3 x 5

Pictures make me so incredibly happy. My old room was filled with photos on the door, walls and in frames. I love having them as tiny reminders of times in my life that joy was captured in time to prevail on paper. Moments become immortal, faces of loved ones become retainable, memories become tangible. With pictures, a collection of happenings that touched my heart can be embraced in one single stack of prints. A picture has the power to imprison a great deal more than 1000 words it can be a canvas for...

intrigue...

Regrettable decisions


Emotion... whatever that may be



Inspiration

Transformation

Discomfort

Adventure

Love

And so my dear friends,
Although you may be a million miles away, an ocean apart and a language in between your lovely faces and cherished times are right here with me, our frozen memories clothe my Costariccan walls... and you are all dearly loved and missed!

Trouble...

I would like to share with you one of the many beautiful aspects of living in Costa Rica... an abundance of ants!

Let me tell you... these guys are good! They haunt the halls of my school, they congregate on my floor, walls and shower and they busily bustle through my unsealed food and my clothing. I absolutely love these little black, creepy crawlers whom insist on sharing my living space no matter how much bleach or ‘tronex’ I use to try and clean them away. Blessed minuscule bugs, little do they know I have requested an extra effective ant trap that is making its way over in the mail. I will thoroughly enjoy watching them, one after the other, march into the ant trap from where they will never return. Now, before you frown at my morbid excitement please note the hurt I feel when these tiny troublemakers invade my tiny, sealed, 9 dollar jar of peanut butter (I have no idea how) or chose to nibble on me instead for scarcity of food... I am certain you would feel the same way.
Dearest ants,
For now you guys reign but take warning... your time is quickly dwindling.

Grace Like Rain

I know that some people might be wondering “where in the world is Christie?” ... and so for my lack of attention to the blogging world I am sorry.

Dear child you are forgiven and loved.

These words resound within my heart in an especially noteworthy way lately. I cannot sum up what I have learned here so far with simple sections and themes or theological facts and controversial issues. However, there have been moments where it as if God is leaving me profound sticky notes, I am given ideas or concepts that “stick”. One of these notions (one that happens to build the brace of Christianity) has just recently made sense to me. I am lost for an explanation as to why.
The entire gospel is overflowing with it, we are commanded to give it, it is presented without atonement but it is by no means easy to give for there IS a price that has been paid by Christ, it is grace. I guess I have struggled with this part of being a Christian. In no way am I one to abundantly offer grace yet at the same time I am particularly hesitant to receive it. My entire life I have seen God as someone carrying a cookie jar of my ever-multiplying sins and I somehow have disregarded grace. Perhaps this is because I have difficulty finding it in life today. The world is starving for grace and I have seen it in the eyes of the people such as those of the Vancouver Downtown Eastside where for most people that live there all rumours of grace simply seem like “nice thoughts” not actual practices. As Philip Yancy puts it, “Grace, like many Christian words, has been leached of its meaning and so that I can no longer trust it”. Therefore, my problem does not only lie in that I cannot always give grace as God commands me to but I also cannot locate a tangible source from which it flows without ceasing except... Christ. Believe me when I say that I know that grace is such a fundamental thing, something that should have been understood from the “get go”. It is not that I did not understand but I guess I lacked the faith to believe. Honestly, I would think that for most, the church is not the first thought that comes to mind when searching for grace. It is disappointing and discouraging because sometimes I feel like church can be a place which presents a partial gospel, lacking the maturity to live out what it claims to believe. However, I want to be different. I want to and I am determined for God to transform my heart and so I am able to finally say “You are forgiven and dearly loved without condition and forevermore” because I now finally believe and live like my almighty Father thinks this of me; completely unlovable and undeserving yet fully forgiven.