My Goals for 2011 1/2

• Stop the self-condemnation! If God tells me I am okay, shouldn't I let myself feel good about me?
• Be more brave! Doing what you are scared to do helps us become a whole person.
• Stand up for Jennie!
• Bake something with marzipan.
• Climb Sugar Loaf
• Set up an Esty account and start selling my jewelry.
• Chill out and stop feeling guilty when I relax. It is okay not to be "doing things" every moment.
• Get a real Indian arrowhead.
• Work hard to subdue my perfectionist tendancies...
• Grow even closer to God.
• Continue to write.
• Fall in love with the plan God has for my life.
• Ride an airplane.
• Get a blue streak in my hair.
• Finish my "read the Bible in a year" plan.
• Stay away from boys!
• Face my dragons this fall.
• More to come I am sure!

<3

 

Everything in life is so beautiful. Joys are found in so many endless places. Why is no one happy then? A compliment is so easy to give, why would people rather complain? When you find joy in this life, why are people so quick to rip it away from you? I wish I had more happy people in my life.

Happy Summer, Dear Readers!

Hello dear readers!

I wish I might talk to each and every one of you and indulge in your stories about your summer. How fairs it? Is it everything summers should be? Lazy, deep, happy, peaceful--filled with glasses of lemonade, nights where you watch the stars pop of out purple twilight, trips to the beach, movies with popcorn, secret little cap naps in the sun, carnivals and cotton candy?

I must confess, I wish my summer would never end. I had my fears about being stuck here for the whole summer but I say, it is the best summer I have had in years! It is quiet here, few people, but just enough to not make you feel isolated... my work schedule is easy, my friend group is smaller therefore I feel closer to them... My sister and I take evening walks through the campus. Such quiet tranquility! For those who are students, do you know how absolutely fresh and dreamlike the campus is without hoards of nosiy kids bursting from every possible crack in the walls?


I feel so blessed and so happy and so peaceful! I wish summer might never end! It is a healing summer...and I hope my spirit will be fully restored come fall, if it isn't already. Wasn't God so awesome when he decided to give us months of beautiful sunshine and warm whether? I hope all people out there are enjoying their summer! If you, dear readers, indeed are not enjoying your summer, change that this very day! Find your blessings and enjoy the life God has gifted to you. You already have all you need to be happy. And sometimes, I have learned, true happiness isn't found in fancy jobs, or fancy vacations, or busy schedules, or big screen t.v.'s--actually, I would say rarely it is ever found in such things! I believe happiness is found when you are quiet and still, when you breathe in deep morning air and whisper a prayer within your heart. Trust your life to God and enjoy the beauty the around you!

Restlessness

Chiefly arising from a childish frustration in which all the grand spectrum of my maturity was exposed as the incomplete puzzle that it is, I felt rather put out this morning. What reasons I might blame for the vile and contemptibly unwelcome spirit I had this morning, I cannot quite say. But, regardless, I may say with shame and regret that I was feeling much anxious and impatient and silly today. Do you ever have those moments when you feel rather idiotic? That you sit there, comatose, drunkenly in a stupor of over-thinking? Where is the off button for the female brain!

I admit, for all my projections of peace and joy, I struggle with a barbarous enemy of restlessness… I feel so antsy to experience everything. I want to see the world. I want to travel to the Grand Canyon. I want to see mountains and great forests. I want to fall asleep on the beach. I want to go to Scotland again. I want to see the Pacific Ocean… I want to see the Hollywood sign. I want to travel on Route 66. I want to see a tornado. I want to touch an elephant. I want to see the northern lights. I want to gallop upon a horse. I want to trek across New Zealand and look for Mt. Doom. As I grow older and more romantically minded I begin to behold God’s creation in such breathtaking awe. I want to experience it all! I feel like half a person, stuck dreaming about the world instead of actually adventuring out into it.  

I feel so anxious to fall in love and live out my Jane Austen-like dreams… the more I see of young men in the world, the more disappointed I am in them. I now understand a teaspoon of what true love must really feel like. It must be a selfless, sincere, pure sort of devotion, a deep and intricate desire to know the well-trodden paths within their mind and the bold chivalry to walk a million miles for the one you love… and even further, I believe love, honest, pure, absolutely true love requires the selflessness to give the other person what they want most…even if that means letting them go. I’ve not yet experienced this kind of love, for sure. Of course boys are swept up in a fireworks spell over my pretty words, or my pretty hair, or my shy spirit—but that means nothing to me.

