Six Months in a Nut Shell

Now that I've had my moment of clarity and decided to pick up where I left off on my blog, the real work begins. I can barely remember everything that has happened the last six months, let alone summarize it in a blog post. Its kind of like when you're trying to watch a movie, but the DVD is scratched and skips about 4 scenes and then you're completely lost and have to take it out and wash it with dish soap and pick back up where you left off. .....Kind of.

So this is me cleaning up that scratch. A lot has happened since I last blogged, but I'll fill you in as best I can starting where I left off- Latvia (you can read about part of my trip here).

My time in Latvia was amazing for so many reasons. I got to spend two weeks doing what I love- playing music and teaching kids. I grew not only as a worship leader, but as a person through the many lessons God etched into my heart. Going on this trip was one of the best decisions I've made and I'm planning on going back as soon as possible!

My acoustic guitar workshop :)

Getting a little crazy after our talent show

Most of the team

Remember when I said the trip was amazing for more than one reason? Well one of my favorite reasons is the gentleman sitting behind me in the picture above. I know what you're thinking...and no, I didn't just take a trip across the globe to snag myself a man, but that's what happened in the end. So ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet AJ. One of the more significant changes to my life in the past six months ;)

We got to know each other while serving in Latvia, kept talking afterwards, and started dating about a month later (July 21st...but who's keeping track...). It's quite a lovely story and I love telling it, but I said this was a nutshell recap, so I won't bore you with the mushy-gushy details. But he will probably make quite a few appearances in posts to come, so consider yourself warned.

For the rest of the summer, I worked up in Grand Lake at a lovely little coffee shop and spent most of my time skyping AJ, drinking coffee and hanging out with my adopted Grand Lake family.

Once August rolled around, I moved back to my apartment and started my third semester of college. I learned a lot about things like procrastination, direction, keeping my priorities straight after throwing a boyfriend into the mix, and the negative effects of skipping class. Needless to say, last semester was not my favorite. But more on that later.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for school, my job added quite a bit of sunshine to days when I just wanted to hit the snooze button...again. I'm now a nanny for two incredible 3 year-old twin boys. We have such a blast together and it has been wonderful spending a few days a week with them. They will probably make a few appearances on here as well throughout the year.

That's just about all you need to know. The past six months have been wonderful, but I'm so excited to be back in the blogging world. I'm still brainstorming ideas for posts, but keep your eye out for bits and pieces of my day-to-day, DIY inspiration, random musings and encouragement to notice the small, simple things in life.

 Until next time, remember to:

here

 And:

here

Simply,

Liv

Latvian Adventure

I'm back! The past few weeks have been so wonderfully exhausting and busy that I've barely had time to think, let alone blog. But I'm back now and I'm so excited to share some of the favorite moments from my trip with you! We packed so much into the two weeks that I'll probably share it in a few separate posts.

For those of you who don't know, I went to Latvia with a group called Josiah Venture to help put on music camps for kids. During the week of camp, we taught the kids from all over the country how to play different instruments and prepared them as best we could for a concert for their friends and family at the end of the week. We used music as a vehicle to share the gospel and form relationships with them. It was so amazing to feel how quickly meaningful relationships formed and see lives changed (including my own) as we went through just one week of camp.

Before camp started though, we spent a few days in Latvia's capitol city, Riga, seeing the sights and trying to get acclimated to the 8 hour time difference before we jumped into a hectic week of music camp. Riga is a stunning city with so much history- I felt like I was traveling back in time. The architecture is incredible so it was hard for me not to snap pictures of every building I saw. Here are a few shots of our time in Riga before camp:

This is the Freedom Monument in Old Town Riga commemorating their liberation from the Soviet Union

To help us better understand the culture we were serving in, we visited a museum dedicated to the memory of the soviet and communist occupation of Latvia. Though it was a sobering experience, it was so helpful in better understanding and relating to the country and its people. 

More pictures to come!

A Time To Remember

They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast,
And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Happy Memorial day, everyone! May we never think of it simply as a reason for a three day weekend or an excuse to sleep in. 

Ps. The third photo is of my Uncle Sam's headstone. I'm proud to call him my uncle, though I never even met him.

THE BLACK KEYS!

Monday night may or may not have been the greatest night of my life. I'm still deciding. I took a much needed night off from studying with my roommate Madi and our friend Liz to see none other than the Black Keys. If you've never seen them (or heard their music for that matter), I suggest you do so immediately. They put on such a great show. Here are some photos of the night so you can re-live it with me.

 

The Arctic Monkeys were the openers. I wasn't too familiar with their music, but I must admit, their British accents and suave style won me over. If you haven't heard their music (or seen the lead singer's hair) I suggest you do so immediately. 

