WOW. It has been a WHILE since I’ve written on this blog…

A lot has been going on but I’ve decided to write about one life happening that is occuring.

SO,

“On Living in My First Place.”

Whenever school ended, I began the process of moving into the 1724 Gurley House.

By “process” I mean that I pre cleaned random things, literally THREW my belongings into the house, and booked it to Houston. Rather than packing, I just threw my dirty laundry in the back of my car along with my laptop. I think at that point I was just ready for a break after finals, haha.

So as you can imagine, when I returned to Waco, a few things needed taking care of.  I cleaned and unpacked what I could, and tried to gain some semblance of an idea of what this next year was going to look like, and just kept moving.

You see, there were a lot of unknowns floating around, a lot of questions surrounding, this whole “thing.”

I’m living alone.  Will I like living alone?  I know I love having roommates, is this going to be a disaster?

What about all of those things that I’ve always dreamed about doing once I had a place, all of those Pinterest pins, all of those little daily castles in the sky?  Will I actually do them?  What if I’m not that person?

Habits! Oh my goodness, what if I find out I’m a REALLY messy person who doesn’t spend time with Jesus, or eat healthily, or stay active, or, or, or…

All of those were floating around and were not necessarily being asked but they were present.

Isn’t it funny how we make somethings out of nothings?

I didn’t realize it but for a long time I had been stabilizing my identity on this tall, unsteady stack of things that I had been told about myself and on the fact that I have never lived in a place that was clean of a history, of a drama.

So how is it?

I love my Gurley House.

Yes, I love to live with people but I’m watching myself be refined and become more faithful in a lot of things by living alone.  I’m consciously, daily resting my dependence for my daily life on something stronger than the fellowship of a roommate. I love the sharpening and refining that happens through living with people and I just love always having people around, but I see the worth and the purpose of this stage of my life.

So those things I hoped I would love?  I love them.  I love having friends over for lunch ALL THE TIME.  I love having movie and game nights and throwing surprise parties.  I love having a garden.  I love that I can hammock in my yard anytime I want.  I love sitting on my porch everyday for my quiet times with tea except for the odd time I have it on the floor of my kitchen, looking out my screen door at the rain coming down.  I love having people sleep over for multiple nights in a row and bringing home fruit from the farmer’s market.  I love it all. I even love cleaning which kind of freaks me out, haha.

Abi came over when I first moved in and told me that living in a new place is kind of like taking a baby home in that during the first few days you don’t ever want to leave the house because it’s yours.  It’s so true though… Not only that, but I want everyone to see it and come over all the time.

Anyways, I just thought I would share a piece of my joy right now.  So far, this summer has been amazing.  I love where I am and it’s a good feeling to have.

Lately, Riley has been doing “dear future wife”s and it has become part of my mental dialogue.  Mel and I talk about it sometimes but it has been great to inwardly distinguish, “Okay, why do I like that? What can I discern from this?”  I like doing it because I know that my future husband can’t hear them, it’s totally just me and Jesus.  I love that Jesus knows the desires of my heart and loves to give me things and show me things; he’s a dreamer and he loves to dream with me.  He knows exactly what I think I want and aligns my dreams with his.  

I was dreaming the other day in my hammock with Jesus and I was just going over my year with him.  So much has changed since the last Cinco de Melanie! (I don’t know why but that is a significant marker of my year, ex. “Oh, that was the Cinco de Melanie we did…” Id even k.)

I love it when we go over my year and he shows me where he was at each moment.  I ask him questions, and he tells me things and shows me things.  He shows me how his glory was shown in every moment. He shows me how he was loving me in each specific moment.  He shows me how much bigger he became in my mind since the last Cinco de Melanie all in tempo with the gently creaking swing of my hammock, looking up into a great tree on a campus at a university I never imagined I’d attend. 

He loves me.  I had no idea what his love was last year and this year I’m still trying to learn how to accept it but one thing I have learned surely and fully: he loves me.

He tells me things!  He tells me what he thinks of things, and what he thinks of us, and what he has for me in the future, and who I am, and what he is capable of doing in people’s lives. 

I get so excited!  I want to sit down and unload onto a blog post, into a person, into a journal, anything!

I just want to talk for an hour nonstop about how he is the same good but he just made my capacity to see it bigger.

But people don’t do that.  People don’t sit and just straight up talk for an hour and honestly I can’t think of anyone I would do that with.

So, future husband, I can’t wait to tell you about how good Jesus is for an hour, for a thousand million hours.  Not for evangelism, not for any purpose whatsoever really, but just because I love him and I know you understand.  And I can’t wait to be your outlet, I think I’ll enjoy that even more!

Maybe he has that for me. Sometimes, even oftentimes, I’m not convinced he does. Regardless, I’m content and fully satisfied to swing in my hammock with Jesus and just soak up whatever he has to say to me, to say over me.  

I love to be his.

Music I’m loving lately

 

The Rescues

I love them. I just do. I haven’t been able to give a band the Liz Cornett platinum standard since the Hush Sound but I FUH REAKING love them.

 

Jon Thurlow

This song and Strong Love are the best.  They are just the most wonderful things to have mosey around your head all day.

