Life Update: February

Life doesn't stop moving.

This past month has f l o w n by so fast. Here are the February highlights:

I received a new position at work that I am very excited about. I am now the Property Manager of Greenbrier Ridge Apartments in Knoxville, TN. It is quite a leap from my previous position. The new complex has double the apartments, and I manage a number of staff members as well. Work was hard there for a while because as a company we underwent a lot of transition and change that doubled our workloads. Since then it has improved greatly and we are all getting a hang of it, plus I am enjoying my new position.

My best friend Allix got into PA school and wanted to do something big to celebrate. She will be moving to Nashville and in school for the next 27 months without much of a break. So... WE WENT ON A CRUISE. We actually did it! We booked the trip and 3 weeks later boarded the Liberty of the Seas for 5 nights (stopping in Belize & Cozumel). It was an amazing trip and worth every penny! How often do you get to leave 7 inches of snow and work behind for a week in the Caribbean?!

New Friends & a Couple Future Roommates

Back in Knoxville I spend time outside of work playing with my beautiful (needy) puppy, leading a college small group, and making new friends. Life right after college was hard and full of change, but now it finally seems like I've found a rhythm and a new normal. Making friends can be hard but I've been blessed with some great new ones and old.

The amazing girls in the CollegeLife Group that I help lead

February is often my least favorite month of the year. The weather is dreary, there's not much going on besides the world's worst holiday, and did I mention how much the weather sucks. God has blessed me more than I ever imagined with a wonderful month full of joy, new experiences, and life to the fullest.

Happy February... Bring it on March!

Confessions of a Birthday Diva

For those who don't know me too well, I am a huge birthday diva. I love my birthday. Its my favorite day of the whole year.

That said, I have had 21 amazing birthdays. When I was younger I had many family parties at the park, swimming pools, and Chuck-e-Cheese. Then I had years of sleepovers with 10-20 giggling friends, cookouts, and camping trips. Recently I've had surprise parties and gotten to celebrate with 100,000 people in Neyland Stadium. Overall I've been incredibly blessed to have so many memorable birthdays.

If you've read my blog before then you know I'm currently living at home with my parents. They are great and I'm glad to spend this time with them, but I also don't have many friends in the Johnson City area so I knew this year my birthday was not going to be a big occasion. I was okay with that simply because, like I said, I've had many great birthdays in my life.

But not everyone is as lucky as me.

My mom is an elementary school principal and she cares a lot about her students, in and out of school. Living at home I've been able to talk to her a lot about her job and students at her school. She had talked to me about a family of little girls in her school who have had a rough home life. Just hearing her talk about these girls made me feel sad. It made me sad that I had been blessed with so much... and they with so little.

I started thinking about my birthday and what I wanted to do for it this year, and all I could think about was that those cute little girls had probably never been able to celebrate their birthday.

So I wanted to change that and celebrate them.

It wasn't much but today I took the 4 girls kids meals and cookies from Chick-fil-a and they got to have a special lunch with my mom and I outside. You could just see their faces light up when they came out of class. They had never even had Chick-fil-a, and before last year they'd never had a birthday party.

To me it was special to get to do this for them and make their day. It was just an hour of my time and only $36. And I thought it would be special to the girls too, but I didn't know how much. Before I left one of their teachers came and found me and said that one of the girls said to her: "This will be a day that I'll never forget". And just hearing that I know that I won't either.

From now on I think I'd like to do something special for someone else on my birthday every year, and maybe y'all will too. Here's some great inspiration from people that are way more impressive than me:

The Birthday Project

38 acts of Kindness

"I have a home… and a car… and a job. Do you need a few bucks for some coffee?"

Here's to 22 great years and blessings!

Love y'all

Scott Gianopoulos

I think one of my biggest blessings in life will be that I had the privilege of calling Scott Gianopoulos my friend. Many people had that privilege as well, because that’s who Scott was, a friend. I first met Scott my freshman year at fall retreat where we sat around the bonfire and annoyed everyone by singing Disney songs for hours, and I wish I could say our friendship began there, but with him being in and out of school we didn’t reconnect till two years ago. He came to the mothership and we found and captured a spider on my porch that was the size of my hand. Scott and I decided to microwave it to see what would happen, and that was the beginning of a friendship that I will never forget.

Having Scott as a friend meant so many things: It meant life became a never ending party, full of spontaneity, because it was never too late and nothing was ever too crazy for him. He was hilarious, and full of life at all times. I’ll never forget all the silly songs he made up and all of his sayings like the ever popular “school is for fools”.

