Erika Linea

(via lovedrelentlesslybyhim)

fitnesstreats:

No-equipment workout: shoulders, legs and core
This is a circuit of 10 exercises. Perform each exercise for 50 seconds with a 10-second break (use the free Gym Boss app; if you don’t want to use a timer, you can also perform each move for 10 to 12 reps instead):
1. In-and-outs on the right leg
2. In-and-outs on the left leg
3. Bear to squat
4. Low plank to high plank (both arms at the same time if possible; on your knees if too difficult)
5. Plank walkout with right leg up
6. Plank walkout with left leg up
7. Down dog knee-to-elbow, right leg up
8. Down dog knee-to-elbow, left leg up
9. Bridge-up (substitute with a glute bridge if this move is too difficult)
10. Dancing crab

(Exercise descriptions on www.fitnesstreats.com/2013/03/bodyweight-workout-shoulders-legs-and-core-but-without-push-ups)

Repeat circuit for a total of 3 rounds!

collegehumor:

The Troll: Easter, Oral, and Homemade Fruit Roll-Ups [Click for more]

I finally understand the true meaning of Easter now.

Source:

This is about my past and about how God came in and changed my life….

A couple things about my past:

Grew up on food stamps/never new clothes

Molested as a kid

Dad never around (tdy)

Parents almost split up (throwing plates/dishes)

Always picked on

Never had a best friend

Always tried to be older

Had glasses and braces by 1^st grade

Told I was dumb

Moved to Virginia when I was in 4^th grade

Shaved my arms and legs in 5^th grade

Did track and field till I was in high school starting in elementary school

Started stealing alcohol when I was in 5^th grade

My aunt’s boyfriend’s son sexually molested me on a family trip in New Jersey to see family and friends

My close friend died August 28^th the year before my freshman year of high school

                I was devastated; none of my friend knew how to comfort me (abandoned me). I started to drink and find ways to ease the pain

I did rowing and was on varsity right off the bat, was a way to release pain and also did it for friend who died before

Started dating a guy named Byron

Lost my virginity at 16 years old and did it as much as I could

                Felt that I had male approval

                Was always looking at other guys when I was with ex

                He started smoking weed in the last months we were dating, got kicked out of his house, out of school and I still gave him money to help him with food (he was living with a friend of ours) came to find out he was using it to buy drugs

I met two other guys and started dating them too (was official)

                No one knew about this and they didn’t know about each other

                I was having sex (protected and unprotected) with each of them

                I broke up with all of them on the same day after a week of feeling guilty (one got drunk and drove to my house, one cried and went away and the last, the one that I liked the most told me to never talk to him again)

Dad found out that I was no longer a virgin and when my siblings were out of town my parents came in my room as I was falling asleep and screamed at me that I was a whore for about an hour. (this was after telling my mom that I have had sex with over five guys)

Always was made fun of at school

                Wrote two notes to guys that I like who were on sports teams and they embarrassed me by reading them out to their teams

I always looked for male approval so I had sex with a lot of guys and never had a definite boyfriend all throughout high school

I was always an all around athlete and did as many sports as I could

I still drank a lot and was always sneaking out to party and drink

I was a good student and always talked to everyone even though I was mistreated by everyone.

Met Carolyn and would sneak out, party, meet up with random military guys, and sleep in my car at nights and would lie to each other’s parents all the time

                Her dad was abusive is what she said

                She used me to meet all my guy friends and all the rednecks, we would go out and meet random guys that were in the military and talk and kiss them but it was always a different guy/different day situation

                We got in a huge fight and she got our guy friends who took her side to call my family and threaten to kill us.

Met Michelle would do the same thing that I did with Carolyn (sleeping in cars, getting drunk and driving…etc) and was treated the same

                Introduced her to everyone in school during get on board day

                Would lie to our parents and party all the time

From friends death before high school to today I have lost over 20 people in my life (four at once with a car accident, some with suicide, a couple drunk driving incidents, parents died when tree fell on their house)

By my junior summer I had had sex with over 15 people and was always looking for male approval. People knew to call me to ask where the party was too, there were over 1,000 people in my contacts at that point.

