Chasing Love

I finished my first year of college! It's so crazy that I've already been out of high school for one year. I absolutely loved my first year at Baylor, but I also love being home. I've already seen a ton of people that I've missed over the past few months and it makes me super happy. I love being able to go anywhere in town and seeing familiar faces. I also absolutely loved being at church on Wednesday and being back with the praise team. I realize I'm using the word love a lot, but when I talk about Rockport, it's hard not to use it frequently.

For some reason, the word "love" has been the topic of a lot of conversations  between my friends and I lately. In college, I noticed a lot of girls were actively trying to find a soon-to-be husband. It actually comes off pretty silly sometimes. Then there's always that friend that has to have a significant other or they just can't go on with their life. Stuff like that really drives me crazy. Don't get me wrong, I'm really stinkin excited to fall in love, but I don't think I'm actively searching for that person. When they do come along, awesome. I've learned in the past few months that if something doesn't work out, there's no point in worrying about it. If it's mean't to be, Christ will work it all out for me. I was talking to one of my guy friends today that I love dearly and he was saying pretty much the same thing. Hearing a guy my age agree with me on this was really encouraging. Finding a spouse shouldn't be your priority in life. Is it awesome when it happens? I'm sure it is. Is it something I look forward to? Definitely. But is it something I'm actively searching for? Negative. When it comes along, I'll know it. I haven't gotten to that point, but I have faith that I will. I've learned the hard way, that when Christ isn't my priority, nothing falls into place like it should. I think a relationship should be Christ centered and when both of the individuals don't have Christ as their first priority, the relationship is just doomed from the start.

I'm excited to fall in love and spend my life with someone. But I don't live my life searching for him. I live my life and relax knowing that his person will come in when God feels they should. They're not here yet, but they will be eventually. I'm not gonna lie, I have pretty high expectations for the guy I'm gonna spend my life with. However, I don't think this is a bad thing at all. I think my expectations are very realistic and I know that there is a guy out there that meets those expectations.

Sorry if this is an awkward blog. I kinda feel like it is, but I haven't posted in awhile and this is what was on my mind. It floors me to think I've completed my first year of college but it has been pretty awesome. God has taught me a ton of things since leaving home and it's been tough a points, but it's turned out pretty great.

This picture pretty sums it up, huh?

Have a great week, yall!

Am I rambling?

Alright yall, I'm giving it another go. I'm still kinda in a blog funk, but we will see. This post is going to be very unorganized, I already know it. I have a few things I need to get down on paper (ehh screen?) but they aren't related at all so the post in general is probably going to be everywhere. Hang in there with me yall! 

I was in Austin this past weekend spending some quality time with my sister. First off, have I said recently how much I love that she lives so close now? LOVE it! Anywho, we were on our way somewhere and we saw this short guy running across the street. We waved him on and he just kept running. We soon found out that he was running to catch the bus that was about 50 feet from us. The bus started to pull away as we yelled, "NOOOO!!! RUN LITTLE MAN!!!" Thankfully, the bus stopped and he was able to jump on. That's when a thought hit me. We were so enthralled with this guys life for one minute then he got on the bus and that was it; I'll never see him again. When we go about our daily life, we come in contact with people for just a few short moments and then they're gone forever. It just kinda made me realize that I have to use those few short moments to show love. What if I'm having an awful day and someone passes me and I subconsciously give them a dirty look? That's the way they remember me. I have just a few moments to brighten up their day. If I waste those moments, I won't ever get them back. 

Like I've said before, I feel the need to be in control of situations and that can get in the way when it comes to surrendering everything over to Christ; which is a necessity. I've also mentioned before that one of my fears has always been that I won't find someone to spend my life with. Maybe I hadn't mentioned that. This is awkward. Oh well, you know now! Anywho, about a month ago, I realized that this isn't in my hands and that I have to surrender this over to Christ or the outcome won't be good. So I started praying about it and slowly put surely, I could tell that I was handing it over. Let me tell you, this is SUCH  a relief. It's so nice to not have fear about relationships. I know that Christ has got it covered, and who else could do a better job? And now that I have surrender that over, God is doing some things with the whole situation and it's pretty awesome.

On a lighter note, I only have one more week of classes then I'm done with my first year at Baylor! This semester has absolutely flown by and it's crazy to think I'm almost finished! I just have to survive finals.  I'm planning on doing a summer class online and finding a job somewhere. So know of anyone hiring?? I don't want to work in the food industry, but other than that, I'll take a job anywhere! Tomorrow, we have all day off so all classes are cancelled! We  have this thing called Diadeloso, which means Day of the Bear for all of you non spanish speakers. There's activities all around campus including concerts, food trucks, and CAMEL RIDES! It should be a fun time! 

