Over half of the world's population suffers with allergies in some form. For most it is a reminder of the changing of seasons, for others it is a little more detailed than that. I suffer from the former. I get a nasty cold when seasons change. Dr. Greene, my voice proffessor tells me I should always be taking mucinex. Unfortunately I do not and just live with my tylenol and suffer through.

But it is amazing to me that something as simple and common as a stuffy nose, watery eyes, sneezing, and/or congestion can be used to remind us that the seasons of the year are changing. No longer is it spring, it is now summer, no longer summer but fall, etc. If only the seasons of our lives were as easily detected.

If only we were given a stuffy nose every time a time in our life has passed. Then we could simply chalk it up to a time of our life passing and understand it's over and something new is just over the horizon that will take us somewhere far more grand than the place of complacency we have found ourselves. If only we could face the turmoils of our lives with an attitude of "well seasons change" and take up what is left behind and move forward. If only we were given some sort of notice of "THIS SEASON IS CHANGING IN YOUR LIFE, LET'S SEE WHAT'S NEXT." Unfortunately we are mostly left with the feeling of "what is going on? I thought my life was headed this direction." or "I can't believe he passed away. He was headed for great things and I needed him" or "Where do I go from here?"

Life is notoriously known for throwing little kinks into the plans we make. And by life, I mean God. We come to find ourselves in places of comfort and knowledge of the world around us just when God says, "not anymore, let's put you somewhere completely new, surround you with new people with new experiences to be experienced." When this happens we find our minds being plagued with doubt. We sit and think "I know that this is going to turn out fine, yet I am scared out of my mind. I wasn't prepared for this, I am not ready." I'm pretty sure that God finds that slightly insulting. He knows us. He gave us our desires, passions, abilities, and futures. He puts us on the path to those things. We think the path to our destiny to be straight once we lean on God but the fact of the matter is, the road with God is more bumpy than most would think.

As Christians we are tried and tested. We have to fight to show God our faith. It isn't a battle in the sense of swords and shields, but a battle of showing how we will give our lives to bring glory to His name. God is a jealous God and wants to know that you love Him. He tests us, tries us, and protects us all the while. Once we are in the situations that we were so petrified of we lean on God more than ever and this is lovely to Him. We end up coming through them and being fine, just as God promised. We are thankful for the experience and the trial. It is through those things that we discovered more about ourselves and our God.

It doesn't mean that it's easy. It doesn't mean that when seasons change in our lives that we are prepared for them, but with the knowledge of our Loving Creator, we can accept them a little more gracefully, hopefully. If not, God knows how to get us up and out of our corners and prepares us for the dance of a lifetime. That is exciting.

If only we had a stuffy nose to know it was coming.

Dreams: n. 1. A series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep....4. A wild fancy or hope

About a year ago I was sitting in my dorm room working on something and i kind of drifted into a somewhat trance. It hit me that I really didn't know what my dreams were. Up until that point I knew exactly what I aspired to in my life. I knew what I wanted from my actions. I knew what I wanted to accomplish. But one day I didn't anymore. I didn't know where my life was going. I didn't know what I wanted to be, not just as a professional adult but as a person in general. I didn't know what I wanted to be known for. I had the remnants of what I wanted but those dreams and aspirations didn't really feel right anymore. They were too far gone and I didn't really feel like I could get them back or even wanted to.

I started getting down on myself. I started wondering if I was ever any good at anything. I felt dumb, I felt stupid. I felt as if I had nothing I was supposed to do. I couldn't get out of that feeling. No one could help either. Some tried to show me that I was wrong but I felt they thought they were smarter than me so I didn't really hear them. One day I sat down in my dad's hospital room and talked with my parents about it. They encouraged me a lot and I walked away from there feeling good about life again. I felt that I needed to take a step back and re-evaluate my dreams.

When I did that I found that my dreams had changed. My wants had changed. My goals were elsewhere. My passion for photography had grown, my desire to help others was a lot bigger, my heart was headed somewhere I wasn't expecting. After April, things changed even more. My heart began to grow for a ministry with teenage girls so that they might see themselves as Christ does. I want to be an encourager of people, a true friend, a daughter of Christ, and a woman who know who she is and isn't afraid to be herself with people.

Those dreams are a lot different than the ones before. They're more permanent, more centered, more substantial. See these goals are lifetime goals and lifetime commitments. Of course I still have the dream of a gorgeous wedding and loving husband and family, but I feel that all that will come as long as I center myself on my goals in Christ. They're the most important. They're the ones that are the most vital to my existence.

