21-30

21. Sunday afternoon naps
22. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
23. Our couch with the pull-out
24. The fact that going to the park is part of my job!
25. Knowing all my neighbors
26. Realizing the small things make up the big picture
27. Office quotes
28. Coffee dates with Jes
29. 60 degree weather in January
30. How a toddler's laugh can turn your whole day around.

Gifts 11-20

11. Having a job that I love!
12. Growing up so close to my grandparents
13. Having Britney as a best friend for the past 13 years.
14. My community group
15. Weekends where I can do nothing
16. Learning I don't have to be busy all the time
17. The perspective I gained from working with CSM.
18. Music
19. Afternoons that I have to myself
20. Forgetting my cell phone at home

1000 Gifts

I saw this on my friend Emily's blog and thought this would be a great way to start off the new year. So, hopefully every Monday I can add a few more. I know I forget so many times with the craziness of life just how blessed I am so this will be a great reminder! Here are my first ten.

1. The fact that I can call my sister my best friend
2. When friends come to visit
3. I have a beautiful neice and two handsome nephews that I love dearly.
4. Being able to look at the world through the eyes of a 3 year old.
5. Going home to visit family
6. Phone calls from Bailee on her way home from work so we can catch up on each other's lives.
7.The friends I have made this past year in Nashville
8. Being able to move to a new city
9. A Godly family that instilled some pretty great values in my life.
10. Having parents that I know would do anything in this world for me and never taking that for granted.

Eternally Focused

You know when you are sitting in church and you feel like the pastor is completely talking to you? Welcome to my life the past month! Every week I have walked into Cross Point and have come out thinking..."Seriously, God..I get it!!" There has been a lot of things that I have decided that I needed to control. Of course, you all know how that turns out. I make it a complete mess!

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon but that we wait so long to begin it." W.M Lewis

Blake read this quote on Sunday and God has not let me forget it. The day before Thanksgiving a friend of mine lost his dad. He was only 51. It was sudden. There was no warning. He was in great shape and did all the right things. No one could explain how a healthy 51 year old just dies. It was so unexpected. There are no words that you can say to the family because in reality, nothing really helps.

The thing that I keep wrestling with is...why do we think it was so unexpected? We know that we really are not promised another day so why do we continue to live like we do? Why do we make plans for next week..month..year and we can't live in the moment? How much of our life do we waste by the plans we make? If I could just graduate...If I could just get this job or this promotion...if that boy would finally realize we were meant to be together then I could start my life. We feed into this notion that life won't be better until....

What keeps us from living in the moment? If I were truly living "eternally focused" I feel like I would live for the moment. Blake said that if we are focused on the eternal things, there should be an urgency in our life. I want that urgency. I want to make the most of the moments that God gives me. I pray that you also make the most of those moments.

Thanksgiving

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, there are so many things I am thankful for this year. Here are a few of those.

Obviously, I am thankful for my family. I love them so much. Of course, we have our issues but I could not ask for anything better. I have parents who are still in love and still love me! I have an older brother who I adore and has a beautiful family. I have a sister who I know will do anything for me and will forever be my best friend. I miss that we do not live in the same city anymore but I love how close we have become over the years. I have two nephews and a niece that are hands down the cutest kids ever!

I have the greatest group of friends. I have had so much fun getting to know so many people in Nashville and I know that I have already made some pretty great lasting friendships. I love living in Nashville. I can't believe I have almost been here a year! I hope I never forget the reasons why I fell in love with this city.

I don't know if I can ever express how thankful I am for Bailee's friendship. She has been there with me through so much and I can't imagine how I would have gotten through some things without her. God is so good and her presence in my life is evidence of that. I miss her and Josh so much. I hate that Lucas is getting so big and I am missing it. Besides my family, she is the ONLY reason I would EVER consider moving back to Arkansas but don't get excited because that is not happening anytime soon! :)

I feel like Cross Point has been my saving grace. I know that I had become so bitter toward the church. I felt so hopeless that I would ever be able to forgive and let my guard down again. The people that I have met since being at Cross Point are the biggest reason that church is succeeding the way it has been. I immediately felt the relationships I was building were authentic. The staff never tries to seem perfect and quick to admit their flaws. Their heart for seeing a change in this community is humbling and is something that I am so proud to be apart of. I feel like I could use an entire entry about Cross Point so I will stop for now.