I went to church with a friend (haley) and was just looking for another boyfriend. After two weeks the pastor preached about everything failing you(he listed everything that was going on in my life that was failing me. Including friends, family, alcohol, sex, etc). I dedicated my life to Christ but still lived on the fence

Dad would always talk about money all the time and we were never good enough for him

Parents never had friends and it would always hurt my feelings to see them so lonely and mom to feel like she didn’t have anyone

Did really well in rowing and basketball (quit basketball jr year) went to nationals three out of four in high school and got recruited for college rowing

Went on official visit at different schools- decided to go to Alabama (dad was angry because I didn’t take the full ride at other places, mom told me to go with my heart)

First day I moved into college got the most drunk I have ever been in my life and was carried up four flights of stairs to my dorm room by some random guy

Freshman year I spent over 1,000 on alcohol in the first couple months

I went out all the time and would look to have sex with guys

I still went to FCA and loved it… and I was introduced to Daystar Family Church because they led worship for FCA. I knew that that was the type of worship I loved and that I wanted to check out that church. (too bad I had no car and none of my friends wanted to go there)

Was having a friend with benefits on the tennis team who swore that he had a pimple on his lip but turned out to be a cold sore, that came up on my lip a couple days later

                He went on to tell all the athletes and all the male athletic teams that I had herpes

It ruined my reputation and I still went out and tried to mess around with guys that were not athletes…

I went to Unashamed all the time and loved the worship but still went out and partied and had sex, I wanted to be part of the Unashamed team

Sophomore year I started dating a football player that I liked a lot and then he kissed me and I told him that I wasn’t ready and he got angry and started having sex with my roommate in spite of me.

That same year I was encouraging another football player and was doing the friends with benefits thing and had a pregnancy scare… He didn’t want commitment, and made me feel like trash or unworthy to date. He made me get checked for STDs three times… to this day I am clean… and don’t have anything, thank you Lord.

My coach liked the way I rowed, so I was lucky enough to be the stroke of the First Varsity Eight… I mean I was on cloud nine…. To be quick enough to be in the first boat?!?!? What an honor it was, but I was so focused on my glory that I didn’t realize that God deserved the glory.

I got injured a couple times; my back had always been a problem since I was a kid, with scoliosis and now bulging to maybe herniating a disk in my spine… I was seriously getting tired of it all.

My roommates were doing their own thing and I felt that I was still missing something… I mean I went to church and I gave my life to Christ… but why do I look and feel the same depressed way that I was a couple years ago??? Why did I not feel whole?

I kept going to Unashamed and kept going to Daystar Family Church during my sophomore year. I didn’t have to ask for rides or anything. But I was a every so often kind of person… kind of like those people that say “oh I know I’m saved, why do I have to go to a church?… blah blah blah”

The funny thing is, I was always positive throughout my mess, I still was outgoing and talked to everyone, just out of love. I started helping break down after Unashamed on Thursday nights but still was just doing my own thing…. I would get all emotional and get torn up and cry on Thursdays but get persuaded that going out is what I did and that it was something that defined who I was pretty much… I soon became the DD… or the not as drunken driver, because at this point I decided not to drink as much but still have fun.  

Let’s just skip over the next couple months to my junior year… sometime during this year I decided to do Unashamed’s Equipped discipleship program, that was led by some great men and women of God. Well during an Unashamed service, Tyler Guice was preaching on Jesus’s love and just living for him… then he asked a question that will forever be on my heart…. “Why not go all in for Jesus? What would you lose?” He goes on to say you would lose actually remembering what you did last night, you would lose not feeling empty… but wait…. That means I would gain, I’m not losing anything if I let go of these things… I am gaining time and joy. I can spend my time building relationships and having joy beyond comparison?… what does that even look like???

From that day forward, I made a commitment to Christ, to live for him. I cut myself off from my friends that went out, even my roommate… and just sought after Christ… every moment I got. I was taught to always pray in the spirit when I had time from pastors at Daystar. When my friends would ask me to go out, I would tell them I didn’t feel like it and lock myself in my room with my Bible, dreams, and kind healing words of the Father.

I learned so much about God and my relationship with him in that semester. I would never take that back.

To this date I have had sex with over 50 people, but I have prayed for months and years for God to help me forget how it feels to ever hold another man. I believe that he has made me pure again, gave me physically, emotionally and spiritually a new body. I have felt so ashamed of my past and condemnation has run rampant in my mind and flesh has been screaming to me about my past. BUT GOD, he is greater than anything in my past. I steal deal and struggle with it each day, but I constantly remind myself about God and his mercy and grace. I write love letters to my future husband and pray daily for the moment that we meet and for our relationship. I don’t want to waste my time on giving my heart and self away to anyone but God and my husband.