Ahh dreams.

so my friend Kiley Dorton posted this on his facebook a little while back and I just found it about 5 minutes ago...IT'S AMAZING.




"i want her to sit by me while i play piano i want her to blog about our trips i want her to take my sister to lunch and never even tell me about it i want to go hiking with her and pretend that i'm fine when i'm really barely keeping up with her i want to constantly grit my teeth because i can't seem to keep her down i want her to cook wild dishes i want to watch hilarious comedies with her for days at a time i want her to force me to read books that made her cry i want her to be ok when i dont want to hang out with her and her friends i want to be ok when she doesn't want to hang out with mine i want her to beg me not to take her out to dinner, and then act like a queen when i do anyway i want to catch her talking about me to her mom i want to surprise her at work with piles of absolutely fattening junk food and have her punch me for it but kiss me later i want her to look me in the eye and say forever and mean it i want her to be ok waiting until i am ready i want her to make me take everything i want, throw it out the window, and rethink who i really am--just for her i want her to save me from wanting her, and show me what it means to have her."


um, yeah I want a guy who wants those things. Not kiley lol, but you follow me. This made my heart all warm and fuzzy inside for the first time in about 3 months. I am quite pleased that he wrote this. it makes me happy

So the other day I was sitting at my computer checking in with the world; checking e-mails, responding, checking facebook, etc. A guy I knew in middle and high school messaged me. We weren't that close, we rarely spoke to each other. He messaged me trying to figur out how he knew me and I told him and he was like "oh yeah." So we got to talking and I found out he was in Iraq and has been for 2 years. He's my age, he's in the war, he's doing something much larger than I am.

I take that for granted. I take it for granted that I am sitting in Mauldin, SC awaiting the day I am leaving for vacation with my family (Friday btw). I take it for granted that when I get back I will be getting ready for my return to NGU and that I will be a student. Something far more common that a person serving in war. Something far more lowly than doing something a lot bigger than myself. What I do in college will not affect my country. It will not save someone's rights or life. It will secure my future (hopefully) and will create a new plateau to rise to, however it will not harm anyone if I make a mistake by forgetting to gesso my canvas. My painting might not look completly polished but the end result will not kill anyone.

It's so amazing to me that there are people my age fighting a war that they may or may not agree with. That they put their selfish pride and fear aside and took up a motto of "Sempri Fi." The thought of doing something like that scares me to death. That would be a total jump out of my box. but not just a jump out but a entire demolishing of the box i was in. It's so honorable for someone to do what the soldiers are doing. I know the war is a hot topic among most people these days, but in my mind if the soldiers can get up and fight the war then it's worth supporting them.

This shall be my title from now on for posts that have no real validity to anything and are just mere musings of my mind.

This past weekend I went to Columbia for the weekend for the 4th. It was a grand time. It was truly a successful venture for I finally got the pair of "plaid, but not manly plaid" shorts I have been searching for for literally two years. Yes I was quite excited...and they were $10 at Delia's. I pretty much jumped up and down, ask Rosie and Bethany.

The weeked also met me with firsts. I had my first seeing of Ben since school got out. Awkward is a great way to explain it. We didn't speak. He didn't try, I didn't either. Of course my presence did sort of blind side him. Yet, somehow I blame him for being weird. I attribute this to me having reached out numerous times and being met by a closed door. I figured/figure it is his turn to talk first. I experienced a wide range of emotion in the hour I spent with him within 25 feet of me. Anger, Sadness, Jealousy, "eh"ness, Complete and utter discomfort, that okay emotion that I really have no word for, Contentment in the decisions that have been made, and longing for him to just recognize that we were in the same place and not total strangers.

I guess that is where I should say the hardest part of this whole thing has been that I lost my best friend in the break up. I lost the one I thought would always be there. Yet, I am reminded that in having him I lost myself, and in losing him (i say losing him because i don't really know what else to call it in short terms and without having to explain a lot) I found myself.

I have come to realize in the past 3 months that I really did lose who I was while dating him. I look forward to my next relationship with the knowledge of who I am and what I will and will not put up with. I lost that for some reason with Ben. I don't blame him, I blame myself. It shows me that I was not where I should be in a lot of areas. It is in those areas that I have grown now. It's been an amazing journey to find myself again. My friends, my family, my community, my "heatherness". I lost it for around 6ish months. I became someone I'm not and I would like to apologize to all those who happened upon me during that time. I hope that I can rectify the damage that was done. You may not even know any was done, but the person you knew from Octoberish-Aprilish was not who I am. I began being far too consumed in myself and in my relationship with one man rather than the relationships around me and the one with my Creator. I became clingy to Ben, and though he doesn't read this most likely, I do apologize to him for that. See I wasn't just not myself with others, I wasn't myself with him either. Do I think that was what caused our ultimate demise? Absolutely not, however, I know it didn't help, for he became someone else too and I know how that felt.


