I wish I could be there to soak up some more knowledge! If you know nothing about Jews for Jesus, you should really check out that site and support them in what they are doing! Incredibly ministry. Pray for Karol also because she leaves for Israel in three weeks and she says it’s a very hostile environment there and they aren’t afraid to get violent with her and her missionary team.

Have a great week! 🙂

Melody

Insignificant

- Melody

Have you ever felt insignificant? Like God didn’t pay any attention to you? Join the club.

(First off, let me say, sometimes I get downhearted looking at other blogs. They always have something profound to say or something extremely theological. So, here is my attempt at making my meager life encourage you or make you think.)

I dislike using my upcoming marriage in so many blogs but it’s surfacing all kinds of decisions and thoughts I just have to use it. 🙂

70% of my daily thoughts are consumed with wedding plans. The rest is consumed with what I will do once I’m married. I have to go somewhere to finish school, but we hate to move because of our incredible setup we have. (Jason works for a small school as their IT director and they gave him a gorgeous FREE house. I know!) Stephen F. Austin University is only 25 minutes away from our home but I’ve never wanted to go there and from what I’ve heard about their music staff, they aren’t very kind to commuting students. If we do move, we will both have to find jobs to support us and our new rent and all of our other monthly bills. I know this sort of sounds crazy, but our wedding is less than nine months away, so I can’t help but freak when I think about these sorts of things. I feel like God has sort of left me out of the loop in my life plans. But who am I to say that about our One True God? He knows all and IS all. He doesn’t have to tell me what in the world is going on in my life if He chooses not to. (And most of the time He does. ;))

I guess in a word, I am impatient. I always have been with things concerning my life and my future. I have never wanted to be right where I am. I’ve always wanted to fast-forward into the future so I could have that knowledge. When I was little, I would never go to sleep before anyone else because I didn’t want to miss anything. I’m still the same way. I have a need to know all. That is a conflict in my relationship with Christ. I often throw my Bible and prayer life aside and just ask God for answers without having studied or seriously prayed to Him. I’ve always been like that. It’s funny how God put me with Jason knowing full well he was perfect for me. God knew Jason would reveal things about myself I knew were there essentially but didn’t really  know how to explain or to fix. I guess I’m still in the revealing stage because I haven’t really “fixed” a whole lot of things. 😛

God, I know, is somehow weaving all of my insecurities and doubts into this giant, incredible big picture that I can’t see right now. I long for the day I can quit the library for GOOD and never go back. I long for the day I can live in peace with my husband and sing for a living. I long for the day I feel right, for the first time in my life, with Christ. I long for the day I have a consistent quiet time and prayer time with God and feel comfortable sharing the Gospel with someone else.

But for now, I need to work on my impatience.

Thanks for reading. 🙂

Melody.

Engagement Session

- Melody 2 Comments

Everyone go to http://angeladuncanphotography.blogspot.com now. 😀

I cannot express to you how incredibly excited I was to FINALLY do our engagement photo sesh with Angela on Monday. Jason went to college with her for a while so they’ve been friends and he introduced me to her photography and I instantly fell in love. I fell even more in love when I met her! Her personality and the way she deals with her clients is like she’s old friends with them. She is incredibly sweet, funny, helpful and all of the other good adjectives. 🙂

Needless to say, I was ecstatic to see she had blogged our session today!! I was smiling so big when I was reading her blog just now.

Throughout this wedding planning process, I’ve come to a lot of ‘brick walls.’ I’ll think I’ve found something/someone I’d want to use for our wedding and nothing ever would really work out. Then the perfect thing will fall right into my lap. God is funny like that. He never moves in the way you expect Him too. And that’s just what I love about Him. 🙂

Here are some pics I snagged from Angela’s blog… 🙂

Spring Break

- Melody

I had an incredible start to my spring break. 🙂 Well, sort of.

