What I Will Be Doing Starting This Fall

College classes start this week and it looks like I won't be packing my bags and moving to college campus like I thought and desired. This final decision has been made with much prayer. I haven't spoken about it much on my blog, but it has been a winding road coming to this final conclusion but I now do believe this decision is what God wants.

"So, since you aren't attending college this fall, what will you be doing?" you may ask. Well, besides saving up for expenses and preparing for college next year (if the Lord wills), there's several things I hope to do to occupy my time. I do not believe success is equaled in a college degree neither is college the most important thing on my "life to-do's"---even though, don't get me wrong, I highly value higher education and know without a doubt I want to pursue some avenue of it at some time. But, for now, God has a reason that I am not going to college this fall and I plan to make the most of this season in my life.

So then, what will I be doing instead?

First, I plan to be practicing deeper spiritual disciplines. Since I am out of school and have more hours in my morning, (and because once I start college I will be most likely pressed for time), I want to make this season a time for much study and growth. Disciplines such as much more Bible reading, deep Bible study, intense prayer, and diligent Bible memorization are a few that I hope to saturate my time and my mornings. It is my goal to do much more memorizing so I will "hide God's Word in my heart." I am working on the book of James right now (yes, the whole book; it is possible!) and there's so many other verses I want ingrained in my memory.

Second, I will be working on completing my correspondence course in Bible from Liberty University's Home Bible Institute. Right before graduation I took a break from this study and haven't started back until last week. This course is basically an outline and overall study of each book of the Bible going from the Old Testament to the New Testament, then finally ending with doctrinal studies. It's a two-year course and I think I am about half way through right now so I hopefully will be finished by next year. I really have enjoyed this study and I am really thankful for all I have been learning through this course.

Besides working on my correspondence course, I will also be undertaking much self-study. Learning is readily available and is basically at our finger tips in our time in age. Just because I am not in college right now doesn't mean I can't learn on my own! I already have several books I am reading which includes studies in government, economics, speech, etc., but I also plan to do lots of research, and just well, learn! Going to the library and doing some research and reading, making searches on the internet, or whatever, I want to study several things on my own. I really enjoy to learn, more than I did when I was in highschool...

In the area of earning money, for the meantime I will be working part time for my Dad. My Dad owns a thriving home business blessed by the Lord of making signs and creating graphic designs. My Dad not only wants me to work for him and pays me hourly, but he needs my help! He is usually swamped with business and orders, so most of the time there is something I can do to give him a hand. I love helping my Dad and there's no one else I'd rather work for. Will I get a job/job in the future? Maybe. But right now, there's really no need. My Dad pays me more than the minimal wage!

I will also be babysitting weekly again for the same family I have worked for the last year. This time, however, I will be working twice a week, for at total of about 10 hours a week. There's 4 kids I have the responsibility to monitor at the ages of 12, 9, 6, and 3. It's a great job and something the Lord has greatly blessed me with. I love the kids and spending time with them, and I get paid very nicely. What more could I ask for? God is so good to me!

For an additional side job, and if the Lord blesses, I will also continue printing t-shirts along with my sister.

Next, since I have graduated and don't have a strict form of "schooling," besides flexible self study, I plan to help Mom more around the house to lighten her load a little bit which includes doing a majority of the cooking.

Besides the privilege of helping mom, I also want to develop more of my homemaking skills. Besides those things such as cooking, baking, cleaning, laundry, helping with homeschooling, etc. I would like to embark on other things, like for one, develop my sewing skills. Our pastor's wife is planning on possibly teaching some ladies in the church how to sew, including myself. I would love to learn how to sew some skirts...I also desire to crochet a quilt, particularly a baby afghan for my hope chest. I've always wanted to but never have taken the time. Plus, I would LOVE to sew a quilt. I sewed a small one when I was in about the 8th grade, but it was nothing fancy and I forgot how I did it. I have searched for quilting classes around here but haven't found any just yet...

