Betty Scott Stam

I first heard the following poem when I was a freshman in college (go USC!). I was at a retreat and the speaker quoted this woman I had never heard of, Betty Scott Stam. I love what she says and I actually taped it to the inside of my Bible:

"Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes,
All my own desires and hopes,
And accept Your will for my life.
I give myself, my life, my all
Utterly to Thee to be Thine forever.
Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit.
Use me as Thou wilt.
Send me where Thou wilt.
Work out Thy whole will in my life,
At any cost, now and forever."

That poem has always struck a chord with me, because Betty was just so ready to be used by God at any time and in any place, and she only wrote this when she was 18!! Her faith led her to China to be a missionary where she met her husband John Stam. They lived there for a year and had a little girl before being martyred. I have read some more of her writings and even when she was 10 years old, she wrote beautiful poems like this:

"I cannot live like Jesus, example though He be, for He was strong and selfless, and I am tied to me. I cannot live like Jesus, my soul is never free. My will is strong and stubborn; my love is weak and wee. But I have asked Jesus to live His life in me.

I cannot look like Jesus. More beautiful is He in soul and eye and stature than sunrise on the sea. Behold His warm, His intangible, His dear humanity. Behold His white perfection of purest deity. Yet Jesus Christ has promised that like Him we shall be."

Woah!! from a 10 year old!! Can you believe that?!?! It still gives me chills to know she was so intimate with God and had such a gift for words at an early age. Her words inspire and challenge me and I hope I can live out her first poem I quoted here.




And on a completely different note, here is a cartoon that I found and think is hilarious. I'm thinking this guy may be my new favorite cartoonist :)

Picture happy!

As promised for my rabid readers, all two of you, here is a re-cap of the end of the semester and what God was doing.

First up we have the annual Christmas party hosted by Christian Challenge and it was a great time, like usual of course. There was food galore and for the umpteenth time I drank too much punch (darn you cran-grape and sprite concoction!) so halfway through the party I took to clutching my stomach to ease the carbonated pain. But before that loveliness happened, got some good pictures with my small group! Well, part of them anyways, a few couldn't make it but hey, there's always next year!


This is the nice and normal picture of some of the girls, Alex, Carrie-Rose, moi-meme, Jane and Lauren

...and here's another one, the picture of class and poise:



After the Christmas parties I went to Disneyland not once but twice in the span of 8 days, both with girls from my small group of course :) The first time I went with Carrie-Rose, her roomie Amanda and another friend of theirs, Ali, from their same floor. We had a blast running around and it was really great to get to know Amanda and Ali some and lay down a foundation for friendship!



The second time around I went with just Lauren and it was a really great time. We tried on silly glasses, went on Space Mountain, visited the jungle and had some deep conversations in the process. We talked about what it means to commit to God and what that would look like and it was a wonderful time. We even got a picture with Donald in his Christmas sweater!


love it :)

Then, as we were waiting in line for the Haunted Mansion (which stopped once while we were on it...) I had thoughtfully remembered to bring snacks for the day so we could munch and not spend too much $$. Well, in my wonderful clumsiness I broke the bag of goodies and they all fell to the ground. It was sad. And it wasn't like the line was moving, oh no, we were standing in line and continued to do so for another 5 full minutes, with everyone looking at me and laughing at my efforts, myself included.


Come to think of it, I guess my hands were a little like the Vikings receivers in the NFC championship game last night, because I dropped what I was supposed to be holding onto...

And in other news my small group ended well last semester too. We looked at The Wheel illustration, which focuses on the basics of Christianity and you can read more about it here: . It's great for re-focusing on your walk with God and figuring out how you can best hone your relationship to God and others. It definitely kicks me in the rear every time I go over it because I find an area that I have neglected and need to give more attention to.

PS. as for my training I had spoken about in my last post, I am doing okay with it. I am more determined to memorize Scripture which is always a good thing, because right when I am in my pajamas and wanting to go to sleep on my beautiful tempur-pedic bed with lovely orange sheets, I remember those verses and how I need to train myself to do good and work on my walk with God. You never drift towards the good, you have to work for it, so then I sit down in my room and memorize my next verse. This also goes for doing crunches in the morning and evening which I have committed to in an effort to work on the physical part of me. I confess I have let up some mornings and not done my crunches, but mostly those verses challenge me and help me to train myself for better. I shall keep you (two) updated with how it goes - yay for getting fit!

Welcome 2010!

