How good is our God!

Last week I had the opportunity to visit RISD, Rhode Island School of Design, and it was absolutely amazing! It was everything I wanted in a school...people ride bikes everywhere, there is art everywhere, there's parks and canals and a really nice library and mom and pop coffee shops and bookstores and nightlife and broadway and movie theaters. How amazing!

Anyway, it's still not my number one because God is good and crazy and amazing! I don't know why I doubt him or why I fault him or why I give him human characteristics or why I even think that maybe he's not God, because he is and he never ceases to amaze me with his goodness.

I went to SVA, School of Visual Arts, in NYC and attended an informational meeting and basically they focus on social change design. They encourage and teach you to become a story teller and an entrepreneur and on top of that they connect you, network you and guide you to being able to do that. It's EVERYTHING I ever wanted in a program and it's exactly what I feel like God has called me to do with my life. How crazy! How ridiculous! How good is our God!

Now here's to three months of preparing and applying for Grad School! Now it's time to cut down on my social life and focus on art and grad school and getting into SVA! Pray for me!

Here's some more photos of beautiful fall in Providence, RI and Plymouth, Ma

East Coast Revisited

I had to go back to NYC to attend an information meeting for a potential grad school program. I decided to head south afterward instead of my usual north. Typically, I would just take a bus up to DC and spend a few days there but decided to spend the weekend in Boston and then look at RISD during the week.

Where Noel lives is a tad bit too small town for me and Boston sometimes is a bit tiny for my taste, but it was nice to get away again. I'm continually left speechless at God's timing. When I initially figured out I had to go back to NYC for a meeting, I was a little frustrated because I had literally just gotten back on an airplane for LA and then last week, after breakdown numero tres, it felt like perfect timing to go out and get my perspective refreshed. And it was.

And it was interesting to really truly realize that I'm not the same person I was a year ago. Last year I would have been all about success and achievement and trying to "live the life" and now I'm all about love and justice and peace and God and doing whatever makes you happy and whatever it is that God wants you to do. I never really cared about all those extra things except for that's what everyone told me to care about because I have this talent and because I'm good at this thing. But being good at something and having talent will only take you so far. It's happiness and it's love and it's inner peace and world justice that will take you places that help you feel truly happy and you feel like you are truly being rewarded for the work that you are doing.

Personal accolades are nice, but they've never been for me. Success has never been for me. I was the kid who was given the spotlight but didn't want it. I was the kid that was told to shoot 20 times in a game but passed 20 times and got benched. I'm finally learning to aligning my heart and my head and it's a beautiful thing to finally be able to be happy in the life that I'm living because I'm doing what I want to do.

Failure to Launch

Are the advantages of living at home really worth it?

There is a reason why we are born, raised by our parents, sent to college and then sent off into the real world right?

Dodgers move on to NLCS!

Some pictures of the Dodgers sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals this week! Including the great comeback behind victory after Matt Holliday took a ball to the groin and made a game-losing error.

Casey Blake scores the winning run on Thursday!

Dodgers come back from behind to win off Mark Loretta's pinch hit single!

Holliday not very happy with himself, especially as the sell out crowd at Dodger stadium roars. Holliday later blames it on the sun and the white rally towels.

There's Mannywood in LA, but because he got caught using female fertilization drugs, it's called Womannywood in St. Louis. Clever!

 

Puljos strikes out! Way to go 2009 NL MVP!

Dodgers win!

 

And just a photo I appreciated yesterday. Delmon Young fouled the ball off his "protective cup" and poor guy, now there are thousands of AP photos of this:

Patience is a virtue of the Jedi

I love Star Wars, have ever since I was a kid. I had all those micro machines of little Star Wars spaceships and Ryan had all the Star Trek ones. I love the original trilogy and mostly loved the new one because of Hayden Christensen. He played Anakin and Anakin becomes Darth Vader.

He mainly becomes Darth Vader because he is prideful and greedy and impatient. He knows he has gifts and he is just too eager to use them so he becomes discontent and impatient and it leads to his downfall. I think I liked Anakin because I could relate on some level. I always want life to happen NOW. I don't want to wait. I don't want to be content. I want the world to always be at my finger tips.

Now I am learning to be patient. And to be content. And to be satisfied with where God has me. It's a hard, hard lesson. It's tough. Especially because many of my friends have already started their own grand adventures and all I want to do either be somewhere designing influential masterpieces or taking pictures to touch and change the world. But God continues to say "wait" or "not yet" or "be patient" or "enjoy this moment" or "rest" or "just be" or "be present" or "soon, but not now" or "be content here first."

This is not my strength. It's nowhere near my strength. I am ADD, always on the go, always not sleeping, always doing something, accomplishing something. That's who I am. Patience, inner peace, contentment, being present, just being...those things have never been my strength, but every week I am learning more and more on how to make it a strength.

I had a vision yesterday while I was praying of a tree roots in the ground and God just saying, right now I'm building your foundation, establishing your roots. Soon, but not now. Not yet.

Parents just don't understand

Do parents ever understand? Ever?

On other notes, I've become a crier. I cry whenever I'm upset. I cry when they play don't stop believing at the Dodger game. I cry at an AT&T lost and found puppy commerical. I cry reading newspaper articles about how the Angels remember Nick Adenhart. I've become a crier and I'm okay with it.

Remembering Adenhart

When the Angels celebrated winning the American League West Division, they didn't just dump champagne and beer on each other, but also on the jersey of late rookie pitcher Nick Adenhart.

This is what true friendship and camaraderie looks like. How often do we forget until after the person is gone?