Quote from A.W. Tozer

"Retire from the world each day to some private spot, even if it be only the bedroom (for a while I retreated to the furnace room for want of a better place).  Stay in the secret place till the surrounding noises begin to fade out of your heart and a sense of God's presence envelops you... Listen for the inward Voice till you learn to recognize it. Stop trying to compete with others.  Give yourself to God and then be what and who you are without regard to what others think... Learn to pray inwardly every moment. After a while you can do this even while you work... Read less, but more of what is important to your inner life.  Never let your mind remain scattered for very long. Call home your roving thoughts. Gaze on Christ with the eyes of your soul. Practice spiritual concentration. All of the above is contingent upon a right relation to God through Christ and daily meditation on Scriptures.  Lacking these, nothing will help us; granted these, the discipline recommended will go far to neutralize the evil effects of externalism and to make us acquainted with God and our own souls."  

(The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer)

HIS will be done

Well, remember the post where I was jumping for joy and excited?  Yeah, that was awesome.  Sadly, I haven't been that excited this entire time but what I have been realizing is how balanced I am becoming as I walk with Jesus.  I am learning the importance of and the fruit that comes with perseverance and discipline.  How, even though at times the last thing I want to do is praise God because the hurt is too much, I say out loud "...blessed be YOUR name." I am learning what it means to seek God through the hard times and thank Him with praises through the good.  That no matter what, HIS WILL BE DONE.

I don't think results from practicing discipline had come before because I had never actually committed long enough.  "Quiet times" were waking up 5 minutes earlier and stumbling through a blurry bible verse just to check off that I did rather than meditating on scripture and actually hanging out with Jesus.

It's a peaceful and new experience, walking with a bit more balance than before.  My awareness of God and His presence does not go to extremes but rather steadily throughout the day.  It's like choosing God on a smaller yet more frequent scale because instead of just choosing "Yes, I believe in God today" or "No I don't"  I am realizing that as time goes on, walking with balance asks the question, "Are you trusting God" in every situation.  And as I am more aware of this question, I find myself asking it on a smaller, more frequent scale and realizing my hesitance more and more.

If you're feeling discouraged because you don't feel like you've completely committed to God, don't kick yourself!  (Jeff Wirth would say, "Don't kick yourself, it only gives you bruises.")  Every day is new and God's waiting for His children to ask for help. He knows that we need to worship Him and will do anything so that we can have Him. Walking with Jesus is not just the spiritual high you get after summer camp. The richest part of a relationship comes as time goes on and we continue with perseverance and discipline.  We consciously choose our Father over everything else.

I feel like I reference the Blue Book so much but I can't help it! I have to share!  Here's the closing prayer for this week:

"You stir us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." -Confessions by St. Augustine

Receive It

I am in the process of processing, if ya know what I mean.

This past weekend I got to be apart of an incredible opportunity.  As a theatre department and then specifically as the cast of The Antics of Romantics, we worked with the playwright, Jeff Wirth.  It would be as if Shakespeare came to help you out with your production of Romeo and Juliet.  I know! It was amazing! Click on his name above and check out his site-He is the most humble, encouraging and fun person to work with that I felt a loss the moment rehearsal ended and he had to fly back to New York.

"I believe in the power of play.

I believe in the empowerment of others.

Interactive performance fulfills both." -Jeff Wirth

One of Jeff's of the main points that Jeff wanted to make sure we understood was that every person wants to play.  It may not be in the same way that you play, so learn how they do and then play along!  


It's incredible how much little we play in our society and how little people go along with how we play. Playing does not end with adulthood!  It's freeing and enables decisions to be made through reaction rather than strong pressure to do things right.  Why don't we let ourselves play anymore?  




The Antics of Romantics is an interactive show meaning that the audience plays roles throughout the performance just as much as the actors in the cast.  (If you're thinking of improv, you're right, but not entirely) It's basically unselfish theatre because while most of the time you go to see a show to only be entertained by the actors, interactive theatre requires "spect-actors" to be apart of telling the story.  I am giving you the spark-noted version of the spark notes right now because there is so much more to it, but I wanted to give you a brief definition so you can better understand a bit better.

Interactive theatre requires the actors to be completely present and aware not only of their own actions but every single action that is going on around them.  You never know where another person's slight turn of the head might lead you, so go with it!

