My dear friend Rylee moved back to Texas. (yay!) Oh, and she also makes a pretty good model, amiright or amiright???!
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“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.” -Slyvia Plath
It's easy to get caught up in the future. Goals, planning, hopes and dreams. They're all wonderful and exciting, but sometimes I forget that the 'in between' , the seemingly empty spaces in life, are the spaces where God calls me to grow.
A dear friend told me; " Whatever the space is between you and where you want to be, fill that space with Jesus." God is not the one who is impatient. I always want to go to the next thing, that I forget to stop and enjoy the moment that I'm in. Despite the difficulties of these in between stages, there is beauty. There is beauty, comfort, and peace when I am leaning on Jesus.
Isaiah 51: "The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sounds of singing."
May 02, 2015
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April 22, 2015
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me: "I want to be Cinderella."
Joy: "No, I'm Cinderella because I have golden hair."
March 28, 2015
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I was going through old photos on my computer and came across these. Most of them were taken summer 2013. I went to Virginia to visit family, and my cousin and I had so much fun photographing anything and everything together. I really miss my family.
Guess what I also miss?
Blogging. I never seem to get around to it. And by getting around to it, I mean actually publishing a post. I always want everything to be 'just so'. And if I can't make it perfect I assume it's better off left in my sea of endless drafts.
But nothing and nobody is perfect. (cue hannah montana song...)That's something I'm slowly learning to accept about myself, and the things I create. So often I don't even let myself try because I'm afraid of anything less than perfection. But I've found the joy of creating surpasses the flaws it may have.
All that to say, I've just decided to blog more. To write more. To create more.
Hope you all are doing well.
-Jana
March 25, 2015
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Learning to accept and love who we were created to be is no easy task. I think it’s a journey, because we are always changing throughout the seasons in life. Some are easier than others.
It’s easy to assume we need to change ourselves in order to be liked, in order to have friends, in order to be anything at all, because it’s a message that’s thrown at us everyday in a hundred different ways. Not just how we look, but who we are.
Even with the whole feel- good self love movement, the underlying issue-searching for who we are and what we created for-cannot be found in one’s own heart.
I remember when I was little, I had a friend named Ellen. Ellen was a couple years older than me, carefree and outspoken, and I wanted to be just like her. ( I was particularly jealous of golden curly hair) One day, we went ice skating with another one of our friends, Beth. On the way there, sitting in the backseat of the car with all three of us squished together, Ellen said “I want to have a play date with you, Beth. But I don’t want her to come, “Glancing at me, “I want it to be just you and me.”
I remember the way my stomach dropped, and I turned my little head to the window and tried to hide my face, wiping away a tear on my puffy pink coat. “they don’t like me.”
Unfortunately, my mind often seems to draw that conclusion, even when it isn’t true at all. I start to overthink the way people perceive me and try to act or be who I think they must want me to be.
And then I thought, “Why do I care so much about what they think?” At the end of the day, it’s just another person with another opinion.
You aren’t designed for everyone to like you. If you were, you wouldn’t be your lovely unique self.
Yes, words can hurt. Especially if you are tender hearted like me. They are hard to forget. They stick in your mind, like a garden full of weeds. The longer they exist, the bigger they grow, and the more pain they seem to cause.
But whatever hateful comments that people say, or whatever hateful comments you may say about yourself, I promise you those things are not from God.
"For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession." -Deuteronomy 7:6
You and I are treasured possessions of God. The same God who created the moon and the stars and those beautiful hazy sunsets that take our breath away.
This quote I heard in church yesterday: "You were not made his because you are valuable, but you are valuable because you are his."
I know it's a challenge to believe this, for many of us. But God wants you to know how much he loves you. He wants you to see your beauty and your value. And if you open up your heart to him, he has the power to change the way you see yourself, and the way you see him.
But whatever hateful comments that people say, or whatever hateful comments you may say about yourself, I promise you those things are not from God.
"For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession." -Deuteronomy 7:6
You and I are treasured possessions of God. The same God who created the moon and the stars and those beautiful hazy sunsets that take our breath away.
This quote I heard in church yesterday: "You were not made his because you are valuable, but you are valuable because you are his."
I know it's a challenge to believe this, for many of us. But God wants you to know how much he loves you. He wants you to see your beauty and your value. And if you open up your heart to him, he has the power to change the way you see yourself, and the way you see him.
February 16, 2015
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“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
February 14, 2015
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