Life After Gap Year

This past month has been a lot of R&R for me. I got to spend most of May back in Arizona with my mom, and siblings. Which was pretty wonderful.
     In the last week it feels a little like I've grown up all at once. I've moved back to Denver. Taken on a lot of responsibilities with a program called Denver Urban semester (that I participated as a student during the first semester of my gap year), and got a job with one of my favorite non-profits SOX PLACE!!! Also have my first day of work in the upcoming week.  My first job ever working. crazy? i know!And in the upcoming week COLLEGE ORIENTATION. whew! That's a lot.

But with great responsibility comes great fun. I've gotten to see so many people that have just poured into my life these past nine months and I get to be around them for the next four years! How lucky am  I?

I've also gotten to go to one of my favorite churches ever Bloom....I forgot how good the sermons are.
I sat down on sixteenth street mall and watched a friends fashion show
I went to an amazing chalk art festival.
and had lots of great chai all over Denver.

Thanking the lord for all these wonderful opportunities and experiences I owe it all to him and I am eternally grateful.

You are beautifully and wonderfully made: Part 2

It's crazy to think that exactly a month ago today we were on kilimanjaro without shower for a couple of days for some of us if not a week. Now we walk the runway in lavish dresses that cost thousands upon thousands of dollars with more make up on than I've ever worn in my whole life. Gap year really does stick you in all kinds of situations. Although runway classes were a struggle for me I would be lying if I said I didn't have an absolute blast tonight. 

also what girl gets to wear a wedding dress TWICE in her life?! 

"I am fearfully and wonderfully made"

Self conciousness. I've never felt so single handedly self concious in my life. If you want to make a girl feel bad about herself go ahead and let her walk the runway. First off let me start this as a disclaimer as my idea of 'fun' is not being the last person to walk the runway as the fashion show finale. My idea of fun actually has nothing to do with walking in heels. Anyways I'm about to rant about the pressure society puts on woman to meet their standard of 'beautiful'. That standard of 'beautiful' women are held to is a lie. You look at the cover of magazines where women are perfectly sculpted by photoshop to redefine beauty as anorexia. That woman is probably wearing high heels again, another LIE. Your not really that tall but society values it so we continue lying. You don't actually look like that it's layers of makeup.

Why and for what? If we are made in the image of god, and he believes he's created us in his eyes as beautiful, then why should we wear make up or heels? Yet we as women still continue reinforcing these lies even if we are blisslessly aware of this fact.

The more I become more and more self aware in our relational training classes at Ithra the more I realize that I struggle from the hindrence self condemnation. While I'm not quite ready to share where this stems from in my life with all of my  followers and the entriety of the internet I do however have a hard time with this upcoming fashion show. I struggle between the tension this upcoming fashion show puts on my hindrence and quitting and letting a designer who has tailor made dress to fit me.

Before you jump down my throat hear me out. I do not believe in doing something that makes you feel so unworthy. I also do not believe in letting others down or quitting. 

At the beginning of this year Millie Cline gave us a task. That task was to roam around Cheeseman park until you found something beautiful. After you found you piece of beauty you had to describe it on paper. Millie then showed us those very adjectives we had just used to describe something we thought was beautiful was actually how others saw us and the way the Lord would describe us.

While I struggle with this decision I will not let the pressure I'm feeling let others down. 

Just an encouraging verse from the start of this year. Who knew I would make it full circle. 

Psalm 139:14

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Just a side note: 

Today as I learned more about how self condemnation hinders our relationships with others I learned that it prevents us from being vulnerable. And then I had the realization that I really am bad at being vulnerable with people for sure I keep them at arms length, but then even with this blog….I never post. So today in this post was an attempt I promised myself I would make this week at being vulnerable. 

Jeep tour in the Wadi Rum Desert on 2/21/14

We're all moved into our home stays here in Amman and things couldn't be any better. The family I'm living with is fabulous. I live with a girl named Nour that went to Kivu a couple summers in a row and also happens to play for the national Jordanian soccer team which is kinda sick! She has the best sense of humor and is probably one of the coolest people you will ever meet!

Nour and I have had some interesting conversation thus far particularly one that I want to focus on that came us at dinner tonight was how ignorant Americans really are. This realization has been a long time coming for me since Rwanda probably. Nour told us that Luke had warned her not to be offended that when we came we would probably think that they live in tents and ride camels around everywhere.While I didn't quite expect that I did realize the only thing I really knew about the middle east prior to coming here were the numerous books and movies written around the 9/11 tragedy. I don't want to speak for all Americans so I'll just so far me personally at least this was true: When you say the middle east the names Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden do come to mind. If you have ever watched the prime time T.V. show Homeland

    ( for those of you that don't know its a TV show based on the Isarali series Prisoners of War that is about a U.S. marine that was a POW for 8 years and then turned into a terrorist and sent back to America and poses a possible threat for United States now because the Muslims who are apart of Al Queda have turned him against his own country)

Anyways this T.V. show paints the middle east in such a bad light a light which is so different from the reality here in Jordan.  The tv show paints the picture that muslims= al queda which is so far from the truth it's not funny but people back home don't think that way. To be honest the way the media portrays this frustrates me to no end that the media specifically prime time television is adding fuel to an already roaring fire.


