hi, my name is jacqueline.

but you can call me Jacquie (: var sc_project=5801152; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_security="a852a39f";

[secretlyunsecret]

Sitting here writing (so many) thank you cards, re-reading birthday cards with so many kind messages. And I can't help but remember that 3.5 years ago I sat in the car and lamented to J, "I literally have no friends."

It reminds me of the end of junior year of college, staring bleakly into senior year with no post-grad prospects, no letters of rec. By graduation, I had 9 thank you cards to write, for 9 different people who had written me a letter of support of some kind.

Somehow God takes my poverty, my nothing, and multiplies it into something.

Only God can multiply by 0 and still come out with something.

[secretlyunsecret]

Is to be made holy to grieve more deeply?

[secretlyunsecret]

28 is the year I realize some pop songs hit different when you're in touch with your feelings LOL

[secretlyunsecret]

3/19/22

If I could bottle this feeling, compress it into a candle, and save it for a dark day, for the dark days that inevitably will come -

This post-celebratory glow, this tired yet satisfied content, this momentary quiet that basks in loving and being loved by strangers who have become family, who are becoming family. This small, strange hope, born out of every doubt, every discomfort turned deliverance. This expectation, this watching and waiting, waiting and watching, this knowing that the Lord is just getting started and He isn't finished yet.

This miracle that is New City Church, beyond anything in my wildest dreams I ever could have imagined...

[secretlyunsecret]

I think 2022 is the year I find the courage to believe that there are people who I can trust to see and hear me, if I would only let them in

[secretlyunsecret]

I think the enemy wants to sow resentment and bitterness in me towards the people who are shoulder to shoulder in the trenches with me in advancing God's Kingdom. Surely this is one of his tactics. Surely he knows where I am vulnerable, where my deepest wounds threaten to fester and rot if not treated carefully.

So may the grace of God bind me in His love, and cover over these old wounds. For the work is too beautiful, too important, to let my own fears take me out of the game.

[secretlyunsecret]

I think 2022 will be the year I try harder to tell people how important they are to me, because I've stopped being afraid to love someone "more" than they love me...

[secretlyunsecret]

I spent a good while today convinced that I was forgetting something important, that something was missing from my calendar and I just couldn't remember what.

Finally after a while it hit me. A birthday, of someone I used to care a lot about. Something that was so important to me, it's like it was imprinted in my subconscious and i guess every year it surfaces in the form of premonition because, I laugh to myself, this happened to me last year, too...

[secretlyunsecret]

Will God Call Me to a Career I Don’t Enjoy?

Does God care about your vocation? Pastor John answers why God intends to give his people joy and thankfulness and a sense of usefulness whatever he calls them to.

[secretlyunsecret]

2016 me saved this for future reference because she knew that 5 years later 2021 me would still be here.....

and she would come looking and would find the previous day’s message, too...

https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/strategies-for-when-life-seems-aimless

[secretlyunsecret]

I've noticed in the last few months that sometimes I laugh so hard that I cry - a phenomenon that I'd heard of, witnessed too, but never experienced for myself, even for all the times I've found myself laughing so hard that I'm gasping for air.

And I sit with the moment in wonder? bemusement? at the openness right between my gut and my chest, where before I didn't even realize lived a knot wound so impenatrably tight. I let delight fill the cavity and seep into the air around me.

So this is joy, I say to myself. So this is what it means to feel alive.

[secretlyunsecret]

I accidentally decided to get boba at 430pm and I. am. SO. CAFFEINATED. RIGHT. NOW.

.

.

.

.

End of story.

[secretlyunsecret]

If 27 was the year I learned to grieve, I think 28 will be the year I learn to worship.

[lunah-goodbye]

x

[uquen]

[bogleech]

I somehow just realized I have never in my entire life seen a panda this clearly? Any image or video I can recall was usually lit starker so you couldn’t easily make out the eyes and the panda was kind of facing down or off to the side. This is the first time I’ve really been aware of them like, having a real face like a real animal and not a cartoonish abstract mass of sad fur.

[arctic-hands]

[Video Description: a close-up of a panda eating bamboo, holding the bamboo in one paw and using another to remove the outer skin (?) of the bamboo. At one point it stops chewing and just looks blankly into the camera. End ID]

On that note...

[Image Description: a screenshot of the above blank stare. End ID]

No thought head empty

[secretlyunsecret]

2021 is the year I pay attention to the things that make me feel alive

[secretlyunsecret]

I guess I've listened to bts so continuously and unrelentingly for the last ~3 weeks or so that my discover weekly has gone from 99% Christian music to maybe 10% CCM and 90% artists i dont recognize at all??

X:

[secretlyunsecret]

Facebook reminds me that on this day 2 years ago I cried myself to sleep for no reason and for the first time had the terrifying thought that maybe the Lord wanted me to go to therapy.