"it's good to be alive"

i think every time us girl cousins on the the Randall side get together (theres only 3 of us) we pick out matching shirts and a theme song. this weekend has been no exception.
shaina and i bought a matching shirt for bethany, and we've been singing jason gray's new song "Good to be alive" over and over again while playing card games, watching spectacular spiderman episodes, riding to a Braves game, eating yummy food, and all that good family reunion stuff.
one part of me wishes we could keep on doing this. i mean, who wouldn't? but guess what... i move tomorrow. back to the dorm and back to hattiesburg.
anyone else think that hattiesburg is an AWESOME name for a place to live? haha.
and so yeah, another part of me is really excited about going back, living with my roomie, taking cool classes (sign languageee AND music therapy!!!), connecting with old friends, introducing shaina to all my friends, meeting new peeps, and, of course, the best part - getting closer to my Savior. <3

mom and dad bought me an awesome book for my second year of college. last year i got a car and a laptop. this year i got "The Jesus Storybook Bible". don't worry guys. i wanted it. in fact, i kinda begged for it. if u've read it you understand. =] not only does this book has the cutest pictures, but it does a fantastic job of relating all these little Bible stories to the gospel. take Abraham and Isaac for exmple - at the end of the story it compares isaac to Jesus... another son walking up a mountion with wood on his back, another son trusting his father, another sacrifice. whoa, right?
but i'm getting sidetracked.
anyhow. i locked my two real Bibles in Bindi (my car) and i'm not sure how to open the front door of my grandmother's house (hehe) so tonight (with all my college worries swirling around in my head) i decided to read from my storybook. i felt like a little kid having story time before bed. aha. good feeling. :D
the story today was about God's people getting freed from slavery and wanting to live however God wanted them to. And reading out the lists and lists of rules. and more rules. and extra rules and "yet some more extra bonus ancillary supplementary rules". as you can imagine, these people got kinda depressed. and not just because of the long lists, but because they realized how differently they were living from the way God wanted them to be living.
so guess what they did.
THEY HAD A PARTYYYYY!! :)) ahhaa.
apparently Ezra decided God's people didn't need to sit around with long faces, but to revel in the power of the God that had saved them oover and over and over and over again. and so they did just that! awesome, eh?

it was a wonderful thing to read with the pressures of college hanging over me.... cause  i really wanna live as a light on my campus. i wanna be wise and awesome and godly. hehe. i wanna get all As and to impress my professors. i wanna love those i found hard to love last year and i wanna patch up anything that went wrong last year. oh, and i wanna start earning money. haha. i mean, my parents want me to. jokes.
but i feel like tonite God wanted me to know that i should simply thank Him for recusing me. over and over and over and over again.
and that i should realize thats its just good to be alive. :)
it is good to be alive.