quote to ....... well, something

"That's not right. It's just wrong!"
-Anna

she's turning twenty!!!!

my little sister is having a birthday today ..... :)

an afternoon with my sister

We did errands, and found the perfect sweaters for the flowers girls!

I bought the sheet music for a song for the wedding: Great Is Thy Faithfulness. The version John and I chose is by Fernando Ortega. He completely rewrote the music, but kept all the lyrics the same. It is so lovely!

Then we got our makeup done

and did some preliminary price checking on paper goods for the wedding.

There were several other errands in the midst of all that, so we had a long, yet wonderful day together.

Date Night

Friday, December 21, 2008

We picked up my wedding band, finished our Christmas shopping, and went out to eat at Chipotle. It was a lovely evening!!! Anna went with us, and we had an "adventure" on the way home.

chaperon

http://picasaweb.google.com/lizibeth/20071221WeddingBandsAndChipotle

Bella

"If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."
-Jose in the movie Bella

Anna, Mom, some friends and I went to go see Bella on Monday night. It's a good movie, a very good movie. It is a movie about despair about hope, about joy, love, about life. It is about grace. It is a movie that you should definitely consider seeing.


What plans have you made? Has God laughed?

"..you say, 'Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, ... yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. ... You ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.'"
-James 4:13-15

What plans have I made? Have I considered that the result of "my" plans is ultimately in the Lord's hands? The movie gave me things to ponder, to think about. For example, the idea that a tragedy doesn't have to end as a tragedy, but can become a source of beauty. It can become bella.

Sisters and Friends

Anna, Lizzie, and Leitha

learning from my sister

Sometimes you learn the most from the one you used to teach. Last night Anna - my little sister - wrote about hope. She expressed wonderfully some of the things that I have been feeling, but unable to say. Her words also brought conviction:

"When my desires are disappointed, it becomes apparent that the fault does not lie in others, but in my own heart."

When have my desires been disappointed recently? Oh, yesterday (or was it this morning?). The root of that disappointment was in my own heart. My own childish and immature heart.

"When I place heavy expectations on others to satisfy my needs, not only do I wrong them, but I also starve myself of what God desires to freely give." She is right. God designed me to be satisfied in Him, Him alone. Nothing else even comes close, and that is very, very good.

A Bit Of Time Together (away from home)

Lake Tahoe Vacation

Daniel, Anna, Leitha (a friend), and I went up to Lake Tahoe on Friday. We met the rest of the family at a friend's cabin, and spent two very wonderful days with them. It was a short break from the normal routine of work, school, ministry, work, school, ..................
I only wish it had been longer!

Sisters @ Tahoe

Twirling

Anna, Twirling


I am convinced that there is something unique to girls that causes them to long to be beautiful. They dress up when they they are little (and when they are grown) and want to know "how they look".

Little girls want others to appreciate the effort that they have gone through to "be pretty". They need you to notice their daisy crown and the washable marker on their fingernails. Even if they are prancing around in shoes that are too big, an outfit that doesn't match, and have grass in their hair from a quick tumble, little girls need you to look at them with wonder. They need to be the beautiful princess, need to know that there is a prince somewhere who sees their beauty and will fight to protect it.

Little girls are precious and precocious things. They need to be taken seriously and treated gently. Telling her she is beautiful makes her day. Asking her out on a "date" makes her week. And if you want her to open her heart to you? Open your heart to her.

And they twirl (remember Kathleen Kelly in You've Got Mail?). There is something very feminine and joyful about twirling. Maybe it has to do with wearing a full and swishy skirt, or the way it makes you feel as if you are a dancing princess, and a beautiful one at that. Maybe it is just pure joy. But whatever it is, every little girl has done it, and any truthful woman will admit to twirling occasionally herself.
How do I know? Because I was a little girl not too long ago, and yes, I still twirl.



Dancing Slippers

A Lazy, Rainy Day

Daniel and Anna and I are going up to Pilot Lake for the weekend.
So I made some pies to take with us: a pumpkin, a banana cream, and two apple (with lattice tops).

It snowed 8-10" there last night. Enough to completely change the prospective schedule!

Today I have been doing laundry and getting caught up on things around the house.
Right now I am listening to the rain through the open window. It is 64 degrees outside, with intermittent showers. When we are between showers, the sky is a brilliant blue, and all the colors of the trees are extremely vivid. I found out that the pears are almost ripe, and a few early ones had fallen. When we get back we will have pears for breakfast!

