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“And the two shall become one." [Mark 10:8] It's official, we're getting married... Collin and I could not be more excited to start the next chapter of our lives together! ❤ He has always jokingly said that if I want to get married I should propose to him. So I did just that on his birthday, made him put a ring pop on his finger and everything. The joke was on me because seconds later he did the real thing!

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Death isn’t when your heart stops. Death is when you give up who you could be for the safety of who you are.

(via defineyourgrind)

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Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.

(via defineyourgrind)

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“You broke through the night like the rising of the sun." Family & friends, I'm excited to say I'm beginning a new chapter with music ministry. Don't ask for my detailed plans because I have no clue--like usual.. Share in the repercussions of a journey unknown by searching “Rachel Ann" (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr). Here's to trusting that grace will lead me wherever I need to be. I may not know where I'm going, but I do know who I am...

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NEWS FROM CASSANDRA: After much thinking and praying, it has been decided that I will be fading out of this music ministry, and Rachel will be continuing as a solo-act. Rachel and I are both still a part of the Extraordinary Mission ministry team and will continue to provide music at those future events; however it is time for me to hang up my “SimplyRC” nametag. But, before I officially sign off I want to say…. THANK YOU for all of the support and guidance that you have all given Rachel and I through these past 3 years of working together as musicians. And of course, thank you to Rachel for being there with me through the thick and thin. ❤ Read the full post on our Facebook page @TheSimplyRC It's been real✌❤😘

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Day 30: HE>i

DAY THIRTY: HE > i 30-Day Acceptance Challenge

“We are difference makers so if you’re beating death raise a hand, but shut up if you’re not...” We try so hard to be what others want us to be. It requires a great deal of energy and perfectionism within to meet their constant demands. I believed I felt free when I was conditionally loved and accepted by those around me. What I didn’t know was if I continued to care so much about what they thought I would always be their prisoner. I was confined to those walls I built myself. I chose to believe the lies. But when I accepted myself, I was freed from the heavy burden of needing others to accept me. Oh the sweet peace that washes over me as I am learning to Love again... Though the enemy of beauty tells me I am nobody, I am Everything to Him. The only true God told me over and over of His love. He stayed, patiently waiting for me to give into a life actually worth living...

“Sometimes you have to lose your mind to find your freedom.” And that’s exactly what I did. In the end I found that the worst enemy to creativity and life in general is self doubt… We all have our share of ugly places in life. We each have the moments where we question if we can keep going. And we each have moments of pure bliss for love of His creation. And with that I urge you to be more than grateful for the wonderful people who love you in ugly and in bliss. Who stay by your side no matter how painful it may be to see you suffer relentlessly. Be more than grateful for people that challenge you, and for people that turn away in the face of your ugly moments… for they have taught you who you’re not. They are the ones that gave you the hit you needed to accept yourself fully.

“I pray my feet won’t ever fail me now…” Thinking in realistic terms has never come naturally for me… I’ve always been a dreamer. So let me ask you this: how many times have you expressed your dreams and been laughed at or met with hesitant looks? Or told it’s not likely to happen? Don’t you worry little dreamer… because the difference between them and us is they let life happen to them, and we MAKE LIFE HAPPEN… How terrible would it have been if MLK Jr. said “I have a dream”…and then said, “but I don’t want to talk about it, it’s not likely to happen”?! Good thing that wasn’t the case. He followed through with his dream and who is to say we can’t do the same?

Today I accept I’ve got a dream and, through the grace of God, I will pursue it.

With Love, Rachel

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Day 29: I Am Not the Hero

DAY 29: I Am Not the Hero.

This world needs God, not me. They need a Savior and that’s not me. I can’t help everyone, and I certainly can’t save everyone. I feel so much empathy sometimes that a hero wants to emerge right here and now. My heart is telling me to be their Savior. But then I fall into brokenness, into my natural imperfections, and discover I’m not the hero. And that’s when I hear my soul telling me to show them their Savior.

Today I accept that I'm not the hero. Our Savior is the Hero, and we can show Him to the world...

With Love, Rachel

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Day 28: Why You’re Secretly Unhappy When Someone Else Succeeds

DAY 28: Why You're Secretly Unhappy When Someone Else Succeeds...

Envy. Everyone feels this from time to time. It’s best described as “sorrow at another persons good”. What we think of ourselves and what we think of God has a lot to do with envy. Sometimes we have this distorted view that God is a master… so we believe we have to earn His love. It can’t possibly be as simple as God loving us unconditionally, so we try to prove that we are worthy of it.

