Don't Panic.

SUCH an interesting Sunday!
I woke up late, so that meant I was late to church, but my loving church family accepted me at the door and led me straight to a seat. :) Grace in the church, y'all!

After church, I bought a Cornish Pasty (a delicious calzone of sorts...) and walked around City Centre before running into a woman holding a sign that said "Don't Panic. All will be well." After contemplating whether I should approach her or not out of curiosity, I decided to go ahead. What the heck, right? (Any way to get out of homework on a Sunday!) I asked her what the sign was about, and she said for 40 days, she's holding up encouraging signs for a couple hours in Oxford. She was on Day 37! Below it, she had "he is my hero" as a website, so my curiosity got the best of me.

"Who's your hero on the website title?"
"My husband. He's been sick for the last six years, and after he started focusing on the good things in life, he's been recovering! I'm trying to inspire people like he inspires me."

Which is great! So...I just said..."That's great!" And walked away.

Lame.

I had just read Matthew's account of Jesus' death and was nearly in tears at a cafe the other day, wanting to tell every person I came in contact with about the best event that EVER happened on this planet! And now I was just going to walk away from a woman who obviously loved inspiration and life and people?? As you can clearly see, it pretty much ate away at me after 19 seconds of walking away from her, and there was no way I could leave without God punching me in the face with an opportunity to talk to someone and see their heart. I turned around and walked toward her.

"Hey, Star?" Her name wasn't that hard to remember. "This is gonna eat at me for who knows how long if I don't say something and tell you what inspires me. What do you think of God?"
And there it began. She started laughing.

"I've had a lot of Christians come up and talk to me. Yell at me. Swear at me. Tell me I'm going to Hell."
"What?? That's stupid! I'm sorry that happened...that's not me. I really don't want to push anything on you. I just really wanted to share it with you because I've been so hyped up on it the last few days."

She started telling me what she thought. She thought God was in everything; that He gave us this planet to enjoy and live life to the fullest - that we chose this broken life and we messed it up - that God didn't come to throw people in Hell if they broke His rules...and that Jesus was possibly the Son of God, but He wasn't perfect and He got enlightened in India before his adult life, and he may or may not have risen from the dead, but we can't know. So...we had a great conversation. That was it. Two people talking about God in a public square while one held up a sign that said, "Don't Panic!" I can't put the whole conversation here, but it really was a great talk. She said she had "done the Evangelical Christian" thing, but she was done. She said she didn't want community; she was fine with it being a personal thing between her and God. I told her I would be a wreck without community, so I told her that my church was really welcoming. I may see her next week, I may not see her ever again, but it was SO worth going out on a limb and chatting! WHY ARE WE SO SCARED TO TALK TO PEOPLE? Every time I've done this (not very often), I've been on a first name basis AND gotten a hug from the stranger, so why am I so terrified to talk about the part of my life that I base everything else on? I'm fine talking about shallow stuff with strangers - even deep stuff that they won't get offended at. I know that if I talk to people in a down to earth, laid back way, though, what would they ever get mad at me for? Something to think about. If you think of her, pray for her. She was a blast to talk to :) And so brave to stand in the freezing rain and snow the last few weeks!

Secondly, pic of the day just needs to be shared: I went exploring on my bike today because it was SO beautiful! Glamour shot!

I WILL live on a farm one day. If anyone's thinking about July birthdays, you know what to do. Buy me a farm, of course.

Tonight was also really fun because we had a post-Valentine's event called "Death By Chocolate." We made yummy dessert (they call it pudding! As in, for all desserts, they say pudding.), and I won Most Sentimental for my peanut butter cookies. (Half of them were burned. We'll get there.) But it still worked! THEN...wait for it...we played Body, Body also known as Cutthroat Mafia. Here's the idea: you walk around the house with all of the lights off (we used all 3 stories). A few people are chosen to be the killers at the beginning of the game, and they kill people by getting them alone and squeezing their shoulder. The person drops to the floor, and when someone finds a body, they yell out "Body, Body!" and everyone runs downstairs to vote who they think did it...who, in turn, dies. This is a video of one of the games we had...Courtney is explaining how it went down...love it.

Here are some more memories of the decadent night:

 Beracah and I lookin' sultry. Ha.

The night was a success! Love it! And love you all!