Head 'em up and move 'em out!

Tomorrow I will be heading out for an entire week of admiring God's creation South of the Boarder.


I can't believe that my cruise is Finally here. It seems not too long ago my friend Laura was asking me to go with her. Now here I am looking it full in the face.


I am overwhelmed with the reality that I will be traveling the same ocean that my ancestors did over 350 years ago. Not only that, but I will also see place that my great grandparents saw as they sailed into the NY harbor. Miss Liberty standing tall and proud. Ellis Island where they went through Imigration.


Last year I placed my feet into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in my known memory.


Now I will be traveling on it. If for no other reason, I want to go on this Cruise to see the beauty of God's creation. Everything is exciting and everything is as nerve racking as groom on a wedding day. And yet I can't wait. I have so many firsts, but that's okay. I have people praying for me, I have parents who are supporting me and yes, I even have a boyfriend who has been helping me hash out the airport jitters.


12 hours from now I am heading out. I will be exhausted because I probably will be too nervous to sleep tonight. Check it out. I have to be a lucky girl to have a friend like Laura who was willing to ask Me to go with her. Blessed to have an opportunity of a life time like this that some people have only dreamed of doing.


SO tomorrow as you go to church and throughout the week while you are about your work and play, think of me and pray for me as I will be doing something totally new and out of my comfort zone.


Then Come back on Saturday for posts and pictures. I may not have everything complied until Sunday, but I will at least have a few words to say and high lights from my journal I will be keeping while on my trip.

Pictures

So a friend of mine saw my blog and told me that I needed to put more pictures on it. So in my attempt to do so I am going to leave you with a post with pictures on it. Everything from family to random pictures I have taken this spring.

Keep a look out for a major blog next Saturday at the earliest. I'm heading out on my cruise this Sunday and will have plenty of words and pictures to show off.

Seeing through new eyes.

Tomorrow I am going to do something that I have wanted to do for a very long time. I am about to change my looks.
Since I was a young teen I have been wearing a piece of wire and glass around my face that we call glasses. Seeing as I am nearsighted, glasses have been a very important part of my life. Whenever I would break my glasses I was unable to do much of anything at all. I can't see much of anything without it being very fuzzy.
But the time has come for me to put down those glasses and try for some new eyes. At last I am about to get contacts.
As you know I have a tendency to take something that I am doing and apply a Biblical truth to it. I have been thinking about it and I think I have come up with an interesting one.
Many people go through life without ever going to the eye doctors. Some because they don't like doctors, but many because they either don't have one in their area or they just don't have the money. They go throughout their lives without ever knowing that if they could just get glasses they would be able to see their world around them much clearer and sharper then ever before.
Again some chose to do this and others don't have the ability.
Then there are those who have glasses and they think they can see the world sharply and can see fine until one day they go to the eye doctor's and discover their eyes and glasses are no longer compatable. As soon as their new pair of glasses are sitting on their noses they realize all the little things that they had been missing because their eyes had changed.
The unsaved are like those without glasses. There are those people who know about the Spiritual Eye doctor, but they are too afraid or don't want to be bothered and so they go on in life never letting the spiritual eye doctor treat them for their eye diseases or with a pair of glasses that will help them see clearly. Then there are those people who have never heard of the Spiritual eye doctor or they may have heard of him in passing, but have no opportunity to find out more because there is no one there to tell them.
When these people finally come in contact with the Eye Doctor, their eyes are opened to the world and their focus is so much clearer and sharper then they ever imagined.
But that is not all. Christians can be represented as the ones with glasses. When they first got their glasses they could see clearly. Their lives were changed because they realized what they had been missing without them. But as all of us who where glasses knows, your eyes change. For Christians, their eyes change not because they are getting worse, but because their focus in life has changed. The more a Christian matures, the more they will need to look beyond were they are standing or living and see that there is more to life then their own box. Allowing the Great Eye Doctor to change the perscription for your glasses is the key to doing His will. Sometimes too our glasses become clouded and that is when we need to take them off and clean them. Sometimes they get broken and have to be repaired. Sometimes they just become bent and start to slip off of our faces. That is when we take them to the Dr. and he fixes them.
Tomorrow I go to the eye doctors for a new set of "eyes". And although my eyes have gotten better and not worse, I knew that I am soon going to be able to see more clearly around me. And even more so my eyes won't be hindered by the wire rims that frame my face.
I hope too that as I go daily to my Spritual Eye Doctor's for my eye exam (daily devotions), I will constantly have my spiritual eyes focused on the world around me and their need for the Great Eye Doctor.

