I Am His and He is Mine

So....I don't actually feel like blogging right now.  But, I want to keep things current for you.

Two weeks ago, I had to make a very hard decision.  The decision to follow God wholeheartedly and step out in obedience and in faith.  God told me that it was time to end something that was very near and dear and close to my heart.  I had to let go of something I loved so much, I didn't know how I could live without it.  With everything in my being I wanted to fight it, and not do what He urged me to.  Even so, I did it.  It was very hard but, it was right.  In return I received peace and a settled spirit that just would not come from anything else, but thats not the least of it.  The most amazing thing is that, in the midst of my broken heart's troubles, he spoke to me.  He pulled me out of the pit and called me by name, He spoke to me and said "Halei, let's go."  So i'm following right now and He just won't stop talking.  Which as precious as it is, sometimes it's hard to handle so much at once.

  I will tell you about somethings God has revealed to me in this time. I'm supposed to be a missionary right now so I'm going to Mexico this week, then possibly Peru over Christmas, and Honduras next summer.  Exciting right?!?!?!  I know :) Also, I recently I had to cut my hair.  It was dry and dead and the ends were split and would keep splitting upward if I didn't cut it.  Now, my hair looks healthy and fresh and sassy and bold.  God gave me an illustration based on my haircut.  Right now, I'm in a new season of my life.  I'm cutting out everything in my life that is unhealthy.  I'm getting rid of everything thats not breathed by Him and allowing myself to heal, so that I can have a more wonderful, vibrant, and full life.  I had to cut off my unhealthy hair that was damaged from lots of styling without any protection and in the same fashion, I have to cut off the parts of my life that are damaged and broken from the living I did without any covering or protection so that my heart can be whole and perfect again.
 

  Now, I told you I was following and it's hard.  Remember when I posted that blog about the Brook Fraiser Ligertwood???  About that song Like Incense/Sometimes by Step.  It has become my prayer.  I didn't understand the significance that song would hold in my life but, I get it now.  "Please still my anxious urge toward rebellion, let love keep my will upon it's knees."  As a young child I frequently engaged in what my Mom affectionately calls,  a battle of the wills, where I would struggle and struggle with her about doing what I wanted to.  I would fight her tooth and nail, with vigor and strength than is rarely seen in a toddler...and toddlers possess quite a bit of those two.  I would have temper tantrums that lasted for 3-4 hours over simple things.  Non-stop screaming and wailing because I didn't get my way.  It got to the point where they would have to put me in my room and let me scream it out.  I would throw my toys and pull the drawers out of my dresser so they had to lock all my things in the closet.  Just me and my bed for hours screaming because I needed to get my way.  Praise God they left me in there, otherwise I'm pretty sure I would have become some sort of delinquent.  Anyways, eventually they subsided and I began to realize that no matter what my parents would always win.  Why?  Because their will was stronger.  Currently I'm reliving my toddler days and engaging in a battle of the wills with God.  If I don't back down, I'm pretty sure he is going to put me in my room for hours by myself until I'm done screaming.  I don't want to go to my room so, I'm fighting with God against my own will in order to do what is best for me.  Unfortunately I haven't stood up to my will in quite some time, so it's grown to a monstrous size.  So be praying for me as I slay the dragon.

(I know this bloggity blog is somewhat all over the place....Are you following so far? haha)

  The last thing before I wanted to share before I left you all was something that i saw and heard on Owl City's blog this morning,   Just go read and listen.  http://owlcityblog.com/2010/10/25/my-hope-is-found/
You'll be ever so glad you did.  Also, if you want to save that awesome lil song to your computer go to this link:http://owlcityblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/In-Christ-Alone.mp3 and right click and click the save as option.  Then you'll have it as an MP3 and you can put it on your ipod, or make it a cd, or do whatever you want with it :)

Love love love love love you sooooo much whoever you are thats reading this,
Halei the Sassy

Not What I Expected/An Interesting Turn of Events

  So today, I had it completely mapped out what I was going to write.  My hands were eager to spill out onto the blank world wide web exactly what thoughts rambling around in my head needed to be shared with everyone.  Then, I had to suddenly take a break and drop someone off somewhere.  While I was on my way back, I just happened to have my Hillsong Live CD playing.  So i turned the dial to track no. 7 and I listened.  Thinking about the words and humming softly to myself.  My thoughts turned to my life the past couple of months.  I've been waiting for something that would inspire me to draw closer to God.  An experience that would cause His spirit to fill me and just light me up and set me aglow for all the world to see.  Sometimes I astonish myself with how little I think things through.