Along with being present and aware, you must completely trust other people, audience included.  We did an exercise to further understand our ability to trust and I found that I am much more comfortable trusting others than I am trusting myself with other people.  Which should have probably been obvious to me? But seeing it play out in such a simple exercise brought much stronger clarity.

The coolest part of all the exercises and the workshops in general was understanding humans better.  We are all communicating something and most of the time it's not through words.  Do I even notice or am I too concerned with my next "line" to even react to what the other person is already giving me?  Will I want to play along?

Like I said... I'm in the process of processing.

Joy Comes in the Morning

AH! I cannot begin to tell you how great today has been.  I don't know why, but I am PUMPED and when I say PUMPED I mean like giddy, dancing around, wanting to sing kind of pumped.  I have had this unbelievable amount of joy and excitement for SOMETHING and I don't have any idea what it is!

The past couple weeks have been hard.  For some reason my heart was extremely heavy and I felt like every second of the day was a struggle to choose God.  Now, I know we all experience hard times, but this time it was different because I actually "sat" in it.  My pastor the other day was talking about the importance of groaning to God and so this period specifically consisted of not only groaning but continuous prayer and seeking after what I know to be true: God is good, He loves me, and I am never alone.  Whew!  It's hard admitting to others that you are struggling and for me, it's been hard admitting to God that I am struggling.

As you probably can tell, I love to write about things, so when I pray, I usually write in a journal.  This has been a habit for a couple of years now and at first, I was especially excited to see how God answered prayers.  What I am learning now and seeing throughout my journals is how God is shaping me.  I look at my prayers from even just a few months ago to now and theres a huge difference.  I have forced myself to be completely honest and own up to my failures and sins instead of praying for God to just cover them.

Prayer has always been tricky for me because growing up in a private Christian world, people tend to get breathy and use big words.  I never wanted to pray out loud because I was convinced I'd never sound as great as that "really great Christian" person over there.  What seems so obvious yet took me so long to realize is that prayer isn't supposed to fit into a formula.  There's not a phrase or name your supposed to say that makes God hear yours louder.  Prayer is simply you talking with your Father, and the more I do it whether it be in my journal or out loud, the more comfortable I become.  The more I hangout with God the easier it is to be honest and know what to ask because I am getting to know Him more.  It makes perfect sense!  The more time you spend with and get to know someone, the easier it is to talk to them and feel confident that they are listening because you are close.

Writing about the hard times is so neat because I get to days like today where I want to scream on the top of a mountain and can see how God never let go of my hand.  I have to choose Him every second and I definitely do not choose Him all the time.  It is a battle, I'm tellin ya, and it has sucked.  But MAN does joy come in the morning!! (Psalm 30)

Reading Psalms now as I am growing and maturing as a Christian even looks differently.  I mean, look at the majority of Davids words!-- this guy struggled and voiced it without ever hiding how he felt.  He actually talked to God and realized that God could handle any anger or frustration.  I found that my prayer journal is looking more and more like the way David wrote in Psalms because there are days when I am questioning why something is happening or why God is being silent and I am furious.  Or times when I am struggling but almost reassuring myself with how powerful God is.  Just because I may not feel like He is at the time, I'd rather say God is good because it's true than wallow in self-pity and not trust God will ever help me out.  But then there are times when I feel like God is bear hugging me and I want to dance, so I tell Him every little detail about it!  Praising and thanking because I don't even know what else I can do!  There's no formula, just being real.


I use Jim Branch's Blue Book as a helpful guide for my quiet times and there was the coolest excerpt from C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed: 

"He can't be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal, but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all."  

YES!  For so long I looked to God as the road and then Heaven as the end, which will be in the end, BUT thinking about it in this light brings such a different perspective to me!  God is the END and choosing Him is the goal of every single thing we do!  The road may be this life, in general, with it's ups and downs, but the greatest thing about it is that we know what's at the end, so we continue to go through the good and the bad to get to God!  And Jesus is right there with us until we finally cross the finish line and it's JUST Him! We cannot get there by being idle, we WILL walk on a path. I guess it's just up to us to choose who or what we are walking towards.  Heck, I want to run!

This post is getting long and went in a completely different direction than I thought it was going to but I felt like I had to open a document and type something.  I needed to explain how incredibly peaceful and happy I am. How excited I am for something for which I feel God has been preparing me.  