The thing I know now is that all that is in the past. All that was a season of growth and discovery. I am not who I was then and I am so ready to start life rolling again. God will bring the man to me that He has picked out and we will live purposefully for HIM and HIS GLORY and our life together will be more than either of us imagined in the past. That excites me. Life excites me. To know who I am now and what I want is a great feeling. I have loved getting to know my friends again, and my friends in general. I am so happy that I have had them. They stood with me in my decisions and through my "weird Heather" time. For that I am more than grateful.

Three years ago today I was in the summer between my Junior and Senior year of high school. I was sitting on the middle level of our house in the recliner watching tv. My cell phone was sitting next to me. I saw that I was receiving a call from my friend Kristen. I answered the call and heard something I never expected to hear. She told me that one of my favorite people in the world had passed away. Well, comitted suicide.

Virginia "Gin" Webb was one of the sweetest human beings in the world. She always had a smile, always an encouraging word, always a way to make you feel better about life. She was a friend of mine from high school. We played on the same basketball team, sang in the same chorus at school and had a lot of the same friends. She was 2 year older than me and got accepted to the USC Honors College. I will never forget when our basketball team went to a Women's Clemson game and she said she couldn't cheer because it wasn't right. I laughed for a while and parents started talking her into it.

Her death threw me greatly. I never had someone that close to me die. Of course there were relatives but they were a great deal older than me and so it wasn't as personal. To hear that she had killed herself scared me greatly. I went into a huge battle of spiritual warfare. I was so afraid of death and I soon became consumed with worry and doubt and fear. I had never been so in the Word as I was at that point in my life. I would read as much as possible to be able to feel okay. that lasted for about 4 months. It was amazing to wake up that one morning and feel like the war was finally over.

That was just the beginning of a long battle of God pulling not only myself, but my entire family under his wing. He began stripping us of things one by one and it soon became difficult to see the clarity and vision that was being used then. God was breaking my father in ways that I, in no way could begin to describe. That battle was one that was a lot deeper than I even know. Battles such as that affect men a lot differently than women so my insight is greatly limited. God was breaking my mother in ways that were more easily seen by me, however I was a senior in high school and slightly consumed with myself. That was where I was being broken. I was so self consumed that I couldn't see past my doubts, my worries, my fears, what I didn't have. God began working on me, and still is. I will always be a work in progress until I die (I love that thought). Complacency had begun to take over in our family. Our positions in life were pretty well known for us. We knew what was expected, where to go, what to say, how to act.I mean we were "the radio people/minister family" those expectations are pretty well known. But that was the problem, at least for me. It was all an act. No one knew my personal struggle. That would be admitting I didn't have as together as everyone thought. I still struggle, but I try. Not as hard as I should, but I do try....anyways back to Gin.

Gin's death was the topic of conversation for many months and even now Mayfield and I will discuss it because she was such a sweet person. We soon found out after her death that she wasn't intending to kill herself. She had been playing the choking game. A horrible trend among teenagers and young adults. She made the mistake of trying it alone and never regained conciousness. Her brother and mother found her. It was truly devestating.

Gin changed my life in more ways than she will ever know. I am thankful that I got to know her and that I got to have my life be affected by her. She fell into a bad hole, yet I know she loved her God and is with him today. I really wish she hadn't fallen into what she did, but God knows the plan there and I can see how her death affected more than just her family, friends, and me. Her mom is now an activist against the Choking game and does all she can to get the word out on how parents and friends can watch for signs.


I ask that you guys keep their family in your prayers. It may have been 3 years but that doesn't make the loss of a daughter and sister easier. Pray that they have leaned on God for their serenity and understanding.

"I Love You"

Those words are some of the most powerful words ever spoken by anyone. However, in our society they are flippantly used and the meaning can be demeaned by its overuse. Lately, my generation will just say it because they think they will get something for it. However, I choose to take a different approach. This works for me, it might not work for everyone but for me it does. So I thought I'd share.

I have said "I love you" to one guy in my entire life that wasn't my father or brother. Do I regret it now that the relationship is over? Absolutely not. I know that I meant those words every time I said them. Something that bothers me with break ups is the question "well do you still love him?" What kind of question is that? In my mind, breaking up does not make that feeling go away. It doesn't cause it to not still radiate through you. It does cause it, however to change. No longer can that love be romantic, it must be a friendly, caring love. To assume that because you no longer are together you must hate that person or not like them I deem absurd. We are called to love by God. Just because a relationship ended badly, or at all doesn't mean that you must hate the other person.


