Wednesday, July 24, 2013

And... I have to delay yet again.

Sorry everyone! Unfortunately for me, my laptop crashed this morning. Looks like they'll need to reinstall the operating system. BUT I backed everything up this weekend, and they apparently managed to save the data.

Problem is that uploading pic to blogger using my tablet is a major schlep.

So I'm just going to wait until I have a laptop again. Hopefully by this weekend....

Monday, July 22, 2013

Finally: The Photos

Hey all!

Since I took hundreds of photos, it's a bit hard for me to figure out which ones you'd like to see. But... I figured you want to live vicariously through my photos, so here you go...

Ten pictures from Paris. Wednesday, I'll put up pics from Versailles and on Friday I'll put up pics from the Netherlands.



Au Printemps

Palais Garnier (this is the building Gaston Le Roux based his opera house on in Phantom of the Opera)

Pont Neuf

For the life of me, I can't remember this one. But it's so pretty...

Louvre at night

Yes. It rained that night.

On the Champs Elysees

Arc de Triomphe

Sacre Coeur

The View from Montmartre

Hope they lived up to expectation! ;-)






Sunday, July 21, 2013

A confession

I went to a new church today after a almost a year of taking a break from the church I’d belonged to. The break had been necessitated by my becoming involved with said church’s activities. I had joined up with the youth and music ministries in good faith, thinking that I could really help and make a difference, but ended up three years later, angry and embittered because of being ignored despite the fact that the current methods being employed helped absolutely no one.

The experiences brought along by my involvement exhausted me emotionally and spiritually to the point where I withdrew from church entirely. I didn’t feel like being friendly and civil to anyone in church. I didn’t feel like doing anything for anyone, since no one there appreciated it anyway. No. Correction. No one even wanted me to do it.

So I shook the proverbial dust from my ankles and walked away.

But the damage had been done. Because although I didn’t know at the time, the experience did much more than just tire me out. It planted a seed of bitterness. Or maybe poured water and fertilizer onto it so that the bitterness could once again take root in my life and infect every aspect of it. The big thing is, though, that I'd allowed this to happen. In fact, I didn't even see it happen. 

The only reason why I do now is that I went to the new church and spoke to the pastor there. He told me that once there’s bitterness in my heart, it’ll deliver fruit according to the tree that’s there. So anger, resentment, impatience, frustration with my life and so on will all be there. They’re bringing my life to a standstill. Which actually makes things even worse. Because nothing adds to my frustration, impatience etc like not moving forward in my life.

It stops now. I’m going to address this bitterness with prayer. I’ve forgiven the people who’ve embittered me, but I know I’ll need to do it again and again and again. For as long and as often as it needs to be done until this anger and resentment I have is rooted out of my heart and get replaced by something healing.


I know it won’t be easy, because it’s been a fall back position to me for so long. But I have to start. And by the grace of God, I know I’ll succeed with His help. 

Do you have bitterness rooted in your heart? Do you want to get rid of it?

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Photos will be up on Friday

Yep. I finally finished them. Amazing, I know. I thought I'd get through with the pictures a lot faster than that, but just ended up getting so busy with other stuff that even my blogging fell by the wayside.

Anyway... It's a bit late today and I have to go sing (YAY!!!) in an hour and a half, so I'll be putting up photos starting on Friday.

Sorry for being such a terrible blogger!

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Almost done!

Hey all! Just want to let you know that I'm through all my Paris pictures. Tomorrow, I'll edit the ones I took in the Netherlands, then I'll start to put some up on Friday. ;-)

Anyone else love taking photos, but sort of fade out when it comes to editing them?

Monday, July 1, 2013

So... this photo project is a bit more daunting than I thought.

I took over 400 pictures while in Europe this time, so with my Camp NaNoWriMo writing goals and work, the photos just aren't getting edited as fast as I'd like to.

I WILL get them done, though.

I promise. Planning to do a few every day until they're all done.