this i know.

via Tumblr.

the end of missing.

“I like to see people reunited, maybe that's a silly thing, but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.” 

                                             -Jonathan Safron Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

planning to make this.

really. I will.  Really.

 I'm posting this here as a reminder for some point in the future that there was a moment I was planning on making this world map. 

(Though with better paper patterns) 

glory no more.

amen.

hashtag marriage

"We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet….. I mean, what does any one life mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things….. all of it, all the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness."

loving the long drives

I've been doing a lot of long drives through Australia lately.  It's such an epic place to call home. 

It's like it's too good to be true...

At Myall Lakes, taken with my Fujifilm Instax

so fresh and so clean clean

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous all together.  
                                                                                                                                              Psalms 19:9

This has been resonating through me all day. I think because it is soo true. 

does it count as china?

Last year in July I had the privilidge of swinging by Hong Kong on my way to and from Thailand.

The purpose was to visit my lovely friend Wing. 

She lives in Hong Kong, is a treasure, loves to pray for people, and has been an amazing supporter of me through teary skype calls, with money, and through heaps and heaps of prayer. 

Vulnerability.

I just watched a Ted Talk about Vulnerability.  Watch it.  It's worth the 20-minutes. 
Here's a gem: 

Courage:  Telling the story of who you are with your whole heart.  

inner restlessness

An inner restlessness grows within us when we refuse to get alone [with God] and examine our own hearts, including our motives. As our lives begin to pick up the debris that accompanies a lot of activities and involvements, we can train ourselves to go right on, to stay active, to be busy in the Lord's work. Unless we discipline ourselves to pull back, to get alone for the hard work of self-examination in times of solitude, serenity will remain only a distant dream.  
How busy we can become . . . and as a result, how empty! We mouth words, but they mean nothing. We find ourselves trafficking in unlived truths. We fake spirituality. How easy to fall prey to meaningless talk, cliché-ridden responses, and mindless activities! It was never meant to be that way; but, more often than not, that's the way it is. 
To break the habit, solitude is required. The hard work of self-examination on a recurring basis is absolutely essential.
                                                                       Intimacy with the Almighty, Charles Swindoll

from kendra's blog

http://squashandlibros.tumblr.com/

"I had finally accepted the precipices that exist in each human topography. The real challenge was not in finding one’s match, but in settling the territory, the tender labor of two imperfect beings who accept one another and agree to work the land, lay bridges, and not escape at the earth’s first shuddering. I had come to this knowledge just when the path before me was full of uncertainties."
— Gioconda Belli

commitment.

what the heck is this delightful little thing?

It's called a 'Puggles' and I never would have reposted this if it hadn't come with that title. I was reading the Huffington Post and I had to click on the link titled 'What the heck is this delightful little thing?'  I wish more things in life started with that.  

You can read about the Puggle here. 

chase kunz, brain waves. I want this for my wall

true words t-swift

what a dumb picture to put this quote over

i'm a lonely boy

 

let me be your everlasting light

I got to see the black keys. And while I haven't been to a ton of conderts, this is one of the best I have ever been to. If you get a chance to see them, don't think. just do it.

'everywhere I go, I take a new place with me'
                                                               -bon iver

one of my favorite books

"The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people’s hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely. 

During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for I love you or I feel serious. When a hand was used to shield one’s face when frightened by a loud noise something was being said, and when fingers were used to pick up what someone else had dropped something was being said; and even when the hands were at rest, that, too, was saying something. Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for Now I realize I was wrong to love you. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because they didn’t go round with the illusion that they understood perfectly the things other people said, they were used to interrupting each other to ask if they’d understood correctly. Sometimes these misunderstandings were even desirable, since they gave people a reason to say, Forgive me, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I know I’ve always been right to love you. Because of the frequency of these mistakes, over time the gesture for asking forgiveness evolved into the simplest form. Just to open your palm was to say: Forgive me."

"If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms – if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body – it’s because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside, was so much less. It’s not that we’ve forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it’s too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other’s bodies to make ourselves understood.” 
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

my cute little room in

germany.

lets go see this.

on the plane i watched