Family Day

Today is my Family Day, the day that my family actually got me from my foster mother. I don't really think about it that often except when the day comes around every year. I am so thankful for them and couldn't imagine being put in any other family. They are amazing

and so wonderful!

My parents are the sweetest. They have been married for 30 years. They love each other more than the day they got married. They are great examples of how a couple with Christ at the center should look like. At night I can hear them praying together and they find things each day to thank Him for. They are patient and have enough experience between the two of them

to truly give great advice. They are compassionate and really seek out those who need an encouraging word. They are hilarious and fun and keep Matt and I rolling. I am so thankful to God for placing me with the two of you!

Matt is the sweetest, funniest, most charming, and loving brother ever! He means the world to me. I love watching him with his friends, at church and just being in his element. He is the most loyal friend and I love that he wants his friends to know about Jesus. He has great faith, charisma and is our social butterfly. He loves God with reckless abandon. I love it when other people tell me how much they love Matt because I know it's not just me that can see how special he is. Even though Matt was a surprise to our family he was the best surprise we could have ever received!

I love y'all so much and am so very blessed to be able to call myself an Atchley! You guys make everything fun and entertaining.

I love traveling with you guys. (Matt I hope one day you can go over seas with Dad because he is completely out of his element but also amazing all at the same time, it is awesome to see!)

I love watching TV shows with y'all. (Psych couldn't get any funnier.)

I love going to Zu's with y'all. I think the pizza tastes better when we are together.

I love going to see Matt play basketball together.

I love getting to hear y'all's stories.

I love doing random things together like going to see the Harry Potter premier at midnight or having Valentine's breakfast one year at IHOP!

I love that y'all go to breakfast together almost every morning.

I love that my mom and dad have invested so much time with Matt's class at church.

I love seeing your smiles and hearing your laughs!

You three make life worth living and make the world a better place just because you are in it!

I love you all. Thank you for making this a wonderful family to be a part of!!!

Sweet You!

Two years ago I went to Africa with a group of people who were complete strangers. We quickly became family. At the end of our six week stay there we each got a sheet of paper, wrote down each person's name and out to the side put down encouraging words about that certain person. A guy in our group compiled each person's, typed them out and gave them to each of us. We all sat in a hotel room and read them aloud. Now what is cool about rereading these words about myself that others wrote about me is that they are things that I don't always see in myself. But these people who I had only known for a month and a half were aware of them and spoke truth into my life through those encouraging words. They were able to see things in me that I couldn't see in myself. I think the reason this is possible is because we lived together, we ate together, we read together, and worked together. We shared life in a place where hope is lost. We questioned some of life's hardest questions. We cried, laughed, and laughed until we cried. We were eager to learn and share adventure. We fought and enjoyed each other's company. We were blessed to be together if only for a short amount of time.

This whole idea made me think about God because God is ALWAYS able to see things in me that I can't always see in myself. Of course that's because He knows all and sees all. What's different about my experience in Africa and with God is that I had to work hard for those people to know me and I tried actively to get to know them. It went both ways. With God, however, he already knows us because he created us. Psalm 139 (MSG) says,

God, investigate my life; get all the facts firsthand.

I'm an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I'm thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I'm never out of your sight.
You know everything I'm going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you're there,
then up ahead and you're there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can't take it all in!
Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you're there!
If I go underground, you're there!
If I flew on morning's wings
to the far western horizon,
You'd find me in a minute—
you're already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, "Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I'm immersed in the light!"
It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you.
Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother's womb.
I thank you, High God—you're breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I'd even lived one day.
Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
God, I'll never comprehend them!
I couldn't even begin to count them—
any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!
And please, God, do away with wickedness for good!
And you murderers—out of here!—
all the men and women who belittle you, God,
infatuated with cheap god-imitations.
See how I hate those who hate you, God,
see how I loathe all this godless arrogance;
I hate it with pure, unadulterated hatred.
Your enemies are my enemies!

Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I'm about;
See for yourself whether I've done anything wrong—
then guide me on the road to eternal life.

There are situations that we are put into in order to be patient, kind, caring, loving, generous, friendly, faithful, and forgiving. We have so many gifts and talents that are just waiting to explode out of us. God knows we can be these things. He knows it way before we do. He grows us and has designed us to do things that without him would be impossible.

God in Moments of Suffering

I read this article from a friend's blog today and really liked what it said... it's by Rob Bell in a interview with CNN.

Words by Rob Bell::

One Friday evening in the fall of my senior year of college I got a headache.

