Autumn Equinox

Hello! So I don’t normally post on Fridays, I have a pretty strict schedule of Jesus posts on Wednesday’s and lifestyle posts on Saturdays, BUT today is the Autumn Equinox (aka the first day of fall) and I am VERY excited! So, you’ll still get a lifestyle post tomorrow, but today I’m going to write about what I’m most excited about for fall/my autumn inspiration! If you don’t care about autumn to the level that I do, feel free to skip this post, but I love when the seasons change, so this will be what I’m most excited about for autumn…. 

1. Fall Fashion! (Scarves, sweaters, and boots galore!) 

2. Fall Adventures (apple picking, pumpkin patches, and more!) 

3. Cozy Nights and Rainy Days (reading, a candle, a bath, and tea, bliss!)

4. Darker, Autumnal Makeup (dark lips, gold eyes, etc.)

5. Lots more Reading and Journaling!

6. Shorter days, longer nights

7. Fall Food! (Apple and pumpkin everything!)

8. Spooky Things! (Halloween)

What are you guys excited about for the Autumn season?!

How Being A Pastor’s Kid Affects Your Faith

People have a lot of misconceptions about pastors and their families. It is believed in some churches that the pastor is the leader, the God-breathed speaker, but in some churches pastors are walked all over. There are even television shows about the “evils” of being a pastor and what it does to their children. It is more likely to see a pastor’s kid that rebelled and walked away from the faith than anyone else. 

 I have a lot of thoughts about this, since I have been a pastor’s kid since I was six years old. I’ve been raised knowing how I needed to act at church events, knowing how I needed to be perceived because anything I did could be reflected positively or negatively on my parents. 

And I certainly don’t believe that it’s a bad thing to be a pastor’s kid, I have had experiences and opportunities for which I will always be thankful that came with growing up as a pastor’s kid. But man, is it hard to be part of the pastor’s family. I’ve always related it to being part of a royal family or the president’s family because you are always in the eye of the people (even though the people are only the members of your church), your actions reflect greatly upon your parents and family, you are expected to act a certain way, and you are expected to overtake parts of the church (I think this is similar to being in line for the throne). 

I grew up knowing that everything I said and did would eventually be shadowed onto my parents, and thus, learned a level of politeness and self-awareness that most people do not learn until much later in life. I knew the Bible well and could put it into conversation, I knew how to be soft-spoken but still stand up for my beliefs, I was a perfect little “first daughter” of the church.

But this affected me greatly. This level of self-awareness manifested into anxiety and depression, the feeling of being watched and always having to say the right thing fell into deep loneliness, and having to be seen as a person of great faith, made my actual faith suffer. I hate to be a stereotype, the typical perception of pastor’s kids that break away from God at the first chance they get, but that is what happened. 

I wanted nothing to do with God, but on Sunday mornings I was still the perfect little pastor’s daughter that everyone expected me to be. 

And it was hard. 

I didn’t know who I was, I didn’t know who Jesus was, and I certaintly didn’t know how to fix any of it. 

It took a long time and even some time away from the ever-watching church before I fell in love with Jesus again (I’ll talk more about this in a later post if you want to hear my testimony!) but eventually I did fall in love with Him. 

I will not say that being part of the pastor’s family is easy or something I would recommend. It’s so hard. But it’s also important. I had opportunities to encourage people on their deathbed and welcome new life that most children don’t get. 

It took me awhile to figure out that Jeaus wouldn’t judge me like the church did, and that I didn’t have to be the perfect daughter for Jesus to love me. But I did figure it out. Being a pastor’s kid is hard, sometimes it just absolutely sucks, but it’s worth it if you let God use you for His good works. It is so worth it. 