So I definitely did not mean to take a month-long hiatus from writing, but unfortunately that is exactly what happened. I blame the craziness of the holidays for that. I will also re-cap the end of the fall semester on Wednesday, but thought I'd write about the new year and what I have planned.

A lot of people have themes or resolutions or whatever you want to call it for every new year - some attainable goal they set for themselves as a benchmark that they work towards. I thought it would be a good idea for me as well but I had no idea where to start. How do you sum up all you want to accomplish in a year into one pithy statement?? I thought choosing a theme verse(s) would be best to encapsulate my goal(s), but again, I had a hard time trying to whittle it down to just one verse. Then it came to me. I was walking in my neighborhood last week and it tends to be hill-y in many places, making running/walking/crawling difficult to do. As I was walking up the first hill and finding myself out of breath and clutching my chest (odd, because I can run/walk on a treadmill for an hour but on a street I last about 2 minutes...) a thought came to me. Just as training for a marathon helps one go farther in their runs, so does spiritual training help one overcome the "hills" of life and be able to walk further without stopping for breath. The idea that if you only go so far in training yourself spiritually, you'll run out of breath and only last for one, two, maybe three hills and then stop, but that if you train yourself as you would for an athletic event, you'll not only be in better "spiritual shape" but you'll be able to weather those steep hills when you come to them. I then thought of some verses my pastor had used in church earlier that week and they seemed to fit perfectly:

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly, I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." --1 Corinthians 9:24-27

I chose this passage as my theme for the new year, to not only get in shape physically and continue my workouts at the gym, but also to get more in shape spiritually too - to train myself to become more like Christ. I plan on doing this by continuing to get in God's Word and working on my prayer life and memorizing Scripture because I really need to work on that. There are of course more areas I intend to work on but those are the biggies.

I will also reference this passage throughout this year and see how I'm doing so stay posted! I hope you're having a great start to 2010 and let's train ourselves and say no to all the obstacles that hinder us from getting closer in relationship to Christ!

Time to celebrate

Today is the last day of classes and I cannot believe that this semester has come and gone so quickly!! Looking back it was one of the best semesters I’ve had, with much personal as well as ministry growth! We just finished our small group this week too, and the girls were all sad that we have to wait until next semester to get together! I still am so thankful that God brought us all together and how we genuinely care for and enjoy one another! The week of Thanksgiving we had a fun night and celebrated one of the girls who was turning 19 on Thursday! We went out to a tasty Italian restaurant, ate homemade (from a box, but still…) fudge marble cake with coconut frosting and then had fun taking pictures with silly glasses :)


Kaila, Samantha, Lauren (a.k.a. b-day girl), myself and Alex!


Kaila making a beautiful face for Sami


Alex, Lauren and I enjoying the ambiance


favorite picture of the night! We all had way too much fun with these glasses…

Sadly one of our other members couldn’t make it because she was punching out a 10 page paper, so hopefully she’ll be able to make the next crazy outing! And yes, I did buy that obnoxiously loud lei for Lauren and I made her wear it the whole night :)

Thanksgiving Part Deux

Now the holiday is over, I figured I’d write another post about things I’m thankful for, and this should have come last week, but things got too crazy plus our cabin in Lake Arrowhead doesn’t have internet, so there you go. But here are some more things I am thankful for!

• That I live in beautiful and sunny So Cal where the beach and mountains are just a little bit away

• That I had a pretty awesome childhood with some super cool and fun siblings!

• That I had such a great group of family friends to grow up with in The Armenian Mafia – multiple families who came together for camping and Forest Home and who each have an amazing heart for God! Seriously, they are such fun and awesome people and I feel so blessed to know them!

• That I am a morning person. I know I’ve written about this before, but I have to say it again – thank you God for making me a morning person because it makes these early mornings a little bit easier

• That I was able to find an apt pretty much right after I graduated college with 2 friends of mine! Vive la Casa de Amor!

• That I live so close to many of my friends, it makes getting together a whole lot easier :)

• That I have a big, fat Armenian family! I love how my family is huge, no, scratch that, we’re never ending and I love it! I have 12 first cousins and they are all great people! There is a pretty wide age difference between us, but it’s not that hard to get along with them because they are way fun and have deep hearts.

• SNOW!! It snowed on Saturday morning in Lake Arrowhead and I think it’s been 2 or more years since I’ve seen a snowfall and it was amazing. A light covering of snow on God’s creation took my breath away because it was so beautiful – the cold be darned!