I took some aspirin, laid on the couch, and waited for it to go away. But it didn't; it got worse. By midnight I was in agony, and by 3 a.m. I was wondering if I was going to die.

As the sun rose, my roommate drove me to the hospital where I learned that I had viral meningitis. A neurologist explained to me that the fluid around my brain had become infected and was essentially squeezing my brain against the walls of my skull.

So that's what that was.

The doctor informed me that it would take a number of weeks in bed to recover.

This didn't fit with my plan.

I was in a band at the time. We'd been playing shows in the Chicago area for a while and had just landed our biggest club dates yet in the city - all of them scheduled over the next several weeks.

We had to cancel all of them.

As this reality hit me, laying there in that hospital bed miles from home with a brain infection, I distinctly remember asking no one in particular "Now what?"

I was devastated. This was not how it was supposed to go. The band was my life, my future, my singular focus. We had just canceled our biggest gigs ever. Eventually I recovered enough to return to school but things weren't the same. Whatever had been driving us in the band wasn't there like it had been before and so we came to the mutual conclusion that it had been great while it lasted and now it was time for the band to come to an end.

I don't think I'd ever felt more lost. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I had all this energy and passion and I wanted desperately to give myself to something that mattered, but I had no plan.

I would walk around campus in a daze, muttering the same prayer over and over, which took the form of "Now what?"

Do you know that feeling when you're playing soccer and you lunge for the ball but you aren't fast enough and the player on the other team has already kicked it quite hard and the ball travels with ferocious velocity and force into your groin region and you keel over, gasping for breath, your voice several octaves higher?

It was like the existential version of that.

And then, things took a strange, beautiful turn.

In the days and weeks following the band's breakup, people I barely knew would stop me out of the blue and say things like, "Have you thought about being a pastor?" Friends I hadn't talked to in months would contact me and say, "For some reason I think you're going to be a pastor."

Me, a pastor? Seriously?

The idea began to get a hold of me and it wouldn't let go. A calling welled up within me, a direction, something I could give myself to.

I tell you this story about what happened to me 19 years ago because I assume you're like me - really good at making plans and plotting and scheming and devising just how to make your life go how it's "supposed" to go.

We are masters of this. We know exactly how things are supposed to turn out.

And then we suffer. There's a disruption - death, disease, job loss, heartbreak, betrayal or bankruptcy.

The tomorrow we were expecting disappears. And we have no other plan.

Suffering is traumatic and awful and we get angry and we shake our fists at the heavens and we vent and rage and weep. But in the process we discover a new tomorrow, one we never would have imagined otherwise.

I have interacted with countless people over the years who, when asked to identify key moments, turning points, and milestones in their lives, usually talk about terribly difficult, painful things. And they usually say something along the lines of "I never would have imagined that would happen to me."

Imagined is a significant word here. Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn't there anymore.

Now I realize that what happened to me - the fluid around my brain swelling up and squeezing it against the walls of my skull – is nothing compared to the pain and tragedy many people live with every day.

But that experience irrevocably altered my life. Nothing was ever the same again. My plans fell apart, which opened me up to entirely new future.

This truth, about the latent seeds of creativity being planted in the midst of suffering, takes us deep into the heart of the Christian faith. We are invited to trust that in the moments when we are most inclined to despair, when all appears lost and we can't imagine any way forward - that it is precisely in those moments when something new may be about to be birthed.

Jesus hangs naked and bloody on a cross, alone and abandoned by his students, scorned by the crowd, and yet defiant, confident, insistent that God is present in his agony, bringing about a whole new world, right here in the midst of this one.

This is a mystery, and one we are wise to reflect on it, because of the countless disruptions we experience all the time.

God is in those moments, grieving with us, shedding tears with us, feeling that pain and turmoil with us, and then inviting to trust that something good can come from even this.

So keep your eyes and your heart open. Be quick to listen and slow to make rash judgments about how it's "all going to turn out," because you never know when you'll find yourself miles from home, laying in a hospital bed with a bad case of brain squeeze, all of your plans crashing down around you, wondering how it all went wrong, only to discover that a whole new life is just beginning.

For Such a Time as This

As I graduated from high school, packed my stuff and headed to California to start my freshman year at Pepperdine I had no idea how naive and unaware I was and how much change I was about to encounter. All I knew was that I was ready for something new and California was where I wanted to go. Little did I know that I was in for the ride of my life. Looking back over the past 4 years. I know I am ready for a new change and challenge in my life as college comes to a close, even though it is a little scary. Donald Miller so beautifully says it like this:

"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, etc. 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 and 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? It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: Leave.
Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed." (Sorry this quote is so long- I just didn't know how to cut anything out.)