As for weekly activities, my church is starting a Bible study on Mondays from the book "Changed Into His Image" by Jim Berg. I know this will be good and I am so excited! Holly will be taking with me as well. My church is also hoping to start a Bible memorization program. I just can't wait for this to start!!

I will also be continuing my piano lessons on Tuesdays afternoons and practicing daily.

With all of this, I also hope, if the Lord's will, to start a Bible study for young girls. I am still praying and planning, but some how I feel like this is something the Lord wants me to do. Not that I am a good speaker or teacher (speaking in front of large groups is not my favorite thing to do!), but it's been a desire of mine for many years and I think this is the opportunity to do so. (I may be writing more on this later...) In concordance to this, if I can make time, I'd also love to start a blog designed particularly for young ladies.

Some other things I'd like to pursue if I have the time are:

-Doing some deep and extensive reading. There's so many books I desire to read!!
-Working on some books I have started writing but are unfinished.
-Possibly take some CLEP tests and go ahead and earn some college credit. I'd especially like to go ahead and clep out History of Civilization, a freshman core subject.
-Look into scholarships

I also desire to help more in our church, if there's anything I can do and if they can use me.

As you can see, useful things to do certainly aren't limited!!

So, these are a majority of the things I hope to be occupying my time with this year. "Bored" is never part of my vocabulary, and I am positive it won't be this year either!

I didn't write this to brag, neither to say that I think all young ladies should do what I am doing. Rather, I wrote this to share what I will be embarking upon and where God is leading me. Believe me, I did NOT take this decision lightly---much prayer, fasting and thought went into it. Being in God's will is essential to me, and I deeply feel that this is where He wants me for the time being. I was not happy with this decision at first. I cried and was very upset and thought I'd be "loosing" a year that could be spent on a college campus earning college credit. But you know what? I now see things differently and I do not think I am "loosing" a year at all! If all I did was sit around and watch TV, then that would obviously be a problem, but rather God has things for me to accomplish and I need to be faithful. Life after graduation doesn't start at college! There's so many things I can do to use my time for the glory of God here at home. In addition, I can work on becoming closer to my family members and developing a stronger relationship with my siblings.

I only want to be where God wants. If going to college will never be a part of His will for the future, then I shall never go. If He desires me to start next year, then I will be packing my bags at that time. In the meantime, my duty right now is to do what I am called to do and that is another year at home.

As for now, higher education and college will have to wait. I didn't think this would be the path I would be taking but I am and you know what? I am happy about it and excited to see what the Lord will do. :) May He be glorified.

~~Brooke~~

Only a Plain, Common Day

I really liked this and it inspired me! Thought I'd share it with you :0)


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Only a plain, common day

(J. R. Miller, "The Every Day of Life" 1892)

Perhaps the every-day of life, is not as interesting--as are some of the bright special days. It is apt to be somewhat monotonous. It is just like a great many other days. It has nothing special to mark it. It is illuminated by no brilliant event. It bears no record of any brave or noble deed done. It is not made memorable by the coming of any new experience into the life--a new hope, a new friendship, a new joy, and a new success. It is not even touched with sorrow, and made to stand out with the memory of loss or struggle. It is only a plain, common day--with just the same old wearisome routine--of tasks and duties and happenings, which have come so often before.

Yet it is the every-day, which is really the best measure and the test of noble living. Anybody can do well on special occasions. Anybody can be good--on Sundays. Anybody can be bright and cheerful--in exhilarating society. Anybody can be sweet--amid gentle influences. Anybody can make an isolated self-denial--for some conspicuous object; or do a generous deed--under the impulse of some unusual emotion. Anybody can do a heroic thing--once or twice in a lifetime. These are beautiful things. They shine like lofty peaks above life's plains.

