My Prayer

We can never measure our relationship with God by emotions. It is a very dangerous game to play. We cannot just follow God because we "feel" like it. These past couple weeks have been very different. Last week God was teaching me so much. I "felt" so close to Him. It was great. This week, though, has been very different. God's still been teaching me a lot...but it's definitely been more tough. One of those weeks were you feel overwhelmed and nothing seems to go your way. It's so easy to let yourself get discouraged and want to give up.

Let's face it: life is tough. Sometimes heaven just sounds pretty wonderful! Sometimes I want to be there already. Today during teaching one of my piano lessons provided an interesting example. Every time my students pass a piano song, I reward them with a sticker. Today my student Madison jokingly said, "How about we just skip playing all the songs and I get stickers instead?" Of course, I didn't go for that! :) But it brought up an interesting point. How can we expect to win the battle unless we've fought? How can we expect to get the metal for running the race that we haven't run? Or...how can we expect to get stickers for songs we haven't played? I love what Hebrews 1:1-2a says: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus." I love the first part of that second verse...If we want to win the race, we HAVE to fix our eyes on Jesus. I've been struggling with that these past couple days. When I take my eyes off Jesus, I feel so discouraged and selfish. My prayer is that God would empty me of me. I want nothing left.

The other thing I recently prayed is that God would show me, remind me how petty life life. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the stress and business of life. And believe me, I know. I'm currently trying to get five speeches perfected for our next compensation and prepare music for four totally different things. Plus, work, school, a huge Spanish project...yeah, I know! But I never want to forget that's important in life. Recently tornadoes have been going rampant everywhere in Kansas. This past Saturday, my town was in two tornado warnings plus a watch. When the sirens started going off, we went downstairs to our closet just in case. Right before I went into the closet, I hurried to my room and grabbed something. I remember seeing all the metals I've received thru NCFCA hanging on my dresser...and yet I could care less about them. At that moment, they didn't matter at all. Don't forget what's important.

Well, this has turned out to be longer than I expected so hopefully I didn't bore you to death. :)

Indians and Easter

Mary and I are fighting our invisible enemies. We were very successful. :)

Yesterday we had an Easter bake-sale...This is one of the beautiful cupcakes!

So far, April has been a fabulous month. I am SO excited to have a month to focus on school, music, our home-school play, and preparing for our regional forensics competition, which I'm also super excited about. Today was especially good and relaxing...reading, cleaning my room, working on our Spanish project, and-of course-sleeping in! :) I went to the park with Mary where we enjoyed playing Indians...our newest favorite thing to do since yesterday. It was pretty epic, dodging our invisible enemies. I would highly recommend it. Wishing you all a fantastic Easter!