These past 4 years are moments I will never forget or take for granted. I have been to two schools, loved, lost, encouraged, renewed, shaped, transformed, lonely, carried, happy, pushed, sad, moved, inspired, uneasy, confident, depressed, angry, tired, cared for, blessed beyond belief, and joyful. I have cried, traveled the world, celebrated, laughed, worshipped, loved, seen loss, read, learned, seen God's wonderful creation, made incredibly genuine friends, had great conversations, and lived in one of the most beautiful places in the United States. I know that the past 4 years were more difficult then I anticipated and was hit pretty hard by the world, but I wouldn't trade these experiences for anything because they have made me who I am today. Just like in Esther when Mordecai speaks to Esther telling her that she has been called maybe for such a time as this. I feel like God has led me here and through every circumstance I have gone through whether good or bad for a purpose. I have been called for such a time as this, into something that I cannot yet see.

Elisabeth Elliot, in her book Path of Loneliness, talks about that after the death of her second husband she felt like God was calling her into a life of loneliness in order for her to draw closer to God her Father. After reading this book I think that if God called me as well, while I was in college, to a path of loneliness so that my life would be drawn closer to Him, than that has made all the difference.

I don't know where I am going, but as I reflect on these past 4 years I know now that life must be lived like there is no tomorrow and that the journey is half the fun. And maybe it should be just as easy as Donald Miller says, "It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out." He says, "Leave." And that is what I am going to do.

Go make a difference.

Women's Retreat

So this weekend we went on the Women's Retreat with the University Church of Christ in Murrieta, California. On Friday I went to Laura's apartment and Laura, Natalie, Ashley and I left from there. We went to Chipotle first to grab dinner and man can those girls eat. We drove for two hours and when we got near the conference center we got turned around. We were so tired that we were deliriously laughing. When we stopped at the gate to the hotel the two guys at the gate couldn't understand us because we were laughing so hard, it was really funny.
We were staying at a conference center, hot springs, and a bible college all in one. It was really interesting because there were tons of women there on retreats from other churches and students were on the campus also. When we walked to our hotel room we passed the hot springs and they smelled awful. It was like sulphur so rotten egg smell, but the place we were at was really pretty and you get used to smell is what I heard, but every time I passed the springs I held my nose! haha!!!
There were about 50 women there of all ages. The oldest was probably in her 70s, maybe 80s and some women brought there babies, there were 3; they were so cute 6 month olds. The retreat was set up around stories. We had three sessions and 3 women shared their stories at each one and we sang before and in between each one. After the session we split up into small groups. My small group was okay but it was such a cry fest totally out of my comfort zone! ha! there was little too much estrogen there for me. And the singing seemed a little archaic to me, well I mean we sang out of the hold hymnals about 80 percent of the time. Totally not my style. I was kind of bored with it and when the women were saying that one thing that they liked most about the weekend was the singing I wanted to be like "COME ON, SERIOUSLY!" There was a group meeting in the room next to our meeting room and their band were practicing while we were singing sometimes. I was really jealous of their group and Laura and I joked about sneaking into their group and joining them because their worship was like home. I made me miss RH.
Then during free time Laura and I passed out, we were soooo tired! It was AWESOME!!! When we woke up we tried to find Natalie to go to Chick-fil-A but she had already gone with people to Sonic, so we went to Sonic by our selves and it was great because I missed it so much! It was nice to have a strawberry limeade!!! Then we went to dinner even after we went to sonic because we had paid for the dinner meal, but I could barely put anymore food in my mouth. I was so full! It was disgusting. We had a good last session and small group, then we split up into groups and put on funny skits of bible stories, it was kind of awkward and weird, but fun too! Then we went to bonfire and made smores by the lake! After talking with Becca a little bit I joined the girls in the hot springs.
The next day I slept thru breakfast and we packed and tried to leave, but Laura's car wouldn't start and her battery wouldn't jump. So we called Triple A but soon her dad called and asked if she would try something and it worked so we got to leave. We went to Sonic one last time for lunch, so good! Anyway that's the end of the weekend!!! It was pretty nice to be able to hang with my friends even if the retreat was kind of weird!!! :)

Jonathan Storment

Memories and things I love about Jonathan....