But the ordinary attainment of the common days--is a truer index of the life--a truer measure of its character and value--than are the most striking and brilliant things of its exalted moments. It requires more strength to be faithful in the ninety-nine commonplace duties, when no one is looking on, when there is no special motive to stir the soul to its best effort--than it does in the one duty, which by its unusual importance, or by its conspicuousness, arouses enthusiasm for its own doing. It is a great deal easier to be brave in one stern conflict which calls for heroism, in which large interests are involved--than to be brave in the thousand little struggles of the common days--for which it seems scarcely worth while to put on the armor. It is very much less a task to be good-natured under one great provocation, in the presence of others--than it is to keep sweet temper month after month of ordinary days, amid the frictions, strife's, petty annoyances, and cares of home-life.

Thus it is, that one's every-day life is a surer revealer of noble character--than one's public acts. There are men who are magnificent when they appear on great occasions--wise, eloquent, masterly--but who are almost utterly unendurable in their fretfulness, unreasonableness, irascibility, and all manner of selfish disagreeableness, in the privacy of their own homes--to those whom they ought to show all of love's gentleness and sweetness! There are women, too, who shine with wondrous brilliancy in society, sparkling in conversation, winning in manner, always the center of admiring groups, resistless in their charms--but who, in their every-day life, in the presence of only their own households--are the dullest and most wearisome of mortals! No doubt in these cases--the common every-day, unflattering as it is--is a truer expression of the inner life--than the hour or two of greatness or graciousness, in the blaze of the public.

On the other hand, there are men who are never heard of on the street, whose names never appear in the newspapers, who do no great conspicuous things, whose lives have no glittering peaks towering high--and yet the level plain of their years--is rich in its beauty and its fruitfulness of love. Likewise, there are women who are the idols of no drawing-rooms, who attract no throngs of admirers around them by resistless charms--but who, in their own quiet sheltered world--do their daily tasks with faithfulness, move in ways of humble duty and quiet cheerfulness, and pour out their heart's pure love, like fragrance, on all around them. Who will say that the uneventful and un-praised every-day of these humble ones--is not radiant in God's sight, though they leave no memorial--but only a world made a little better by their lives?

It is in the every-day of life, that nearly all the world's best work is done. The tall mountain peaks lift their glittering crests into the clouds, and win attention and admiration; but it is in the great valleys and broad plains, that the harvests grow and the fruits ripen--on which the millions of earth feed their hunger. Likewise, it is not from the few conspicuous deeds of life, that the blessings chiefly come, which make the world, better, sweeter, happier--but from the countless humble services of the every-days, the little faithfulnesses which fill long years. By the simple beauty of their own humble lives, by their quiet deeds of self-sacrifice, by the songs of their cheerful faith, and by the ministries of their helpful hands--they make one little spot of this sad earth, brighter and happier!


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Compliments of Grace Gems!

A treasury of ageless sovereign grace devotional writings

The Heavens Declare the Glory of God

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge. Ps. 191:1, 2



What does it mean when it is said that the heavens declare the glory of God? The heavens declare that God is perfect. The heavens manifest His wisdom, power, and His intelligent end. The heavens are manifesting the glory of God in the sense that they reveal what God is and what He can do.

But the heavens are not designed to reveal the love of God, the grace of God, nor the righteousness of God. That is where Christians come into the picture. We are designed to show "the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ." (Eph. 2:7)


-Dr. John Walvoord, The Thessalonian Epistles p.112

Week at the Wilds

My sister Holly and I recently returned from a Christian teen camp called the Wilds and what an amazing time we had! We had a blast and were able to participate in many games and activities and meet some great Christians. The main highlight though, was definitely the things the Lord taught us. The Lord is so faithful to teach His children! I will have to share some things some time. :-)



O Jesus, I have promised
To love you to the end;
Please be forever near me,
My master and my friend;
I shall not be troubled
If you are by my side,
And I'll follow you always
If you will be my guide.

