Prayers for a Family

This past week, a young girl whom I've had the pleasure of getting to know quite recently, lost her little brother. This girl came from a broken home, a hard past, and what I can see as an unclear future. Her little brother was only five.

Five.

Five years old. Five Christmases. Five birthdays, all that can be counted on one hand.

My heart aches for the family of the little boy who's getting to celebrate his fifth Easter in heaven (a bittersweet occasion). My heart shatters for the six siblings he left behind, the parents and parental figures who are feeling a piece missing as they go on without him, for anyone who knew this dear boy.

A premature death is always hard. It hurts those who hear the tragic news along with those who are pushing to go on while missing a young soul.

Please keep this lovely family in your prayers.

*insert totally unrelated pictures*

Have a fabulous Easter.

The Quest for Making Life Fabulous

Have you ever had that moment when you stopped in the middle of what you're doing and realized that you haven't had a moment of realization in a while? You've been going through the motions for hours, days, weeks maybe and haven't really stopped to think. You haven't stopped to recap what's been going on, stopped to be grateful for how well life's been treating you or stopped to pray for courage to go on and the prospect of it getting better.

The lighting in this is like flipping AHmazing.

Most of the time you don't realize what you're doing until a significant amount of time passes, but it happens. Sometimes you need moments like that to remind you of our short time.

But once again I'm getting all too cliche. You know you don't have a lot of time and God knows you don't need me reminding you.

I've just been in the savoring life kind of mood lately. I'm going out. Doing things. Making things happen. Things that are making my day worthwhile. All in the quest of making life, you guessed it, fabulous.

Not sure how I feel about this picture. It's like a flipping wild mess,
 but maybe somebody will interpret it much differently.

Have a fabulous Wednesday.

Nobody Has It Easy

I'm a worrier. I stress. I freak out. I'm a full blown worry wart.

Honestly, at times, who isn't? Usually the cause is trivial, forgotten about as soon as the next worry comes along. Other times, it's not.

And I hate it.

It's a blessing and a curse, really. Because of my excessive worrying, I get things done. If I didn't, I'd get that awful gnawing in my stomach reminding me constantly about everything that must be done.

Do you remember the picture of this flower? (You may have to scroll
 through the post a little bit.) It's changed so much in the four short days
since I took the first picture, I was utterly amazed when I saw it again.

Sometimes I just have to stop. Look up. Look down. Take it all in. Realize that what I'm worrying about will be far gone on the highway called my brain by next week.

Sometimes I feel that our worries truly define us, showing others that we all have something going on in our life. One of my favorite sayings is "No matter what it may seem like, nobody has it easy." Everybody is worrying about something that probably hasn't even crossed your mind today. We're all guilty of thinking there are people who have everything going for them, but take a second and think about yourself. How is your life perceived in the eyes of others? You know that you have worries that haunt you at one in the morning, but who else knows that? Your life too could seem amazing from the outside, but your worries are what unite all of our lives as imperfect.

But enough of that. There's a Saturday happening right now and I'd like to make the most of it. So go out.

And make today fabulous.

Mid Week Catch Up

So I realized yesterday that there were two pictures on my phone that were never uploaded onto the blog but were meant to be on my previous post and well you can't just leave pictures unposted so here I am, posting them:

Now that we got that out of the way, I've got exciting stuff planned. Now I know that I've said this before, but this is going to be like super freaking amazing what I have coming up and I JUST CAN'T WAIT to share. Also go check out my about this blog page because it has been updated with a piece of important information.

Hope you guys are having a fabulous week.

The Days Are Long but the Years Are Short

It's funny how time seems to slip through your fingertips. It's bittersweet in a way that I feel needs no explanation.

Absolutely in LOVE with the lighting in this picture.

Through my many --or by most standards, not any at all-- years of living, I've started to realize the reality of a well known saying:

"The days are long, but the years are short."

And I couldn't agree more.

I'm a sucker for good quotes. I collect them like little boys collect Pokemon cards, tucking them into my back pocket and when the times right, I play them. And I play them well.

Pinterest has fed my addiction of well said wordings for a while now, and I've got a whole stash. If we were still on the Pokemon analogy, I'd be like the king of the playground, but we're not, so I'll stop.

Anyways. Skip back a couple paragraphs. The quote is a beautiful reminder to be grateful for the moment and to make your time worthwhile, but I'm going to stop there before things get too cliche.

It seems that the older we get, the more we become aware of our time. It's suddenly started to hit me. My years in high school are numbered and I've got big decisions to make. All of my decisions are so important and a lot bears on the choices I'm making. They started small and now they're becoming more and more complex. It's like when you're getting into a cold pool and you dip your toes in first before somebody comes up from behind and shoves you in.

I'm dipping my toes into the vast ocean of freedom, anticipating the push into the flying water any second.

I'm so flipping proud of this picture. Holaaaa.

So go out and enjoy your time. Go shopping. Wake up late. Eat out. And make everything fabulous. 

A Good Day to Be Alive

Note: This was supposed to be posted yesterday, but one thing led to another and the publish button was never clicked. Sorry. It'll probably happen again too, so make that sorry times ten, just in case.

The weather man prognosticated a daring weekend, warm weather all day Saturday and Sunday to follow up the pouring rain Tuesday and Snowing Thursday that we had this week. If you're not from North Carolina, you'd probably think that's the most ridiculous thing you'd ever heard, but it happened.

65 degrees today. Yea, 65 freaking degrees. And it felt so good. I took pictures. I soaked in the sun. It felt like spring, and spring feels good.

It seems the older I've gotten, the more I adore the weather. The more things I notice. Today birds sang their foreign, long lost tunes as I captured spring through the lens of my iPhone. Everything felt good. Everything felt right.

It was a good day to be alive.

Have a fabulous week.

Having Time

I've been staring at any empty word document for nearly half an hour.

I want to write something. I need to write something. But I can't. I can't think. I can't write. I can't decide what I want to talk about. What I want to share.

So instead I'll just ramble, as that usually gets me somewhere.

A majority of my friends don't know what they want to be. Where they want to go to college. What careers they want to pursue. What classes they want to take next year. Hell. They can't even figure out what they want to wear tomorrow without having a thirty minute debate between themselves and their closet.

I'm fairly fortunate. I know what I'm going to do. I know where I want to go. I've got my entire imaginary life planned out, overseeing every detail as I try to fall asleep. I've got so much I want to do and see and taste and live, that I want to stay this young forever. It's a paradox really. When you're young you've got what seems like an endless span of time ahead of you where you can accomplish the endless amount of things you want to do. It's a wonderful feeling really. It's like you see something you want to do and the youth inside of you knows that you've got plenty of time to do it.

But then you want to get older. You want to grow so you can do these things, but then you learn of new places to go, new adventures to explore, and you realize that your time is coming to a close.

That's what I like about being young. You feel like you've got time.

And time is a fabulous thing.