Check out their song Brick by Brick!

And now the moment we've all been waiting for..........

 The Black Keys, ladies and gents.

Such a retro drum set.....

For the encore, they dropped a gigantic disco ball that lit up the entire stadium.

 I've seen some good shows in my time, but this one might have been the best yet.

What are some of your favorite shows you've been to? I'm always up for new music/concerts to check out!

I hope your Wednesday has gone swimmingly.

A Not-Even-Quarter Life Crisis and the Hunger Games: Does It Matter?

Last semester in my Psychology class, we learned about something called the "False Uniqueness Bias", otherwise known as the "I am special effect". It's the human tendency to underestimate our own commonality in our abilities, desirability or behavior. I suppose this is somewhat true, but it's also terribly depressing.
Maybe it's just me, but I think we all have this innate desire to be extraordinary, to do something special that no one else can do. We want to matter. But my psychology class, and most everyone else, would have us believe that any "unique talents" or "uncommon dreams" we may have are actually just a result of this bias and we are, in fact, nothing special at all. Just like everybody else, we are a result of our culture's psychological influence and nothing more.

But I don't buy it.

Generally I'm not one to jump mindlessly on the popular-culture band wagon, especially when it comes to books (I'm especially skeptical of any "new" romance/comedy/action novel people throw my way...I think I have a "classical literature bias"). Usually the story has been told a thousand times, in the same ways and the old version is a million times better.

But then I read the Hunger Games. (I'm sure a lot of you are sick of the hype about these books. Well, I was too, until I read them. And now I can say unashamedly, I'm "one of those" fans.) Something about these books resonated with me as they obviously did for the majority of the world's population right now. But why? What about these books gets our blood pumping and stirs something deep within us?

Katniss Everdeen is "normal"- she comes from a small district, has the occasional fight with her mother, has unruly hair, likes to be alone, is stuck in an awkward "love-triangle" with two (pretty ideal, I must add) young men. She doesn't see anything special about herself. But everyone else can see that she is indeed "uncommon". She is incredibly brave, taking the place of her sister in the Hunger Games and thereby embracing her almost certain death. She sees the bigger picture, isn't fooled by appearances and ultimately becomes the symbol of a rebellion against an overbearing government.

So why does Katniss stand out to us? Why can we all relate with her in some way that we just can't quite nail down?

It's because she matters. She found something (or in her case, someone) she was willing to die for and didn't hold back anything. She sacrificed herself for a cause greater than herself.

Though the example of the Hunger Games is a bit extreme (we aren't living in a dystopian society where our children have to fight to the death in order for us to eat) the exaggerated story-line leaves us with an undeniable feeling. We want to fight along side Katniss. We want to matter.

While most try and boil our behavior and desires down to a science, I believe we are much more complex than that. I finished the second book last night and woke up this morning with the irrepressible feeling that my life matters and and that I'm not doing anything to live up to it. It's a feeling that makes my heart race and sink every time I think about it: my life matters. I'm getting far too comfortable with being comfortable though. The place our lives matter the most is when we are doing something that scares us. Something that makes us uncomfortable, but something that makes us feel alive. The continual question I keep asking and won't be content until I find an answer to is "how". How is my life supposed to matter and what steps can I take now? I think it is a question we all should be asking.

Love is Bigger

Happy Valentines Day!
I have to admit, I've never been really excited about February 14 and I often forget about it. But I think its good to have a day (albeit a very commercialized day) to completely focus on loving others. As I thought about love this morning, I was hit by how misunderstood it is. Listen to what Paul says about love:

"And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing....Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."

 If our culture has one thing completely backwards, its love. Paul never defines love as a feeling. Its not happiness, or contentment or butterflies. No, love is an action. Its patient, kind, enduring- a choice.
"If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." Nothing. The hugeness and power of love has always astounded me. Think about it today.

And so as the rest of the world is giving chocolates, forcing their boyfriends to see The Vow, and using today as their once-a-year excuse to show affection, lets remember that love is bigger than that. And let us love today.

 

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! 

~ Olivia      

"Welcome to the Real World", she said to me condescendingly.

Never have John Mayer's lyrics been so applicable.

 

Not really, but it just felt right. 

2 parking tickets, 3 emissions tests (2 failed, 1 passed), 1 faulty gas cap, 1 power of attorney, several unhelpful courthouse employees, and over $200 later and my car still isn't registered. Could they make it any more complicated? I'll answer that. No, they could not. I'm not so sure I want to pass this "prerequisite to the adult world", as my mom and I affectionately call this endless string of shenanigans. If this is what "being an adult" is about...I don't think I'll grow up.