Scott was magnetic. People were drawn to him, and before I don’t know if I knew what it was that drew them in but it just was. Maybe you haven’t realized it yet but UT is a different place when Scott was here. He was the most inclusive guy I’ve ever known. He noticed when someone new came to the mansion and he would get to know them. One time I remember talking to scott and describing someone as one of those people that was just “hard to love” and I remember scott looked at me and said “What do you mean?”. And it finally clicked, that was a foreign concept for him, Scott loved everyone and he loved them well. How many people can really love everyone?

Scott always cared. Whenever he asked me how my day was going he actually listened. And whenever he facebook chatted me for the 7th time that day he still wanted to know. And whenever I was having a bad day for me with the most mundane problems he would listen with sympathy even though it could never touch what he was going through. Scott noticed when you were gone or hadn’t been around for a while. If I hadn’t seen him in 3 or 4 days I could expect a text saying “Aunt Mandy. I miss you. Lets hang out soon!”

Scott was selfless. He didn’t need or want attention on himself, ever. If someone was going through a tough time he would elevate them and make them feel loved. He was a servant and would have done anything for me.

As a friend, Scott cared enough to say the hard stuff. He was there to listen to me, but he was also there to point me to Christ. He would tell me when I was being selfish or not surrendering something, even though I didn’t want to hear it. He shared his heart with me and helped me become a better person.

Its no secret that Scott was passionate! Passionate for everything: the VOLS, the Packers, the White Sox, David Crowder, Disney movies, Taylor Swift, johnnies, krispie kreme doughnuts, and Jesus. And his passion was contagious to everyone around him. I will never think about any of those things the same. I will never halfheartedly sing Rocky Top again and the cubs will always suck to me now. But the thing I loved most was scott’s passion for Jesus. He loved Jesus.

Being his friend for the past two years I saw Scott go through some things that most people couldn’t dream of. The thrills of getting back clear scans, and the horror of hearing the doctors say that there was nothing more that they could do. But NO MATTER WHAT through everything Scott was faithful. And he was always positive. No matter what the outlook was, on a football game, on a situation, or even on the number of days left in his life he remained positive. He didn’t worry or get depressed. He remained faithful. Scott always went to Romans 8:28 “God works all things together for the GOOD of those who love him”. He trusted that no matter what happened, no matter what the doctors said, that it was GOOD. Seeing Scott continually trust God as he went through the hardest things that I can imagine and the pain he suffered, taught me what it really meant to “trust God in ALL circumstances”. He taught me that suffering was glorifying to God. He used his sufferings for God’s glory no matter what.

Above all Scott inspired me. To be a better person, to love well, to complain less, to tell more people about Jesus, to befriend the lonely, and to enjoy life. Scott pointed me to Christ all the time. Scott loved life, no matter what was going on. He lived each day to be a light for Christ. I remember one time last semester me, Scott, Allix, and JR stayed up till like 3 in the morning talking about life. What we’d done, our favorite memories, what we feared, what we still wanted to do in life, our hopes, and our dreams for the future. At first it was hard for me to look back on that night because it was stuff that Scott isn’t going to get to do but I realized that everything Scott had wanted to do in his life revolved around bringing people to Christ and bringing God glory. And Scott did it. Scott may have left us but his testimony lives on and it will continue to point people to Christ forever.

Scott fought, and it may look like he lost, but that’s not true. Scott won because he lived his life for Christ and he lived his life to the fullest. I’m going to miss Scott’s friendship, probably every day, but I rest in the fact that now he is with our savior, pain free, in a new body, in heaven. And I hope to live the rest of my life for the same impact that Scott had in 23 years of his. I will never forget Scott Gianopoulos and all that he taught me about how to live.

 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
1 Timothy 4:7

more than we can ask or imagine...

As another year comes to a close, my junior year in college to be exact, I like to reflect on how God has blessed me in the past year. This year I was lucky enough that I don't even think I could count all the blessings I've received, and if I tried to put them all in a blogpost no one would ever read it because it would be so long. Instead I'd like to share with you all the "biggest" blessing, or at least the one that always comes to mind first, and that is the house.

Back in February/March of 2010 when trying to decide housing for next year we decided to look for a house to live in instead of an apartment. What we found was an 8 bedroom, 8 bathroom house that was pretty rough around the edges. It was dirty and gross at the time but we decided we wanted it anyway. We started trying to find 8 girls to fill it with us, which was nearly impossible, but at last we had 8. I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about living with SEVEN other girls, who wouldn't be? And to top that, I barely knew more than the names of three of the girls.

