oh the places you'll go...

Create your own travel map - TravBuddy

paint by dreams

"It's a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn't matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be. 

So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification. 

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?” 

-Donald Miller Through Painted Deserts

I have a simple dream (one of many). Buy a VW van, pack my bags and drive. 

It is a funny thing when you realize you have gotten to live another dream you had and it also started very simply. A pencil and paper. 

Though that dream has since faded, as I suppose some should, so as to make room for more adventures.

We'll see where this one goes, but I know myself, and I will make it real.

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” 

― Eleanor Roosevelt

On a bunk bed in Koh Toa, Thailand

Fat Tires and Cigarettes

"...most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of the people around you."

--Anne Lamott

There have been few times in my life where God felt near, and even fewer (possibly never) when He was tangible, at least in how I expected He would feel. I don't know why, but I have always pictured me hand in hand with Jesus walking along the ocean on a quiet beach. Probably some sort of Christian commercialism. I think I saw it on a bookmark from Mardel. That has never happened, though if Heaven is close to a beach...I won't complain.

This is what I have learned in my short 25 years of knowing everything (which to the teens out there who haven't learned, it means you actually know nothing). God does not touch us often, in the dreamy sense, but He does use friends and family to lift our Spirits or bring a small glimmer of hope. A glimmer is all you need most days. Humanity has quite the knack for survival.  

When we feel so beaten and defeated, and in the moment you feel life can't get worse (you try and remind yourself of others stories of pain, though comparing gets us nowhere). God gives you a chin up. A friend sends a text reminding you what you mean to them, someone buys you a cup of coffee or whatever glimpse of love is needed. It is a funny dichotomy. A God so able, mostly chooses to let humanity choose to love each other. That's weird and oh so sweet at the same time.

It is good to remember to ask for encouragement. There is no shame in that. 

And to end this blog, another word from Annie...

"Hope is not about proving anything. It’s about choosing to believe this one thing: that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us."

GOD is love, so that's a good word. 

*Sorry for the use of language.

The sun has set pink and blue

The good times are just memories now

I have to let go somehow

Our paths have separated to something new

I've struck out on my own 

To an adventure unknown

I will never forget

I will never regret

But it's time to move on

I know I have to say goodbye

But no matter how hard I try I can't deny it

No I can't fight it

Even through all the hurt

Even through all the pain 

I'm trustin in your name

The sun will rise again

Friends will go but they will always come

and I know that I will never be alone 

You are the only one I can rely on

“No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath... We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?"
-Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts


There has been a few things that have happened recently that have brought about a nagging thought; like the car alarm down the street that just won't turn off. Life is short. I have come to believe it is something about turning 25. I want to do this thing to the fullest and with everything in me, but I have a few questions (actually, I have many questions, but here's a few).


How do you balance knowing when it is a time to earn money and the desire to get in my car and drive? I want to see this beautiful country. How do you balance others expectations and your desire to be you? It seems so much like a fight sometimes. My fists are up, ready to punch and block. 

H-O-M-E

Hi there! I just wanted to let you know I am back on Oklahoma soil. For those of you that have followed my journey to New Zealand and Thailand, thank you. Now for a new chapter in Tulsa.