I keep on waiting, waiting at the emissions place. (Did you catch that John Mayer reference? I'm on a roll tonight...)

I'd like to think the best of me is still hiding up my sleeves...(Really, Olivia?)....but, when the going gets rough, and the registration gets out of hand, and adult life isn't all that is cracked up to be just remember: 

I hope everyone's Monday was as John Mayer-esque as mine.

~ Olivia

Relevant Magazine: Women, Stop Submitting to Men

This article is from relevantmagazine.com, one of my favorite websites. I read it and was so encouraged I wanted to share it here. It does an excellent job of describing how devastating our culture's influence has been on our view of women, but also offers the hopeful, Biblical side too. Enjoy!

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.”
Quote Ephesians 5:22 in a small group, a meeting, a marital argument, a dinner among friends or even a Facebook status and just watch what happens. This little line from one of Paul’s many letters is perhaps one of the most hotly debated in all of Scripture. But why is it so controversial—and what does it really mean?
Those of us who hold to so-called “traditional gender roles” are often assumed to believe women should submit to men. This isn’t true. Indeed, a primary problem in our culture and in our churches isn’t that women aren’t submissive enough to men, but instead that they are far too submissive.
First of all, it just isn’t so that women are called to submit while men are not. In Scripture, every creature is called to submit, often in different ways and at different times. Children are to submit to their parents, although this is certainly a different sort of submission than that envisioned for marriage. Church members are to submit to faithful pastors (Heb. 13:17). All of us are to submit to the governing authorities (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13-17). Of course, we are all to submit, as creatures, to our God (James 4:7).
And, yes, wives are called to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22; 1 Peter 3:1-6). But that’s just the point. In the Bible, it is not that women, generally, are to submit to men, generally. Instead, “wives” are to submit “to your own husbands” (1 Peter 3:1).
Too often in our culture, women and girls are pressured to submit to men, as a category. This is the reason so many women, even feminist women, are consumed with what men, in general, think of them. This is the reason a woman’s value in our society, too often, is defined in terms of sexual attractiveness and availability. Is it any wonder that so many of our girls and women are destroyed by a predatory patriarchy that demeans the dignity and glory of what it means to be a woman?
Submitting to men in general renders it impossible to submit to one’s “own husband.” Submission to one’s husband means faithfulness to him, and to him alone, which means saying “no” to other suitors.
Submission to a right authority always means a corresponding refusal to submit to a false authority. Eve’s submission to the Serpent’s word meant she refused to submit to God’s. On the other hand, Mary’s submission to God’s word about the child within her meant she refused to submit to Herod’s. God repeatedly charges His Bride, the people of Israel, with a refusal to submit to Him because they have submitted to the advances of other lovers. The freedom of the Gospel means, the apostle tells us, that we “do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).
Despite the promise of female empowerment in the present age, the sexual revolution has given us the reverse. Is it really an advance for women that the average high-school male has seen images of women sexually exploited and humiliated on the Internet? Is it really empowerment to have more and more women economically at the mercy of men who freely abandon them and their children, often with little legal recourse?
Is this really a “pro-woman” culture when restaurant chains enable men to pay to ogle women in tight T-shirts while they gobble down chicken wings? How likely is it that a woman with the attractiveness of Henry Kissinger will obtain power or celebrity status in American culture? What about the girl in your community pressured to perform sexual favors for a boyfriend; what is this but a patriarchy brutal enough for a Bronze Age warlord?
In the church it is little better. Too many of our girls and young women are tyrannized by the expectation to look a certain way, to weigh a certain amount, in order to gain the attention of “guys.”
Additionally, too many predatory men have crept in among us, all too willing to exploit young women by pretending to be “spiritual leaders” (2 Timothy 3:1-9; 2 Peter 2). Do not be deceived: a man who will use spiritual categories for carnal purposes is a man who cannot be trusted with fidelity, with provision, with protection, with the fatherhood of children. The same is true for a man who will not guard the moral sanctity of a woman not, or not yet, his wife.
We have empowered this pagan patriarchy. Fathers assume their responsibility to daughters in this regard starts and stops in walking a bride down an aisle at the end of the process. Pastors refuse to identify and call out spiritual impostors before it’s too late. And through it all we expect our girls and women to be submissive to men in general, rather than to one man in particular.
For women, sexual and emotional purity means a refusal to submit to “men,” in order to submit to God and to their own husband, even one whose name and face they do not yet know. Closeness with a husband, present or future, means a distance from every man who isn’t, or who possibly might not be, him.
Beauty is found not in external (and fleeting) youth and “attractiveness” but in the “hidden person of the heart” which “in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Peter 3:3-4). And it will be beautiful in the sight of a man who is propelled by the Spirit of this God.
Women owe no submission to Hollywood or to Madison Avenue, or to those who listen to them. Worth and dignity cannot be defined by them. Girls, stop comparing yourselves to supermodels and porn stars. Stop loathing your body, or your age. Stop feeling inferior to vaporous glamor. You are beautiful.
There is no biblical category for “boyfriend” or “lover,” and we owe such designation no submission. In fact, to be submissive to her future husband, a woman must stand back and evaluate, with rigid scrutiny, “Is this the one who is to come, or is there another?” That requires an emotional and physical distance until there is a lifelong covenant made, until she stands before one who is her “own husband.”