When someone close to us succeeds, we feel sorrow because we fear God will not love us as much as he once did… like he is an unfair parent that chooses favorites. We feel we have been pushed further away from Heaven, so now we have to defend ourselves… we desperately try to come up with as many reasons as possible for God to let us live in His love, His joy, His freedom. We believe we have no choice but to succeed and focus on ‘doing’ instead of ‘becoming’…thinking our salvation and happiness depends on it.

“How can I possibly become the best version of myself, if I’m not doing something to earn that place with God?”

Relax. God is does not want drama. Envy doesn’t come from the Kingdom above, but from the broken world below. You don’t have to earn anything. The simple truth is unconditional love. God doesn’t need anything from you. He actually loved you into existence. So stop trying to earn his love and start letting his love release into the world through you.

You are the only person that can live your life; no one is going to do it for you. Release the comparisons you have between yourself and the world. You will never have what they have. You will never be who they are.

Whoever YOU are, set yourself free… Rest assured that you are always loved. There is no reason to be anxious or afraid.

So when you wake up each morning, remind yourself who you are & always remember WHOSE you are.

--- Today Iet's release the comparisons we have between ourselves and the world. Your life is not comparable to anyone else’s because you are one of a kind. Do not be content with comfort saying, "someone else will do something" because there is no one else that can do what you were put here to do. No one else can be you. If you don't play your part, your part won't be played at all.

We've each got one life to live... "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone." (Thomas Merton)

With Love, Rachel

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Day 26: Why Do You Let Fear Control You?

DAY 26: Why Do You Let Fear Control You? For a long long long time I chose darkness. I was complacent with accepting that my average life wouldn’t amount to anything extraordinary. But through a lengthy (still ongoing) recovery process I made a change. I would love to tell you it’s an easy process but that would be a big fat lie. It wasn’t simple then, but it is now… now I accept joy. I choose life. Below I’ll share some of what helped me turn my life around…

Is passion and joy absent in your life? Do you go to bed with regrets; feeling like you didn’t do enough and you have no idea where you’re going?

DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK. Maybe motivation is missing from your life; you feel you’ve lost your purpose. There’s nothing inspiring you or filling you with happiness. Maybe you feel your life is so out of order that you couldn’t possibly feel more empty and confused. Darkness may be overwhelming your heart, but don’t be afraid to face it. It might be at terrible day today, but it’s always darkest before the dawn. Tomorrow could be the best day of your life! You just have to get there…

JUST STOP. Take a look at your everyday decisions. Who are you in your daily routine… negative or positive? Anxious or calm? Sad or happy? Filled with hope or filled with doubt? Do you see victory or do see loss?

What do you choose?

Your mind obviously says, “Choose the positive, calm, trusting, happy life style!” but is that what your heart says? You’re heart rules over all. The mind may be yelling all the right answers to the best way to live, but none of that matters if you’re heart is not ready and willing. Sometimes your heart is simply stuck. It doesn’t want to choose to move forward to a joy filled life. It’s scared of the cost and fears that it may actually have to hike into the unknown. Instead it wants the comfortable suppressed negative life style! Sometimes your heart has been deprived of joy for so long that, at first, it’s actually more painful to live a life of joy. Don’t worry; you’re on the right track. Sometimes simply choosing to believe is not enough, you have to train yourself to give all you have of to love.

WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO EXPERIENCE TRUE JOY? -Fall in Love with Christ. -Know that you are fearfully and wonderfully made, worthy and loved from the inside out. -Live in the MOMENT. Not in the next hour or even the next second…this moment. -Know that you don’t have to earn your purpose or talents. God has already blessed you with a mission. He has already given you everything you need to live a full and meaningful life. You just have to discover it within yourself. -A lot of practice to rid your mind of the bad and replace it with good.

THAT’S GREAT, BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO ANY OF THAT… The way you train yourself to live joyfully is different for everyone. What are your passions? What makes you happy? Maybe sports, music, cooking, volunteering, being a mom or dad, teaching, spending time with friends and family, reading, writing, etc. These are the places you are free to be you. They make your heart all warm and happy inside. Your heart can let go and you can be yourself. This is where you begin to practice letting go of the negative and taking in joy. God gave you these gifts so you could see the meaning of life a little more clearly. USE THEM! He gave them to you so you could understand Him..and through this you will better understand who you really are.