About Thursday, my back had started to hurt again. (I threw it out really bad last semester and was out of school and work for several days.) I woke up that morning and remember thinking, “Ow.” It was a muscle right on my spine on the right side. It was really tender and I didn’t think much of it. Thought I just slept on it wrong and it would go away in a couple of days. Well, it didn’t. It just got worse. At Jason’s cousin’s wedding Saturday night I couldn’t get comfortable during the ceremony because my back was stiff and sore. Sunday afternoon, after church, I went out to the car to go pick up Jason. I sat down in the car, shut the door, turned on the car, and turned on my iPod. As soon as I sat down I knew something was bad. I told myself, “If you can just reach the seatbelt, you’ll be okay from there.” Needless to say, I couldn’t even reach the seatbelt. My back seized up like nothing I have ever felt. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t scream. It was all I could do to find the lever to lower the seat. I slammed the seat down so I could lay on my back. I was still in the driveway and called my mom. She came out there, all I could get out was, “It hurts,” and I started to cry. She ran back in and got my dad. He had to carry me with my legs dangling, into the house. I laid there, my back seizing for the rest of the day.

Today, we had our Engagement Session with Angela Kay Duncan Photography scheduled. Jason and I both thought I wouldn’t be able to do it. Somehow, I was able to make it through the entire session and felt great the whole way through. My back is still stiff, but I feel so much better than yesterday. I am SO thankful for all the prayers. Thank you all so much!

Happy Spring Break!

Melody 🙂

Awakening and a Smashed Finger

- Melody

Yesterday this came in the mail!

Awakening: Passion 2010!!

So excited! I was supposed to be at youth chorus (a choir at school for the local homeschool kids) at 2.30 and was 5 minutes late trying to upload it to my phone, and it didn’t even work! 🙁 But nonetheless, I finally got it on my iPod!

So, today I’d sort of been dreading going to work. Always happens on Thursdays after being off on Wednesdays. But it turned out to be really nice. The GORGEOUS weather really lifted my mood and my spirit and decided to meet sweet Jason at the coffee shop to hang and talk and just be together. All was well until I got out of the car and demolished the tip of my left pointer finger in the door of the car. 🙁 I hate to be graphic, but the force was so great it pushed the skin out from under my nail! So I sit here only typing with 9 fingers. It’s extremely difficult! But I shall survive. Jason bought me chocolate, band-aids, and neosporin. 🙂

Anywho, plan on going to KC’s woodwind concert in about 20 minutes! Can’t wait to see my friends perform!! 🙂

Melody

Gloria

- Melody

Hello! I’m on the school’s WiFi and let me tell you, it’s crazy slow.

Life is just sort of ambling on lately. Wish I had more to blog about!

Last night was our Chorale concert and we performed John Rutter’s Gloria from the mass, among other things. I’ve done a lot of Gloria’s in my days, what with being in All-Region choirs and just choirs in general. But this Gloria, was out of this world. I loved every measure of it. There wasn’t one note of it I didn’t just feel overwhelmed with praise and adoration for our Creator! We had timpani, snare, xylophone, trumpets, tubas and an organ. It was the most beautiful piece of music I have ever performed and I couldn’t help the tears welling up in my eyes during that song. When it was over there was a standing ovation and I couldn’t help but look around at my fellow performers and none of them seemed too impressed. I think they were more worried about just getting it over with and going out with their friends afterwards than they were living in the moment of that beautiful Gloria. Their faces were blank and unhappy. I felt like I was the only one smiling. I don’t care what we sounded like, it was the text of that song that I fell in love with from the beginning…

“Gloria in excels is Deo.” GLORY TO GOD!

Being a vocal major I can’t understand how an unsaved person could sing countless amounts of pieces written to praise the One True God and STILL not believe! All the oldest composers had to write about was CHRIST! (And anything written about something else was considered secular.) That in itself amazes me. God REALLY has been around FOREVER! And He always will be!

Nowadays secular music thrives over sacred music. Just looking at the number of Twitter followers MercyMe has compared to someone like A Fine Frenzy proves that. More people know about secular music stars because the media latches onto them and spills everything about their lives to us so we may live vicariously through them because our lives “aren’t good enough.”

Okay, I’m done rambling about that. Back to my original point. God should be glorified in the music that is made. After all, He is the one that gave those talents in the first place. Shouldn’t we be using them to praise Him?

Hope you guys have a great rest of the day!

Melody