It sounds weird, doesn't it?  But I just know it's good.  

God's plan is GOOD

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first  the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Matthew 6:25-34

I came home for Fall Break and forgot how out of sight out of mind I am sometimes.  So many things happened here. The majority of my entire life revolved around a few miles here. Isn't that crazy to think about?  "Cassidy" has been built through experiences in Memphis, Tennessee.  I learned so much here and most of the time I had to learn the hard way. I went this one Chickfila every single morning for years before school. I drove down this one street more times than I can count. I had my first kiss, first love and first heart break all right here.  I experienced loss and celebrated birth here.  I laughed so hard that I cried and cried so hard that I felt sick.   I met my best friends here and have spent hours upon hours talking right in their rooms down the street.  Jesus called out my name one night right in the middle of my bedroom floor here and showed me how to follow Him.  

So many good things happened while growing up in Memphis and yet I do not feel like myself when I am here. 

When I moved to Nashville, life was weird. I moved away from everything into a world that did not know who I was and therefore I had to just be me.  I don't even think I really knew who that was because I had always been around people who had known me forever and so I did not have to remind them.  However, I realized once I got to college that I had not actually been able to be me for a long time because back home I was almost forced to remain who I had been for so long because that's all everyone knew.  A lot happens as you're growing up and people change incredibly, especially when the Lord works in your life.  I had changed immensely but was not really able to be free in it until I was surrounded by people who had not known me my whole life. 

It isn't even that I was some hooligan that everyone thought was crazy, in fact quite the opposite.  But, for whatever reason, I felt trapped.  

I am the type of person that enjoys change and finds excitement in new adventures, so of course I was more than ready for a change of scenery once graduation came.  I packed up my things and headed off into an unknown world of many different types of people.  It's as if I left all the baggage I had been carrying around here at the doorstep and started fresh.  

I get caught up in the dark places of my life when I come home. I do not really experience that in Nashville because I have not spent enough time there to go through as much as I did here.  I forget about the good things going on when I focus on the bad and forget to count my blessings over the crap.  It's a terrible trap!  Jesus did not leave me when I crossed the city line and I need to quit acting like He did.  I take steps back into the stages of life that happened here and have a hard time bringing the present into my thoughts about the past.  Does that make any sense? It's like thinking about only the good things that happened in an old relationship without acknowledging the terrible things that caused you two to break up.  When you think only about the good things, you want to get back together but you shouldn't because the bad outweighed the good and therefore it'd be a terrible decision.  You block the bad out until someone reminds you or you try it out again and remember why it was you broke up in the first place.  You forget all the things that are happening right now and the good things that led you to this new place of peace because you go back into the dark place of unrest.  I think Satan knows how to bring me into that place and trick me there.  He wants me to forget all that God is doing and has done by reminding me of dark things in the past.

I am a great "blocker outer" and my friends laugh at me for it all the time.  If you do not have friends who slap you into reality when you need it, I recommend getting some immediately. They keep me sane.  For example, Chandler reminded my today how easy it is to miss and be reminiscent of the past because we know how it ends.  We have a sense of control over it and therefore do not have to "risk anything."  She said that it is the future which causes us to wait for God and that scares us because we have no idea what's coming next.  TRUTH.  

I can read Jeremiah 29:11 a million times but it's not until I am forced to accept I have no control that I have to trust in God's plan for my life.  It is when my attempts at planning my next step or attempts at forcing what  think should happen that God reminds me He is the only one who actually knows what's going to happen and it is good because I love Him.  I had to seriously take a step back today and ask myself if I REALLY believed that God works for the good of those who love Him? 

Do I REALLY trust that God has a plan for me?  That it is good?

Obviously not all the time or else I would not have panic attacks over little things like what I should major in.  God has me in His hands! He see's the WHOLE picture and He knows I don't.  Trust is accepting that and believing in His goodness!  Man, that's a hard thing to do and something that doesn't come naturally but takes constant practice because I think our default is self-sufficiency.  I'd prefer getting my world rocked every second to remind myself of how out of control I am than having it easy and not needing God in every area of my life.  Are you not sure of what to do next?  Count it as a blessing because you have nothing else to do but TRUST, and that's exactly where we should be.  

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11