by the way it's really cold here

Hello to my beautiful friends and family! Greetings from my cozy little bunk bed on this chilly November morning here in Smithtown, New York. So much has been going on here at YWAM and in my life the past few weeks so I thought it was time for a little update. 

I guess I can start off this post by saying that this experience has been one of the most eye-opening and challenging experiences of my whole life - mentally, relationally, and spiritually. BUT I also have never been happier or felt more fulfilled than ever before. It’s so encouraging to see the Lord working in my life as I am away from home and away from my loved ones. Jesus has completely broken me over the past few months, and I think that I am finally experiencing the feeling of true peace for the first time in my life. I have spent my whole life trying to impress my friends and my parents and my teachers and pretty much anyone I have come in contact with. I would bend over backwards to try to win their approval and acceptance. I’ve learned that that is also how I used to view God - that I had to keep doing good to win his approval. The fact that NOTHING I have done and NOTHING I will ever do, no matter how “good”, will ever make Jesus love me more. It’s such an easy concept to understand but it is so difficult to actually put into action. He loves me unconditionally, and even though I always make mistakes and fall short, he will never ignore me or turn me away. I have spent so much time trying to live this religious life and trying to make myself look holy and have completely missed the concept of passionately loving God. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Savior. But until now, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the concept of this red-hot passion for Jesus. 

Passion: “To wholeheartedly give yourself to something, to be affected by.” 

I like to imagine how the world would be if every single person was infected with this all-consuming passion for Jesus. I know for a fact that it would be the exact opposite of how society works today. There would be so much hope and everyone would be overflowing with joy. The thing that stands out to me about that definition of passion above is the part about it affecting people. I like to think that my passion for One Direction would rub off on other people, but believe it or not, people here don’t seem to be very affected by it. You can replace One Direction for anything in your life, whether it’s your husband/wife, car, favorite band, or sports team, but usually people just don’t really seem to connect with you on the level of your passion for this specific thing. But we all know and love that incredible moment when you find out that someone has that same shared interest as you and you possibly might jump up and down or shriek back and forth at each other or maybe high five or hug it out for a few minutes. From that moment on, you just click with that person and you know you can go to them whenever you want to talk about that specific thing. What if we clicked like that with people over Jesus? It might be a strange concept to you, but here at this base it’s the one thing we all have in common. And it’s actually perfect because since we all have an interest in this thing (well, person) nothing else really matters all that much. If someone gets on your nerves, it really doesn’t matter. If we have different opinions on something, it’s not going to change how we view that person. Imagine if the whole world could be like that! I dream of living in a world where people can humble themselves and accept other’s opinions. God gave us all different minds and different thoughts so of course we all aren’t going to agree on everything! I’m not saying we all need to put on our maxi skirts and flower crowns and gather around a fire and hold hands, but I think it would be really nice if we could all just focus on Jesus and not each other’s opinions and short comings. I want my life to be so similar to Christ's that when people look at me they see Him. Obviously I am not perfect and I never will be, but I want to live with this incredible passion for Him that completely consumes my life. 

"We live in a universe at war, war for the affections of hearts.” 

-CS Lewis

Take some time today to think about your top three (okay yes you fan girl people you can have top five) passions in your life right now. Would you consider Jesus and making Him known being one on your list? I know for a fact that before coming here He wouldn’t have been on my top. He was on there, but probably somewhere in the middle of the list. I got so consumed with my life and my grades and my sorority and my friends and my car and my bank account that I didn’t really give any second thought to the people out there who don’t know the incredible joy of being in a relationship with Jesus Christ. How ridiculously selfish of me! Like I said, I’ve been broken over and over of everything and for a while I felt completely filled with shame. I wasted so much time and so many good opportunities to lead people to my Savior. But now I have moved on from that guilt and shame and channeled it into how I will act in the future. That definition above really is right on point. You can’t affect people without passion. And now I have it. And I just want to talk all the time about Jesus and what He has done for little old me! Thank you Lord for opening my eyes and completely turning my world upside down!