  It's been said forever that God is a relational being.  God gave his only Son so that he could have a personal relationship with you.  God desires to be close to you more than anything.  He loves you.  Those sentences have been ringing in my ears since the moment I heard them...and I thought I understood them.  Still, here I was waiting for him to do something.  Then it occurred to me as I'm listening to Brooke Fraser Ligertwood sing these words:

May my prayer like incense rise before You

The lifting of my hands as sacrifice

Oh Lord Jesus turn Your eyes upon me

For I know there is mercy in Your sight

Your statutes are my heritage forever

My heart is set on keeping Your decrees

Please still my anxious urge toward rebellion

Let Love keep my will upon its knees

To all creation I can see a limit

But Your commands are boundless and have none

So Your Word is my joy and meditation

From the rising to the setting of the sun

All Your ways are loving and are faithful

The road is narrow but Your burden light

Because You gladly lean to lead the humble

I shall gladly kneel to leave my pride

  Halei.  Relationships are work.  You have to work with God slowly and with perseverance to change yourself.  Rome wasn't built in a day.  I'm sure at this point other drivers on the road were pointing at me with wide open mouths, ogling at the brilliantly illuminated light bulb floating above my head. Have you ever had a moment where you truly understood something that you already understood?  Yeah...me too.

  Then the music shifted.  The drums started to beat heavier, the voices were singing in unison, and the Holy Spirit gave me a vision.  I was standing on a giant hill, I could see everything.  My hair was blowing behind me in the wind looking gloriously unkempt.  My face was beautiful despite my wild appearance.  I looked pure and natural and I was glowing.  Beams of sparkly light were shooting from my body and they shined light on everything below me.  My arms were in the air and I sang just like the people in the song 

Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You

  Whenever think of who I am, I always see the wild girl on top of the hill with her hair flying helter skelter.  This girl was soo much more beautiful and more pure and natural and she was GLOWING!!!  I wanted to be her so badly. 


I realized I can be her.  If I work relationally with God, If I stop sitting around waiting for him to just make me into that, I can be her.  I want to share this experience with you guys and for you to listen to the song and go back and read this entry again while its playing.  Then at the last part ask Him to show you your potential...what you could be.  Ask Him to show you, your very own version of what He showed me.  If you want, and I'd really appreciate it if you did, post a comment of what He showed you.  You can do it anonymously even.  


HERE IS THE SONG



Click on the big words right above this sentence. 


I am anxious to hear what the result of this experiment is.  Also it helps if you turn up the volume really loud. 


Have a fabulous Thursday.

Not All of us Were Meant for Toy Making

Sooooo


  It's been a massive amount of time since I wrote last and I know you guys are all dangling from your computer chairs (When I wrote this I imagined you as a miniature version of yourself grasping to the edge of a giant chair, ready to fall to the floor at any moment where you would be left to the mercy of the dog sitting next to your feet)  wondering, "Whats going on with Halei?  Why did she desert us like this?  Is she ever coming back?"


  The answer is..... Of course I am you goose. ;P 


  I just feel like a giant lame pants because I have absolutely nothing to write about.  Well, that's not true.  Really, I just don't feel like I have anything bold or exciting or magical to share.  Lot's of things happen to me, they just aren't so awesome I want to shout them out to the whole world.  When people read me, I want them to see something so awesome that it blows their socks, shoes, and toe rings off.  


  But, since activities aren't all that exciting, I will tell you about scary things.   You guys can deal with scary right?  It's October, so here's my scary post about really scary stuff. Legit scary things like, my thoughts.  Mostly my thoughts actually.  My thoughts are scary.  Scary to explore and scary to share.  Sharing makes you vulnerable and being vulnerable is scary. That makes sharing a scary thing.  Also, just plain exploring the going-ons of my cranium is a dangerous activity as well.  So bare with my you salty brutes, as I dangle me-self from the plank e'er so recklessly.     


  I am lonely.  


*GASP*  "But, Halei you have all-"...Silence! This is my blog foo! (and if you'd just wait until the end for questions and comments I'd radically appreciate it)


I have friends, yes.  I have a boyfriend, yes. (most wonderful boyfriend ever actually)  I have family, yes.  I have a Saviour and a Father, yes.  There's something still left that I don't have and want desperately.  I'll prelude with a little mini bio about me:


  I'm different.  No one is like me.  Not a single person.  I am unique.    I'm extraordinarily unique.  I don't mean to sound boastful, rather, i'm just trying to to express my singularity.   I see the world differently, I react to things differently, and I think about things way more differently, than anyone I know.  No one desires the same exact things I do, no one wants what I wants.  I've grown accustomed to living this way since it's basically how it's been my whole life. 


  I'm somebody who sees things like a child.  I look at life through gloriously unexposed glasses, through eyes that are so blinded by the sun's splendor that I fail to see the ugliness in everything around me.  I measure something's beauty or coolness by how absolutely, flat on the face, awestruck, it leaves me.  Everything is an experience.  Everything is a miracle.  I am childlike in several different ways: my spirit, my mannerisms, sometimes my logic,my enthusiasm, but mostly my heart.  People are quick to judge my childlike whimsical personality and they make harsh and cruel assumptions.  "Immaturity" one will claim, "A facade; clearly a front" others will deduce.  Hopefully you'll get where I'm coming from when I tell you that a lot of the time I walk around feeling defeated and misunderstood.


