Ruth: Loss, Love & Legacy

"Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she smiles at the future." Proverbs 31:25

I got the privilege to attend the 2011 Chapel Women's Conference this past weekend called "Ruth: Loss, Love & Legacy."  The speaker was Kelly Minter who is an acclaimed author, speaker and songwriter from Nashville, TN.  Together we studied the whole book of Ruth and learned about Ruth's struggles with loss, love and legacy.

These three things were the focus of the conference:

Loss: Weeping forward in our times of trial

Love: Experiencing the surprising, never failing love of God

Legacy: Living beyond ourselves by leading lives that matter

The conference was held on Friday night and Saturday morning and consisted of three sessions focusing on each theme.  Each session they had door prizes for everyone and guess what, I won Friday night!  They told everyone to look under their chairs and if there was a piece of chocolate then you had to go up on stage to retrieve your prize.  There were ten winners and before you could pick your prize you had to tell everyone your name and one thing you love.  I said "I love my family and friends."

 My chocolate that was under my seat!

 Rachel took pictures of me on stage :)

 My prize!

I won a month membership to Foxy's with a personal trainer, t-shirt, and a book bag along with a vitamin water and other little goodies.  I was so excited and it made me so happy because I never win anything!!

Back to the message...

Women of the Bible are so inspiring and we can learn a lot from them today.  Ruth did not have an easy life but she trusted in the Lord and He blessed her so much.  I loved going to the conference and do you want to know another really awesome thing?  Tonight at Refuge (the church I attend on LSU's campus) our pastor Josh LaRavia said that for the next four weeks we will be studying the book of Ruth.  I think my jaw literally dropped.  I turned to Olivia and said that I had just studied this whole book.  I enjoyed hearing Josh's translation of it and learned things I didn't from Kelly and vice versa.  I can't wait to hear him speak about the remaining three chapters.  God definitely knew what he was doing when He put the desire in my heart to attend that women's conference and that it took place days before we started looking at it at Refuge.

Loss is inevitable but when you struggle with loss I hope you weep forward with all your heart, soul, strength and mind as Ruth did.

I hope you love all those who God has put in your path for Ruth 2:12 says, "May the Lord repay you for what you have done, May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."

Lastly, I pray you leave a legacy by leading a life that matters.

What Inspires you?

FRIDAY

Have you ever heard of the Christian movement called “I am Second’?  Well I heard about it about a year ago and watched several people who have been in the public eye testify and show their faith.  So when I heard Bradie James was going to speak for I am Second here at LSU I jumped at the opportunity to go see him speak.  The idea behind I am Second is claiming that you come second to God.  He deserves to be first in your life.  This is the description from their website:

Inspiring the Revolution of Second.

I am Second is a movement meant to inspire people of all kinds to live for God and for others. Actors. Athletes. Musicians. Business leaders. Drug addicts. Your next-door neighbor. People like you. The authentic stories on iamsecond.com provide insight into dealing with typical struggles of everyday living. These are stories that give hope to the lonely and the hurting, help from destructive lifestyles, and inspiration to the unfulfilled. You’ll discover people who’ve tried to go it alone and have failed. Find the hope, peace, and fulfillment they found. Be Second.

Check out what Bradie has to say about why he is second:

http://www.iamsecond.com/seconds/bradie-james/

I had heard of Bradie James before because he played football at LSU and plays for the Dallas Cowboys. Each year LSU hosts a breast cancer awareness gymnastics meet and Bradie comes to this meet because his mom lost her battle to breast cancer.  He has shirts made and raises money for breast cancer awareness in honor of him mom, Etta James.  Another thing that I learned about Bradie was that his mom and dad both died in the same year and his mom didn't tell him that she had breast cancer until she was almost gone.  I can only imagine how hard that had to have been.  Although he made some not so "God-like" decisions in college he got back on the right path and is now happily married.  I enjoyed listening to him speak.

 Bradie is in the middle of the guys seated

SATURDAY

Saturday morning I participated in the Race for the Cure which is a 5K race held on LSU's campus to.  I have participated in this race every year of college.  Breast cancer awareness is very close to my heart because my Meme lost her battle to breast cancer and also my Aunt Christy had a scare a few years back but she is fine now.  The chances of me or one of my sisters getting breast cancer is pretty high so I support the research as much as possible.  It was so amazing to see all the people who came out Saturday morning for this race.  They announced that there was a record of over 12,000 participants and over $450,000 was raised.  WOW!  I was so excited to hear that!  

The group us that walked together: Macey, Olivia, Liz, Ashley, Me, And Allyson

Me :)

Macey and Olivia Sims

Liz and I

Allyson and Ashley Sterritt

Many groups of people had such creative shirts.  I loved this one!!

Beautiful pink trees were in bloom all down the lake.  I thought this was such a blessing :)

Both of the events that I went to last weekend were so inspiring.  I am inspired by God and by those who make a stand for what they believe in and also by all those battling cancer and cancer survivors.  It makes me want to do more with my life so I can help inspire others.  So my question is this, What inspires you? 