 

Rodrigo y Gabriela

The reason I will never EVER say confidently that I am a guitarist.  All the percussion you hear is Gabriela playing the guitar. INSANE. I waited too long to get tickets to their show in Austin but I think I’m just going to show up and see if I can get one the day of because… INSANE.

 

All Sons and Daughters

So good.  And this cover of another one of their songs and Beautiful Things is awesome too though I’d love to hear it covered by my group of friends

 

John Mark McMillan

Somehow he reminds me of Jon Foreman. Kind of by the music but more in that his songs have a complex depth.

 

Other things are Devotchka and of course Beirut and OCMS and all that jazz and anything pop or country that is just ridiculous enough to scream at the top of your lungs (well, MY lungs ). LOVE IT. Something about the summer is that music is so much more rich to me when I’m listening to it driving with my windows down and volume at full blast. AH.

 

And and and! More music coming soon after my Antioch’s live recording tomorrow!  I don’t know who you are or where you are from but you need to be there.  I am so excited!  Antioch’s music ministry is really into gifts like prophetic song and music ministry so what typically happens is they debut all of this wicked cool new music at an event called World Mandate in the fall.  Well, they decided this year to debut it at a live recording because they have been ridiculous inspired plus by the time WM rolls around people will actually know the songs.  They’ve already previewed a few and it is about time they record.  I mean really, some of these songs need to be on iTunes already.  But pretty much it’s just going to be the entire church in face melting worship all together. It is going to be intense. 

I’m in the process of planning 3 parties right now.  I love planning parties.

The funnest one to think of right now though, because it’s in the idea stage, is a Seis de May-o Hawaii Five-o Party.  

It going to be good.

The party itself is going to be a merge party because next year my LG will be merging with another in our section.

So I’ll have new leaders and new people and probably a new place and time. 

I’m excited but it’s going to be super different!  I guess no matter what happens for next year in all area of my life it’s going to be super different because this year is all I know!

I’m going to be leading with Garrett and Jonathan (who is called JBillz because of the myriads of Jonathans in our section).

This part of the post is really for my benefit; I want to look back on it and laugh because I really don’t know either of them very well and my impressions are pretty distinct.  Looking back on this kind of stuff and seeing how little you knew is always fun.

So Garrett is Matt’s roommate so they are good friends.  He’s dating my good friend and section leader Melissa.  He’s trying to be less sarcastic in his daily life concerning which I have already repented for stumbling blockage because I enjoy getting pretty sarcastic, haha!  Hey, whatever you’re convicted by, dude He loves basketball. He’s pretty funny too, leading with him is going to be fun.  He really likes to pull people in and shepherd them.  He loves to empower people in their gifts which I am excited about because that is one of my favorite things! I can already tell he’s going to be way different than leading with Matt but I think it’s going to be awesome!

JBillz is our worship leader.  Where Garrett is more traditional, JBillz is super charismatic.  Like, really, hilariously so.  I still make fun of him for explaining to me that “You have a joy bucket.”  He can quote the Misty Edwards monologue from How He Loves.  It’s funny because of how often I randomly enter a conversation and he’s talking about something very spiritual such as “I was speaking in tongues the other day,” “I was praying fire the other day,” “Where do y’all have your biggest Holy Spirit experiences?”  It’s REALLY cool though. Over Awaken I definitely got to see him acting in the gifts of healing and prophesy distinctly in outreach so it’s cool to see.  He also is a really talented worship leader (SUCH a great vocalist, and guitar and piano too), speaks Arabic, can remember things ridiculously clearly (such as how you met, birthdays, what you wore that day, dates, numbers), is double majoring in business, and is extremely administrative (like, “Oh, you’re giving me $20?  Let me make a spreadsheet for that.”).

Anyways, I’m really excited to lead with them both, them being so different and both such good leaders and good friends. Abbey says I’m a pretty even mix of the two

Also REALLY excited to get to know all of our new people better and walk with them.  Like, REALLY excited.

Since Awaken our section has been hanging out more and I’ve gotten some good opportunities to hang out with our girls and get to know them better and get to know who they are and where they are in life.  I just LOVE knowing people and walking with them.  You get to see so much of what Christ is doing and ugh I just love LOVING people.  

This is going to be good.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell the universe about what happened yesterday.

At least, not until Tuesday.

You see, things will be announced next Tuesday, LG goers, super secret section things.

Get excited.

I can, however, tell you meaningless things just because I have an outlet. MWAH. HA HA. HA HA.

Today someone told me something in my paper was redundant. I, of course, replied by alerting him to the redundancy of his face. Turns out, he’s a twin. BWAH HA HA HA.

I have a presentation tomorrow and I have to dress “business casual.” I love business entrepreneurship but if I ever have to get a corporate job I’m going to need to wrap my head around the clothes. I just feel like a conformist wearing them or like one of the extras in a sci fi movie that’s about to turn into part of a remotely controlled army.

Its so cool that God’s love for us never changes. And at the same time, he is continually increasing our capacity to understand his love for us. Sometimes I just can’t handle it its so beautiful. Which might be why I don’t listen to straight up charismatic ish worship anymore while I run… But I digress.