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving week. I am ready to head to Mississippi to eat way to much and watch football for four days in a row! Love y'all!



Breanne

Almost Finished

Crazy Love is almost over. I have had to go back and reread some things because I really am the worst at reading books. Even though, I really enjoyed this one. This book as caused me to look at my own life and try to figure out if my life is any different. Most days, I play the "christian" part real well. I know the right things to say and the right things to do. Could people look at my life and see Jesus? I desire to live a life fully for Christ so what the heck is holding me back sometimes?

What if I took Matthew 25 literally? How would my life be different if I really looked at every person as coming in contact with Jesus? Tonight, we got on the subject of hell a little bit. Sometimes, I can let the thought of hell consume and it keeps me up at night. It is such a reality but yet we let life get so busy that it is not our reality. How many times do we hear after someone does something so horrible like shoot up a school or abuse a child that the deserve to be in hell. If we truly understood the ramification of hell, would our comments change? I sure hope so. Where did we get this mentality that we also dont deserve hell? We deserve it just as much as the next person and as Christians, we should understand it better than anyone. We have taken the love out of the gospel and filled it with religion, traditions, and judgements.

In the book, Chan talks about real faith and love is loving someone who has wronged you. I feel like we should be so focused on the kingdom that we begin to learn to look past ourselves long enough to love someone who doesnt deserve it. Loving people who we feel don't deserve it is what God calls us to do. So many times, I burn bridges and cut off relationships because someone does me wrong. If I could keep a kingdom perspective, my thought process would change so much. I would no longer see people through my human eyes. I would be able to see them through Christ's eyes.

This entry was kind of all over the place but I just want my life to be different. I want people to describe me as a person who loves Jesus and loves people.

Breanne

Crazy Love

I started reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan yesterday. It really has been an incredible book to read. I love to highlight the parts of books that really stick out to me and part of me could highlight this whole stinking book!

I am only through chapter 3 but I want to take it all in. I find it funny that in the last post, I talk about how I don't always trust God and then in the first few chapters, I am reminded how selfish I am for not trusting Him! I feel like I could talk about this book for hours. It has already challenged me in so many ways. I really like how he explains that this is not another book bashing the church. We all know, there are plenty of those out there! It's so easy to blame the church. Trust me, I did it for so long. I love when he writes, "If we lived like we were supposed to the people could not say, 'I believe in God but not orgainized Religion.' The expression would have to change to, 'I can't deny what the church is doing, but I don't believe in God.' At least then they'd addrees their rejection of God rather than use the church as a scapegoat."

For so long, I used the church as a scapegoat. Yes, I had been burned by Christians that were supposed to be my closest friends. Yes, I had been let down by leaders in my life that I trusted and I let Satan win that battle. Instead of focusing on my relationship with Christ, I pulled away. I didn't want any part of what the church stood for and I had no plans to help make it better. I just wanted out.

I feel like through a lot of pain and tears, my view has completely changed. People will always let me down and the church is not perfect but it's my choice how I react to these situations. I can totally write people off and judge them or I can be there for them and see them through Christ's eyes. It's not easy and it's something that I continue to struggle with but I have so much more peace in my life these days.

I really feel like this entry could be forever long if I let it because there are so many things I could write about on the topic of this book. I will just leave a few of my favorite quotes.

Until next time,

Breanne

We don't get to describe who God is. God said to Moses, "I am who I am." We don't change that.

We are programmed to focus on what we don't have. This dissatisfaction transfers over to our thinking about God. We forget that we already have everything we need in Him. Because we don't often think about the reality of who God is, we quickly forget that He is worthy to be worshipped and loved.