  

Autumn Bucket List

Autumn is one of my favorite seasons, and I love making lists, especially to-do lists or bucket lists. But I never seem to be able to keep up with them, so I decided that I would make a seasonal bucket list, post it on here, and make a blog post for each of the things I accomplish! I don’t know how well it will work out, but I’m really going to try! So here is my autumn bucket list, and don’t forget to check back to see if I complete any of the things on here! 
1. Journal everyday (and make journal entries more creative) 

2. Have an autumn photoshoot 

3. Host a Halloween party

4. Take up yoga 

5. Wake up early and go to a farmer’s market 

6. Go thrifting/antiquing with friends 

7. Go on a shopping trip with friends and pick out sweaters for each other 

8. Be more thankful (make lists of the good things that happen every week) 

9. Enjoy cozy stay-in nights 

10. De-stress often! 

How To Be a Light For Others

Sunday in church the pastor was talking about how Jesus sent out 72 believers to bring people to the Lord. And how each of us are meant to be in specific situations and talk to specific people. We discussed the Time To Revive moment which has groups of people walk around cities and pray for the people they meet. And we talked about how Jesus provides people of peace for us to minister to. And I couldn’t stop thinking about a situation I was in all last school year. While I was in it, I didn’t feel as though I was encountering a person of peace or spreading God’s word in a significant way, but I realize now how important it was for me to be in that specific situation with that specific person. God provided the resources and I had to use them. 

So my school does a thing called cadet teaching. It’s a class where students go to the elementary school and are assigned to a classroom and help the teacher. This last year was my second time being a cadet teacher and God was in that experience more than I’ve ever felt in my young life. The classroom I was put in was God breathed for several reasons. It helped me decide that I wanted/was called to teach special ed, there were students who opened up to me and only me, and I was able to speak the gospel to someone who had forgotten about Jesus and what His love means. 

In this classroom there are three teachers, and one of them quit early on and a new teacher joined the group. This new teacher was kind and obviously had a hard skin in order to keep hurt out. Because the other teachers were close already, this new teacher and I spent a lot of time talking. I shared my life with her, and mentioned how often I was at church and things like that simply because it’s a part of my life. I shared with her when I finished a devotional and about the Christian colleges I was looking at. And before too long, she started to ask me questions. I didn’t think much of it, just answered her questions and talked about Jesus with her. And one day she told me that she re-read her bible, because I’d inspired her. And then another day she told me that she had gone to church the day before and shared her experience with me. 

I had been an important part, really the driving force, in this woman’s decision to go back to Jesus. And I had no idea. 

Being a light for Jesus to other people is not hard. It is not something we must work at or try for, it is simply Jesus speaking through us to get to other people. And that is very inspiring to me. 

I encourage you to live a Christ-like life and people will be drawn to you. The privilege of planting a seed in people is entirely ours if we choose to use it. So why wouldn’t we? 

An Introduction

hello! Welcome to this blog! I wanted a digital place where I could write my thoughts, post pictures of things that I find pretty, discuss God, share my music, and find new recipes that I can actually eat with celiac disease. So this is going to become my outlet! I’m hoping that I will actually keep up with this blog, as I have an infinite amount of blogs that I started with a sudden inspiration and then have given up on within a matter of weeks, but I will try much harder to keep up with this one!

Anyway, I did have a point for this post, other than to welcome you to my ramblings and thank you for reading, so here it is: I was sitting in my house watching Hallmark Christmas movies with a fever and a box of tissue sitting next to me and suddenly became very restless.

It is now almost a year after I was watching those hallmark movies, and I’ve been hit with the inspiration to blog again! I found myself writing lots of thoughts and ideas in the notes section on my phone, and thought why not just publish them?! I have several friends who are successful bloggers, so why couldn’t I be one?! We’ll see how this goes, but welcome to my ramblings!

Love…..

Today I went to the beautiful wddding reception of a friend whom I have known and been close to for about five years. We’ve shared whispers about boys we liked, lots of dance parties, lots of food, and a lot of time. While this friend got married and I thought about all of the experiences we’ve had, the “drinking” games we used to play with soda and the late nights where we just cried and talked about how much boys suck, and while I heard all of the stories about her and her husband, I couldn’t help thinking about love means and how often I tell people I love them. As a Christian, love is what God shows us, and the only way we can show God’s goodness to others. As a young person, love is thrown around, whispered to people we barely know after sloppy kisses in the dark, or to friends who we feel the need to tell how much we “love” them. And we, as people in general, are told to be careful who you tell those three words to because they can lose their meaning quickly. But is it better to have loved everyone, or to have not loved anyone? Is the word “love” used for a false commitment or is it still the pure, delightful thing it once was? Basically, what I’m getting at is that the wedding I went to tonight made me think a lot. I’m going to start making it mean something more when I tell someone I love them, and I encourage you to do the same.