  Which is honestly where the loneliness stems from.  Misunderstanding.  If there were someone else out there who knew what it's like.  Who saw what I saw, and felt how I felt, and thought how I thought.  I wouldn't be lonely, I wouldn't be misunderstood.  There would be someone who I could share my struggles with, who gets it. I know they exist.  There are at this exact moment in time 6,872,890,499  people living in the world.  There has to be one who is just like me.  


  I feel like Tarzan.  Living in a world of apes (metaphorically) and being a man.  Living your life being different from everyone, always feeling slightly off.  Never feeling truly 100% accepted.  Imagine how wonderful it is for him to meet someone just like him.  Knowing he isn't by himself.  That there is someone out there who knows what its like and understands his feelings, emotions, thoughts and what causes them.  Someone who isn't going to look at him with disgust and think "Gee, what a wierdo."  


  I will say though...for a wierdo, I do have it pretty much made.  I still have some ape (again metaphorically) friends who think I'm a lil cooky but befriend me in spite of it, and I have that crazy elephant kid who isn't like me but is unique and different from everybody in his own way and has to deal with the same things I do.  Then, you have those people like the ape mom boyfriend ;p. The people who look entirely past any difference whatsoever.  Who are unconditionally excepting of you, who do their absolute best to try to understand anyways, and who will tell off all of those who misjudge and hastily discredit you.  Those people are awesome and I just adore them.


  Whatever role you play in my mixed up jungle fairy tale,  I appreciate you all.  You guys keep me going and I'm really sorry I haven't been the most consistent author.  I'm working on improving.  Eventually I will be perfect. (thats a lie just in case you couldn't sense my sarcasm)
  
Love from the Land of Misfit Toys,


Halei Clark- The Elf Who Wanted to be a Dentist

Boots and Me....

So today, I purchased some boots.  At Cavender's.  These aren't my first boots.  I've owned three pairs before.  But these boots are special.  They are the boots that will stay with me the rest of my life.  Needless to say, I am absolutely in love with them and have yet to take them off of my feet since the minute i returned from the store.  Isn't it amazing how names like Cavender's, Shepler's, and Justin's Boot Outlet Store can make you all of the sudden feel like riding a horse and pulling out your pistol?

  These boots mean a lot to me.  They aren't just a prop in a little girls wardrobe.  They are a symbol of me breaking away.  Freeing myself of all the crap I've buried myself in.  You see, the person I am today is only a small glimpse of the girl I was.  I've hidden myself away and tried to be somebody else.  At heart I've always been a small town country girl.  The one who you see in movies riding bareback with her hair falling out of braids as her trusty mare buttercup canters through a field of flowers on her parents land....well, perhaps not that exact girl but you get the gist.

   I've stumbled through high school trying to fit into the crowd.  Trying to be the girl who always looks absolutely flawless, the one who makes every body's jaw drop as she walks by.  The girl who wears all the fashion forward clothes and listens to the cool music.  Don't get me wrong, on some level I am the girl who wears those clothes and listens to that music.  But it's become all I am now.  If you met me a year ago, you might never have known I'm the girl who likes to drive down dirt roads with her Pops listening to George Strait and Brooks & Dunn (sad face that they're splitting).

   I'm the girl who likes to fish and ride horses and be outdoors all day long.  I'm the girl who would swim in a creek if I wasn't afraid there would be all sorts of scary critters in there.  I like to climb trees and drive out to where I can see all the stars in the sky...  I love the stars :D  I'm the girl who lives with her grandparents and her mom and dad in the small town of Krum, TX.  The one who wears braids to sleep every night, wakes up in the morning and pulls her boots on to go help feed the horses.  The one who gets back from mucking out the stalls to change into her overalls or her long prairie skirt.  The one who looks in the mirror with no makeup on and thinks she's beautiful no matter what anybody else says.  I'm the girl who isn't afraid of having a deep emotional talk with her mom because she hates to cry.  I'm the girl who runs to her daddy at the first sign of any trouble.  I'm the girl who doesn't let a single persons opinion impact who I am.

  In the words of Miranda Lambert " I got lost in this whole world and forgot who I am" from the song The house that built me. The first time I heard that song on the radio it dawned on me.  I had forgotten about that girl who was me. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I was running from myself, that after I moved away from Krum and fell in love with a boy for the first time, I changed.  I stopped being me.  The pressure was too much and I wasn't ready to handle it.  So I lost myself.

  But, not to worry friends.  I'm going back to my roots to see if I can capture the heart and the essence of the thirteen year old girl I used to be.  With the help of Jesus and these brand spanking new boots I think I've got this in the bag.  I'm going to move forward and be me again.  With the help of my Father guiding my steps, I know I can do it.  He's restoring my confidence and it won't be long now until I am back to my old self.  :D

In conclusion I would also like to ask the question: WHO is Conway Twitty??????  I keep hearing about him but I'm not really sure I've ever heard of him.  I will give the person who solves this mystery a crayon and a large hug.

Blessings to you on this fine Tuesday,
Halei <3