YOU WANT THE ANSWERS TO LIFE? Live your passions. 1. Practice these passions that reveal your true self. Your true self doesn’t want fear, sadness, and anxiety… no matter how much that voice of doubt tells you, “that’s just who I am”. It’s not who you are. So stop listening to the fear out of fear that you might be what you’ve feared! 2.Talk about what makes you smile, your gifts, your struggles. Nothing can be changed if you don’t at least talk it out with people you trust. 3. Involve others. It’s all about sharing your gifts. 4. Forget what “they” say. If there is one thing that blocks us from freely living with joy, it is the fear of what others will say if you have the courage to go for it and be who you really are. 5. Be courageous with your passions! This ensures that you will always be moving forward. You will improve your gifts and your ability to live to the fullest. You will become less likely to fall into laziness and that dangerous comfort zone that we all embrace too much. It doesn’t have to be complicated… visit a long lost friend, make a meal you’ve never made before, turn off the TV, watch the sunset, etc. 6. Believe!!! The first step to any goal or dream is to believe you can do it. If I wanted to be the best musician I could be, it would begin with realizing I am capable and I can do it! I could practice and practice for months, but if I don’t believe I am capable I will never improve and it will feel like months of wasted time. When you don’t have faith, your passion for life diminishes because nothing is driving you. There’s nothing more powerful than a simple thought-feeling of “I can do it!”. 7. No buts. No excuses. No regrets.

HE’S GOT YOUR BACK. God will take you to love and joy if you trust Him and His unending love… It all starts with a little faith. Picture yourself living your dreams. They will come alive only when you believe they will. See your own victory in overcoming darkness and discovering joy.

I hope you’ll choose to love. I hope you’ll choose to live without fear of darkness and without fear of joy. Like any path, it will be difficult, but I guarantee this one is completely worth it. It’s always darkest before the dawn…

With Love, Rachel

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Day 25: Uhh... Hello?

DAY TWENTY FIVE: Uhh… Hello? That “Love Thy Neighbor” thing… I meant that. –God

Hello? Is anyone there? I am convinced that the greatest cruelty is our casual blindness to the despair of others. Sadly, we are putting the blindfold on ourselves. We don’t want to see that others need us right here and now. Because knowing that there’s actually something we can DO… knowing we’ll be challenged to look within ourselves… It’s intimidating. We are fearful of what might happen if we open our hearts and give everything to others. When we refuse to do this, we lose out on our ability to really live. We lose out on being able to help the ones that need us the most.

“Everyday prayers go unanswered, and it seems to me that this is not because God didn’t want those prayers answered, but because he sent us to answer those prayers and we didn’t heed to the call” (Matthew Kelly). There are so many that simply give up, and it’s hard to blame them. They are searching for the right answers in the wrong places, and we are letting it happen. They are being consumed by the culture, abused by an enemy who doesn’t sleep, and ignored by a church that won’t wake up.

So how do we wake up? Well there’s this thing called love... don’t roll your eyes or stop reading because this is our solution and the only thing in life that counts. How many times will we have to hear this until we finally choose to believe it and act upon it?

Mother Teresa is the perfect example of leading a life of love. She had an immense love for the unloved, “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked, and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.” We don’t have to go on a mission trip far away to make a difference. We are needed right here.

Now what are you going to do?

Stop and listen. Listen with the intent to understand, instead of the intent to simply reply. Discover that the bravest love is wildly faithful and is not afraid to fall hard again every morning. Give your heart, not your mind. When you make mistakes, pick yourself up with dignity and keep going! Live without fear of failure. Live simply for love.

There is a reason loving others is the second most important commandment. The needs of your neighbor will not be met by a church building. They need a church family. What they need is someone to lead them to love, someone to reveal the joy in discovering a true Savior because they won’t find Him on their own. They are lost and reaching out for you, but are you reaching out for them?

Today I accept that Love is what we’re looking for.

With Love, Rachel

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Day 25: Uhh... Hello?

DAY TWENTY FIVE: Uhh… Hello? That “Love Thy Neighbor” thing… I meant that. –God

Hello? Is anyone there? I am convinced that the greatest cruelty is our casual blindness to the despair of others. Sadly, we are putting the blindfold on ourselves. We don’t want to see that others need us right here and now. Because knowing that there’s actually something we can DO… knowing we’ll be challenged to look within ourselves… It’s intimidating. We are fearful of what might happen if we open our hearts and give everything to others. When we refuse to do this, we lose out on our ability to really live. We lose out on being able to help the ones that need us the most.

“Everyday prayers go unanswered, and it seems to me that this is not because God didn’t want those prayers answered, but because he sent us to answer those prayers and we didn’t heed to the call” (Matthew Kelly). There are so many that simply give up, and it’s hard to blame them. They are searching for the right answers in the wrong places, and we are letting it happen. They are being consumed by the culture, abused by an enemy who doesn’t sleep, and ignored by a church that won’t wake up.

So how do we wake up? Well there’s this thing called love... don’t roll your eyes or stop reading because this is our solution and the only thing in life that counts. How many times will we have to hear this until we finally choose to believe it and act upon it?

