{Produce Aisle}

I ate the fruit. I was poisoned by this overwhelming feeling of some other love. I ate the fruit & let it spoil my appetite for something other than my Creator's love. I craved the power, lusted with jealousy. I ruined the feast set before me by sneaking a bite from the one sweet I was not allowed to have. But just as I ate the forbidden fruit, but after the Fall & with the Rising, it is by the Fruit that I live. 

I have learned to accept & to grow by the Fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23. My joy, my patience, my gentleness, kindness, faithfulness, love, peace, self-control, & my goodness grew into fruit on a tree that my Savior bled & died for me on. 

"If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit." Galatians 5:25

When we recite the fruit listed in the New Testament, there is always an order in which we repeat them. But that doesn't mean they all don't have the same power. Just like normal fruits that we physically can eat, there will be different vitamins & nutrients, sugar & fructose contents, however, it doesn't mean that one fruit is better than another or should be stuck on a ranking scale. I have been trying to recondition myself on learning & using the Fruit in different orders & patterns. 

An apple a day will keep the doctor away -but the Great Physician is here to heal you, to provide you with answers & comfort that you may be seeking. Faith is hard, & it is hard to know if there is really a God out there looking to feed you. Adam & Eve ate from the tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil in hopes of being able to feed themselves with answers, but in return their eyes were opened & they say themselves as vulnerable beings, recognized their faults & knew they had sinned. God reached down & clothed them, but sent them from his garden & they began to labor over the fruits that they were from. Sin entered our world by the bite of a fruit but they continued to plant the fruits in the earth & watched & nurtured them to grow.

My gentleness can come before my patience & joy. My self-control can be shown through love. My kindness will be my joy. The Fruit wasn't meant to be eaten & digested in an order, so we shouldn't program ourselves to produce it in that order. Fruit grows on different seasons & there are times when a pineapple is going to be ripe & when a blueberry will be the perfect purple color. In those times, we must use & produce the Fruit that will real the most benefits for our own spiritual growth & well-being.

At a young age, we are taught about the food pyramid & the five major food groups: grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, & meat & beans. We have to have a healthy balance of these groups to maintain a strong physical body. If we deny ourselves of these categories, we lack something that could potentially benefit us in the long run. Different foods pair up better with others, as a college student, I'm starting to learn how to plan out weekly meals for my boyfriend & I. Making sure to cover all ground so that we may be filled in the most nourishing, but cheap way. However, I can't only make dinner of rice & beans. We wouldn't be satisfying our bodies, it is not sufficient enough for us to eat only a few things. just like eating three meals a day is recommended to help keep metabolisms rolling & our bodies in check. By bringing in a healthy dose of a variety of foods, we may be nourished & filled. By feeding our spiritual bodies, with prayer, meditation, & worship, our spiritual bodies may continue to grow & be filled also.

So remember to be the Fruit. You are what you eat. If you put in the good fruit, then you will produce good fruit for others to eat as well. 

Peace & love.
B.

{Overflowing}

I love getting the opportunity to spend Sunday morning worship at other sister churches & with other congregations I am always amazed how I can see so many different members of God's family gathered in many different areas of the country serving & praising the same God. Churches have different orders of events, run their worship in different ways, even host pot locks in a different manner, when you grow up Church of Christ, pot locks are a staple in a strong church family. There are always different standards of dress & the child care can take all forms of little to full structure during services. There are always the more conservative churches & the more progressive. But at the end of it all, we are all gathered to worship & honor our one good God. It is all about the common good that is shared from congregation to congregation wrapped around states to countries. The size of the church ranges from thousands to just under a hundred, we've seen them all while taking tour routes for our annual college choir tour.

Sometimes, I think that we spend too much time focusing on the quantity of the worship. We count the hours of the service. Head to the church building Sunday mornings for worship, then trek back on Sunday nights for fellowship. Mark Bible studies and Wednesday night classes off our calenders. Hit up a few workshops. Host youth group events. Take part in a service project. While focusing & counting numbers in church attendance, we forget that these aren't just a specific number of hours we need to mark off to make some sort of "Heavenly Checklist" of good deeds & time spent in a church pew. We count up the offering given up by members. Sure the things & gifts we give are important & our congregational attendance helps our family to grow, we forget why we were called to worship. You can be involved in hundreds of "church sponsored" events, but not have your cup filled. We tend to spend all of our time focusing on quantity & numbers, rather than the actual quality of worship in which we are partaking in. We can dedicate our lives to serving, but not grow from our own helping hands.