Luke asked us earlier this week to write down our fears before moving into this particular culture and almost all of my fears had to do with the stereotypes that have been thrusted upon me so these were the major ones that I wrote.

                       Fears

• Women are not respected 
• anti American attitudes present? 

The list went on and on  but those were the main concerns. In addition to these already emerging fears I had family and friends back home that were afraid for me to come here. All I wanted to ask was "have YOU ever been THERE?"

While I realize it's naive to think that all of the middle east is as peaceful and tolerant as Jordan is with Americans I  know that it isn't I watch CNN for gods sake . I do believe it is ignorant on our parts to reinforce the stereotypes present to us in the media within our own hearts. It's really sad because there are some pretty awesome people that I've met here and I've only been here for 6 days. Earlier this month it was posed by Luke or Andy while having dinner with our Jordanian friends among who are Muslim, christian and atheist that this must be what heaven tastes like coming together despite our different beliefs and cultures and enjoying one another's company and I couldn't agree more.

Ramblings from my time on Kilimanjaro

Journal Entries from Kili!

Journal Entry #1

February 9, 2014

Kilimanjaro has become so beyond real. It was always a one day far off thing that we'd do this. Here we are in Tanzania on the eve before we start our climb. If you would have told my friends and family a year ago that I'd be climbing the tallest free standing mountain in the world while camping for seven days in a tent on the ground they would have said dream on. Honestly camping still doesn't appeal to me today. After long discussions with the gap year staff I learned to look at it from a new perspective that has grown me tremendously in my faith and that is spending seven days with god. If you look in the bible some of the most monumental moments occur in nature when god reveal something to man.



Journal Entry #3
February 11, 2014

Today went a lot better than yesterday in the sense that I was able to keep way ahead of the pace. It actually felt like we were getting somewhere there was a lot more talking today than yesterday. However despite all the chatter I feel like I was able to connect better with the lord. As we hiked the steep mossy hills I began to get a rythum in my head and that quickly became my mantra, "I believe help my unbelief". Thats all I kept saying in my head with every step I took, the fatigue got stronger and I got weaker. The only way I was going to make it to camp none the less the next couple days was through god and god alone. I feel like I'm the 4th person in gap year to say this but it just proof of how wearing mentally and physically the mountain had on all of us.



           A couple of hours after that journal entry I woke up with a horrible cough making it severely hard to breathe. Blair stayed up with me  all morning we read Jesus calling while the porters brought us tea in our tent. It didn't seem to help. A few hours later during breakfast I was coughing up a lung. Being told it was unsafe to continue crushed me. I feel like it was something I'd been looking forward to since gap year started. I replayed different senarios in which would let me continue like taking diamox or going at a slower pace the day prior but none of it was any use now.
          In the woods each step I took I felt so close to god. I can only help but wonder if its because I'm so used to being in control that this I had really no control over what my body was deciding to do. Within this 'power struggle' so to speak I also learned that even though in life when I think I'm in control it's a false sense of control because ultimately God is the one thats pulling all the strings. When things get hard we turn to god because we have no where else to turn. Which was kinda a reality shock to me that's so true of me. When things get good instead of praising him and remaining in constant communication with Him I tend to put him in my back pocket.
        I honnestly think that mountain is thing that changed me the most this year in terms of the perspective I gained toward my relationship with the lord. I don't really think it's anything I could describe that any of you would understand it's just something that will remain between me and god.  If you think 9 months can change a person try two days on that mountain.

 "I will not show you what is on the road ahead but I will thoroughly equip you for the journey"

Boy is that true. Anyone that knows me knows that I hate not being in control. But man has Jesus really taken the wheel on this one. It's been well, interesting. First only seven out of the 13 of us got to Rwanda due to extreme weather conditions in America.While the rest of the group was focused on missed flights and our missing group members I was focused on the terrible fever, chills and sore throat that 

engulfed my body.  After many prayers and lots of meds several days later I was finally feeling better. The week came and went and it was finally time to depart for my host family. Leaving the group was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I feel so lonely sometimes in a culture so different from mine. You really learn to appreciate the Kivu community we have on our gap year when we're being tested in every way possible. God is certainly stripping me of everything that makes me comfortable here but I truly believe it's for a greater purpose. I don't know what he's going to throw at me next but all I can do is believe that he will, "thoroughly equip me for the journey".