glimpses

Will update more soon and put up some pictures and such.

Hope you had a great weekendl! :)

Away from my present. To visit a place of my past. A past of laughs, cries, love. Of friends, family, school. Of mangos, geang kiew waan, songteaws. Of icecoffes, dances, community service. Of learning, challenges, decisions. Of seven years of my life. Of memories I will never forget. Of circumstances, people, places that have shaped me into who I am. A place from my past that I carry with me everyday of my present. A place of the past  forever shining through me.

Cuz' isn't it like that? That our past is not only something that happened, passed by. But something that left imprints on our hearts, brains, feelings. Something that somehow affected us, made us feel, engaged us just a little or a lot. And that will shine through our actions, words, feelings today. In the present. The past meets today. Of course not everything leaves us dramatically changed but I think our past is carried in and through us in our present. We can then choose to move from it and what it made us into, what it did to us. Or we can choose to embrace it and continue to live with it. Depending on what our experiences were. I think it's important to reflect over our past sometimes, not to get stuck in it, but to see how we move from it. How we best use it in our present. How it affects us. How we carry it with us best. What we carry with us. How we want the past to shine through us in our present.

Beauty is talking about grace with kids. It's praying. Sharing. People. Church.

Beauty is having your grandparents visit your church. Nice lunch. A walk. Catching up.

Beauty is seeing the first "tussilago". Signs of spring. New beginnings. Hope.

Beauty is watching a movie with a friend. Relaxing. Being.

Beauty is getting to pack to go home. Family. Surprises. Love.

Whats beauty in your life at the moment?

For me that means busy, busy, busy. But lots of fun! :)

It is a brand new day. A new Friday. A new weekend. The opportunities are many! What are you going to make of this new day? :)

I wish you an amazing Friday! It's here :)

Surprise can be getting a letter from somewhere you didn't expect.

It can be having someone open up about something they haven't before.

It can be discovering a weakness.

It can be being really productive.

It can be a smile on a rainy day.

Take the chance and surprise someone! Send a textmessage, write a card, call, give a hug. I encourage you to be a good surprise for someone today! :)

Hugs!

It's heartbreaking. It's horrible. It's the kind of book that makes you feel. Where the words grab hold of your heart and squeeze it hard. Where the characters become alive. Where love and beauty is felt. Where sorrow and anger leaves you breathless at the evil this world holds. A book that takes you on a journey. A journey both thoughtprovoking and emotional. A journey that I'm sure is different for every reader. A book that says something. A book that left imprints on my heart. A book that brought me back to my visit to this a country far, far away. A visit, that just like the book, was filled with joy and beauty conflicted with deep sorrow and anger. A place and people that grabbed hold of pieces of my heart. A visit that changed me. That, like book, took me on a journey. A journey, that unlike the book, was real.

Join me in prayer for Afghanistan. For the people. For the children. Men. Women. For the Laila's and Mariam's. For the government. For the fear carried by many. For the joy and hope shared by many. For the sick. For the heartbroken. For the people working for the good. For our sisters. Brothers. For Afghanistan.

Friday was Disney night! Saw Tangled for the first time. Funny. Beautiful. Made me think of one of my homes- Chiang Mai!

Saturday was Gothenburg for the first time for me. I fell in love a little bit. It's a beautiful place. Spent some of the day in the city with some great people in the sunshine. Lovely! Then in the afternoon we (the youthleaders at our church) spent time listening to some inspiring people tell us about their church's work with teens. And we also got to be apart of it that night. Inspiring.

Sunday, lovely Sunday. We held a youth service. I was so proud and happy and inspired by the youth. They are soo great. They led worship, preached, led the service. I got to lead the communion which was fun! It was a great service and it was so clear that God was present. Church is really something beautiful. It's people longing for something more. It's life. It's shared joy. Shared sorrow. It's a lovely chaos. It's a glimpse of something much greater coming.

Sometimes it's so obvious to me that I have the best job in town!

Then at night I went to Sisters. A time of prayer and worship for girls, women, ladies. A time to seek God together. It was well needed. Thanks to all those who made it happen!

My weekend was filled with glimpses of the sweetness of life. Of things that made me smile, gave me butterflies in the stomach, brought tears to my eyes, laughter to my ears, and thoughts for my heart.

I wish you a week filled with glimpses of life's sweetness.

I have been thinking about the future a lot lately. It's time for me to apply which means it's time for me to deicde where I want to study and what.