With eyes I see
Through Glasses dim,
While the world around me wanders.

I do not see
What's so near to me,
For my eyes are darkly covered.

My friends in need
Hearts sadly breaking,
There appears no way to recover.

At last it seems
When all is lost,
My eyes are then uncovered.

Now I see,
What I missed before.
So clearly everything hovers that

Before this I never saw.
I'm here, I'll help.
Please tell me where to start.

Lord, give me sight,
So I can see,
Looking through my new eyes.

Copyright Alicia Westcott 2008

Exciting News!

It has just come to my ears that some very special friends of my family's is coming to see us on Friday. I am very excited because I haven't seen them in several years. The girls are like little sisters to me and I look very much forward to seeing them after all of this time.
Of course I have to work on that day, but that is okay. Purhaps if I do it right I will be able to get out of work early. OF course then it would mess up my time for the week so maybe not, but as long as they come see me at work I will be very happy to see them.
I can't wait to see you, Erbs!

Signs of Spring

I was taking pictures of Spring and I thought I would share them. I now have a favorite picture for every season.

Reminders on Clay

I was reminded last night about one of my favorite verses in the Bible, Isaiah 64:8 "But Now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the caly and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand."
I can relate to this verse. While in school my Senior year I took ceramics and learned just what it was like to mmold clay. It's not as easy as it looks.
Maybe that it why Isaiah used this illustration not once, not twice, but three times in his book. Jeremiah also used the illustration of the potter in his book after the Lord sent into the Potter's house.
We are like clay. First of all we were made from the dust of the ground. We were nothing until God found us. He shoveled us out of our dirty living and placed in a special container and took us back to his shop where he started his perfect way with us.
Of course we complained right from the very beginning. As soon as he put us into the mixer and started to add the ingredience to make us better for working with we complained. And yet all he was doing was getting us wet so that we could be molded and worked to the way he wanted us.
Of course after we got out of the mixer we were feeling pretty good with ourselves. We had made it through the watering system and now we were big and stronger then ever and ready to take on the world until God took us and what was he doing! He started to Knead us squishing out all the excess water and making us just right. But that hurts!
Ah But soon we forget the discomfort as the trials of being shaped come our way. We cry out to God telling him that we don't want to go through these trials. We become bitter. We struggle with the Potters hands as he tries to shape us. We become the marred vessel of Jeremiah 18 and once again we have to be kneaded once again to bring us back to where we are supposed to be.
Over and over we do this and the patient potter continues to work with us. Some of us struggle so hard that the Potter can do nothing more than put us back into the mixer or throw us away, but some of us begin to recognize that the pain we go through helps to shape our lives for our good and his glory.
Ah as Jeremiah says "Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand."
We are shaped to the way God wants us to be shaped. Some of us are large vessels and pots standing out among the crowd and serving God in a big way. Others of us are small, being used for the simple things of life. But all of that doesn't really matter. It's when we have been willing to let go and be clay and not try to be the potter that God's perfect work is done in us.

Feeling pretty special

I'm feeling rather special today.
Yesterday I was really sick. I was in bed most of the day with the 24 hour bug or something and all I ate all day was jello, crackers, ginger ale and water. Not my favorite meal and if I could have I would have eaten something much better. But my stomach wouldn't allow it.
I pretty much had to fend for myself because Mom and Dad left for the day and wouldn't be home until today.
It was also the first day I had to call in sick to work. Not too fun seeing as I don't like to call in sick because too many people at my work use it too often when they are not sick. But I had to do that anyway.
Today was my real day off and I was feeling much better. Food never tastes as good as when you have been sick and you could have any. Um yummy Food!
SO to the special part and why I am feeling so special today. Today I got flowers.
Reagan sent me some beautiful yellow, pink, and purple flowers just to let me know that he was thinking about me.
Wasn't that sweet of him?