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as unto the Lord. Yes and Amen. But, women, stop submitting to men.

“We have been called to participate in the world’s creation from the very beginning. Making music. Baking Cakes. Sewing curtains. These things mean something greater: that we have been known from the very start. Our eye color, our hairline, our jawline, the shape of our big toe, the tone of our voice. These things have been designed from the very beginning. What kind of music we listen to. The sort of skirt that looks good. The baseball cap, the tennis shoe, the orange bandana. We have been made to find these things for ourselves and take them in as ours, like adopted children: habits, hobbies, idiosyncrasies, gestures, moods, tastes, tendencies, worries. They have been put in us for good measure.
Perhaps we dont like what we see: our hips, our loss of hair, our shoe size, our dimples, our knuckles too big, our eating habits, our disposition. We have disclosed these things in secret, likes and dislikes, behind doors with locks, our lonely rooms, our messy desks, our empty hearts, our sudden bursts of energy, our sudden bouts of depression. Don’t worry. Put away your mirrors and your beauty magazines and your books on tape. There is someone right here who knows you more than you do, who is making room on the couch, who is fixing a meal, who is putting on your favorite record, who is listening intently to what you have to say, who is standing there with you, face to face, hand to hand, eye to eye, mouth to mouth. There is no space left uncovered. This is where you belong.”

—	Sufjan Stevens

I told you so.

These past two weeks have been the "I told you so" of my entire high school career. I've gotten to test what I learned, but aside from that, I've realized how important it is to be grounded in what you believe BEFORE you get to college. And that makes me so grateful for the education I received before I got here.

Through my entire high school career I knew that when I get to college my professors will (most-likely) fiercely disagree with what I believe. I was taught that the "dead, white males" who made so many advancements in history will be frowned upon and every story will be twisted to make women seem oppressed and smarter than the average man. They warned me that the Bible will be put in the same category as The Epic of Gilgamesh, or Homer's Oddessy. Truth will be relative, you will be crazy, and the professors will be geniuses with degrees and letters behind their name. All this was drilled into my head, but learning it for myself is a different experience completely.

In my World Literature class, we read The Epic of Gilgamesh (which I've already read), The Oddessy and the Iliad (which I've already read), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (which I've already read), Dante's Divine Comedy, The Canterbury Tales, Augustine's Confessions (all of which I've....)....you get the picture. Despite my familiarity with the texts, I was thrown off by my professor's interpretation of them. We just finished a discussion on Genesis and Job, and she made it very clear that we were to read it "as literature". Objectively. Read it like you would read about Zeus or the creation account in Gilgamesh, she said. However, I just can't do that. Having "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..." conveniently placed next to "when the gods created Gilgamesh", and "When in splendor you first took your throne high in the precinct of heaven, O living God, life truly began" (from Akhenaten's hymn to the sun), really seems to reduce the Bible's creation account to yet another myth.

In my Study of Literature class we are reading Virginia Wolff's Mrs. Dalloway. Virginia Wolff is known for two things: feminism and drowning herself. The main character of the book, Clarissa Dalloway, questions her identity, sexuality and purpose. The other main character, Septimus Smith, is insane and eventually commits suicide. It's written in "stream of consciousness", meaning it basically jumps all over the place, following the thoughts of the deranged characters with no real structure or plot.

What have I gotten myself into?

Despite the newness, the hostility, and the confusion, I love it. I've discovered that I thrive in an environment of opposition. It pushes me to search for why I believe what I believe (or just look back on my notes from Theology class...), and so far my faith is soaring rather than sinking. My heart breaks for these people who think they know the truth (or the lack thereof), and I pray that somehow God will use me to be a light in this dark place.

So go ahead and say it. You really did tell me so. But the only thing I can say is thank you. Without what I learned before I came here, I'm sure I would be falling in every literary trap set for me. I know I'm no expert, and I'm sure I've many more challenges to face, but being sure that the Bible is what it claims to be and God is in control of it all makes everything else fall in to place.