Lately, the big question for me has been: where?! My thoughts have daily wandered off to comparing the cities I'm considering. Counting the positives and negatives. Analyzing. Thinking.

My prayers have been "Where should I go? Where should I be? What's Your will?"

My life has been consumed by these questions, thoughts, prayers. My conversations tend to end up in these questions, thoughts, prayers.

And then it hit me! I'm almost only praying for this one thing. Where? I wasn't spending time with God to get to know Him and build on our relationship. I wan't really giving Him a chance to speak to me because I was doing all the thinking and talking. I wasn't exactly listening, just wondering why He didn't speak. I wasn't resting in Him. My life was worry, worry, worry. And it was me, me, me. My city. My feelings. My future.

And yes it is an important decision! And yes the core of it is that I want to live in and of God's will. I want to live my life with and in Jesus. I want to be in a place where I can love, be loved and get to shine Jesus. And all of that is great. But perhaps I got tangled up in all the things surounding the core. All the outer things. Things that are important but not vital. Perhaps I made it a little too much about myself. Perhaps I lost the bigger perspective. Perhaps I was trying so hard to find the answer that I tried to do it all myself. That I didn't listen. That I didn't rest. Didn't trust. Didn't seek Him first.

God gives us a woderful promise in Matthew 6.

³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

This past weekend my friend and I prayed for eachother as we were both experiencing a kind of desert in our faith. A dryness. A sense that we weren't spending time with Jesus enough. That we were just trying to figure out the future. And this Bibleverse became so real and alive. It came as a wakeup call. But it wasn't one of those horrible morning alarms but as one of the times you wake up to a sunny day and birds singing outside your window. It was filled with freedom.

I still think about where I will end up next year. I'm in the middle of filling out applications and it still takes a lot of my energy. And that's okay. It has to be that way I think. I have to make a decision. But I also know that Jesus is with me and that He and His plan for this world is soooo much bigger than this one decision in my life. Yet He still cares fo this decision. And He just longs for me to spend some more time with Him. For me to let go of my worry. Curl up in His arms and rest assured that He will go with me wherever I go.

It's good to be writing again!

Good night! :)

think it's important to show eachother appreciation. To show eachother we care, we remember, we love. It can be little or big, an everyday thing or something special. But I want to encourage you to celebrate eachother! Celebrate the people around you. Encourage. Build. Appreciate. Love. We all deserve to feel appreciated and loved for who we are. To be celebrated for being the beautiful person you are. And we can help eachother in doing just that!

I also got to spend sometime with two lovely, fun and great girls this afternoon. We had so much fun together and we got to just talk about life. Talk about boys, faith, God, school and movies. And for me to get to share some of my experiences with life, with faith and of God was soooo great. And to hear them share about their lives was very encouraging.

I think really think it's important to have people with whom we can share our thoughts, feelings and experiences. To have people who we look up to listen. To have people who we want to open up a bit of our lives for. People who listen to the truth, to our real feelings. And I also think it's important to have people who listen to us when we share our experiences, our stories. To be a rolemodel, by being who we are.

I hope that you have people who listen. People that you can share life with. That you have people to look up to. And I also hope that you get to discover that, you are a rolemodel as well!

I hope that my life wil be filled of doing small things with great love. Of trying to live out love in everything I do. Big or small.

Here's a great quote and picture on the topic!

I hope and wish to live more and more like this. I encourage you to keep doing little things with great love! And I hope that you have too, get to experience great love in the little things people do for you.

candles lit,

a warm blanket,

a good book,

a sore throat,

sleepy eyes,

candy,

a phonecall with a great friend,

and

Bon Iver

accompanying my night.

What's your night filled with?

I think it's important to reflect over these things. It's easy to say that we don't have enough time for this and that, but in saying that we also say I spend my time on something else. The question is what. Are you spending your time on the the things you want to? On things that bring you in the direction of your deepest longings?

As lent is approaching I'd like to encourage you to reflect on these thngs. Is there something that you would like to have more time for? If so, what is it that you will say no to, in order to be able to say yes to that?

On saturday my dearest friend and sister Jessica came. We ate this years first "semla", caught up on life, feelings, thoughts, struggles and laughs and then we got picked up by lovely Johanna. And we went to Värnamo together for a night filled with great company and music. Ole Borud! It was so good. Our friend, Simon, got to play piano with Ole. A dream come true for him. What's your dream?

Then Sunday was church. What a joy it was to get to show Jessica my home church, the great people and just have her taste a little more of what my life is like now. I think it's important to be able to share our everyday-life and what's important to us with the people close to us.