read more.

I'm torn about New Years Resolutions. On the one hand, I love the idea of a NEW year...there is something so fresh about a "clean slate", right? But on the other hand, why do we have to wait for a new year to make changes in our life? Why do I need to wait until Jan 1 to decide to eat better, exercise more, read more, etc? So I have mixed feelings about it.

So I don't know if this counts as a new years resolution, and if it does, whatevs. But I am going to finish at least ONE book in 2016. You may find yourself thinking "Wow, Eva. That's a really modest goal. Aren't you an adult? Aren't you in pharmacy school? Shouldn't you aim a little higher?" Trust me, I know. In 2008, I read all 4 books in the twilight series in ONE WEEK. That's 2,444 pages in one week. What has happened to me?! Pharmacy school. It has somehow managed to simultaneously stimulate and deactivate parts of my brain but that's another story... ANYWAYS. I started reading this book earlier this week called Abba's Child by Brennan Manning.  It's a book about walking in our identity as God's children and how necessary that is for us to be able to receive his love. I was feeling kind of intimidated about starting this book (given my really impressive reading track record as of late...) and I read these words on the first page that were just a warm blanket for my soul:

"The road I've traveled these last thirty-eight years is pockmarked by disastrous victories and magnificent defeats, soul-diminishing successes and life-enhancing failures. Seasons of fidelity and betrayal, periods of consolation and desolation, zeal and apathy are not unknown to me. And there have been times...

When the felt presence of God was more real to me than the chair I am sitting on;when the Word ricocheted like broken-backed lightening in every corner of my soul; when a storm of desire carried me to places I had never visited. 

And there have been other times...when I identified with the words of Mae West: "I used to be Snow White--but I drifted"; when the Word was as stale as old ice cream and as bland as tame sausage; when the fire in my belly flickered and died; when I mistook dried up enthusiasm for gray-haired wisdom;when I dismissed youthful idealism as mere naiveté; when I preferred cheap slivers of glass to the pearl of great price. 

If you relate to any of these experiences, you might want to browse through this book and pause to reclaim your core identity as Abba's Child."

-Brennan Manning

WOW.

Raise your hand if you have been flattened by the presence of God!

Raise your hand if the Word has ever felt stale to you!

Raise your hand if you have preferred cheap slivers of glass to the pearl of great price!

*Raises hand for all three*

There is just something beautiful about being able to be super honest about where you have been and where you are at (especially if it's not that pretty) and know that it's OK and that God's heart for me won't ever change as a result of that. For me, this often happens when I am reading the Psalms...who were written by David, the (possibly) schizophrenic poet who went from emotional high to emotional low faster than you can say "Selah"....and yet he was repeatedly referred to as a "man after God's own heart". It's like, if he can be that emotionally unstable and cycle through feelings of nearness and distance from God on a seemingly regular basis and God's favor was continuously on him, then isn't there hope for all of us? 

With certainty.