Lately the Lord has been showing me how he’s been my covering all these years. This past semester he kind of stirred up some things in me, things I didn’t really think about anymore, things I kind of just classified as part of my testimony. Hes been showing me how he’s still redeeming them and how he redeems things fully. You see, you can understand things or the motives behind things even if they’re wrong or illogical and move past them. Even if you don’t understand! You forgive and move on. But God doesn’t just redeem those things in your conscious thought. He is faithful to redeem and heal those things all the way in to the parts where you don’t understand how you feel, or you respond a way and don’t know why, or you don’t understand the situation, or you don’t know the right answer. When he heals, he heals fully and his fully is even more complete than our complete healing. God is good.

Brooks Flats is a COOL place to live. There is always someone playing the piano downstairs WELL and I just love the international students. We have a pack of French students that study in the room outside my apartment and I kind of want to do everything out there just to listen to the language. It reminds me of the first time I heard a conversation in fluent French on the way to Austria. Think they’d be creeped out? Probs.

Yesterday, Miranda and I were having coffee and we decided we wanted to do something.

I’m convinced I need to be best friends with that girl forever.

We tossed around some truly excellent ideas and then decided to send out a mass text and go to Austin.

It was me, Miranda, Dara, Kelly, Laura, Patrick, and Chris. It was good.

We went to a restaurant I had never been to before that was supa good and talked forever and took pictures and laughed.

We went to Amy’s for ice cream (of course) and I proclaimed things profusely to the Whole Foods pertaining to my complete, passionate, and undying affection.

We walked from Amy’s to the capital and it was beautiful outside.  A gorgeous night.  

When we got to the capital Dara licked the capital (because she had been dared), I kicked the capital (because it rhymed), and various other people yelled things at the capital and hugged the capital.

Is it just me or does the capital building not seem real?  When I look at it all I see is bad CGI which freaks me out once I actually touch it because, in fact, the capital is real and not a scene from Despicable Me.  HUH.  I don’t know it just seems larger than life and too clean.  Kind of trippy.

Then we just laid on our backs for a while directly under the capital looking straight up at the building and the sky just waiting for the tornado to make good on all of its threats and claims.  I love it when the sky looks like a black t shirt that has been tie died with bleach.  Love it.

Then we walked back and drove home.  I slept the entire way and it was glorious.  Something about sleeping in cars and trains, it’s fantastic.  I like the sounds.

When we got home at like 3 AM, I was in full on “Liz is about to fall over mode” only no one in the group had ever seen that side of me before.  I played it cool for like 15 minutes while Patrick, Miranda, and I talked and then the fury of the dementia was unleashed.  I remember not being able to stop laughing or stop saying “WHOA” and the fact that everything smelled like carrots.  

They were sure to fill me in this morning at church.

This weekend was our leadership equipping conference called 417.

It’s based off of the verse Nehemiah 4:17.

It’s awesome.

I have things to say about it.

•have you ever been in a room of people where you not only want to meet every single one but you feel like you could be best friends with each singular person?

-if you look around about 30 seconds into worship at any of our leader’s meetings, it is evident the Holy Spirit has dropped a bomb.

#I have never wanted to quote a conference so much ever.

@i feel so much more secure in my leadership and discipline now that I know what the core standard is without any styles or anything.

$I got to talk to my co leaders for next year. I know them and I’ve talked to them but I don’t know them super well yet. That makes me sad because I have LOVED leading this year and don’t think i can bear Matt, Abbey, and Matthew moving to another city but mostly CRAZY EXCITED. I am so pumped to get to pour into their girls (I love so many of them so much already!) and so excited to be sharpened by leading with Garrett and JBillz. But more on that later…

&Does your college ministry start off their day mass dancing to Beyonce? Because mine does.

-God is moving and I get to be a part of it! I get to hear Him and obey and teach others to too! I get to love people and do life with them in a real way. I get to have God change me through it and I get to watch Him change those I love though it! I get to know that what God does out through me will never return void. He is always bearing fruit. He is moving in my LG. He is moving, and shifting, and softening, and permanently changing hearts and i get to be there. I get to see the kingdom on earth and it is AWESOME.

;because of all of the switches in leadership for next year, I’ve gotten to talk longer with some people in my section about my LG and my leadership in it. I’ve gotten to hear what people have been saying about me behind my back. The people Im with love me and love me so well. It’s not just me either, its everyone. Hearing how they have spoken of me when i feel like I’ve been barely keeping up all semester is… Honoring. I love them. Someone asked me what the highlight of my semester was and i said being empowered in leadership without a doubt. I thought i knew how to lead humbly, i thought i knew how to disciple, i thought i knew how to care for girls, i bought i knew how to honor guys, i thought i knew what being submissive to the Lord was, i thought i knew what worship was, i thought i knew how to handle internal disagreements, i thought i knew how to be intentional, i thought i knew what i wanted out of relationships… But i didn’t. I guess it’s a continual refining God does until you die but i feel like someone hit light speed in growth in those areas in my heart this semester.

Oh, i loved 417! Can we do this every weekend?