Happy Valentine's Day

 As a young girl I remember LOVING Valentine's Day.  We would get to decorate shoe boxes for school to hold our valentine's in and it was such a special treat.  I remember one year when I was in 1st grade my classroom had a contest for the most creative valentine box.  Well as luck would have it, my babysitters hobby was art and she was so creative and helped me build this huge castle to hold all of my valentine's in.  Needless to say I won the contest and it made my Valentine's day so memorable.  My sisters and I would spend the whole night before Valentine's Day putting together our valentine's and making sure we didn't give certain boys ones that might suggest that we liked them.  Each year my mom would volunteer to be our "room mom" for our classrooms.  Considering there are four of us, there were some years that this task I'm sure was pretty overwhelming for her.  To this day my mom never ceases to amaze me.  She would stay up til 2 or 3 in the morning baking dozens of cupcakes and decorating them and then proceed to deliver all of them at each of our classroom parties.  I'm sure it wasn't easy and I appreciate her so much for it.  My lifelong "Valentine" is of course my dad, he is the one man I know I can always count on.  My parents always made Valentine's Day so special and I hope to one day continue that with my own family.

Now fast forwarding...

Here it is, year 2011 and another Valentine's Day has yet again come and gone.  I didn't decorate a shoe box but instead I spent my day studying and working, however I did get to have a nice dinner with two special friends, Lindsey and Sterritt.  We spent most of our dinner talking about life and what we think our futures may be like.  Hopefully I won't be spending too many more Valentine's Days single.  I didn't mind not having a special "Valentine" this year though.  Of course it's fun to celebrate it with someone you care about but really to me it's a holiday that is all for show.  Florists and chocolate company's live for this holiday.  But if you truly care about someone you should show them your love everyday not just one day of the year where it is expected.

 

All day I read statuses on facebook and quotes on twitter.  There were a few quotes however that stuck out to me that I read on twitter.  One of my favorite people that I follow is "TheSingleWoman" who is a 32 year old single lady who lives in Nashville, TN and she has some fabulous words of wisdom about the beauty of being a woman.  She is an inspiration to all women and encourages us to love and respect ourselves even with all of our imperfections.  Here are a few of my favorites from the past couple of days:

 

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. 

Sexy is a woman who knows herself, loves herself, accepts herself..just the way she is.

Trust that you are right where you need to be..& that your life is unfolding just as it should.

Another one I love to follow is "SororityGirlProblems" and here is a favorite of mine from Valentine's Day:

There is nothing like Valentine's Day to make you remember how much you really, truly, honestly need your girlfriends in your life.

 

I LOVE that one because it is so true.  Men come and go but your girlfriends will always be there.  In a year from now I'm not sure exactly how I'll be spending my Valentine's Day but I do know that if I don't have a special someone, I sure do have some special girlfriends I can celebrate it with!!

Dinner at PF Chang's with Sterritt and Lindsey

The yummy cupcakes Brooke made!

Today Google chose their Valentine's Day logo to mimic this piece of architecture

I leave you with some words of wisdom from my roomie Brooke - "Tomorrow is another day."

I love you and I appreciate you

REGRET-  By definition it is a sense of loss, disappointment, dissatisfaction, etc.  Basically it is everything you don't want to feel.  So why on earth do we regret so many things?  I don't know about you but I don't want to regret anything in life.  Life is way to precious to regret or take for granted.  We often are so busy and worked up in our day to day activities that we forget to stop and appreciate everything that we have.  

This really hit home for me the past couple of days.  Friends of mine have recently experienced the loss of loved ones and it has just been weighing heavily on my heart.  A particular friend of mine, Allyson, had a bad wreck a couple of years ago and we were talking about it the other day and I asked if she could remember everything that happened.  She said she blacked out for some of it but she vividly remembers slamming on her brakes thinking "There was so much more I wanted to do."  I thank God she survived and she is a great friend of mine now, but things like that are perfect examples of how tomorrow is never promised.  I don't want to wait until some life changing event happens to me to realize everything I wanted to do in life and that it's too late.

Since this is the year of big decisions for me I have been thinking about this a lot lately.  Granted, I know money and time are crucial for things I'd like to do such as travel and time off school and work to do so, but I'm okay with starting with small adventures.  I just don't want regrets.  Life is to short and precious to waste.  So stop obsessing over the past and don't focus too much on the future that you forget to live in the present.  Tell your friends and family how much you love and appreciate them, you never know how much of a difference a few words of kindness can make.  Always keep your eyes open as I leave you with these quotes.
 

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”  -Alexander Graham Bell 

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.” -Buddha

 

New Beginnings

So I decided to jump on the bandwagon and start a blog.  Now I warn you I'm no "fashionista" nor do I have any special skills, so the topics I talk about may be random thoughts or things that have happened in my life.  I'm a senior at LSU and I graduate in May 2011 so I have many big decisions coming up in my life. I love God and I trust he will direct me in the path that I am supposed to go.  For now though I am enjoying college and spending time with friends! Once I figure this whole blog thing out I will start posting so stayed tuned.