discoveries

i discovered something today. i really enjoy morning time. especially early morning.. when it's still dark and foggy and the rest of the world is sleeping. i find it very enchanting. today i woke up at 5 am to meet a friend of mine for breakfast in celebration of his birthday. that's only about 6 hours earlier than i'm used to getting up haha. i love it. i'm highly considering getting myself on more of a morning oriented sleeping schedule..
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okay i'm real excited!!! haha so i was having some reading withdraw... and i've been going to all of these bookstores looking for a few particular books over the past weeks and have been rather disappointed that i can't find any Barnes & Noble or Borders that carries these books.. or maybe they do and I just suck at searching for them.. but anyways, I decided to order them online last night. I ordered a couple biographies of some women's different traveling adventures. and then this morning after breakfast, I figured since I was in Marion I should stop by Tree of Life bookstore to look for another book I was hoping to find (which I didn't) but they were having some good sales so I ended up buying 4 more books haha. I bought two donald miller books because i always hear good things about him as an author. the one i had started reading a couple summers ago when i borrowed a copy of the book from a friend, but apparently got distracted. the others were just random finds that looked good and were only $5 so i couldn't resist.


here's a list of the newest additions to my library. let me know if you're interested in borrowing any after (or before) I read them. p.s. that reminds me... I'm missing several books. do you have any of mine? lol

*a thousand days in venice by Marlena de Blasi
*tales of a female nomad by Rita Golden Gelman
*searching for God knows what by Donald Miller
*blue like jazz by Donald Miller
*the first drop of rain by Leslie Parrott
*questions to all your answers by Roger E. Olsen

and don't you worry... i'll be sure to give you my reader's review after i finish each :)
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last night i was driving back from fort wayne when my ipod that i was listening to died on me. rather than turning to the radio at this point i decided to see what cds i had left in my changer. in slot number one i came across my long neglected sugarland cd. i can't tell you how happy it made me haha. see, i feel like i have this special connection with sugarland. they taught me how to draw :) haha okay let me explain that further.. spring semester of my sophomore year I had to take my drawing 1 class independently with Prof. Hopper. We would meet for a couple hours every tuesday night in his old office on the third floor of becker. most nights after giving me some instruction he would let me listen to the music he had brought in and just go at it. from his cd collection, sugarland quickly became my default album. i would listen to them during our meeting times and when i would go into the studio outside of class time to work. they got me through many nights of pastel dusted jeans and feelings of absolute hatred with whoever thought up this brilliant thing called drawing in perspective. but now when i hear those songs, they bring me back to this place of bliss and inspiration and the joy of learning how to do something i never thought i could do. i love how music has that effect on us... i think music is more powerful than we even realize. it's crazy how a song can stop you in your tracks and completely turn your mind, your emotions, and your attitude around. which makes me wonder... do you ever think about how crazy amazing the music is going to be in heaven? after reading Don Piper's book 90 minutes in heaven, that's something i think about from time to time. i know the experience that he writes on is something that some people may have a hard time accepting, but i personally believe that it's possible he was given that glimpse of heaven. i found the first few chapters of that book really fascinating as he described his short experience of heaven. one thing from his description that has really stuck with me is how amazing the heavenly sounds were. i can't recall exactly how he described it but i remember how it made me yearn for heaven all the more.

no eye has seen
no ear has heard
no heart can fully know
how glorious, how beautiful you are