I hope yall are having an awesome week! Here's a funny video in case you aren't having a good week or you just need a good laugh. You seriously can't watch this and NOT laugh.

Quotes

I'm back!! I hadn't realized how long it had been since I had posted. These past 2 weeks have been CRAZY. In the span of one week, I had 4 tests and 2 research papers. I realize it doesn't sound like a lot, but trust me, it's killer. I at least found the topic of the papers interesting. The first one was on attachment theory with adoption so pretty much just researching whether adopted children had problems feeling attached with their adoptive parents. The other paper was for chemistry(bleh) and I wrote it over Thalidomide. We could choose to write about anything that had to do with chemistry and I find Thalidomide really interesting. This drug caused severe birth defects in the early 1960's and is now being used by people with Multiple Myeloma to help them. It's crazy! Anywho, I'm finally home and able to relax some before getting back into school next week. Thankfully, I only have about a month of school left! There's just something about being back in Rockport that gives me a sense of peacefulness. I feel like no matter what is going on in Waco, I drive into Rockport and it all just goes away. I love it here. 

If yall know me very well, you know that I absolutely LOVE quotes. I'll see certain ones and realize that that is exactly how I feel, but I just couldn't say it so eloquently. However, there's also some quotes I absolutely despise. Feel free to post a comment if you disagree, I'm up for it!

In three words I can sum up everything you need to know about life: It Goes On.

I've seen this quote a lot by people that see it as a very positive and uplifting thing. Personally, I find it so incredibly sad. I just don't think you should sum up life like that. Granted, there are certain times where you have to remember that life will go on despite your current situation, but in general, life should be so much more than this. It shouldn't just "go on" and you deal with it; you embrace it and live life energetically and with a purpose.

Well behaved women rarely make history

I'm all about rules, yall so obviously I'm one of the "well behaved women." Okay so the ones that break the rules make history. But for what? Nothing good I would imagine. They make history by disobeying someone and doing something that is frowned upon. Also, the well behaved women might not be known by the whole world, but I would guess that they've made a much stronger impact on the people that do know them. I would rather be known for positively influencing a handful of lives than being known worldwide for doing something against the rules.

 I hate religion, but love Jesus.

I strongly dislike this saying. For off, it was the theme of a video that went around a while back that everyone was posting. I think the thing that really bothered was that people posted it and didn't really think about what the video was saying. They just saw that it was saying he loved Jesus so they posted it; not really comprehending the intensity behind the statement. Religion gives us a way to organize our faith and also gives us a chance to do mission work. It gives form to our relationship with Christ. Religion is an awesome thing as long as it's based on a relationship with Christ. Not to offend anyone, but I think the whole "religion bashing" movement is a cop out for those that don't want to actually attend a church. 

Git er done

I legitimately HATE this saying. Other than it being ridiculously redneck and hick sounding, I can't even give you a reason as to why I hate it soooooo much. I guess on top of being redneck it has horrific grammar? I don't even know. When I hear someone say it, I automatically cringe. It drives me nuts.

Sometimes, it's hard to put into words how I feel about things. I know what I mean and if I'm telling somehow about it I can say it; but typing it down can be difficult sometimes. Yall, I'm sorry if this post is a completely failure and makes so sense. Maybe the quote thing wasn't as interesting as I thought it was gonna be haha 

The past few weeks have been kinda weird but also exhilarating. I've been praying about a lot of stuff and I'm seeing those prayers get answered. It's such an amazing thing to be able to see prayer being answered and to see how Mighty our God really is. There's been a lot of things lately that I've been praying about; everything from people's well being to my future to relationships and it's so awesome to see how God is paving the way in every aspect of my life. 

I hope yall have a great Easter Holiday!

Oh!! and Sic Em Lady Bears for being undefeated and National Champs!! 40-0!!

Back to Reality

Spring Break is officially over and has been for a few days now. The last few days of Spring Break were pretty great. On Saturday, I was in a mixed doubles tournament with my dad. I'm not gonna lie, I was kinda nervous about it. I played tennis in high school for 2 years but due to my back problems and problems with the coach, I didn't play my junior and senior year. This semester, I'm in a tennis class so I've been playing more. Tennis is actually like my therapy. I can be having an awful day but when I'm out on the court playing, it disappears for awhile. Anywho, the tournament actually went really well. We won 3 matches and lost 1 so we ended up getting 3rd overall. Not bad seeing as my dad and I had never played together before. 4 Tennis matches in one day is a lot of tennis when you're not used to play tournaments. The tournament was really fun, but it was super frustrating to me. I knew I could have played A LOT better than I did but it just wasn't working. In my last match, I couldn't even get my toss right for my serve. It's literally just tossing a ball into the air and I couldn't get it right. So frustrating! Overall, it was a lot of fun to play with my dad and against all his friends out there; even if I could barely move that night. 

