Hello, everyone! As my blog continues to grow, I want to make sure that I am listening to what you are saying about my blog. Here is a short Google form that has questions that will help me know when to post and how to post. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer the questions!
If the form doesn’t work for you, click here to access the form.
Prayer is an important part of having a strong relationship with God.
I remember last fall, my school took a trip to Windy Gap. We spent the week worshiping God and getting to know one another before heading back to school. One of the last nights we were there, the leaders sent everyone off to have quiet time with God. I found a spot beside the sand volleyball courts. Looking up at the starry night sky, I thought of how cool it would be to see shooting stars.
Immediately after that thought, I frowned. Why should I ask God for shooting stars? Aren’t I supposed to ask for important and meaningful things? How can I ask for shooting stars when there are so many other things to be praying for? I bent my head and looked at my hands, convinced that something as little as shooting stars should be something I should have prayed for.
You could probably guess what happened. When the bell rang and everyone was called back to the chapel, my friends ran up to me speaking quickly about how beautiful the shooting stars had been. I stopped in the path, shocked. God had answered my prayers but I was so busy convincing myself it wasn’t worth the time that I had missed His answer all together!
While we should pray with full faith that He is able to answer our prayers and do everything we ask, we have to remember that it’s God’s Will that is to be done. God wants us to accept His Will completely and give our lives to Him. Once we do that, He openly answers our prayers because we are praying for His Will to be done! Sometimes, though, there are things that He gives us anyway, like shooting stars. But we have to remember that it is God that we are serving, not ourselves. James 1:6-8 explains this idea:
But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. ~ James 1:6-8
My challenge this week is that you would pray expectantly, knowing that God can answer your prayers, giving us everything we need, but also remembering that His Will comes first.
Hello, everyone! How are you? It’s been a while since my last life update so I thought I would share one today.
Things have been pretty busy until today. I just finished my third quarter of Senior Year and I’m not exactly sure what to do with that information. I’m excited to graduation coming up in a couple of months but I also know that I’m going to miss so many things from high school. I think, for now, I’m just going to take things one week at a time.
Speaking of, this next week is going to be full of really exciting things! On Monday, I have my final meeting before I head to… Peru! I’ll be gone for 10 days but I will come back with lots of pictures! I also have a Sign Language Club meeting on Monday which I’m very excited about! I’ve always found sign language to be interesting and I’m looking forward to being able to sign with some other people from my church and school.
I was nominated for this award by the lovely Lindsay from Linds4Dance. Thank you so much, Lindsay! Please be sure to check out her blog here and her version of the post here!
*I’m going to skip these but please feel free to accept your own nomination for this award!
The Awesome Blogger award was originally created by Maggie @ Dreaming of Guatemala. This is an award for the absolutely wonderful writers all across the blogging world. they have beautiful blogs, are kind and lovely, and always find a way to add happiness and laughter to the lives of their readers. that is what truly defines an awesome blogger. ~coffeelovingbookoholic
Breaking news: I love space. Also, God loves us enough to make stars for us, so that’s awesome.
I do not know why I love the stars so much.
My first memory of the night sky is standing on the driveway, the rough cement beneath our feet and the night like a blanket and my father pointing up to the heavens, tracing the stars into the constellation.
“Cygnus,” he would say with absolute confidence and a little bit of awe. “Orion.”
Why, I always asked. They don’t look like anything but pricks of light. Who was the first person to gaze up and see people?
My parents explained once upon a time, there were no lights. Every night, the sky seemed like it was on fire with the stars. There were more of them to see and trace.
Maybe that was what lit the passion inside me.
I have looked through a telescope two times in my life. Once, the neighbors down the street— a single mother and her teenage son— invited us to glimpse the heavens through theirs. I do not remember what we looked at. Perhaps it is only a dream. I only remember the coldness of the night and the darkness of the sky.
The second time, we went out with our friends the MacMillians to the golf course by their house. It was a bad place to look at stars; there was so much light pollution. But we had just finished a unit in school on astronomy and space and they had a telescope they had acquired from somewhere. We looked at the Moon, I believe, and tried to find Jupiter or Mars.