12. Jonathan is so ridiculous. When he was interning at RHCC he was staying at Jenni New's house and when Britton and Brock ran out of shampoo in their bathroom they didn't tell their mom and Jonathan being the nice house guest he didn't bug Jenni about not having any shampoo to wash his hair. So one day when Jenni was cleaning the boy's bathroom she realized that they didn't have any shampoo in their shower and Jenni asked Jonathan what he had been using while he showered and he promptly said that he had been using conditioner to wash his hair and Jenni just laughed!

11. I loved it when Jonathan first moved to RHCC he called every adult Mr. or Mrs so and so. For years after his internship he still said Mr. and Mrs. so and so even after people told him to stop.

10. When Jonathan got married his wedding was awesome! I don't think I will ever go to another wedding where the groomsmen and the groom walk into the ceremony to 'We are the Monkees' by the Monkees while holding bananas again!

9. While Jonathan was interning Jessica and I would sneak into his office and write him notes on post-it-notes and stick them all over his office. And one day we found a picture of Leslie the girl he was dating at the time and drew a picture of her and stuck it on his desk saying that we wanted them to get married. Also there was this other picture of Jonathan of him working at Taco Bell with bleached tipped hair and a visor and everything, it was greatness.

8. Every Sunday after church we would go to Bueno to eat and of course there were a ton of people there every week, Jonathan being one of them. Jonathan, Matt and I would sit there for hours quoting lines from Dumb and Dumber. Without fail every Sunday we would end up quoting the movie again and it never got old. I love that movie and it's great when you are friends with people who share your appreciation for stupidity!!!

7. One week when my parents were out of town Jonathan came to stay with us, and one night he took us to McDonald's to get ice cream. It was such a fun time to de-stress from school and life and have fun!

6. Also on this same trip to McDonald's we found a stuffed horse in Jonathan's car that he had made for Leslie at build-a-bear, it had a voice box in it that had a recording in it of Jonathan making a horse noise and telling Leslie how much he loved her! I love seeing the ways in which they love each other even if it is cheesy! We definitely made of fun him for this one!

5. Last spring Jonathan went to Burbank to speak at something and I drove out on Saturday to hear him and hang out! We had a great time going to In-N-Out, getting lost, going to a garage sale and.... getting a FLAT TIRE!!!! My tire popped on a sharp curb on one of the many times we had to turn around! We changed that tire in record time laughing while we did it. Poor Jonathan I felt so bad he was late for his sermon and covered in black stuff from my tire!

4. The summer I interned at RHCC for Michael Peters we would take breaks and go invade Jonathan's office and play the music game, where you try to guess the song before someone starts singing, on J's computer and we would also make fun of Bad Brad. haha! I don't think I could marry him sorry Jonathan and Michael.

3. I appreciated that after I got back from Africa last summer he was the first person I called from LAX. That summer was really difficult for me and he was so willing to talk me through it and fill me in on anything I missed from the huge circumstances that took place. He took me to the prison and reassured me that everything was going to be okay. Jonathan is so helpful and patient. He is a great friend because he just loves you where you are at and understands and listens.

2. Jonathan helped me understand Acts because I took a class only on this book. It was good timing because Jonathan was doing a series on Acts and was very eager to tell me all about what he was learning. I like how excited Jonathan gets about studying the Bible, like every time he finds something new and inspiring. It makes me want to dive deeper into God's word.

1. Jonathan has the best props during sermons and he is an amazing preacher! He is a good messenger of the gospel and I can't wait to see how God uses him at Highland!!!

I love Jonathan and I am so sad that he is moving on. I am seriously going to miss you, Leslie, Eden, and Samuel. You guys have a special place in my heart and it will be empty once you leave Fort Worth. But I am also happy that Jonathan gets to pursue his dreams of being a full time pulpit minister because I know that God has blessed him with an amazing gift of sharing Christ's story! You are going to do awesome work!!! LOVE you Jonathan!!!!

Philippians 1:3 "I thank my God every time I think of you!"

p.s. I am so glad that you guys are getting the house that my dad and I found! It is precious!

Flowers for Morgan in honor of James Lyda!

Two weeks ago my grandfather died and I wasn't able to attend the funeral because I couldn't miss any of my classes, it made me really sad because my family is really close. I made a video for the funeral of pictures of my grandfather and his grandkids. And everyone really enjoyed watching it. I was glad they liked it because I worked on it for a long time. I loved him so much and I am glad he is free from pain on this earth and am happy he is with Jesus. My family knew I really wanted to be there but understood that I couldn't; they sent me these flowers on the day of the funeral. I love my family so much!