A book review- The Hiding Place

The Hiding Place is an autobiography written in 1971. Its author, Corrie ten Boom, was born in 1892 and raised in Holland. In her lifetime, of course was the second World War, which left a profound impact on her life. As a Christian full of love, she opened her home to persecuted Jews as well as managed an underground network helping other Jews find homes and food.

Eventually her work was discovered and she was sent to prison and solitary confinement. Later she was sent to Ravensbruck, a women's concentration camp in Germany, with her sister. There they saw horror upon horror, but they brought into this dark place the light of Christ by holding a "worship service" every evening and sharing the gospel with others. Eventually Betsie died, and Corrie was released shortly after. For the rest of her life, she traveled the world speaking, and opened a home to provide healing to people deeply affected by the war.

This story is quite moving, almost life-changing. I just finished it for the second time today and would recommend it to anyone and everyone. Corrie is an excellent writer and her story is incredible.

And that's all I have to say about that.


God bless.

Mom

Happy Mother's Day to all! But especially, happy Mother's Day to my mom!

She's been with me since day one, through thick and thin, and I couldn't be more grateful, nor could I have asked for a better mom. She basically rocks.

This is a fun little picture I made of her, using words that describe her. The picture I used of her to create this was, in fact, from the "Mother's Day picture" we took last year--a tradition Mom likes to do where a picture is taken of her and her children, that is, I guess, the source of her motherhood. I thought the fact that this is last year's picture made this one pretty cool. 

Some of the words repeat, and some of the words might be too small to read (although if you click on the picture, you should be able to see a bigger version), so here is a list of the words used in this picture:

Mother
loving
sweet
teacher
Godly
inspiring
beautiful
Paula
wife
mom
cook
awesome
wonderful
thoughtful
caring
joyful
Christian
patient
kind
good
faithful
gentle
example
passionate
joggler
smart
creative
generous
funny
goofy
fun
hospitable
friend
grateful
committed
PTL
dedicated
smiley
prayerwarrior
musical
family

I love you, Mom! Thanks for everything!

The original photos:

God bless

Life Goals

I have recently solidified a few of my life goals. It's a big deal, because I am not a very goal-oriented person. I just go along. But now I'm planning!

1) I am going to go to Jamaica. If a vacation doesn't work out, I will just live there forever.

2) I am going to graduate with a bachelor's degree in psychology and then I will go be a counselor for Mercy Ministries and help young women get out of rough lives and discover the truth and love and, most importantly, hope, of Christ.

3) I am going to marry a man who loves me. And I have to love him too. And we're going to have children. And we're all going to be happy together. Even though I'm utterly single right now, I feel that this stage in my life is coming soon. After all, by the time my mom was my age, she was already engaged to Dad.

There's a bunch of other things I would like to do, but if they never happen in this life, I will still be okay. If these things don't ever happen either, I guess I will still be okay. Sort of. Of course, God probably has all kinds of craziness in mind for me, so whatever. I guess that's the plan that I'm going with, which isn't really a plan on my part at all. WOO LET'S GO DO LIFE.


God bless.

Score

Today is my 20th birthday. I celebrated by joining (or rather, requesting to join) www.20sb.net. That is, 20 something bloggers. A place for bloggers in their 20s to get together and read each other's blogs and talk and whatever. I'm not sure yet but it looks really cool and I've been looking forward to joining since I was nineteen.

I did other things to celebrate. For example, I attempted to run 3 miles under beautiful cloudless blue skies and otherwise pretty much perfect conditions. However, I was struggling, because I ran yesterday, and I literally never run two days in a row. I'm trying to start running every day, and this was my first attempt at not skipping a day. It was beautiful out, so I didn't really even mind that I had to stop and walk a few times to catch my breath. Also, there was a cute guy mowing the lawn and I got to pass him twice. And he smiled at me both times.

I also made myself cream of wheat for breakfast, ate leftovers from last night's delicious dinner with my Aunt Amy for lunch, talked to Gavin on the phone for a bit (he always knows how to make me laugh), and checked facebook where I had practically a zillion notifications. That was stressful, but not really in a bad way. Also, Mom came home briefly and I got to talk to her and watch her put the icing on my homemade chocolate cake. It was lovely.

Since I just finished the book of Philippians yesterday, I wasn't sure where to go next with my devotionals I try to do. So I was like, I'll read a Psalm! Because you can't really go wrong with a Psalm. The first couple I flipped to didn't look good (or, "applicable," I should say), then I thought, hey, since it's my 20th birthday, I'll read Psalm 20. Or maybe God put that idea in my head, because it was absolutely perfect. It's short, so I'll share it with you.


Psalm 20 (NIV)

May the Lord answer you when you are in distress;

may the name of the God of Jacob protect you.
May he send you help from the sanctuary
and grant you support from Zion.
May he remember all your sacrifices
and accept your burnt offerings.
May he give you the desire of your heart
and make all your plans succeed.
May we shout for joy over your victory
and lift up our banners in the name of our God.

May the Lord grant all your requests.

Now this I know:
The Lord gives victory to his anointed.
He answers him from his heavenly sanctuary
with the victorious power of his right hand.
Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
They are brought to their knees and fall,
but we rise up and stand firm.
Lord, give victory to the king!
Answer us when we call!

In the afternoon, I went to my elementary school where my mom works, and helped do a couple odd jobs for her there. One of the kids in her class wrote on a piece of notebook paper, "Happy birthday Mary Ann." It was a sweet gesture, even if she did spell my name a little wrong.

I looked forward to getting the mail all morning. There was sure to be something for me. I haven't told you all about Chris [yet], but I've been corresponding with him via snail mail and he had told me he would send me a drawing for my birthday. Last night I had a dream that I got five letters from him, which would probably be hard for him to live up to, but I think I was just excited. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten that from him yet (sometimes the USPS is kind of slow, sometimes they are surprisingly quick). Neither did I get my letter from Marcus who said I would be getting one from him "VERY soon." But I did get a nice card from my Virginia-dwelling aunt and uncle, with an iTunes card inside. As I write this, I am listening to music I bought with it; have you ever listened to Goldmine Pickers? They sound like their name, so check them out if you're interested. I'm quickly falling in love with them. "Far from Shore" is playing now and the solos are incredible.

For dinner, we had twice-baked potatoes and steak (at my request), and after Sarah's BFF, Marie, got here, we had the cake and I opened presents. I put a dorky "party" hat on and blew out the candles. You know the whole spiel. I got some cool presents from Mom & Dad and Sarah, but all Sam got me was a card that it must have taken him all of 20 seconds to make. He loves me a lot.

And now I'm sitting here. When I took my hair down my headache went away. Hopefully my 21st birthday next year is a bit more thrilling, but I'm not complaining about today. It was a good day, and I thank God for being with me through it. And the blue sky. was beautiful. So there you go. You just witnessed the first full day of my third decade of life.

God bless.

P.S. I spent the rest of my evening reading The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, which I recommend. In case you were wondering.
P.P.S. Also in case you were wondering, the reason the title of this post is "Score" is because score is another word for twenty. Yep.