easter at eastlake. i need to anticipate easter more next year so i can be more deliberate about choosing something to lent. last year i chose to give up not-cleaning and the mister chose to give up not-eating. this week marks the end of my eastlake growth groups - one for glassblowing (yes, our church "bible study groups" include glassblowing) and the other with a group of strong, amazing women. my prayer request in the latter group each week was always the same - to read the bible, to pray. because i haven't in a very long time.

i received my favorite book as a simple graduation gift from my high school and it's a timeless, no-nonsense, non-mushy/touchy-feely devotional written by a man in 1935.

"Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this." Revelation 4:1

...Compare this week in your spiritual history with the same week last year and see how God has called you up higher...Never let God give you one point of truth which you do not instantly live up to. Always work it out, keep in the light of it.

Growth in grace is measured not by the fact that you have not gone back, but that you have an insight into where you are spiritually; you have heard God say "Come up higher," not to you personally, but to the insight of your character.

miss ♥u♥ bert

i grew up in city with an intense love for hockey, where all the boys in second grade would go to practice at 5am and be trading hockey cards by recess, where my uncle would buy expensive gear year after year for my cousins, when i knew names like lemieux, bure, and gretzky and little else because i personally did not grow up with the game in my family's living room.

in university i saw bertuzzi ward off two guys with one arm while stick-handling the puck with his left hand, all the way down the ice . i gained a great respect for the beast of a man. i'd never seen anyone do that. a year or two later a young kid from the avalanche let a puck slide by so he could hit our captain and top-scorer of the league hard in the head. bert retaliated two games later and was suspended. there was almost a mike tyson/evander holyfield type milieu to the situation, but this one was more career-ending. if the punch didn't snap three vertebrae and cause a concussion, the dogpile with players from each team certainly would have. when bert finally came back to the game, he was drafted to the eastern conference and i lost interest in hockey. so you can imagine my surprise to be taking photos during the national anthem this saturday and read the words bertuzzi on detroit's number 44 player. detroit won with 1 second to go in overtime. did i mention the red wings are my favorite team?

there was a fat child at the concession stand during intermission wearing a canucks bertuzzi jersey. i felt sad for kids like him, who had to watch their hero fall.

philippians 4:23

i spent the morning skimming through a visual artist's very ethereal blog and it reminded me to get back to the real truth, words that are admittedly godly and not new age.

my favorite

this is my favorite image from my wedding day, thanks to casey and danielle at mindcastle. i've finally sat down to begin my very own wedding album, while still working on a dozen others.

oanh+liem

pisa, a diversion from editing

burnout status, 4:48pm: found pretty image

editing burnout