On a less serious note, I am having the time of my life at this place. People are always asking me what exactly it is that I am doing here, and the answer to that is A LOT. I’m so used to my laid back days at college where I might or might not go to class and might or might not shower and the hardest thing I had to do all day was work out and decide if I wanted to nap or not. Here at YWAM, I am up every morning at 6 AM and going nonstop until about 7 o clock every night when I finish my dinner and sit down with my friends and watch Disney movies and talk about how much I miss my dog. You might think I am trying to be funny but I actually talk about Honey constantly and I am pretty sure I have seen every single Disney movie ever created since I have been here. But on a serious note, I am still head over heels obsessed with this place and the thought of leaving this base and these amazing people actually makes me so depressed that I want to curl up into a ball and cry and possibly suck my thumb. We have one more week here until we all go home for Thanksgiving break, and we are all kind of dreading it. I don’t want to go back into the gross real world and be away from my new and wonderful friends. BUT I am also so excited to go back home and see my family and my Honey bear and sleep in my own bed. You can bet your butt that I will be spending my five days in the south hitting up all of my favorite restaurants with my family and eating myself into a ginormous food coma. That’s what Thanksgiving is all about right? Hahahaha I would like to say that I am joking but Juju and I have actually already made a list of the restaurants we want to go to and I am so excited thinking about all the sweet tea I am going to be consuming and how many times I will be saying “y’all” without people laughing at my southern accent (which I still don’t really believe that I have.) I am so unbelievably ready to have access to a TV and getting the chance to watch the Iron Bowl with my psychotic football-loving family. I will be home for five days and then returning back to base on the first of December. From that point on, we will have two more weeks of lectures and then I will be returning back to the promise land of fried chicken and childhood obesity for a wonderful two weeks of Christmas break. After Christmas we will all be coming back to Smithtown and ending the lecture phase of our program and starting the outreach phase! I am so excited to see all the Lord is going to do through our team here in the states and then in Costa Rica. I can’t believe that I am almost halfway done with this program, it feels like forever ago that I got here but I’ve only been here for two months! Time flies when your life is being turned upside down.

I think that’s all I’ve got for now but I will be posting a few weeks after Thanksgiving. If you are still with me after all of that rambling about One Direction and childhood obesity you are a SAINT and I want to thank you for reading all of this. I would go on about everything I’ve learned here but I really think everyone should just take some time off and do a disciple training school for themselves :) Trust me you will not regret it. I hope you all (can you believe I just said that) have the best week and that you will be filled with an all-consuming passion for our Father! 

May the Lord bless you and your families this Thanksgiving! 

In Him, 

Kitty xoxo 

My First YWAM Blog Post, Yeehaw!

Hello to all of my wonderful friends and family!

I still can't get my head around the fact that I am writing this to you from Smithtown, New York. I live in New York. How weird is that? Very. I think I might actually still be in shock. I am starting my fourth week here at YWAM Metro New York. And yes, I am still loving every single flipping minute of it. I don't think I have ever been so busy so please excuse me for how long it has taken to update my blog. But I thought it would be nice to take some time today and post something new so that everyone has an idea of what I am doing here and what I am learning. 

So as I said this is week four here at YWAM. Our first week was sort of an orientation/get to know you week which was actually really great. The past few weeks we have started lecturing with guest speakers. The second week we learned about intercession, this past week we learned about the nature and character of God, and this week we are learning about the holy spirit. Every morning I wake up at 6 AM and get ready and have what we call here at YWAM work duties. My job is breakfast duty which is essentially waking up every day and getting everything ready for breakfast for everyone here on base. And then of course there's dishes and cleanup afterwards which is usually accompanied by dance parties to gospel music in the kitchen (no seriously one morning the two girls I work with started a conga dance line around the kitchen.) One of the main things I prayed for coming here to YWAM was that I would be put even more out of my comfort zone and this job at first was quite the struggle for this little kitten who really loves her sleep. But now that I look at it as a chance to serve the Lord and serve my fellow students and staff, the more I have come to enjoy it. I actually think it might be my favorite part of my day. Every day after breakfast and quiet times, we always have a time of worship or devotion or intercession. Lectures take up most of the morning, and then there's lunch and other activities in the afternoon. Some nights we have off that we usually spend catching up on Nashville or going to the laundromat down the street to do laundry. Other nights we will have worship and community nights, and then once a week we meet with small groups and do fun things like watch movies or bake or go to town to get ice cream. Fridays are our Outreach days, where we go out into the city and try to serve people and share Jesus. This past weekend we went to Brooklyn and set up prayer stations at a street festival in Brooklyn. But more about that later. We have Saturdays and Sundays off, and we usually spend those sleeping and playing cards and going to church. Even though we are very busy throughout the day, everything is very low-key and laid back which I absolutely love. I never feel the pressure to go out and do something just to do something, it's just as cool here to play ping pong with friends as it is to go to a bar in Tuscaloosa. Needless to say I like it here a whole lot. I haven't even lived here a whole month yet, and I am already dreading leaving this place for the holidays. 