The church service that our choir attended this tour was in Garden City, Kansas. We decided to visit during the middle of a snow storm, but made it to & from safely. I sat in the padded pew & listened to the preacher give a sermon on wearing the Armor of God. The song leader lead us in songs with chants of victory, battle cries, & not being afraid with God on our side. What I witnessed & took from this specific church gathering, was that this was an actual church family. These people were vulnerable to each other, genuine. They were open & honest about their fears, like when an elder stood up for the opening prayer, he cried to his family about the stress & worry he had concerning his mother's decisions to be made about her cancer treatments & options. During the communion table talk, the speaker pulled up his eight year-old son & spoke about a plague that could only be cured by the shedding of his son's blood, & he expressed how he would struggle with giving up his son to become the cure for all. He spoke on how Jesus' parents had to come to peace with knowing that that would be the outcome of their own son, & how Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac as an offering to God. What touched my heart the most though, was a young boy, who couldn't have been any older than nine years-old. He stood up in front of the congregation during the congregational sharing & announcement time to thank his spiritual family for their prayer concerning his friend who had been sick. I saw hope in this boy's eyes. He was so genuine & sincere in thanking his family members for their prayers & their concern for his friend's health. His innocent praise of thanks was heartfelt. It was truly a beautiful moments for me to witness. Then once finally all packed on the tour bus, our bus driver offered up a prayer over our journey & travels.

I witnessed a quality worship time while in Garden City. For what I am extremely thankful. The quality of the worship I witnessed this morning gave me hope of being a part of a strong, spiritual family. I all too often fear that there won't be a spiritual influence in my life, but then God slides on in & throws in a "don't worry, baby, I've got you, always." Sometimes God's face is found on young boys. I saw my hope in that little boy today, & I am thankful for times like today that I am able to see God at work.

My cup is full.

Peace & love.
B.

{Published}

When I set out to write new posts on here, I really struggle most times to even come up with a topic that is relevant to me. Sure you can hit up the topics of gratefulness, & thankfulness, & family during holiday seasons. Joy & being carefree comes with spring & summer. Stress & anxiety comes with midterms. Relationships always hit some sort of curve ball when you hit winter. But I always struggle with not being generic. Then at the end of it, I realize that I'm not being honest with myself & that these are things that I really need to express myself on, that's why I started this blog in the first place!

I always sit down, laptop in front of me, usually a cup of coffee beside me, ready to blog. Blogging is almost like a marathon, where you have to type & type, & then if you for some reason stop, to fix a typo, or someone distracts you, then you lose all train of thought & you're stuck drinking the entire cup of coffee next to you & then your refill & you have absolutely no idea what your main point was to even start with. So then you head right back to the drawing board, & before you know it, you're on refill number six or seven, have three or four different drafts typed up, or you're stuck just staring at a blank computer screen wondering why your life isn't more eventful. Okay, so maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm some sort of obsessive blogging freak who wants to change the world with only nine followers...

I set out with my mind locked & loaded on writing a blog post & it does nothing but make me feel like my life is all but normal for a girl who lives in the middle of Nebraska, at a conservative Christian college, rocking both a suit jacket & pom poms for school activities, just trying to complete a degree that I signed up for when I was 18 years old. Normal.

Here's the deal, every time I sit down to write one of these blog posts, I obsess with it being perfect. I read over it about 102 times, try to fix all my spelling errors, which most of the time doesn't really do much because I always notice them after I hit the PUBLISH button, & do nothing to make my blog stand out. The font size & type always reads NORMAL. My blog format is SIMPLE. I set out with the dreams & desires to change, but then I get to my prime stomping ground & platform area of followers, I resort back to the same ole, same ole, & it is frustrating.

I try to change the world, but struggle to find a way to change myself. You know the saying old habits die hard? Well for me, my old habit is biting my fingernails. I know that may be gross to some of you, well that's because it is, but I seriously cannot cut this habit! I've tried the nail polish trick, I've tried just keeping them trimmed short. I have tried time after time to quit this habit, but I cannot figure out how to cut it out of my system. Life comes with a lot of habits, daily routines that we fall into. Wake up, do one thing, then the next, until the end of the day rolls around you set your alarm & wake up the next day to do it again. Since when did life have to become so boring?

I know everybody has dreams & aspirations, there's places you want to be & see, people you want to meet & know, things you want to be & do. Life is supposed to be exciting. But just like my blog posts, they're normal. Nothing extraordinary. True story, I wanted to be a writer not too long ago. I wanted to write books. I think the part of me wanting to be a writer is funny because I hate to read. So why I desired to write a book is beyond me, but I wanted it, more than anything. I came up with these super generic story lines that fit into a high school girl's mindset & desires, & over & over re-wrote the same over-dramatic, extreme climax novel with the same characters, just in different forms & with new names. I was like the female version of Nicholas Sparks, just less famous, & a few movies behind.

This is now my writing outlet. & I let anyone read it. It's not extraordinary or super enticing. It's just some chick from Iowa, living in Nebraska, trying to break the routine of life. & you know once you figure out that life can be more exciting outside of your penciled in schedule, you begin to see the joy in summer, become thankful for your family around the holidays & everyday in between, recognize which relationships mean the most to you, & put aside your stresses & anxiety as you go about your carefree ways of life.

Peace & love.
B.