• That it’s almost Christmas!! So excited for this time of year with all the decorations and music and Christmas-themed drinks everywhere, ahhhh how I love it so!

Thanksgiving: Part I

Seeing as how it is Thanksgiving right around the corner, I thought I would post about some things I’ve been thankful for and get into the spirit of gratitude!

• That I was born in the most free country in the world and can worship God openly and not in fear

• That my rheumatoid arthritis is in remission – I cannot tell you how that makes me super happy to feel normal again and not have to walk around like I’m 90 years old

• For all the fun and free things I’ve been able to enjoy recently: Keith Urban concert in my hometown of Pasadena, Ok Go concert at USC, tree lighting at The Grove (where said hello to Gov. Schwarzenegger!!) and free frozen yogurt at 21 Choices! All in the span of 3 days too! Thanks God for looking out for me :)

• That I have a super awesome family and extended family! I am so thankful that most of us all live within a half hour radius of each other too – it makes holidays such a fun time!!

• That I had an amazing education all the way through! Great schools in Chandler (K-8), Poly (go Panthers!) and USC (Fight on!!)

• That I did not get into my first choice for college because that meant I would have been in Boston when I found out I had RA – yet another example of God knowing better than me :)

• That of the 2 serious injuries I’ve had to my head, none of them were life-threatening and I always felt safe because had an amazing family to walk me through it – plus I got some sweet scars from them!!

• Thankful that nothing is too big or too small for God - I can come to Him with my seemingly impossible problems as well as my stupid ones and He cares about them both

• That I can go to the gym and have it not hurt – yes, another one about my RA being in remission, but it is seriously the best thing in the world! I am able to be active and go surfing and go to the gym multiple times a week! And I can RUN!! I used to not be able to and now I can use treadmills, ellipticals, whatever and it doesn’t hurt!!!

I think I’ll cap it right there and come back later for Part II :)

So excited for Thanksgiving around the corner and looking forward to making some delicious food too!

Peanut butter jelly time!

Okay so I know the title of this makes no sense, but it makes me laugh and thus thought it'd be a good beginner :) In keeping up with the last post, wanted to share some more photos of what I've been up to this semester. One of the best parts thus far has been being able to see the U2 concert when they came here in October (the 25th to be exact). Why am I talking about this? Well, U2 tickets went on sale today for their second run in So Cal and I thought it'd be appropriate, plus, my blog's official title comes from one of their songs!

Basically I got to see U2 at the Rose Bowl when they came out and it was amazing, oh, and did I mention I got to see them for free? AND get paid?? How did I accomplish that feat you might be wondering? Well, a friend on staff with me forwarded me some info the week before the concert, as in, the Monday before their Sunday show. He said a friend of his worked the concert for Blackberry, the main sponsor, in Oklahoma and they needed more people for the Pasadena show! Ummm, yes I will try out! Had to send in my resume, a head shot and body shot (yeah I know...) and then if I seemed normal enough I'd get a group interview and hopefully be selected to work the show! Through God's grace I was chosen for an interview, got selected (!!!!!) and worked about 12 hours that day! (and sadly my friend who told me about the opportunity didn't get chosen...) So I got to the Rose Bowl about 12:15 and was a "brand ambassador" for Blackberry and got to wear a cool fedora:



That was me with one of the girls who was there, Amber, and we were doing our best impression of Zoolander :)

So I worked the VIP area for a little bit, which basically meant I walked the VIPs to their respective tents, a whole 10-20 feet. I was enjoying that job because gave me more face time with the other people working there, but then I got switched to work the actual arena and tell people as they were walking by about the new U2 app on Blackberrys. Incidentally, if you have a Blackberry phone, I can tell you how to download U2's newest album, for free, on your phone :)

Once that was done, we finally got to go into the show at about 9ish, once U2 had already been on stage for a bit. We walk into the stadium, with "Beautiful Day" playing, and we were on the floor! Ironically we were too close to the stage at times because it was hard to see the band unless they came to the edge, but it made for some good pictures!!



Yes, that was Bono and The Edge chilling and singing along!! It was a great night and I am so happy I got the chance to do it! I told God that if I could go I would love it, but if not it's not a huge deal. Thankfully God was gracious to me and gave me the chance!!



The Rose Bowl was full to capacity, as in, FULL. So glad I didn't drive there but my awesome brother picked me up. The "parking lot" (a.k.a. golf course) was a horrendous maze, but in the end, made some friends!



That was definitely a highlight of these past couple months!!