Adapted from a hymn by John Ernest Bode

A Whole Heart For God

One day at camp last month, I laid in my bunk-bed in the middle of the night wide awake. Light from the hall-way trickled into the bedroom through a half-shut door and it was keeping me up, so I got up to shut it when I heard sobbing in the girl's bathroom. I gently opened the curtain to see a friend from my room sitting on the bathroom floor with a roll of tissue in her hand and a pile of used ones next to her. I sat down beside her and there we talked for a very long time...

This particular girl had told me earlier in the week that she had been going through some really tough times in her life, starting last year. She's still struggling with many hard things, but she told me that the trails she has been through so far has only made her stronger.

I listened to her and tried all I could to comfort her. Our conversation led to what God had been teaching in our lives and then about God Himself and what a great God we serve.

Something I will never forget is what this girl told me. She told me that she didn't want to be the "average Christian," and that she had fully surrendured her life to God and would live for Him no matter what. She said that before camp she had made God a promise and commitment that she was willing to do whatever it took to give Him the glory, even if that meant suffering for Him. She told me that even if she had to be crushed by other people, forsaken, abused, put down, no matter what, she would do whatever it took to make the Lord famous. She would do it for Him so He could be exalted.

This girl has a fire burning for the Lord within her that is not hidden. She inspired me so much and only made my fire within me burn the brighter for the Lord! What a blessing to meet a young lady who wants to live for God without reservations!

Making the Lord famous, is what she kept telling me was her purpose, her promise, her goal for the Lord.

A song by Rush of Fools reminds me of this girl's ambition. It is entitled "Fame." The chorus says:

I raise my hands

Just as I am

I'm letting go

Of false control

I lift my voice

I have no choice

My life is yours

Use me for your fame

I'm letting go; My life is Yours; Use me for your fame. God is so perfect and holy. Full of love for His people. He deserves all of us. Not half. Everything.

One of the main messages at camp was having a full heart for God. Not an empty or half-hearted one, but one without set backs. God wants all of us! He doesn't want us to be cold or warm in our Christian faith: He wants us to be on fire! Lukewarmness is not an option. Remember the verse in Revelation?

"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I
would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art
lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of
my mouth."
Revelation 3:15-16

This girl from camp really inspired me. I have heard about young people on fire for the Lord, but I've never met one like this particular girl. Especially one like her who was willing to suffer for God who had a desire to do whatever it took to give glory to HIM.

It makes me look at my own life: how much have I given and am giving to the Lord? Would I be willing to suffer for Him?

The Bible is clear that if we are His child, we will suffer for Him. There's no hiding that fact.

2 Timothy 3:12

Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

Philippians 1:29

For unto it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.

But shouldn't this be a privilege? Look what He did for us!

The conversation I had with this particular girl sitting on the bathroom floor for an hour or so started with tears and ended with smiles and laughter. Talking with her about her commitment to the Lord and about God Himself, and how good He is, really blessed my heart and hers as well. Living for God is her greatest joy. Oh, if only every Christian, including myself, had such a deep desire to live for God with their whole hearts and without holding anything back!

I strongly encourage you to look at your own life as I look at mine. Would you still be faithful to God through suffering or persecution? Is there anything you are holding back from God? We're not truly living for God until we give Him everything. We were made for Him and Christ has given His life for us---what excuse do we have? We not only should surrender all but we should desire to do it because of what He has done for us! God deserves every ounce of us. Strive to give Him your full heart. Life is not about us. It's about HIM.

Desire to live for God without reservations.

Hiking with Jeremy D.

For updates, we arrived back home Friday. Thanks for anyone who prayed. Please continue to remember our aunt, uncle, the girl's mother and other family members in this hard time...

Holly and I went hiking with Jeremy Saturday. It was really pretty and we had a great walk.








We chose a rather hard, I guess, trail that contained lots of hills. Jeremy told us that his grandma did it once, so we kept saying that if she could do it, we could do it. Jeremy must have one awesome grandma because it was a little tough!