Carefully Crafted, Wonderfully Made & Fearfully Knit Together

For You shaped me, inside and out. You knitted me together in my mother’s womb long before I took my first breath. I will offer You my grateful heart, for I am Your unique creation, filled with wonder and awe... I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You have approached even the smallest details with excellence. Your works are wonderful. I carry this knowledge deep within my soul. You see all things. Nothing about me was hidden from You. As I took shape in secret, carefully crafted in the heart of the earth before I was born from its womb. You see all things. You saw me growing, changing in my mother’s womb. Every detail of my life was already written in Your book. You established the length of my life before I ever tasted the sweetness of it. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Your thoughts and plans are treasures to me, O God! I cherish each and every one of them! How grand in scope! How many in number!

If I could count each one of them, they would be more than all the grains of sand on earth. Their number is inconceivable!

DANCE AGAIN!

Weeping into LAUGHTER, LAVISHING COMFORT and INVADING GRIEF WITH JOY. The young woman will DANCE and BE HAPPY, young men, and the old, will join in. "I WILL BUILD YOU UP AGAIN... You will be rebuilt!"

Again you will take up your tambourine and GO OUT TO DANCE with the joyful.

The Dances in Us

Joy is Prayer

*2013*

you don't sound like a martyr, you sound like a human i like that. i respect that. this is what i love about you. you are genuine. life is a beautiful struggle sometimes and you aren't going to deny that you will be refined and strengthened. i empathize with the feeling. and i know god will reward

25 things I could tell my 16 year-old self

25. At 25, you will get to know yourself. You will love what you will find. You will want to let your hair down... finally. You will make beautiful mistakes.

You will forgive others. Forgiving yourself will be harder.

24. You will love dancing.

23. Asking questions is way more important, and honest, than having all the answers.

22. You'll marvel at the human physiology, and see such dazzling mystery and beauty in it.

21. The movie 'Titanic' will make you cry buckets when you grow up even though you didn't understand what all the fuss was about when you watched it.

20. There will come a time when your favourite colour will be yellow.

19. Never apologize for loving.

18. Keep making friends. You will have friends who are double your age. Never stop remembering they are a blessing.

17. The 50-odd boys from that all-boys' high school you had to go to won't make a difference to your life. What they said to and about you will not matter. They will realize themselves but may never be brave enough to admit it to you, except for one.

16. It’s OK to be a bit of a geek who is perfectly happy at home reading a poem or one of the classics, and who gets high by the time you could say Fabulous Fabionacci Fixtures.

15. Live simply. Always.
Skip the social networking craze when it happens. You will doubt it anyways. A phenomenon called Facebook will happen. You won't be able to buy it as real.

Knowing of Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs is the closest you will get to overcome being technologically-challenged. Mostly because, you'll find their out-of-the-box thinking interesting and inspiring.

14. Take lots of photographs.

13. You will never forget working at an NGO for HIV/AIDs-infected men and women and their families. You'll learn the meaning of hope, faith and love while walking down these corridors with children running after you, sick, yet smiling. You'll understand that a science textbook can't begin to explain the depth of having a diseased or disordered medical condition.

12. People may say horrible things to you. Deal with it, move on and only wish good things for them. Hurt for those people because they don’t know what love is. Don’t expect guilty people to apologize. They are too stuck in their own guilt to remember it isn’t about them. Many people will fake care, concern, faith, hardship. Forgive them anyways. Some people have no empathy. Even if it hurts always have empathy towards these people, they need it most. People will gossip. Remove yourself from the situation. People will make assumptions about you based on their knowledge of 1% of who you are. That’s OK, let them.

11. You will know God. Living on faith alone will be hard. But He knows and understands that.

Bach, Coelho, Byrne, Mary & Artemis, Winfrey, Rowling... You will learn to learn. You will see the magic of the Word, the magic of being kind to yourself, the magic in Newton's Third Law of Motion, the magic of dreams and never giving up.

10. Success is never a straight line from point A to B. The journey's way more fun than just the destination.

9. Get to know your heart. Listen to her voice and follow her always. Fight harder for your dreams.

8. "To thine own self be true." ~ Shakespeare
Just be yourself. You will stand out. I promise. Just be you. It's perfectly ok... in fact, it is cool to be nerdy, artsy.. call it whatever you may. The coolest people are the ones who just let themselves be.

8. Curves? Embrace them. Not "fair & lovely"? The word's Dusky.

"Don't listen to them. You're not dark. You're beautiful. I love your olive skin." Bless Alyosha's 14 year-old soul.

7. "Come over here and let me hold your hand and hug you darling
I promise you that it won't always feel this bad
There are so many things I want to say to you
You're the girl I used to be
You little heartbroken thirteen year old me..." ~ Pink

You'll learn that there's no boy you "can't live without." You will hope to meet somebody you'd just...rather not live without.

6. Diet coke is not the answer. Run, swim, play!

5. Enjoy your creativity. Go for those piano classes. Keep writing... and when your mom offers to teach you charcoal painting, do not blow her off.

4. Dad was right. Time does fly.

3. Don't be in a hurry to grow up and become "big." You'll always want to stay a kid.

2. You’re going to stand up for others and tell them that they are beautiful and strong. In fact, at 25, your proudest achievements will have been seeing the beauty in people who are mean to you, being a science teacher and growing from losing people you love.

Life will be hard at times, harder than life for most you know. Accept it always.

1. 'Chutzpah' will be one of the three words you would use to describe yourself!

Vindication often comes in beautiful words