In Love

These past few days have been pretty great.
I came back to Mount Pleasant on Sunday, and since then I have been spending more time with God each day than I did for much of the break and it is pretty sweet. I hope to continue to be excited about getting to know him more and seeing how he works in and around me.
I am in love with God.
I am also in love, in a different way, and with a love that comes from God, with Kassie. I am very thankful for her in my life and the honest conversations we have had lately and the ways we have been able to encourage each other love God together.
I have been reading Captivating for my senior research project. I can't say the research is the only reason I was interested in reading the book. There are definitely parts of it that I don't like, parts that say things like boys don't do this or all women need this or things like that. I don't like generalizations, in general ;)
However, there are also definitely some good thigns in it. I haven't gotten very far but one thing I read today was talking about beauty and how beauty is part of who God is and is definitely something he values. It mentioned that we often get caught up in accomplishments and other things that could be good or bad that we don't spend time enjoying and appreciating God's beauty. I think it is also possible to get too focused on beauty, but maybe the problem isn't the amount of focus but it is what the focus is on, maybe not real true Godly beauty but what the world has called beautiful. Anyway, I thought it was interesting and it made me want to play guitar and sing because I think music can be a beautiful way to express my love for God, not that the music I make is beautiful, but I know that God thinks it is beautiful when I use the gifts he has given me as a way to worship him.
Another thing cool I thought about God today was how he orchestrates things. It is definitely plain to me that God has orchestrated, in many ways, my relationship with Kassie. That is something I think about often. Today, however, I was talking to Katie Bennett and realizing how God has orchestrated my relationship with her, as well. This made me think a little more, or made me think about it differently because while it is common for me to think about the things God has done between Kassie and I, it is less often that I think about friendships.
As Katie and I were talking today, we were both realizing how cool it is that even though we don't spend much time together or talk to each other regularly, there are certain times when we "randomly" meet and have a really good conversation. Last year we spent quite a bit of time together for some of the year but then kind of just stopped hanging out after a while. Now, it is sweet how we can have great conversations so "randomly." We know each other to a certain extent from the time we spent together last year. And it is also cool that there are no obligations and no hard feelings, for example, if I forgot about her birthday or something, it wouldn't be a big deal and we would still be able to talk like nothing happened after that.
Anyway, I think that type of friendship is cool and I also think it is quite rare.
God does some pretty amazing stuff. It is kind of sad how much we miss of what God does when we don't focus on him. I often have the problem of focusing on myself. But it's the times when I focus on God that I realize how good he is and how much he is doing.