It's been tough getting back in the swing of actually working. Instead of refreshing me and giving me energy, Spring Break just reminded me how awesome Summer is and how not awesome school is. Just a few more weeks and I'll be done! Thank goodness. I went to advising early in the week and decided on which classes I'm taking next semester and I'm actually super excited for them. For the most part. I'm taking Neuroscience, Greek, Theories of Family Development, Individual and Family Financial Management, and Christian Ethics. I'm excited for Christian Ethics but I know it's probably going to be really frustrating as well.  

My sister and brother in law are coming to Waco this weekend and I'm excited to see them. I'll spend Friday and Saturday with them, and then Sunday will consist of church and writing a research paper. Fun stuff. There's some pretty exciting things going on right now, but we'll see where God takes them. Who knows! I'm slowly figuring out that this isn't my life to live; I'm living my life for Christ so He gets the final say. I might not like it, I might not understand it, and I might be afraid of it, but I've gotta listen to it. Even it if it means going against what I thought the "plan" was, I gotta have faith. It's a hard lesson to learn and I'm still learning it. By the way, I'm looking for a job in Rockport over the summer(that doesn't involve working in a restaurant) so if you know of anything, please let me know!

 Is that not the cutest cat ever? 

I just really liked this and figured I would share :)

Yall have a good week!

Sports. And other ramblings

It's March Madness time!!! Who's ready for endless hours of basketball?? This girl is! I've got 2 brackets going and right now it's going pretty decent I would say. It's still early so there's time for one team to lose and kill my whole bracket. I guarantee this will happen. It always does. Baylor won their first game in the tournament though! It wasn't pretty, but they pulled it off. I love my Baylor Bears, but I do not have them winning my whole bracket. Sorry boys. Have I said lately how much I love sports? I can't even explain why; I just love them. For instance, in my car right now I have a baseball bat, tennis racquet, tennis balls, and a football. I just love them all. I love watching them, I love playing them, it doesn't matter. Is it an obsession? Maybe. But it's a healthy obsession so I don't see a problem with it.

Spring Break has been amazing and it's so close to being over :( I've been able to see friends, go to the beach, see family, eat yummy food, sleep, and just relax. I had absolutely no work to do over the break so I haven't even thought of school since I left last Friday. Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about how time consumes everything we do. We live life day by day and hour by hour. We know how much time we're going to spend on each homework assignment and we have lined up what we're going to do after that assignment and for how long. It just consumes our lives as students. There's also no way to really get out of this. We have to get stuff done and this is the way to do it. But we realized that we wake up and by the time we go to sleep, the day has passed us by so quickly and we didn't even do anything really substantial. Then we wake up and get things done the same way the next day. It's a vicious cycle. That's another reason I love being home. My mind doesn't work this way when I'm home. I just live my life. I don't have anything set in stone or any assignments I have to do. It's very relaxing.

I'm in a tennis tournament this Saturday playing mixed doubles with my dad so that should be interesting. I'm pretty sure everyone else in the tournament is way better than I am, but we'll see. It's just so nice to be out on the court playing multiple times a week again. It's so therapeutic. 

By the way, I'm addicted to this game on my phone called Draw Something. If yall have it and need someone new to play with, my username is erin.albin. I have to warn you, I try my absolute best, but a lot of the time, it still looks like a 6 year old drew the picture. I apologize in advance.

Have a great week, yall!

Questionnaire

I was tagged in this blog survey thing by Hollie and decided to do it. Actually, I'm only halfway doing it. You're supposed to post 11 random facts about yourself (but I did that in an early post), then answer the questions, make new ones, and tag bloggers in it. But I'm not doing any of that, mainly because I don't follow many blogs.

Hollie's Questions

1.What's your take on the Twilight phenomenon? Are you a fan? Are you strongly opposed?

I am strongly AGAINST Twilight. I hate this books with a passion. I have to admit, I've seen the movies but just because my friends wanted to see them. I think the books are written in an awful way. "Bella loves Edward. Edward loves Bella. Jacob loves Bella. Edward is a vampire. What will we do?" It's awful. There's also not a very good message in it. This girl can't survive without the stupid boy. Oh no. That is not how I work. And they're horrible actors.