The people I am surrounded with here at YWAM are absolutely incredible. I know I talk a lot and that I usually over exaggerate everything, but believe me when I say that I am obsessed with the students and the staff here. There are 17 girls and 3 boys doing this program with me, and then about 10 or 15 staff that are just the best. Everyone is around the same age, the youngest being 16 and the oldest student is 25. We have students from all over - a few from New York, a couple fellow southerners, a few from Colorado, Oregon, Texas, and Michigan, and then some from Germany, Canada, and the UK! (Yes for those of you wondering to yourself about how I am holding up with a real life British friend at this program with me - I am absolutely obsessed with her and I usually just follow her around and ask her to say things and just smile at her from across the room because she's just so lovely.) I think my favorite part about the people here is just how genuine they are. Everyone here is desperately seeking the Lord and looking for some direction for their life, just like me. No one knows what's next for them and so it's reassuring that we are all taking some time off and figuring out what the Lord wants from us in the future. The first week we were here the students and the staff spent a few days laying in a circle telling our testimonies to the group. And now three weeks later I feel like these people are my family. I can walk into any room here and sit down with anyone and talk about anything, which I just love. I might not know someone's dog's name or favorite color or what car they drive, but after hearing their testimonies and living with them for a month, I really feel like I have known them forever. Every person here is very uplifting and very encouraging, and honestly I just never want to leave. Obviously we are all very different and some of us don't really have anything in common, but we all have Jesus to talk about so it just doesn't really matter if we like the same music or movies or TV shows. I've always thought that I could only be friends with people who are like me - outgoing, extroverted, laid back, loud - but some of my best friends here are actually really quiet and introverted and enjoy silence and solitude. Thank you Lord for putting all of these amazing people into my life. You knew exactly what I was looking for and gave me more than I could have ever asked for!

The culture here in Smithtown is very different from what I am used to. People are weird. Some are mostly angry and easily aggravated. Cars honk their horns a LOT and drive like they are Ricky Bobby trying to shake and bake. There is no Chickfila or Publix here (insert crying face emojis at this point.) I love talking to strangers and making conversations with employees at different businesses but no one does that here. I say thank you and you're welcome and excuse me to people and they look at me like I just said I was thinking about stealing their children. People here on base literally call me Southern Belle because of my accent. I didn't even think I had an accent coming here but everyone thinks I sound hilarious. No one here says dadgummit. No one here wears oversized clothing. NO ONE DRINKS SWEET TEA. Everyone does like Nutella though so we do have a little bit of an overlap, thank ya Lord. So yes, life is very different. But I absolutely LOVE it. And I wouldn't want to be at anywhere else. No one has their cars here so we walk everywhere. And I mean everywhere. We can't listen to secular music or watch R-rated movies and we don't have access to a TV. We play a lot of board games and cards and watch a lot of old disney movies. Life is different from life in Alabama but so far I am just loving it. 

