Ruby!!!

My sister and I got to go see my niece last weekend!! She is so adorable in every way and my sister-in-law and brother are very good parents. I was so glad we got to see them. Not only because I miss my brother and sis but also because if we hadn't gone that weekend I probably wouldn't have been able to meet my niece for who knows how long.

Here are photos:

Seeing my brother LOOK like a dad with a diaper bag and carrying the baby was so different!

This is my favorite family pic.

My brother is a good father.

Kissing the baby.

Passing the baby, very carefully. =)

I hope you enjoy those photos of my beautiful niece. :)

In other news... the end of the semester is coming up on me! I have one more week. This week is all finals. I'm not really worried about any final except my guitar final. And worried is too strong of a word. It's only that the song we have to play has a couple chords in it that I'm VERY bad at playing and my fingers just seem to not want to do it. But I'm sure I'll be fine, or at least I hope.

Since it's coming up on the end of the semester my team took photos together again, of course:

We did a serious one and then a funny one, of course. lol. I love this team and am going to miss them over the summer. One of my worship leaders (the one in yellow) is getting married in August and won't be coming back to school! But thankfully, she'll be my neighbor so hopefully that means I still get to see her. =)





My plans for the summer are to get a summer job and to have scheduled prayer room hours. The prayer room is my JOB JOB (for anyone who thinks that that's not a job, I challenge them to come spend 4-6 hours a day of focused prayer room time here for a week and THEN tell me that it's not a job! LOL) and then the other thing will be my side job. I still owe the school for this semester so I'm praying that the Lord brings that money in this week because otherwise I'll have to pay it off over the summer and that would mean I wouldn't be able to save for next semester.

So, Happy Summer everyone!!! Many blessings to you all. =)



Lesson Learned

I have a quick story to tell... it is funny but, well, convicting. I hope it has a similar impact on you...
This semester, my theology classes are divided up in quarters so last quarter I had a class on doctrine. It was called Basic Christian Beliefs and it went through the doctrine that every Christian should believe. (We read the book Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe by Mark Driscoll and I highly recommend it.) It was a pretty good class and a good book.
    We had a paper due at the end of the class, it was a research paper and we had to have footnotes and a resource page etc. I began working on it 2 weeks before it was due and went over it and over it (almost OCDish) and saved it over and over to make sure it was always up to date. I ended up with 5 pages and I even had my roommate edit it as well. The last thing I did was save the cover page and resource page to the paper so that it was all saved on one document. Then, after I emailed it, I checked the email to make sure I sent the right thing.
    The reason I did all this and was so OCD about it was because at the beginning of the semester, my teacher said, "I rarely give out As,"and I was going to challenge that. I wrote a GOOD paper. The whole time I was writing it, I kept saying, "Well, if HE doesn't give me an A, I know the Lord does!" But I really wanted my teacher to give me an A.
   

   Guess what I made?....
A 78. Yep... A C+!!!!
Guess what I did when I saw that? I cried. Yeah...
Now to go back a little I want to explain something. Growing up, grades were always very important to me. You see, my brother and sister could make As with barely trying, but I had to work really hard for my As. A B made me think I failed. Why I felt this way, I'm not going to get into but I felt that way all the way through college.
    I remember when I took Accounting I made a C ( I think I only made two Cs back at A&M) and I had never worked so hard for a C in my life! That was a really hard class for some reason. Anyway, compared to the accounting class, this Doctrine class should be easy, right? And yet, I made a C on the paper. (Thankfully, there were other grades so I ended up with a B in the class, but the paper was the biggest portion of our grade.)
    Since I always had this thing about striving and making As etc, the Lord has been teaching me that His approval is what's important and to do my best and do it for His glory and that may not be As. So, He told me not to worry about my grades in this school. And yet... here I was working really really hard for an A on this paper. Now, I'm not saying I shouldn't have worked so hard, but it was the motive behind it that mattered.
 
    So, the next week I went in to look at the paper to see why I made such a bad grade. I kept thinking, "If he was really going by all the things he said he would be grading on I SHOULD NOT have made a C!"
When I saw my paper I almost had a conniption... they only had 2 pages of my paper. No cover page. No resource page. No conclusion paragraph even. I mean, it ended with a quote! I couldn't believe it. How did that happen?
    I knew that I had checked and rechecked to make sure I saved the paper and emailed the right one, so how did they only receive two pages of it?!
So, I went home to look on my computer and found that what they received was all that was on my computer. It wasn't even the same paper that my roommate had edited! My roommate had edited my finished document. So, how did that happen? Well, there were only two explanations that I could come up with:
1. A demon went and unsaved my paper.
2. Or, God did it.
   
    And when I asked the Lord about it, He said, "Are you willing to receive MY approval over man's?"
Talk about a lesson!! I was so convicted and repented. Then He said, "If you made a C+ on your unfinished paper, what do you think you would've made with your full paper?" 

I had been learning this lesson since coming here, but I guess the Lord had to do something a bit more dramatic to get my full attention on it! Something I say to myself every time I get up to sing or play with my team is: "Lord, this is about You, not me. It's not about whether or not people like my voice or my playing. It's about worshiping You and interceding for others. It's about coming to know You better and helping others to know You better too."

Apparently, I need to remember that for EVERY area and not just for leading worship.

LESSON LEARNED.