I kept serving at Unashamed and was giving everything that I had to rowing. I tried so hard to please and make everyone happy. I think that every conversation that I have had with my earthly father since I have been to college has been about money and how I am going to make it. As you can see men, please encourage and love your daughters… be a dad… I longed for just a daddy to hold me as I cried and just to tell me that everything is going to be okay… and to tell me how beautiful and treasured I am…. This led me to calling God “Abba”… he is such a dad that I need and desire in my life sometimes. My father is an amazing man, and I speak now that he is growing into such a Man of God every day. God’s got such a high calling on his life… sometimes tough love is hard to breakdown. His heart is big, but he doesn’t know how to say what he feels sometimes, afraid to let down his guard. I have learned so much about life and how to fix things from my earthly father. He is awesome in that point, but I always wanted someone to lead me in Christ…. Now I am at the age, where it would be inappropriate to ask for a father to just hold me and let me cry… yes, I am a big child sometimes… it is allowed. I am finding that it IS okay to cry. I always try to be tough and just seem okay for everyone. When Jesus wants us to have a heart cry for him and for people who are unsaved.

My mother has always been a prayer warrior… she has been my best friend for a long time and has always taught me about Jesus even when I was a child. I could write a book alone just about how kind hearted she is even when people at her work have treated her badly. She is truly an angel and a light for the Lord to the people around her.

Well that same year, my fire for Christ just grew. Even though I did not fit in with any of the girls at Unashamed, because they constantly just brought up rowing and my stature and how tall and athletic I was… whenever we would do things… I was not looking like them or acting like them so I didn’t fit in there either. The only thing that kept me going to Unashamed was just thinking about the lost people that would be saved… and the opportunity I had to share Christ. I grew in my personal relationship with Christ and just fell in love with him.

During rowing, I stroked the second eight, which I was okay with. I gave God the glory before every race and read scripture and found time to meditate each morning on his word and worship and praise him. That boat was ranked in the region and was beating the first varsity on some races. We were in unity all the time when we rowed, and really kept the fire going inside that boat, even when odds were against us. God really worked on my heart that season. I would write scripture and reminders on my outboard hand to remind myself of God and how he deserves the glory. To drop my pride and surrender to Christ fully.

Haley from high school and I started talking, I found out that she was right where I was with Christ… just seeking after him. I was so excited to come home and spend the summer with her growing in Christ. That’s exactly what we did! I had made enough money to go to the Jesus Culture Awakening Conference with her in Chicago, Illinois (which is where my sister moved to). It was probably one of the greatest experiences that I have ever had. Hearing such amazing speakers that really changed my perspective on living as a single Christian and getting to worship and heal people… such an amazing experience. It was really hard to walk away that summer and come back to college when I was growing so much and walking out life in Christ with Haley.

 My senior year had its times of hardship and greatness, but God was still faithful. The summer after graduating college, I thought I wanted to go into full time ministry… and I still think that sometimes. It was probably the driest seasons in my relationship with Christ. I did not hear from him and I S-T-R-U-G-G-L-E-D… just like that. I had a bunch of different jobs… I was applying and got denied for food stamps. I still went to church and believed God … well kind of.  I didn’t know what God was doing. This season really taught me that a relationship with God was not based off a feeling, and that the teacher does not talk when the test is being taken. That he is faithful even when I don’t feel Him around, because He is around. I started to tithe and just expected God to bring me out of my pit and out of this low point I was in.  

I became the head coach of the men’s rowing team and was struggling with losing my identity as an athlete. I missed competing and everything that came with being an athlete. I got to race twice in the fall, which was such an amazing experience. Coaching men is such a different experience. God was with me through the whole season, even though I was having a hard time. I struggled with so many people coming up to me and telling me that their sons or daughters looked up to me. Instead of feeling encouraged, I was feeling convicted and ashamed because I was going nowhere in life. Or at least I felt that way. I felt that I was at a stopping point, that I would be stuck. But I kept reminding myself that God gave me visions and has told me before that he has a HUGE calling on my life to encourage and speak to millions of people. From that moment on I just prayed and tithed for God to bring me out of having four jobs to having one job and to give me clear vision. I just kept praying for the breakthrough. I then decided that I wanted to take the GRE and go to graduate school. I decided about twenty five days before to start studying. I was a bit inconsistent when it came to studying, and could not focus.