Sisters In The City

Shopping Together

Pictures from the weekend

Sisters, partners in crime (it is a long story ...)

San Francisco Bay, from the 92 bridge

preparing to drop off the face of the earth

(figuratively, that is).

Yes. I am leaving. To go somewhere. Somewhere for a month.
"Camp".
Yup.
I get to go to camp!!!!!!
This camp does not have a telephone.
This camp does not have cell phone service.
This camp is remote.
It is on a lake (hence the name, "Pilot Lake Christian Camp").

I will be working in .......... the kitchen!
Anna will be there, too.
She will be counseling, helping out with lifeguarding, and in the kitchen.



I will miss my family.
I will miss my friends.
But I will be learning of my Saviour, the One who is my Brother and my Friend.

I will also be learning how to communicate with the ones I love via the mail, not the phone or face to face. Should be interesting.

quote for today

I love being a girl!
-Anna

Sisters

"best-est" friends


There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
-Proverbs 18:24

Mmhmm. (a.k.a. "sister")

Sisters

Session 3: The Power of God's Grace - Kay Arthur (and a few more pictures from the weekend)

My notes from session three of the Deeper Still conference, San Francisco, March 9-10

Appropriate the power of God's grace to take you through the trial - it is sufficient to take you through any fire.

II Corinthians 12:7-10
v. 9 - the law came through Moses, grace and truth through Christ
grace = power (not to sin)
Final answer: "I am not taking away the thorn, My grace is perfected in weakness."
v. 10 - when I am weak, THEN I am strong.

Acts 13:22 - Do I have my heart set on the things of God? Even after I have fallen? Do I desire to be a precious one of God? What is my heart set on?
v. 36 - He served the purpose of God in his own generation.

II Samuel 12:8 - God is sovereign. None can stay God's hand (Isaiah 45, Psalm 103)
v. 9 - "So why have you despised My word?"

v. 13 - David acknowledges his sin.

I John 5 - If you have really gone "too far", God will take you home. Until then you have the opportunity to appropriate the power of His grace. God is a God of grace. David understood this. But David also knew he must go through punishment and chastening, and he went the distance with God anyway because God had his heart.

If you have a heart for God, then you have a heart like God's. If He hates sin, you will too.

The deeper you delve into the Scriptures, the less angry you will become with God because you will understand that He is sovereign and He is God.

Faith is not faith until it is tested.

Psalm 51 - "hessed" = loving kindness
God still has a purpose for you as long as you have breath.

Galatians 1:23 - If God can use you, He can use me!
It is only after you acknowledge your sin that God can heal you. He can still use you in a mighty way, you can still go deeper, but you must
acknowledge your sin, repent and claim the power of His grace.

II Samuel 24 - David sins again. Repents. God caused it all to work for good, used the threshing floor as the temple mount where every nation will someday gather.
Hebrews 12:11-13 - Take your discipline and be healed. He wants to use you, but you must take the discipline.

I Chronicles 28:1-6, 8-9, 11-12, 17, 19, 22 - Great gladness

There is recovery if you will appropriate God's grace and go ever "deeper still".

Happy Birthday To You ...

Anna Genette Jacobsen

Anna's birthday was yesterday. She turned 19.
19 years of Anna's life, some bittersweet, but all wonderful, and I am thankful for every moment.
Watching her grow up (it sounds so odd to say that, I am only 20 months her senior) physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally has taught me alot. In many ways I look up to her (and not just because she happens to be 3 1/2 inches taller). She has walked through valleys so deep that I cannot see myself ever being in them, and she has come through with a strong and glorious faith. She is far from perfect, and knows it very well, but has an incredibly strong desire to grow ever more like Christ. And she really knows how to have fun (she just might be the camp counselor who helped your daughter put Vaseline on the door knobs). I can hardly wait to see the kind of woman she might be in five years ...



We celebrated tonight with presents and a chocolate cake that Julia made (from scratch - it was very good). "A good time was had by all."

Pier 39

Welcome to the Pier (Anna took this one)

Mrs. Spruance (Jill), Anna and I spent a few hours wandering around Pier 39 this afternoon (can you believe I have lived in California all my life and never been here? Must have been ... deprived or something). We ate sourdough bread, drank coffee, talked, watched the guys dancing on the street corner, took lots of pictures and had a wonderful time.