Sunshine On My Shoulders

As it stands, I am blogging from a poolside chair. Talk about joy in its finest. The song “Sunshine On My Shoulders” by John Denver comes to mind hence the title of this post. God decided to show me that he loves me today by making it 75 and sunny in College Station, my definition of perfect weather. Why I think I will be able to survive the Colorado winter next year is beyond me. I shiver when it’s anything below 50 degrees. I am doomed. I really love God for pretty weather; it is one of my favorites of His gifts. I smiled when I woke up to the sun shining in my eyes at 7am, that is saying something.

Becca and I got to the Rec pool today at 10am to catch some rays. Game on. We are currently in an unspoken tan-athon, and she is winning...shocker there--good luck with your skin cancer, Becks. Its a good thing I am not above cheating in this race by going to fake bake at Darque Tan…I feel its only fair since I have class during the day and she does not. She does not agree with this theory. Winning is key here, though, so whatever it takes. Here is why I love laying out with Becks. We both brought our bible studies, bibles, pens, highlighters and scripture books; our stuff sprawled everywhere. Every 5 minutes we will find something: a verse/a convicting statement from Beth Moore/etc, and of course we feel the need to read it aloud to each other. We spent 10 minutes straight “one-upping” each other on good advice from the bible. I love that I can have a serious conversation about the Lord with her and end up in tears from laughing so hard. Sometimes we end up in tears for other reasons like being overwhelmed at how messed up we are and how faithful God is to save. Today, this was my favorite: Becks found something that I needed to hear in her Beth Moore-Daniel bible study. The scenario went like this:

“OH my gosh Ally, listen to this…this was written specifically for you.”
(then she read it aloud…I would type it but it was long and I didn’t memorize it. It said something about being obedient in the small things, even the things that you don’t think are a big deal, because God is trying to prepare you to be obedient in the big things. Becca knows the part of my life that I like to avoid when it comes to being convicted and she loves reminding me that it is sin. $150 dollars says I receive the quote again via text from her sometime later this week. An extra $50 says that it will come at a time when I am struggling in my sin, and the Lord will use it to convict me. He is so faithful about using Becca for things like this.)
“Crap. Yeah that is definitely God talking to me huh?”
“Yeah Ally, I told you. I am writing your name beside this right now in my bible study. You know what, I will just read it to you one more time. You need to hear it one more time.”
“Thanks yea, maybe twice actually. Go ahead.”

Haha we died laughing, and she really did read the entire paragraph 3 times out loud and sentence by sentence pointed out the things she thought were really important for me to hear. Thank you Becca, for being so faithful in accountability.

Last night, we were talking about how we are the luckiest girls at A&M. Our reasoning? Let me tell you. In the past 3-5 years God has essentially crippled us. He has been faithful to shut our mouths, crush our pride, and give us the tears of a broken life. We have both been so quick to move instead of listening to Him, but he has allowed our worlds to fall apart before our eyes in order to remove our idols and woo us back to our first love. Even when we have forgotten Him, He has not forgotten us. He drew near to us when we had all but given up, for example-times when I was in the fetal position in the floor, pathetic and helpless. He has destroyed us in order to redeem us. And I am FOREVER THANKFUL for this display of his grace. It would have been far more un-loving of Him to let me remain in my sin, and God knows I was deep in it. Beth Moore says it like this:

“There is nothing that can make God stop loving us. God is love. Love is not only something God does, love is something God IS. God would have to stop being God to stop loving. Only the places that we allow the love of God to fully penetrate will be satisfied and, therefore, liberated. God stands by us until we are free. He uses various forms of discomfort to woo us to cry out to Him, but He never forsakes us. God is the only One who is not repelled by the depth and length of our needs. No matter how long we have struggled, God is not giving up on us, even if we’ve drained all the human resources around us dry, He is our inexhaustible well of living water. He may allow the life of a captive to grow harder and harder so she will be more desperate to do what freedom in Christ requires—but He will never leave her. The measures God takes to woo us to liberty may be excruciating at times, but they are often more powerful evidences of His unfailing love than all the obvious blessings we could expound. Few truly know the unfailing love of God like the captive who has been set free.”

I could tear up reading that. It is so true, and that is just too much. Anyways back to why we are so lucky. Although God loves us more than enough to satisfy every desire in our hearts, he has given us a group of friends this year like none other to walk with, to comfort us, to laugh with, to cry with, to run towards the cross with. No one has friends like we do. I look around and see a lot of people who have more friends than me, but nobody has the quality of friends that I have. Oh I am so very blessed by the friends that I have made here in my senior year at A&M. We both realized that God PROVIDED these friends when we finally decided to be obedient to Him. When we CHOSE to believe His truth over Satan’s lies, He did what he said he would do. Why does this shock us? He is FAITHFUL. And let me say, we both see a light at the end of the tunnel. GOD IS GOOD.

Speaking of the greatest friends in the world, the infamous Laura Grubb, Rita & Erin O'Connor, Alex Feagin, & Lauren Wood alongside some of the boys just walked in to join us in the tanning festival. Alex is already in the pool. Grubb is sweating profusely from biking here, she’s wearing vans and as always, looks like she biked straight from California. Rita thinks she’s going to study yea right, and Lauren of course looks the cutest. Today is the greatest day ever. I am so happy. Time to take the headphones out and socialize, thanks for your help though Christy Nockels, you are always so greatly appreciated. I will leave you with this: be obedient to Christ...and yes, even in the small things that you think are not a big deal. He is faithful and so worthy of your whole heart. And be so very thankful when he blesses you with cool people to walk through life with. Even just one person can make all the difference. Believe me, I would know.