Cookie Dough Icecream and John Travolta.

Today has been a really crazy, but awesome day.

I had to drag myself out of bed...it should have been at 8 but it didn't happen until 10.

My entire family came today, including my Aunt April, Uncle Greg, and Cousin Angel are here from Ohio. They are wonderful! And I'm so happy they are here!

Yesterday, a small group of us loaded up into the church van and headed to Ferdinand to go to the Abbey and to the Monastery Castle. They were lovely.

We got to go into the large chapel in the Abbey. The marble floors, ornate woodwork and stonework, angel carvings, stain glass windows, and statues of Christ were a little overwhelming compared to my normal setting of a gymnasium and simple stage. It was like stepping into another world. One where to show your love for God, you spent and spent and decorated and spent.

I don't think that God in anyway calls us to build ornate buildings like that to worship in, rather I believe the opposite.

But, at the same time I can appreciate the beauty of the building and the imagination and creativity and heart of the people that spent their lives on it.

My favorite part of the Abbey and the Castle were the windows.

You should have seen the detail and precision and the colors...ohhh...
They were otherworldly. They were like nothing I've ever seen.

I was afraid the pictures were going to step out of their frames at any moment. That I would be joined by the angel Gabriel, or Jesus falling beneath the weight of the cross.

I studied each one and wondered how I could take the beauty of the windows and apply to my life; to my religion. Then I thought of what the most important part of stained glass windows is....sunlight.

Without light the picture isn't visible! It's just a dark picture outlined by iron....sooo how does that apply to my life?

The windows are beautiful and painstakingly worked on. We are painstakingly created beautiful.

No one can see the beauty of the windows without light shining through them.
As Christians true beauty isn't visible without the light and love of God our Father shining through us!

Does that make sense? Or did I totally force that thought just for the sake of making windows applicable?

Mehh....who knows. I'm running with it.