I took the GRE and did not do as well as I want to, but I still knew somewhere in the back of my mind that God was going to let me go to graduate school. I just kept praying and expecting, that led people to come back into my life and gave me opportunity. I got to meet with the director of the program and expressed my heart for athletes and for sports. The process of applying seemed really easy and getting recommendations came so easy. God just let me have peace throughout it all. I just had an overwhelming peace about it even though there were times of stress. During this time I was still expecting for one job. Out of nowhere I was contacted by the Mayor of Fayette, Alabama. I was so surprised; he was contacting me about a waterpark that they were opening in their city. The man over American Red Cross for Alabama gave him my contact information. Well to shorten this, God was with me throughout the whole time and I now have a summer job that pays a lot more than I am getting with my jobs now. Now back to graduate school, my application was put in on the last day that it could be, on a Friday. That next Monday, I was contacted for an interview for the graduate program. The program is very prestigious and accepts only a couple people each year, but somehow I had the confidence that one was going to be me. Even though there was a little doubt in my mind, I went into the interview knowing that God was with me. Not even two hours after the interview, I got an email telling me that I got accepted. Wow! Thank you God!

I am walking this out each day. I want to touch the world and dream big dreams. I know that God’s got something big in store for my future… and it will change thousands of people’s lives and bring them to Christ. That’s all I want for my life. And my story goes on…

I love rowing

(via youcouldbesaved)

Love soem china glaze! =D

(via youcouldbesaved)

(via yourlovenever-fails)

So, I have been living in Alabama after college for a while now and I am realizing how much God is with me. In the past it has been rough and I have had my times where my eyes weren’t focused on God instead on men, lust and money. I was consumed with how depressed I was not being an athlete anymore for the University. I didn’t have a job for a while this summer and felt like I worked so hard in college and make such an impact in college that I did not get why I was not getting a job. I almost fell in love with a man out in Atlanta who had everything that would be considered amazing in the world. I was acting like his wife without the ring… I didn’t read my Bible and did not pray. I pushed God away because I knew what I was doing was not right in his Word. It’s funny how when you think that you have the best life and that you can get away from what God has for you… He steps right in and reminds you that only HE can fill you and make you WHOLE. I quickly figured that there was something not right in my being. I had stayed in Atlanta for over a week at that moment and had applied to about 30 different jobs and did not hear one thing back from any of them. see—- where you focus is makes a difference. I quickly started feeling bad becaus I was not working and I was just sitting around. I then just felt I had to read the Bible… I realized that I had lost the yearning and my heart wasn’t desiring and longing God like it used to. That was a problem… How am I supposed to tell other people to follow Jesus and be all happy if I wasn’t trying to listen to him. So I got in the Word and he reveiled that the relationship was not of Him and that the man I was with was not going to be leading me in Christ. … you see now, I am really intimadating to most guys because of my tall athletic stature and aggressive personality. But I knew that God was calling me out of that relationship and away from him. I spent the day with his sister and got to pour my heart for Jesus and for the lost to her. She cried; as did I. I got to share to her the heart of Christ. I had to wait for him to come home and talked with him… he understood and was heartbroken that we weren’t talking anymore but I knew that it was time for me to buckle down and become the woman that God wanted me to be. So back to Ttown I went. Got another job about a week later that I am currently at. That was God, because I got the 1st,2nd and 3rd interviews all in the same day. They were impressed with the way I talked with people and built relationships with complete strangers.

Over the past couple weeks I have finally gotten to spend time with my spiritual parents and learn things in the Word. I am getting consistant in the reading praying and seeking God… to where I can get back to being obsessed with him and to where I can tell people that Jesus is my boyfriend… Realign my focus on the Lord. So I am getting poured into and we just got done with the Equipped Conference… Holy Spirit fell everywhere in our church… God has released so many chains that were holding people down. We have missionaries from Mexico staying at the church for a month. They are all about my age and I can’t wait to grow in God with them and learn a lot from them. By keeping my eyes fixed on the Lord, God has brough two younger girls for me to pour my heart into and show them His love. Also, he has let me be a beacon at my work, where I am the youngest and only unmarried person there. One lady called the office on her off day and asked me to pray for her and the situation that was going on at her house. Only by God am I able to be able to do the things that are happening lately. 

I started writing love letters to my future husband again. How refreshing it is to remember that someone else is waiting for me and is growing in Christ like me!

Lord come and fill my day with happiness.

THANK YOU LORD!

fuckyeahweddingideas:

Beach Reception Inspiration