Waiting for my wings to dry...

Okay, there has been so much going on, I haven't seemed to have a moment to update everyone....so here goes, I have decided to start the Master in Counseling here in Orlando this July is my first class...so in the mean time I will finish up at Great Commission Ministries (May 13th is my last day!), I will go to Texas for a couple of weeks and spending time with amazing people, look into buying a house, taking some fun trips with friends...destination looking like Egypt! A family vacation to Costa Rica and hopefully getting to visit my dad in Belize before the summer is done!

SO....in all this I find myself changing, growing, committing, and blossoming (that sounds like such a stupid verb) I should rather say that I am in a new stage, this is my chrysalis. It is the end part when the butterfly is out of the cocoon but must wait for her wings to dry.

Paul and I at Freebirds...I got a Super Monster

I am not afraid of Monsters, I eat them!

I got to visit Freebirds last week....it was so wonderful!! It is my favorite burrito place in the whole world. I love Texas!

Louisiana Easter with the family

Pok-pok anyone?

These last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind, my goal this past weekend was to have nothing to do! I got back from Easter last week which I spent in Louisiana and Texas - it was great. My family is so cute, it was a weekend of love, laughter, and tradition. The strange thing is that I love adventure and new things but I crave the stability of traditions. Me, the girl who wants to travel the world and never sit still longs for a life of security and worth. It has been interesting to watch my life these last few months, searching to be content in just BEING, not doing.

P.S. Pok-poking is a little French game we play with cracking our dyed eggs!

Snowboarding trip in California

grenadegloves.com

I spent a week in Mammouth, California hanging with the family - I spent the week: snowboarding, cross-country skiing, reading by a fire, hot-tubbing it, etc. It was an amazing week, exactly what I needed! I had so much fun, I felt so alive in the brisk breeze and watching the sunset cascaded across the mountains. It was phenomenal. Nicole and I decided one night to venture out in the pitch-black desert to find the natural hot tubs, to our dismay we never found them and had to get Aunt Shirley to help us the next day. We cross-countried out to the hot tubs with watercolors and lunch - we spent the day painting the snow-covered mountains around us!! I can confidently say that I can snowboard blues, I can also confidently say that I have a bruise the size of an orange on my backside!

Band-aids on the mirror....

So I have returned from a whirlwind weekend. I was able to see most of my family, which made it so wonderful and eat a little crawfish! The funeral however was hard. Picture a hearse coming through town with interior lights illuminating the American flag covered coffin, the streets aligned with thousands of people waving American flags....it was a breath-taking military funeral for Seth.

Mourning has become common to me recently and actually bittersweet. I am at peace and after this weekend I realized that heaven doesn't seem so far away because there are more people there for me to love now.

My goal for this week is to make it to California, where I can hopefully average more than 4 hours of sleep, which has been the last weeks average! I am realizing that I long to laugh more, enjoy life fully, so if you want, a friend passed on a great joke about bandaids on the mirror and I would love to share it with you if you need a laugh!

Life is hard, it is a gift, and it should be cherished. Love well.

Hope your week was better than mine...

Spinning felt so good this morning, there was so much inside that I have failed to let out and so I just pushed harder and harder, hoping to release the tension inside. (boy did I sweat!) I have found myself retreating alot this week, going for a run around this lake near my house. I will be attending two funerals this weekend, I fly home this afternoon. I have found that with the pain of loss, fear has found me again.

Overwhelmed. I told this to the Lord as I ran another lap around the lake yesterday. I need You desperately. And once again He came.

So Louisiana bound for two days and then home and then California bound - this chick needs a little snowboarding break!

In Memory of Tracy Rupp

I haven't ever met Tracy Rupp, but she inspired me. There is a huge wooden carving of 6 dolphins erected from the base of tree. Each dolphin swimming toward the sky. It is a pretty phenomenal piece of work...people pass by some glance, others not even a look, and very few notice the small engravement - in memory of Tracy Rupp. I want to live a life which leaves inspiration.

Twice on deck, once before the pitch.....

This was my dad and I's little secret plan for getting rid of your nerves before batting. My dad would pitch to me in the backyard and he would tell me take one practice swing before the pitch and then you are ready. Well the next 13 years of baseball offered a lot of opportunities to try out his method. I would be so nervous, but I would religiously take two swings on deck, and then one practice swing before the pitch.

