Let me fill you in

on all the crazy happenings of my life lately. It seems that life wants to either go 100 miles an hour while I try to hold on or it's inching along slowly while I beg to faster. There's a little prayer that I've heard my mom say (especially when we're driving and stuck behind the slowest driver on the planet)

"God, slow me down or speed me up

but always keep me 

right where You want me."

I got a new haircut, color and highlights! Yay. Oh, yes and I got braces too. :-)

Some of the fast things that have been going on lately:

I went to El Paso to see my brother one last time before he deploys to Afghanistan. Please be praying for him, if you think of him and all the other military troops that are still there, about to go there, and those that are coming home. I enjoyed getting to see him and his wife and hang out with them for a while but it did feel like we spent more time in the car than we did with them. Riding in the car is not my preferred method of travel but I did get some good driving practice in. 

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Then, the very next weekend, I packed up for a Ladies Retreat at the Southland Christian Camp and had really good time with the other women from my church that were able to come as well. I am hooked on the salted caramel hot chocolate from Starbucks and the pumpkin spice latte even though I just had a sip. God showed me some things that needed to change in my life and I've been able to really start working through them instead of just ignoring the problem and pretending it's not as bad as it is (which just makes the problem worse.) As always, I appreciate you prayers for me as I work it out with God's help. :-)

I'm also in the market for a job and looking for new health insurance (which is NOT easy and very expensive, hence the need for a job). Trying to fill our insurance forms and write up my resumé and fill out applications (ok, application. Just one as of now) has been slightly (a lot) overwhelming, at times it's frustrating and sometimes I wonder if my head is going to explode. It hasn't yet and I don't think it will... but it sure feels like my head will explode. 

Because there are never enough gorgeous sunset pictures

Some of the slow things:

My room is really messy, again. Both of those trips left me throwing clothes around as I repacked between weekends plus I got three bags of new clothes from a friend at church and my sis-in-law which have been really fun but I haven't had time to go through them or put them away so they're piled in front of my closet right now. Oh, and I just did laundry yesterday so I have a whole other basket of clothes, plus my suitcase still needs to be unpacked. And my dresser needs to be cleared off and organized. Gives me something to do when I don't want to mess with job applications or insurance stuff :-p

I'm driving! Almost. I've still got a few things my mom wants me to work on but for the most part I'm driving and I was able to go hang out with a friend Sunday afternoon and didn't get home until late. It was really nice to not have to coordinate times with my parents and to be able to leave when I wanted and to drive alone and not get lost because I knew where I was going. It's the little things, people. :-D

There's also my faithful little blog that has been sorely neglected yet again but it's always here ready to take my next impulsive or planned blog post and share my thoughts on everything and yes, I do have some more planned blog posts ahead so LH won't be sitting here empty for weeks at a time. 

Oh, look! A pinecone. :-p

I have stumbled across some really neat, encouraging blogs that I thought I would share with you. I was really inspired by reading them and I hope you are too. They are real stories of real people with real struggles and that's always encouraging to me. Enjoy!

Good Women Project

Deeper Story

Check them out and let me know what you think! Also, I've been getting back into photography and I edited this picture last night for my Facebook and decided to share it with you too as well as the other photos sprinkled throughout this post. :-)

Have a great day y'all!

Long time, no blog

Ok, so I let the blogging slip a little these past couple weeks which is not cool for all of my tens and tens of readers. I did try to think of something to write but I really didn't have anything other than repeats of this post here: And then what?

I'm basically still in the same "holding cycle" if you will and still not exactly sure what my next step will be, although I've got some plans in the works which I'm not going to share just yet because I'm not the one with the Master Plan and I know all too well how plans (very good plans, I might add) can fall apart in a moment so I'm not going to tell you unless I get a little bit more confirmation and see that the doors are wide open (which I'm hoping for!).

But I did just go to the doctor's office yesterday to get a new check-up and I am doing great. Great as in, Lefty is doing his job and functioning like a normal kidney should and my body is not rejecting at all, I was able to go down on my meds a little and the least amount of pills that I have to take the better, plus I'm gaining weight (!!! Finally!!!) which is a very good thing, and my room is the cleanest and most organized it's ever been in my life not counting the room inspection I had to do in school.

Ok, so that last part is just a nice accomplishment on my part and had nothing to do with my appointment but still, I wanted to share because being messy and unorganized is the usual state of my room and now, I could bring someone in and not say something like "pardon the mess over there" or something like that and I will post pictures soon because I want to show off my cool pictures and crocheted creatures and my wrought iron key that I have hanging up on the walls. :-)

So, back to the appointment, the next time I have to go up to OU will be in November which will be my big one year kidney day and then, I think if all continues to go as well as it has been, that I won't have to see the doc every other month but only 3-4 times next year and after three years I'll only see them once a year. :-D

My younger brother looked at a picture of me from over 2 years ago and said "Wow. This was way before you even got sick and you look a lot better now than you did back then and this was during one of your good times."

Way before I even got sick, I was still... sick. I just didn't know how bad. I sometimes wonder if maybe I hadn't eaten all those really salty mushroom and swiss hamburgers from McDonalds that maybe I could have staved off failure for a few more years but that would still have meant not having a fully functioning kidney and now, I have a good kidney that works perfect.

I told my brother that it's amazing what having a good kidney will do for you and then we both just laughed because the evidence of that is obvious every day.

 Photo Credit: Rachel S.