2. What's your favorite form of exercise? Window shopping is a perfectly acceptable answer to this question.

We always do a workout routine in our dorm room. It's anywhere from jumping jacks, to different forms of crunches, to burpees(look those up, man they are killer).  We also always do some just dance to finish our workout.

3. Running along with the shopping theme, if you could max out your credit cards (without penalty or paying them off!) at any one store, where would that be?

Do I have to choose just one? I suppose it would be Old Navy. Then Forever 21. 

4. If you could pick a movie title to describe your life, what would it be and why? (just the title- not the movie subject or premise... like if you pick "Pretty Woman" it just means you're a pretty woman, not a prostitute who falls in love with Richard Gere.)

This one is hard. Mainly because I'm not very creative. I'm gonna have to go with Smile and Keep Moving. Is that lame? oh well.

5. What (in your opinion) are the ideal condiments or toppings on a hamburger?

Cheese, ketchup, mayo, lettuce, tomato, and sometimes pickles. Depends on my mood. Definitely NOT mustard though.

6. If you could learn a new musical instrument, what would it be?

Guitar for sure. I love the sound of a guitar. Maybe I'll just find a guy that can play a guitar haha

7. Are you an Apple or PC person?

PC all the way. It's kind of that rebellious streak I've talked about. Everyone and their mom has an Apple product so I feel the need to not have an Apple product.

8. What is your ultimate guilty pleasure? (i.e., that trashy tv show? romance novels? ice cream??)

Vampire Diaries for sure. My sister got me hooked on it and I realize it sounds really lame. AND IT'S NOT AT ALL LIKE TWILIGHT. I promise. 

9. Do you have any brothers or sisters (or siblings-in-law?)? Are you close in age? Are you close in relationship?

I have 1 older brother, 1 older sister and 1 brother in law. Joey is 6 years older than me, and Courtney and Justin are about 3 years older than me. As siblings we're all pretty close. With Justin, I seriously could not have picked a better guy to marry my sister and become a part of our family. Courtney and I are super close. I really don't know what I would do without her. The year she was lived in Florida right after she got married was no fun(for me at least). I needed my sister! But now she lives in Austin and I seem them a lot. She's my  best friend. Joey lives in Oklahoma so I don't see him as often as I would like. But, I think I'll always have the cliche little sister attitude towards my older brother. No matter how much he picks on me and how old we are, I'll always admire him.

Anywho, I'm finally home for Spring Break!! I don't even care that the weather is not Spring Break-y, I just care that I'm home. On the down side, I have no voice :( My throat was kinda sketchy on Friday, then I had four and a half hours in a car by myself belting out songs. Now I have no voice. It sounds quite pathetic actually. That means no praise team or choir for me at church tomorrow. Hopefully it'll come back soon.

Integrity

Did you know that when the general public is asked to describe Christians in one word, the top two responses are judgmental and hypocritical? This makes me soooooo very sad. I look around at the Christians that are in my life and I see love. Whether the love is shown by prayer, encouragement, accountability, or even just mowing someone's lawn during sickness, there has always been love.  That's why it makes me so sad that the general public isn't seeing this for themselves. Don't get me wrong, there are Christians that are judgmental and are hypocritical, but that doesn't mean everyone is. The other day in the parking garage, I walked by a car that said, "God hates atheists." Seeing this literally pained me. Doesn't this person realize that they're sending the completely wrong message? Even if someone isn't an atheist, they see this sticker and the word hate just pops out. If they don't know Christ, this is going to steer them in the opposite direction. And honestly, if I weren't Christian and I saw that sticker, I would be assume bad things about Christians as well. The Christian faith isn't about hate, it's about love. I thought about just taking the sticker off but I didn't. I also thought about leaving a very respectful note on the car telling them that the sticker was awful, but I decided not to. I hate when I see violent groups on the news and they say that they were doing it for a reason having to do with religion or "because God told them do it because those people weren't Christians." I absolutely hate that people that don't know Christ, only know of Christians because of situations like this. In elementary school, I always hated when the whole class got in trouble because of one person; it was never fair. This is a similar situation. Christians as a whole get an awful name because of the ones in the group that don't live their life through love. Christians should want to show people how awesome it is to have this faith. We need to show them that our joy doesn't come from wordly things, it's comes from Christ that lives within us. We need to be drawing them near to us, not running them off. I don't even know if there is a solution to this problem except to urge people to act lovingly towards everyone they come in contact with. Maybe if we try to act as Christ tells us to, then the world will see us more than they see those violent groups killing people because they aren't Christian. I only hope that one day when people are asked to describe Christians they will use words like loving, forgiving, and altruistic. Hopefully that will happen one day. 

 Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.

Psalm 62:5