I remember lying on the golf course and staring up into the blackness with coats bundled close. We couldn’t actually see anything, but we imagined we could.
When I was older, we went to a planetarium. The animated heavens wheeled over us. They drew lines between the stars in the constellations. I did not like the fake stars. I wanted the real stars.
When I was nine and at summer camp for the second time, I was sick in the middle of the night. Most of what I remember is the walk with my counselor down to the infirmary, her hand clutched in mine. I looked up through the trees and it took my breath away.
Stars!
But what stars!
So many more than the skies at home. I could only see pieces of them through the treetops, but I longed for more.
Maybe it was just the mystery. Maybe the reason I love the sky so much is the fact that I have never seen it. I have only seen pieces of the heavens. I keep coming back for more, straining my eyes into the navy, looking for the milky way.
In New York City in 1965 the power went out for a night and all the people went up to the top of the buildings and looked up at the stars— spread out over the cities like they are every single night but visible for the first time in a century.
What a sight.
It seems to me that every time I have been out in the night I have only sought after the stars. I do not know why.
They are beautiful but they are distant. They might not even exist anymore. Their light takes eons to reach us; the actual star could be gone by now but the light is still traveling across space, thundering along at 300,000,000 meters per second but space is so massive it hardly makes a dent.
When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut. I have no idea why.
Space is beautiful but it is beautiful in the same way wildfires are beautiful. It is bone-chillingly terrifying as well; as unforgiving as the ocean.
Perhaps that is why astronauts and cosmonauts share their root in ‘sailor’.
Perhaps the younger version of me wanted to sail— to sail to all the fantastical planets no one has ever set foot on; to glide up to the distant stars and wave hello.
But space takes from you.
Space is unforgiving emptiness— silence and loneliness and coldness.
It is beautiful and breathtaking to look at space— those pictures from the Hubble telescope where every prick of light in the image is not a star but a galaxy, with a hundred million stars its own— they bring tears to my eyes.
But space is also wrong in some fundamental way, like watching an orchestra play without sound; the Wizard Of Oz with Kansas in color.
It is beautiful but it is terrifying once you get out in it, just like the ocean.
Maybe I am in love with space because of the book I had as a child. It was all about space exploration. I fell in love with the space race— with the scientists and their rockets. I could almost feel their emotions— disgust as their ideas were ignored, triumph as their vision was realized.
And under the stars, it seems as if the world is clearer.
The sky is high, higher than the ceilings in the great cathedrals of old. The grass is soft under your bare feet. Above, the stars glimmer down— millions and millions and millions of them.
Why are there stars?
Why did God decide to make stars? We wouldn’t know the difference.
We would never know the difference and yet I like the think that God thought it would bring us joy to look up upon the beauty of the sky ablaze as night.
I like to the think that God thought of me and my friends at our school retreat, lying on the cold grass staring into the heavens in unspeakable joy and thought, “I’ll make stars for them!”
I like to think that he saw me and my friends from camp sitting around a dying fire and canning our necks up to the heavens, filled with awe and thought, “I’ll make stars for them!”
I like to think that in all his planning for the world, he knew that the stars would fill us with wonder and amazement and a tremendous desire to see and to know, and so he, with hands so old the stars themselves seem like the lights of fireflies, spun them into the great blackness.
He hung each one in the heavens and thought about how it would bring us joy.
And so I am in love with the sky at night, with the stars, with the heavens.
I have never seen it in all its glory, but I know I will someday.
I know I will be driving through the empty lands of Montana some clear, clear night and I will pull the car over the side of the highway and get out and look up at the sky.
And I will not have words.
The sky will be on fire.
I will see the Milky Way, spread out like diamonds, each star so far away and yet looking down on me with unwavering light, older than the rocks I stand on.
And from above, God will smile. “I made them for you,” he whispers. “So you could have this joy.”
—The End—
Hello, everyone! I would like to give many thanks to Hollis Thundercroft from Rag Tag Essays for writing this guest post!