Early this morning, I spent some time praying on an empty baseballfield. Standing on homeplate looking straight onto the pitcher's mound, I felt that rush come back for a moment. Instinctively I thought, one practice swing and then you're ready. I remembered many times in the past I would reach too high for the ball or even strike out, yet everytime hearing my father's whisper, one swing and you are ready.

Very much like my life lately, I stand at the homeplate and I am so nervous because the pressures are on. Can I do it? Will this be too hard? What if I strike out? The questions run repeatedly through my mind, yet I heard the Father tell me this morning...one practice swing and you are ready.

What's Love Got to Do with It?

Absolutely everything.

I find myself on this Hallmark holiday contemplating the depth of love. As I am busy sending flowers, bath salts, cds and candies - I find there is left a void. These gifts say "i love you" or "i am for you" and "i love the way you laugh" but deeper still there is a longing to be sought after by one. A quiet desire to be known, accepted and even more to never be left.

There is a scene in "Lord of the Rings" we watched yesterday in church...Frodo is going off in a boat to take the ring, and Sam runs after him, yelling. Frodo says, no Sam, I am going alone. Sam, who can't swim begins to run into the water and without success, attempts to reach the boat. There is a look on his face as he is drowning, one of determination to live out his word, his commitment. Frodo comes back and pulls him in the boat, and looks at him in amazement, complete awe. Sam says, I made a promise to go with you, and I mean to do that.

No one is void this desire. We want someone to journey with us, fight for us, commit to us. I find that easily we look to a significant other, a best friend, a family - and I must say the feeling of true acceptance is completely intoxicating. When I take a moment to think, who is committed to me, faces come to mind, because without doubt, I know they are for me. It is powerful, because it is the closest earthly encounter we have to love of our Creator. Yet I would dare say these only subdue the true ache.

So as I worshipped my thoughts are consumed by His face, He is running after me. I feel skepticism, to hope this will quench my longing. It feels phenomenal today, but tomorrow I will ask Him again to scale the mountains for my heart and prove His faithfulness......and the awestricken fact is, He will.

As we all journey through life, attempting to love and asking to be loved, you can find me near.

Doubtlessly peer through these intentions

Hope for my best and offer your hand

Carry my armor when I am wounded

Ignore my scares and kiss my secret fears

this love makes me alive.

Camping Flagler Beach - Tosser, Bushwacker, Blaze, Breaker, and Cha-Cha survive camping through a storm!

Christmas 2004: Time with the family, fireworks, destroying gingerbread RVs, and laughing!

Having Lost All Sensitivity...

5:15 AM - every morning this week, and it is only Tuesday. Yikes! I have started teaching a spinning class at 5:45am and it is kicking my butt (so is the 63 year old woman in my class, I think I may just let her teach from here on out!). I thought I was a pretty funny and entertaining girl....but I found out I am not much of anything at that time!

I am beginning to feel more anxious as I think of my future, everyday I seem to here the voice begin to ask again....what will you make of this life of yours? My hearts response is so much different than before...whatever the Lord decides to make me passionate about, whatever He consumes my heart with! Well this sounds easy enough except when me, the most passionate person I know (other than Sarah Brown) has lost her passion.

So the adventure begins, as explore my passions anew. A small surge of excitement runs through as I feel this time it will look a little more healthier. This verse caught me this morning-

(paraphrased Ephesians 4:19; 5:!) you must no longer live in the futility of their thinking. having lost all sensitivity, with a continual lust for more. ....instead, live a life of love.

Having lost all sensitivity with a continual lust for more.....that is so much me. I have lost my sensitivity to anything around me because I am so consumed with myself. I am continually lusting for more. Whether it is because I don't want to feel the full weight of my heart or just enslaved to stimulation, I have become addicted to being entertained by everything. Even my times alone are monitored by a performance.

Here is the healing....instead, live a life of love! Oh wow, my heart melts as if a weight lifts and this secret hope is uncovered from the weight of these huge boulders I have carried for so long. You mean I can drop all of these things and just love, freely love?

Instead, live a life of love.

You have allowed me to walk this path....

Camping will do amazing things for a person, well definitely for me. Last weekend a new camping club was formed, 5 female campers (Blaze, Bushwacker, Tosser, ChaCha, and Breaker) set out to spend a nice evening with a fire and the ocean. Well the rain never quit and we found ourselves setting up camp on the beach and laughing hysterically over a campfire. Drenched. We spent the next 24 hours damp, and after little sleep and too much laughter we made our way home. My favorite part was cooking breakfast over a camping stove and having the neighbor come over and take our picture because he was so impressed that we survived in a fourman tent through this thunderstorm. It was great to feel gross and tired because it made me feel alive. I noticed that the coffee and sausage we ate that morning was the best I have had in awhile. Plush circumstance allow us to forget how great life is, how blessed we are....how good coffee tastes.