READ THIS WHOLE PARAGRAPH...DO NOT SKIM OR ELSE YOU WILL MISS MY POINT
If you were to ask me if I still loved Ben Nahlen, I would say yes....because I do. He was the first guy I ever used those words for and the guy that I spent the past two years with. He was there at the beginning of the transition into college, Christmases, Birthdays, my dad's hospitlization. That doesn't just go away. But to ask if I think that we should be together would be a completely different question. Do I love him? Yes with the love of a friend and the love of someone that I will always have fond, and not so fond memories with. Do I think we should be together? Not how we were in the last part of our relationship. We were not the same people we were when we started dating in 2006. We both changed. Our lives were no longer meshing together the way we thought they would. So no. At least for now. We both have much growing up to do and we couldn't do that together. We may grow and as we grow find ourselves back at each others doors or we may find ourselve even further apart than we are now. Either way, it doesn't affect me being able to say that I do have love for him and I do not think I should be frowned at for admitting that I love him.

People would ask me right after he and I ended our engagement and parted ways if they should hate him? Really? Why would they hate him because of something that happened between the two of us? I think that's odd. Moving on to the point...

When people hear the line "love never fails" (1 Corinthians 13:8) they think that means that they must not have loved that person because their relationship failed. This I think is the wrong mentality. Just because your relationship ended does not mean that it failed. It succeeded. It met all that it was supposed to. See, God knew that relationship would not be the last one in your life. God knew that there is someone better for you than that person. Your relationship ended, it did not fail. There is a large difference. I know it seems crazy to be happy that your relationship is over, but if your relationship ends that simply means that that person was not the one with whom you should share your life and that they are in the way of the best person for you. Of course there should be a mourning period. You're not just going to jump up and be ready for a new relationship, mourning is okay. However, it shouldn't cripple you. You should embrace a new plateau in your life, a new experience, a difference that God put in your life for a reason. That doesn't mean it will be easy, it doesn't mean that you won't be a little sad, or even devestated. However, you have to pick up the pieces, put yourself back together and realize that GOD KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING. Hard concept I know, yet one of the most comforting thoughts in the world.

I know that when people ask "do you still love him?" they mean a romantic type, but I think that question should never be asked of anyone, no matter what the situation (i.e. romantic relationship, friend relationship, parent etc.). Don't ask if they still love that person and don't lie if you are asked. It's easy to become bitter towards someone you once loved (in the romantic way), but don't. The bitterness only hardens you and prevents you from growing and seeing all that God has laid in front of you. Love them with the heart of a friend and the heart of compassion.

I mean really, we all just want to be loved.

Well, here I am. iPod earbuds in ears, "We Belong" by Pat Benatar penetrating my ear canals, and me sitting, trying ever fervently to reverse my night owl tendencies. However, I am failing miserbly at this. I can not seem to make my brain rest when it is meant to. No matter how I try I find myself tossing and turning for hours until it is some amazingly ungodly hour and finally falling asleep to sleep for hours in the day that I could be a lot more useful or productive.

Times like these are the ones I find myself wishing I had taken that summer course. However, I was meant to spend this summer developing my photography skills and getting my name out in the real world. At this I am very successful. Give me a camera, photoshop, and some Photographer friends with their own businesses who want to help me, and I am more than good to go.

I currently have many topics on which I would like to blog:
1. Love (I have a theory to this topic on which I have found myself feeling overwhelmed in need to share and express so others might understand it a little better. I'm not sure this blog will be the one that will see this thought come through to its fruition but look for it because I've been sitting on it for about 3 weeks now bouncing ideas off of friends and such)
2. My dad (For some reason I have been running thoughts through my head on doing random updates on my dad's situation and stuff. A lot of people read his updates or hear them on the radio but a lot of people ask me and stuff so I'm contemplating using this to harness thoughts and things so that others might be able to keep up with my dad and the transplant).
3. The amazingness of Christ. (to do this topic justice I feel I need to be more prepared to delve into the topic on which I want to talk. Phillipians. It will come.)
4. Everyday topics that are just fun to talk about


I wish I had thought of blogging. I mean really, how amazing is it that we can write our thoughts down and post them for others to read? Now, is this amazing or stalkerish? Eh, let's do both and say Happy Stalking! You never know when one of your topics will help somone you don't even know.