Mother Teresa is the perfect example of leading a life of love. She had an immense love for the unloved, “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked, and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.” We don’t have to go on a mission trip far away to make a difference. We are needed right here.

Now what are you going to do?

Stop and listen. Listen with the intent to understand, instead of the intent to simply reply. Discover that the bravest love is wildly faithful and is not afraid to fall hard again every morning. Give your heart, not your mind. When you make mistakes, pick yourself up with dignity and keep going! Live without fear of failure. Live simply for love.

There is a reason loving others is the second most important commandment. The needs of your neighbor will not be met by a church building. They need a church family. What they need is someone to lead them to love, someone to reveal the joy in discovering a true Savior because they won’t find Him on their own. They are lost and reaching out for you, but are you reaching out for them?

Today I accept that Love is what we’re looking for.

With Love, Rachel

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Day 24: Can You Remember Who You Were?

DAY TWENTY FOUR: Can You Remember Who You Were Before The World Told You Who You Should Be?

“Let God give to you what is yours and give to them what is theirs.” This quote has a lot of meaning behind it…. Because the question is, what is mine? What’s my purpose? Who am I? Not who am I dating, who are my friends, what school do I go to, what’s my job, but WHO AM I? The world tends to skip this question and instead tells us to go down the checklist of life. Because if you have everything they list (money, career, wife/husband, house, etc.) then you will be truly happy. But life is not a checklist! It’s so much more than this…

We find much confusion in life, constantly wondering which way to go and what the best solution is for the countless hardships we encounter. But confusion seems to be the forbidden word in today’s society. You are not allowed to be confused. You have to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it at all times. If there’s a problem you better be quick to find a solution, because the simple words of “I don’t know” is not acceptable. Everyone wants an instant fix and instant results. But all good things take time. A few areas each of us could work on are patience and the ability to live more in the moment. Yet the world says if you don’t know exactly what your future looks like then there’s something wrong with you. Why do we need to have our whole lives figured out by the time we’re eighteen anyway? We worry so much about what a child will be tomorrow yet we forget that he/she is someone TODAY.

The only dangerous confusion in life is the confusion of who we are. In the end, this is the only thing that matters. Uncertainty with life is beautiful, uncertainty with yourself is not. Learn to know the difference. So who are you? What do you like about yourself? I believe many of us have forgotten or maybe never had a chance to learn the answers to questions like these. They are some of the toughest questions because they require something deeper than stating where you go/went to school, what you majored in, how many kids you have, and how much money you make. You can have all of these things but if you don’t know and love who you are…you will go through life feeling discontent with everything you do.

Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be? If you want to learn your direction in life, learn about yourself without the world’s opinions. Discover the present you, not the future you. Embrace who you are, not what the world says you should be, and the rest will follow.

What we seek may be found in what we already have. God doesn’t expect us to have life figured out, but He does hope that we can discover who we are. He made you in a perfect image, knowing that you could be nothing on this earth but imperfect. So learn to love the fool in you. The one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. Befriend your imperfections and even better befriend your enemies. Only then will you be able to learn to overcome the fears, doubts, and sins you carry. You will discover who the enemy really is. You will be able to peel back the layers of insecurity you feel burdened with. Only then will you be able to find the true peace and happiness that’s inside you.

So if you’re wondering where to go from here… here’s a head start. “People everywhere are searching for the key. Who they are and what their purpose is. I may not know you personally but I don’t care who you think you are or what you’ve done. I know that you are good enough. You are worth it. You are here for a reason. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are loved and cherished by the Creator of all things. You are a child of the one true King. You are you. You are His.”

My prayer is that you will discover and embrace the real you.

Today I accept that I don’t know where I’m going and that’s okay. I don’t have all the answers, but I do know who I am and that's where I find real joy.

With Love, Rachel

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Day 23: Am I Enough?

I accept that I am enough.

With Love,

Rachel

http://lifeteen.com/blog/what-makes-you-awesome/

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DAY TWENTY TWO: The Desert is Not Your Destiny

DAY TWENTY TWO: The Desert is Not Your Destiny I absolutely love this article written by Tori Harris. The desert will no longer define me. With Love, Rachel http://torifharris.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-letter-to-my-old-self-and-maybe-my.html?m=1

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DAY TWENTY TWO: Put Yourself First

http://www.purposefairy.com/74324/why-you-should-always-put-yourself-first/

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Day 21: Affirmation Addiction

DAY TWENTY ONE: Affirmation Addiction I'd like to share an article from 16 year old, Elise. For the next few days I thought I'd share some words of wisdom from others that have touched my heart, and I hope in some way they can do the same to yours. Today I accept that I do not need affirmation from others in order to feel good about myself. http://www.tosavealife.com/affirmation-addiction/