My second epiphany has been in my personal walk with the Lord. I have many times wondered if I am lost, maybe I got turned around or mixed up. I wanted to be great, but instead I am an unseen nobody. Somehow I have walked confidently into a world of insecurity and doubt. It came to me from a devotional, that when the Israelites were leaving Egypt because God had delivered them, they were chased right up to the Red Sea. Did they get there because they wanted to be there? No. God delivered them, led them out of captivity, to be halted in front of the Red Sea. Wasn't this what He said, isn't this where He led us?

I feel often that I have been going where the Lord is leading me and now I am looking up to find that I am blocked by the Red Sea.

Do I turn around? Swim? God, didn't You lead me here? And that is what He is telling me.
Christy, I allowed you to walk this path.
So what do I do now Lord?
You trust me and wait for me to open the Red Sea. Wait for me to deliver you.

Aud Lang Syne

2005 was christened along with my Kroeger family this year, we spent 14 hours at Epcot, dancing to the nationality of each country!! After 3 firework shows by Disney you are not sure if you will ever be satisfied again by a family firework session. We capped the new year morning off with wine and stockings in the RV (of course interrupted by the casual tourist who needed to use our restroom!

I was also up in Ohio for a conference which went well, but most of all I was able to play in the snow! I have learned that you can definitely get a soar butt from other things than a workout.

Christmas was filled with family, the zoo (which could be mistaken for my family), engagements (not mine!!), traveling, gingerbread RVs and the pingpong destruction method we chose! There was not a dull moment.

I think the sound of some structure sounds nice....well? So back in Orlando, covered with tsunami relief effort work and the regular "saving with world" tasks I perform. My friend Tran was in I was able to roadtrip a little with her this week and spend the day in the ocean.

I was provoked with this spiritual thought....why did God ask Adam where he was when Adam was hiding in the garden? was it because God didn't know where Adam was? no. God knew but He wanted Adam to share it with Him. God knows where and who you are, it is us who fully don't. All He is asking that we share it with Him, and why so in the process we find out where we are.

Gen. 3:8

They heard the voice of Adonai, walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, so the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of God, among the trees in the garden. Adonai called to the man, "Where are you"?

Running through a Winter Wonderland!

So I ran the half marathon....2:22 - not the best time ever, but I finished it! It was awesome as I ran through the finish line and I had friends cheering, I felt so alive!

Went to a Christmas party last night at Epcot -"Jesus" from Passion of the Christ narrated the Christmas story in the midst of a huge choir and orchestra - then it snowed, Disney made it snow right here in Florida, and after we watched a firework show! It was such an incredible night, it felt like Christmas.

I wonder if Jesus had any idea the extremes people would go to in celebrating His birth.


"Oh come, oh come Emanuel, and ransom captive Israel..."

To Belize and Back.....

Over Thanksgiving, I travelled down to Ambergris Caye, Belize to hang out with my dad and sister. It was so beautiful....we night snorkeled, fished off the boat, trolled out in the ocean, dove in the reef, ate lots of lobster. It was so wonderful. I learned how to clean out conch and make ceviche.

One night on our way home from fishing, we tried a new route through the back of the island, but we couldn't find the inlet back to our house so we searched for lights onshore that might seem familiar to us...as I looked over the silohuette of the town and different lights that marked different places in town, I thought of how many times in life we find ourselves coming on a new route in uncertain water, looking for the way home. The answer was in remembering the past and where we came from, and what we already knew, it is because of those markers in life that we can always find our way home.

I'm back in Orlando now, and getting ready for a half marathon this weekend! I ran 10 miles and feeling like 13 might be a bit much- we'll see.


Great peace have they who love your law and nothing can make them stumble. -David

Does everyone have an Awpa?

I received the most amazing email from my grandpa today, I love that my grandparents are my very best friends. There is something about having a person in your life who will always accept you and whatever you offer....and they won't sugarcoat it because they love you too much. I hope everyone has an Awpa & Memaw in their life!

Okay....so I ran 9 miles yesterday and well, it took me awhile, but done! All I know is that I am not sure I will be any good at capture the flag tonight. later.