I was just telling my Mumsie last week that I wish I had done this earlier. It's terrifying to get out of your comfort zone because we get so comfortable with our daily routines. But one of the first things I have learned here is that change can be good for you. If God can get us out of our box, we become vulnerable and I think that's when He can start working on our hearts without us getting distracted. I really miss my family and my dogs and all of my friends, but I don't want to go home yet. I have so much more to learn here. I am so thankful for this experience and I wanted to say a special thank you to all of you who have been praying for me and that helped me get out here. I wish all of you could be here and take part in this incredible ministry. I am so blessed that God chose me to stop what I was doing and come here and spend some time with Him. Thank you to everyone who has been calling and texting and face timing me -- it's so good to hear from all of you! I want to stay as connected as possible to everyone at home so please keep updating me on your lives. If there is anything that you would like me to be specifically praying for, please don't hesitate to text or call me. I am literally just sitting around here reading through my Bible and praying and talking to people so I would love to set some time aside to pray for you. 

The last thing that I wanted to mention in this post is what all I have been learning about myself and about God this past month. I think God has put it on my heart to tell people that it's okay to be different. It's okay to not follow the norm, and it's okay to chase your dreams and invest in what you love. I can't even begin to explain to you how caught up I got in college - my sorority, my grades, the parties, the boys, the football games, the list goes on forever - and now that I am out of it I can see so much more clearly. You can't really tell when you are in the midst of it because everyone around you is pretty much just like you - talking like you talk, dressing like you dress, acting like you act. Now that I am looking back on my time in college I am actually kind of disappointed in myself. I always told myself that I wouldn't be that girl who did what people wanted her to do and wanted her to be and that is exactly what I became. I don't know what's next for me in my life, whether it is going back to Alabama to get a degree, starting a photography business, applying to go staff with YWAM, or anything that the Lord tells me to do, but I know now that I have to go about it differently. I want to be different. I don't want to be one of the crowd. I want to do the right thing for me, not necessarily the right thing that society is telling me to do. The world tells us to follow the crowd and try to fit in and try to just get by. But I don't want to live someone else's life anymore. I want to live my own and I want to do it for the glory of God. I want to watch TV shows that I want to watch and go to sleep early and listen to praise music in my car and be friends with who I want to be friends with. I don't want to hang out with friends in bars and I don't want to party. Why do something if you don't enjoy it and if it doesn't please the Lord? When we all can wrap our heads around the fact that Jesus is literally the only thing that matters, the sooner we can actually feel like we are living fulfilled lives because we are living with a purpose. I feel like I have just been flailing around the past three years at Alabama searching for some direction, when all I really needed to do was turn to Jesus and seek Him for everything that I need. I don't even know if this all makes sense but I thought I would at least try to get across what all the Lord has been doing inside of me the past few weeks. All I know is that God made me specifically and has a very precise plan for my life, so I've got to stop looking at the world and at other people for direction. If we say that we are living for Jesus and seeking the Lord but we don't even spend time with Him or consult Him about this life that He has created for us, how can we ever expect to become more like Him? 

I will try posting again soon, life is crazy busy here but I want to keep everyone updated on what we are up to and everything the Lord is doing here! I am going to add some pictures of my first few weeks here in New York! I hope you all (yeah you read that right, these northerners are really rubbing off on me) have the best week! Thanks so much for reading all of my terribly random ramblings. 

God bless you and your family this week! 

Love you and miss you all dearly,

Kitty xoxo

but really why am i so bad at blogging?

So, social media.

As you are reading this post you probably have your phone sitting on the table right beside you. Or maybe you are even reading it on your phone at this very second. Either way, can we just take a step back for a second and try to remember what it was like not having an iPhone? Remember five years ago when everyone had different phones like that gross little slider chocolate phone or maybe the infamous razor? There might have been some super cool kids in school that had the iPhone 3g but let's just not talk about them right now because they are the original hipsters and were definitely a minority. In my family, cell phones were given to us as safety precautions. I had a phone so that I could call my mum when I needed to be picked up at the movie theater when the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants ended. You might have texted your friends on it some or maybe talked to your super cute girlfriend at night before you did your geometry homework, but it wasn't attached to you everywhere you went by any means. Sometimes I would leave my phone on the charger and forget to bring it to school with me, and I can vividly remember my mum being more stressed out about it than I was (No really I think I got spanked for it.) Nowadays if I even go into another room without my phone I feel discombobulated and don't even get me started on leaving it at home when I leave the house. If we were playing a game of would you rather right now, I honestly think I would rather choose to leave the house without pants on than without my phone. How in the HECK did we get so addicted to a small hunk of metal made by tiny precious children in China? I mean think about it - most of us would say that we couldn't live without our iPhones, but when you think about it, people have for years and have been just as happy and just as successful. I mean heck, when Queen Beyonce was in the studio recording the classic "Crazy in Love" in two thousand and something, she didn't need to tweet and say "Recording Crazy in Love right now with this really handsome guy, Jay-Z. Hope you like it. PS - I think he has a crush on me," to make it successful. (If we are going to get technical here she actually just made a Twitter account about a year ago and has only tweeted four times.) So that goes to show you that - YES - you actually can love your mother without tweeting to her on Mother's Day and -YES - you can get good grades without tweeting a picture of your report card and last but not least, - YES - you can read your Bible without tweeting about how great your quiet time was this morning. For some reason I just really want to put a "boom baby" at the end of that sentence so here it goes - BOOOOOM BABY!

