1! I went to Salmon Days in Issaquah, Wa. And let me just say this was quite a saturday. I ate the most scrumptious salmon burger known to man (the secret was that they mixed cajon spice in the mayo!). i got to hang out with an uber cool girl named Jenny from my graduate program. we saw really, really big (and quite scary) live Salmon in the river.... we walked further up the river and spent some time watching said Salmon try unsuccessfully to jump over a dam that was specifically constructed to stop them from reaching their spawning ground (very tragic!). I had a quality Margarita at applebees happy hour! yum!

the day continued to be great as Jenny and i came back to my apt and watch ... "Troop Beverly Hills" and laughed our butts off at how 80's this movies is... ahhh the good times. Then we got to chatting about prayer and i showed her the prayer space i had set up in our space room at the apartment. We chatted some more about God and how hard it is to be a christian and then spent some time praying for each other! it was amazing!

2! I went into down town seattle to a Tea Festival on Sunday! Some girls at my church were going to this festival and asked if i wanted to come and i was like... "hecks yeah i love tea" (tho really i only like enlgish tea and that is only because in england you either like the tea and then make friends or you don't and they hate you!)... so yeah, this festival was pretty sweet. you got a little cup and then mingled around different stands to try an array of tea flavors like, jasmine& vanilla white tea, to orange and cinnamon hot tea, to some really disgusting cold cough syrup tasting tea... gross!! I even found a box of, the all time #1 tea of england, PG tip and just bought that box right up. We then went an got some lunch and sat in the park right under the space needle and just had a good laugh in the sun... while getting sprayed by this fountain that was going mad!!

3. Monday Morning... i arrive back from work and am checking my school work, workiness, for the upcoming week when i notice i have a message from one of my professors about a paper i turned in... i think "ahh i'll just have a quick look at that"... oh man... a quick scan of my paper show an unusually high number of markings, but i take comfort in the fact that the marking come to an abrupt halt 1/3 of the way into my paper... this comfort soon evaporates as i move back to the top of the page to read the following quote "Tina this paper needs a lot of work. This is not graduate level writing. I have marked your paper only through the first paragraph due to the intense need for revision. I have given you a score of 6 out of 12 points for this assignment...." WHAT!!!???!! haha epic fail!!! I'll be honest this was a bit tough to take... i haven't failed an assignment in... well a long time... and if i did fail is was totally because i didn't try. But i had spent hours and that paper!! The remainder of that day was spent in a panic of trying to understand how the hell i was suppose to do better. Followed by the worst night of sleep, where i was typing and typing and typing up this paper but every time i looked at the screen it was just a blank page!! ahhhhhhh

the next morning i was stressed... UBER STRESSED! but then i just did what i do most morning... got my cup of tea, went into the prayer room, and just gave my day to God. It was strange because suddenly failing that assignment turned into this really great thing. It just made me recognize where i stood and also really defined the place i wanted to be. In a matter of an hour i went from this shakin maniac to a quite calm and collected person... IT WAS A MIRACLE!!

So this week has been tough... really tough... i laid in my bed the other night all curled up in a ball thinking "there are such better places and people i want to be with right now... maybe i'm not made for this..." and normally i would let myself just get completely wrapped up in that train of thought for hours, but this ever clear voice whispered in my ear and reminded me of this... "Discipleship is hard... being disciplined is hard... living for Christ is hard... but through Christ who give me strength, it is possible." And the possibility of what i hope my life in Christ will be, is what i cling to and what pushes me on....

i was reading an article called "The Enforcer" by Samantha Power on Gary Haugen and the organization he started called International Justice Missions. Haugen made this statement "with out a fierce commitment to the sharpest standard in operational and tactical excellence, we do not honor God". That so is the ring of my heart... i want to be fierce and through that achieve a level of excellence that screams out honor for God...

that is what i live... and for now... that is what gives me the motivation to learn from my epic fail and battle this grad school with the fierceness i have for running life's race well and hearing God say "well done my good and faithful servant"