Hollis is a high school senior who writes essays in her free time. She enjoys running, quilting, and sleeping, as well as playing with her two new cats. Her favorite smell is after the rain, her favorite planet is Neptune, and her favorite rocket is the Saturn V, which, she says, you probably shouldn’t bring up in conversation because she will never stop talking about it.
I absolutely LOVE Hollis’s blog and all of her writing. I find her essays to be very powerful, true, and passionate. Please go check out her blog here and leave a comment!
“You’re not good enough.” “You’re not smart enough.” “You’re not strong enough.”
These are the words we tell ourselves. Sometimes, they are the words that we get told. They are the words which remind us of the everpresent truth of our humanness.
We fail. We mess up. And we surely fall short in our relationship with God.
But the good news is this: God is enough. His promises are perfect and His plans never fail.
“This God — how perfect are His deeds!
How dependable His words!
His is like a shield for all who seek His protection.
The LORD alone is God; God alone is our defence.” – Psalm 18: 30-31
How encouraging is it to know that we have a God who is forever perfect! When we fail, He picks us back up. When we forget the meaning of love, He shows us that His love is unconditional. And when we forget our worth, His reminds us of the truth.
My challenge for you this week is to focus on the perfection of God in the midst of our failures. When you feel like you aren’t measuring up to the standards in life, remember that He is enough.
Hello everyone! I am so excited to announce that I will be taking applications for Guest writers and bloggers!
If you are interested in guest posting on Happily Abi, I’d love to get to know you a little bit more and hear about your blogging or writing journey. To apply, please use the link below.
I pulled into my parking spot and turned off the engine. From where I sat in the parking lot at school, I had a perfect view of the sunrise. Shades of blue merged into purple and pink. Thin clouds raced across the morning sky as birds happily chirped in the cool air.
I watched as the sun rose all too quickly and the sky turned blue. As I continued my school day, I remembered the beauty and wondered how amazing God is! Later, that night, I opened my Bible and read the words that perfectly expressed the awesome beauty I felt only a few hours before.
How clearly the sky reveals God’s glory!
How plainly it shows what He has done!
Each day announces it to the following day;
each night repeats it to the next.
No speech or words are used, no sound is heard;
yet their message goes out to all the world
and is heard to the ends of the earth.
God made a home in the sky for the sun;
it comes out in the morning like a happy bridegroom,
like an athlete eager to run a race.
Psalm 19:1-5
I’m sure I’m not the only one to wake up some mornings feeling completely away from God. It can be difficult seeing Him work in life when we’re going through the motions and routines.
But, as Psalm 33:6 reminds us, God’s hand is shown throughout all of creation, in the beauty of His created world.
Hello, everyone! How are you? So today is my eighteenth birthday! Yay! I wanted to do something special to celebrate so I am hosting a giveaway.
Just like the past two giveaways, there will be TWO winners.
One person will win this “beauty set.” This prize includes one pair of pink floral socks from Forever 21, one marble necklace also from Forever 21, and one oatmeal, milk & honey bath bomb.
The other person will win this “study set.” This prize includes one mini pink binder, one Dare To Dream marble notebook, and one marble pen.
This is a Raffelcopter Giveaway! Click here to enter.
The giveaway is open from February 4 to February 18, 2018. There are six ways to enter with a total of 8 entry points. Any questions? You can read all of the Terms and Conditions here or email me at happilyabi@gmail.com.
Hello everyone! How are you? Did you get any snow this week? I did! It snowed on Wednesday so the schools were canceled. Life in the south :)
The two days off from school were much needed. To celebrate, my family and I went down to the park to go sledding. It was so much fun! It was also so beautiful seeing all of the trees covered with snow.
In the park, there is a bridge over the little stream. The sound of running water was calming. With the snow, it was even more beautiful.
There’s something about fresh snow that makes time seem to stop. It’s peaceful and perfect for hot chocolate and reading. :)
Hello, everyone! How are you? I’m doing pretty well! The second quarter ended yesterday and I finally get a chance to breathe after all of the assignments. Yay! I was nominated by Bella from the Dancing Damsel for the Liebster Award! Many thanks to her! Be sure to check out her blog and her version of the post here.