So now that I have gotten that off my chest and I have given us a little perspective to look back on, let me tell where I think social media has gone WRONG. Okay first of all, everyone has really good friends that we want to keep up with. That's totally acceptable. But when it gets to the point when you are following 1,000 people I think it might be time to reevaluate what we are doing with out lives. No matter how many people you are friends with on facebook or following on twitter, when in the world did we decide it was a normal thing to know what those hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people are doing at every moment of every day? Yes, we love our friends and family members and coworkers and favorite celebrities but when it gets to the point where you are refreshing your feed and it takes 30 minutes to read through all of these tweets aren't you annoyed that it took so much time? And usually the material you are scrolling through is totally pointless and not applicable to your life at all. For example: let me refresh my twitter feed really quickly and rephrase some of the tweets on my timeline so I won't step on anyone's toes.

•  "Laying out at the pool and drinking my skinny girl margaritas! #Heaven #HappyGirl (Attaches picture of girl's greasy sweaty legs in front of the pool or ocean"
•  "Good workout at the gym this morning. That 6 AM spin class was killer. #TimeForWeights #RiseAndGrind"
• "Flashback Friday to when I weighed 99.37 pounds and surfed the waves in Maui for senior trip with my bestie, @whitegirltwitternamehere! (emoji of the sun and a swimsuit and maybe a heart) Attaches link to instagram of the girls wearing entirely too revealing bikinis and the ocean in the background)
• "Oh my gosh this is heaven. Thank you Lord for your goodness and your faithfulness." (Attaches picture of a Starbucks cup with your name written on it and the steering wheel of your car in the background.)
• Instagram of a pretty sunset 
• Instagram of a dog making a cute face / wearing something funny / sleeping in a weird position

#nofilter

You probably have people just like this that you follow on social media too. Isn't it weird that we all have this sort of stereotype that we fall into on social media and we act like we have to follow it all the time? (Examples: a fitness person who loves to talk about their workout and what healthy food they are eating, or the high school girl who sub tweets and quotes lyrics to sad songs, or funny people who always try to be witty and compete with one another, or the man that loves to update people on every sports event that he watches) But we will go into more detail about that later. Moral of the story is even  though these people are our friends or role models or whatever, most of the information that we are putting into our brain from social media is completely useless.

Secondly - I think that social media has become way too glorified in our culture. Yes, it's cool. Yes, it's informative. But honestly I think we are making it a bigger priority than our families, our friends, and most importantly, God. I had a major HOLY CANOLI WHAT ARE YOU DOING KATHERINE? moment a few weeks ago when I got home from the summer. I would wake up every morning, relieve the stress on my bladder of course, and then go back to my bed where I would pick up my phone off of my bedside table and check my text messages, email, twitter, instagram and all of those notifications before I got out of bed for the day. (Which of course take the average person 30 minutes to an hour to complete.) The first commandment in the Ten Commandments is "You shall have no other Gods before me." Right. Everyone knows that. It's the first one so it has got to be pretty important to our Creator and Savior. I always tell myself and others that I am putting the Lord first in my life. And in so many ways I am. But he wants to be first in everything! The order is so important to Him. And I finally realized that I was waking up every morning and spending figurative time with my friends and some people who I have never even met, before even opening up my Bible or thanking the Lord for waking me up that morning! How messed up is that? All I know is that if I were in His very large shoes and I had sent my son to die for them and then saved them from eternal damnation and all they were doing is praising this tiny little piece of technology in their hands, I would be really frustrated. Who do we think we are? I know that I want to live a life that glorifies Him and I am just not so sure anymore that some people (myself included) can juggle it all at once. We all say that we are so busy and so stressed and always have way too much going on to spend time with Him, but I say we change that today and make him the priority and not other people. Because when it comes down to it ladies and gentlemen, will our tweets being favorited or our instagrams getting 100 likes mean anything to us if we approach the throne of Heaven and the Lord says we can't spend eternity with Him because he doesn't know us at all?

