his past weekend was extremely lovely-slash-painfully short. :/
saturday morning, i planned to sleep in a wee bit, but the sun shining through my thin curtains beckoned me out of bed, which ended up being a blessing in disguise. i got an extra hour to get ready for the day , which meant parking myself in front of my make-up mirror with a latte and JesusCulture on my laptop. between that and the intermittent bird chirps drifting in my window, it was a beautiful morning.
around 9am, i headed out to los angeles, which ended up being just as beautiful. i cranked up hillsong and spent the next hour in intense worship and prayer for our generation and also that God would give me the ability to discern truth in the midst of everything falling around us. it was awesome to have that time with God and i wished i could have that much alone time with him everyday.
i got to los angeles about 45 minutes later, met up with ethan, his cousin, sam (who's a girl), and his Marine buddy, jeff, and we immediately left for venice beach.
venice is a strange place and i love it for that. all the crazies, bums, hippies running around... while i don't necessarily love the lifestyles they lead, there is something accepting there. you can wear whatever you want, do whatever you want, be whoever you want without any feeling of judgment. after spending most of my days in richy-rich orange county, the feeling is strangely refreshing and i never cease to indulge in it.
as soon as we got to the venice, we went to our usual place, the sidewalk cafe (where the service is always horrible, but where the food is always worth it). i drank my margarita (yes, at 11am, but it was 5 o' clock somewhere, people!) and ate my chicken tacos. there was an oldies rock band playing nearby, which was an awesome soundtrack to all the people-watching we did while the 4 of us ate our lunch in silence.
after we finished, ethan and i went off so i could go shopping. :)
oh yeah, and we found this sign.
the other side said "money for acid."
i ended up with a toe ring and henna on my foot before we met jeff and sam down at the beach. i don't know how long we sat in the sand and sunshine, but it was finally time to leave when ethan looked down at me and noticed i was getting horribly sunburned.
we cranked up the tunes ("if you like pina coladas...") in ethan's car as we headed out to hollywood for the evening. with the exception of the dress blues incident, it was a lovely time. i was starting to feel the pain of my sunburn, so sam and jeff went off to explore by themselves. ethan bought ice cream, i bought a peach-green tea smoothie and we sat by some fountains and talked and talked and talked :) until jeff and sam came back and were ready to go.
on the way out, we came across those "May 21, 2011 Judgment Day" people and ethan and i ended up talking to one of the men for about 30 minutes. i genuinely wanted to understand where they came up with their information and picked the guys brain until i felt he could no longer answer any more of my questions. while i respect what they're doing, the answers he gave me did not line up with the Scripture, and the Scripture he did use was often taken out of context. still, after talking to him, i felt convicted of how much more aware i need to be of the times we are in and watch for the coming of Christ. i also thought it was interesting how on the drive to LA that morning, i had been praying for discernment and that God would show me truth and then ran into those people only hours later... i feel i am coming upon a new season in my faith and i think it's going to be an exciting one.
we finally left hollywood around 8:30pm and by the time we picked up pizza and got back to ethan's aunt's house, i was feeling exhausted and the pain of my sunburn had intensified so much, it hurt to move. while everyone else ate pizza, i went back to the room i was staying in to put on the aloe vera lotion i had just bought. before i could even start, my sweet boyfriend came in, sat by my side on the floor and slowly, sweetly, rubbed the lotion on my burnt shins and shoulders as i tried not to cry from the sting (i can honestly say i've never been burnt so bad in my life!).
i don't know why, but that moment took my breath away. i hadn't said a word as i slipped to the back room to be in pain by myself, and i was amazed as he made my pain just as important to him as anything else. more than that, he wanted to make sure i was taken care of.
as much as my skin hurt, it was a beautiful moment and i felt honored to have someone so tender as the man in my life.
after i felt a little better, we joined everyone else for pizza in the living room and watched 28 weeks later. i didn't see half of it because it was so gory and my head was continuously buried under my sweatshirt hood or in ethan's arm--not a movie for the squeamish! we all finally went to sleep around 1am.
sunday with ethan was way too short. we got coffee at some breakfast place nearby that was out of all their food, watched tv movies half the morning and spent the other half in preparation for a barbecue. we got about 20 minutes to eat lunch while ethan's dad and older sister passed around family pictures and told stories, all of which made me laugh and feel even more a part of the family.
ethan and jeff left to head back to base around 2pm and i headed back to orange county, where i made a peppermint chocolate shake, caught up on all my blogs and spent a couple hours researching prophecy of the end times (yesss, that may 21st guy really struck a cord with me!).
all in all, the weekend held many beautiful moments, from my margarita and the warm sunshine to the lotion on my sunburn and the sharing of family pictures.
i started my day on monday feeling full and content. i am convinced that is how every weekend should leave you feeling, which must mean that it was a blessed one. :)
and now, i am missing ethan terribly and counting down the moments till we can have another saturday together.
hope everyone else's weekend was just as blessed! <3
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