It's safe to say that we moved in as strangers, literally, some girls met others for the first time the day they moved in. We quickly started getting to know each other and there were always other people over first semester. The house became a huge blessing for Cru at UT too because no matter what there was always room for more, unlike in an apartment we could have a movie night and no one had to be excluded. I remember the first party of the year the boys (and some girls) made a 5 story pyramid in the living room. We also held the Cru Halloween party there which had over 80 people and there was still room.

This displays how large our living room is

The Rave-o-ween

The real blessing wasnt the extra space or everyone having their own bedroom and bathroom or anything like that, the real blessing was the people. I knew it was going to be another hard semester for me because all of my closest friends were in dating relationships. When you're surrounded with that its hard to stay content and patient, but God gave me something I didn't even know I needed, single friends. I'd barely knew Allix and Beka before we moved in, but they quickly grew to become two of my best friends in that time and I am so thankful.

Beka and Allix

The second semester started and we hardly ever had people over at first, probably because all 8 of us had become such good friends that if I came home and any of my roommates were home I was perfectly happy with hanging out with them. All 8 girls that lived there did for a reason and it wouldn't have been the same without them. I'd lived with Amy, Misha, and Brittany before and I loved getting to live with them again. Amber was the house masseuse and counselor, you could just go lay on her bed and she'd give you a massage and some wise advice too. Victoria, Vix, Vixie, Vixen, etc. always served as the comedic relief, and there was never a dull moment when she was around. Beka became one of my closest friends and she was our beautician always willing to do anyone's hair or nails. And of course, Allix... She became my partner in crime, whether it was bumming rides off everyone or terrorizing Vix by "saying Jan in a midwestern accent" millions of times. The ninth roommate was a male (not casey or scott, sorry) but Dooley, our little poopface dog. Though he peed on my carpet, my bed, and myself he was always so fun to have around. Last but not least, #hashtag, yes that's our betafish's name. I wouldn't have traded any of them.

If only #hashtag made it in this one

The perfect group

Half the house has moved out now and its not what it was a month ago, but I think that anytime I look back on this year or college as a whole I will remember how blessed I was to live there and all the good memories we had together. Like I said we moved in as strangers, but now that we're all moving out those girls are like my sisters. I didn't even know that was something I needed, but God did and he blessed me with them. Next year is going to have a hard time topping this one.

God is the ultimate pursuer of our hearts.

Often times I am not a fan of the dreaded Valentine's Day holiday. For those of us single ladies the whole day and week surrounding it is a reminder of just how single we really are. I have never had a significant other at the time of Valentine's Day so I have never experienced it as that, but every year it has always been the dreaded day where it seems like everyone has someone but me.

But this year was different.

I felt so loved all day, some love from friends and from family, but mostly I felt loved by my Savior. All day I was happy and content and full of joy. There is no earthly explanation as to why either, which is why I know it was from above. All day I was reminded of his love for me, through the weather and even small blessings like hitting all green lights. Overall I just had a great feeling of peace all day that I know did not come from me considering it was on my least favorite day of the year.

The verse Psalms 29:11 comes to mind.

"The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses his people with peace."

God really did give me more than enough strength and peace throughout the day. One of my friends said to me "you know Jesus is the ultimate pursuer of our hearts". And how true it is! No one else can satisfy us, comfort us, care for us more, or love us more than he can. Not only that, he is jealous for our love. He wants our attention and he wants our time. He wants the best for us because he love us. It didn't matter that I didn't have a boyfriend or valentine anymore, I had the ultimate lover. No one else could love me like Jesus could, He loved us enough to die for us. And the best part is that we can never lose it.

"And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 8:38-39 (New Living Translation)

Count Your Blessings.

I just love how God sends me little reminders of how I should be thankful for what I am given. Just this morning my teacher let us out of class late, I hit every red light on the strip, and the I couldn't find a parking spot at the place I was going to get my lunch. Just as I was getting very frustrated and practically angry, God sent me a reality check.

I was pulling out of the lot that had no spots and going to look for somewhere else. My car window was half down and I saw two people walking down the sidewalk towards me. I notice that it is a homeless man and woman carrying large bags with all of their belongings. At this point there is also a rare break in traffic to where I could pull out. I look to the couple, knowing that they have the right of way to go in front of my car. The man stops for me to get out and says "You better go when you have the chance. Have a blessed day."

This really touched me. This man with no place to call a home, clean clothes, or a car is telling me to have a blessed day. And that is just what I have, every day is a blessed day for me. I thought back to all the complaints I'd made that day and turned them around. I am thankful to be in college, thankful to have a car, and thankful to be able to go grab some delicious food before heading to the job that I am thankful to have. Its sad that it takes something like this for me to really count and appreciate all my blessings.


Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
Ephesians 1:3