Lastly, I hate what social media is doing to our everyday interactions. Recently I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and I saw that one of my really good friends was on this big trip that I didn't even know she was going on. I thought to myself, "Hmm that's weird. Why wouldn't my gurlie tell me she was going on that trip?" And then I realized that that is just how we share information now with our friends. Like whether we got accepted into college or it was your dad's birthday or you are going on a cruise or you graduated high school - most of the time we find out from social media. And all of that is fine. But you have to ask yourself - is this how I want my relationships to be from now on? Do I just want friends who follow me on twitter? I don't know about you but I want friends who in twenty years will be calling me every week to see how I am doing and laugh with me about funny things that happen to me. I don't just want people who interact with me over a few websites! I mean dang is that too much to ask for? Posting on someone's wall or tweeting at them or putting up a collage of them on instagram  will never be as special as calling them or actually talking to them face to face. And when it comes to actual romantic relationships - please for the love of One Direction get off your phones and pay attention to each other! Tweeting at your significant other when they bathe the dog, mow the lawn, give birth to your son, or cook you a nice meal will NEVER be as special or even as real as getting off your fat angle side side and looking them into their eyes and saying, "Hey baby cakes sugar muffin sweet lips. Thank you so much for _____________ << (insert literally anything there.) And when you are on dates or at the movies or just drinking coffee in the morning, put down your freaking phone and pay attention to him or her and I promise you you won't regret it. You can tweet as many times as you want and say how great your date with your boyfriend is, but when you are on your phone the whole time checking what Kim Kardashian is doing with her baby weight and your boyfriend is cussing at his phone because he lost a life in Candy Crush Bike Racer, was your date really that great? NO. This actually applies to everyone. Next time your family sits down for a meal, try putting everyone's phones on silent and leave them in your rooms and talk to each other. Weird concept right?! Isn't is so frustrating when someone is texting when you are trying to hold a conversation with them in person? For those of you that haven't been reality slapped yet, being on your phone when someone is trying to speak to you is just really rude and you are nonverbally saying to them that the person in this phone is more important than you so I am going to give my attention to it right now instead. When you get real with yourself it is actually really simple. I would much rather listen to my mom (who I know would take a bullet for me) talk about her Pure Barre class or a funny experience with my grandmother than scroll through Harry Styles' instagram feed and like all of his pictures. (Don't worry yall - I've already done that. Love you Harry baby xo) But seriously, all of these celebrities or athletes that we are so obsessed with don't care about us at all and we are choosing to invest more into them than in people that actually love and care about us.  Let's put down our pieces of technology and be more intentional with each other. I can guarantee you that your life will become instantly better and brighter. 

How do I even conclude this? I am definitely not saying you need to click out of this and go deactivate all of your accounts and delete the apps off your phone. For so many of us it just comes as a second nature to be on our phones all the time, but I've realized that I don't want to be that girl anymore. I want to be the girl that is spending her time with her family and working out at the gym, and reading good books and living her life. If we stop trying so hard to form this picture of our life for others to see on social networks, maybe then that is when we will actually truly start to live again! So needless to say, I am going to be taking a little break from social media for a while.

If you are actually still reading this and haven't fallen asleep -- thank you! I don't blog a lot I know but this has been on my mind for a few weeks now and I just thought I would share it with others. Thanks again for reading, now let's all turn off our electronics and go interact with human beings! HOORAY!

Kitty

xo