A weekend AWAY.

Sometimes I forget to thank God for the amazing people he's placed in my life. Among those are three girls who within the last few months have honestly become my best friends. And if it were mathematically correct to say this, I would suggest they are my better halves... but it's not mathematically correct. In fact, I'm not mathematically correct.

Selah, Rach, T and I went to Lincoln City for a weekend away. We left on Friday afternoon and spent two nights in Selah's grandmother's beach house (she goes by Dabi, and don't any of you forget it.) It was beautiful. We spent the first night doing what a lot of TV-deprived girls do best: claimed spots on the living room couches and watched movies and TV shows into the wee hours of the night. We didn't fall asleep however until we had all gotten some reading in- we are all very studious after all. The next morning we woke up at what felt like the crack of dawn to Jack Johnson's "Better Together".

At times, all it takes is someone else's words for you to realize something. Yes, Jack. You had it right when you said, "It's always better when we're together." With these girls and the direction my life has seemed to take, those words could not be truer.

So anyhow, we woke up early so Selah could catch the tide at this one spot in Newport so she could spend a few hours surfing and we could spend a few hours bonding underneath a blanket in the rain... because of course when it comes to surfing the rest of us are plain ignorant fools. We got then returned home for some leftovers and a sad movie, dinner at Moe's and yet another movie. What can I say... we had a craving and we needed to fulfill it.

What came next is something I probably shouldn't share with the whole world, but here goes: An hour of dancing and random work-outs that resulted in every one of us being sore today.. sad? You decide.

So we were homeward bound this morning after we woke up to the beautiful Oregon coastal weather ever. So beautiful in fact, we decided to make our ways down to the beach to bask in God's magnicence, and read his word. This life-changing session was interrupted by the realization that we had locked the house keys in... and there was no way to enter. So the four of us spent 40 minutes digging through dirt around the house for the spare key. We found it, needless to say. (Those 40 minutes were greatly needed, mind you, so that we would all stop to realize that NOTHING ever works out the way we want it to.)

I may have learned a few things over this past weekend (i.e. how you should always pay attention when writing in the beach sand with a stick to avoid wet sneaker) but the most monumental of them all is that I should never forget to thank God for these wonderful girls that have been so strategically placed in my life. I love them so much.



OH.. and PS. Today, Sunday January 31st, 2010, is a ground-breaking day because I finished my first Spanish novel for my 315 class. May that book be set on fire so that I never have to deal with it again. Seriously, my life is back.

Haiti. Haiti.

Yet another disastrous situation has hit our tiny little world and it has seem to come out on top... but they always do at first.

I was at the gym this morning when I heard the news about the devastating earthquake that happened in Haiti. Yes, Haiti. As in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere? Yes. That Haiti. The country that just underwent one of the most horrifying natural disasters in human history.

My room mates and I sat in front of the laptop screen listening to CNN's report on how the death toll has hit more than 100,000 and is not stopping there.

Selah, one of my three room mates has an adopted Haitian brother, so one can only imagine the hysterics taking place in our room as we watched- powerlessly- as the number of those affected gradually got bigger.

It's amazing how small I feel in times like these. As four girls with willing hearts, we felt unable to do A THING. Sure, we donated money. And we prayed. We prayed for God to hear the words of four college girls who have compassion for this poor country because there was nothing else we could to.

Rachel and Tiara talked about how there must be something good coming from all this because God wouldn't turn on the world like that. He has a plan. How his plan involves 100,000+ deaths in a country that already had nothing is far beyond the capacity of my brain. But he's got it.

Haiti, God's got you. You're in our hearts.