You might conclude that when the first rich, charming gentleman who is wild about me enters into my life I should jump into his arms and script the finale of my adventures of singlehood. But it seems the older I get, the more unsatisfied I become with the shallow, empty ways of the world and the more I am convinced that only the deepest love will persuade me into matrimony. (Did I just quote Jane Austen? Oh, yes, I believe I did). Do you tire of the world? I do. Where they offer a shortcut, I seek the surreptitious twists and secrets of a fairy forest. Where the world offers a glaring neon sign, I seek the blazon canvas of one of God’s magnificent sunsets… When the world offers the chalice of fame, pleasure, and fortune I drink in quiet dreams of peacefulness and a simple desire to do what God has set before me.

 

The more I realize my dreams the more I realize how impossible they seem. Do you ever feel like that? So many pretty things inside and no one can comprehend them. For once it might be grand, to have someone understand that I want so much more than they’ve got planned.

(Did I just quote Beauty and the Beast? Why, yes…yes I did.)

This just makes me so happy <3

“Words and hearts should be handled with care for words when spoken and hearts when broken are the hardest things to repair."

I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.
-- L. M. Montgomery

Black and White Convictions In a Gray World

Do you ever get the feeling that you are standing on quick sand? That you are desperate for solid, principled ground, yet it feels everywhere you step you just sink further into soft convictions and passive attitudes. Or perhaps, you hungrily thirst for cold water and everyone gives you a drink of lukewarm liquid. Maybe you feel more like the only light bulb that is shinning in a dark world… frustrated? Discouraged? Weary?

I realized today in my typical chorus singing epiphany style that I did not have many examples of strong, sound, conservative Christians in my environment. I realized today, as Noel was passionately asserting the very real presence of Hell, that in my little world I usually come across two kinds of Christians: The very conservative Christians who, professing an unpracticed, dutiful, fearing doctrine of a wrathful, and punishing God, come across as hypocrites, unloving, and rather faithless. And the second kind of Christians grasp on to the faithful, loving side of God, but have seemed to entirely miss chunks of scripture which are laid out to be immovable rules and regulations of Christ-like Christian living.

Why must so many Christian’s be hypocritical? I don’t get ridiculously angry over much, but I do have a deep sense of justice and intolerance for accepting things which common sense and God tell us is wrong. Lately, I have become rather disgusted with the people of the south. I was talking to a good friend who is African and he told me of how people will avoid his line in the grocery store, even when it is empty, and go to a longer line with a white cashier. I really couldn’t believe people would be so ignorant and brainless, especially when presented with a rare, Wal-Mart short line, until I visited this friend and actually witnessed it. All the lines around him were long, except his. Oh goodness! How it made me so ridiculously angry. How vile we behave as humans! How truly despicable we “Christians” behave. I have witnessed countless Christians who treat people the same way as the people did to my friend. What sort of message are we sharing if we treat people different because their skin, or ethnicity, or social class, or background is different than ours? What if a person was teetering on the fence, deciding if they were going to give their lives to Christ, and they were shown this prejudice, this racist attitude by fellow Christians? What if they give up Christ because of it? Do you not think that the Christian’s responsible will have to answer to this on the Day of Judgment? I shudder to think…

I don’t understand how people can keep quiet. I don’t understand how people can be without godly zeal, passion, and justice. I don’t understand how people cannot care enough to care. I don’t understand how people can sit in church and not sing praises to God; I don’t understand how people can profess generosity, yet give so little of their time to God; I don’t understand how big brothers and fathers can let their precious little sisters or daughters indulge in immodesty—wearing shorts that are too short, necklines that are too low, and shirts that are too tight. They are men, they know how hard it is to struggle against impure thoughts—shame on all of you!!

It seems in today’s world if you stand up for anything other than tolerance, unquestioning love, and acceptance of everything, you are labeled as hypocritical and judgmental. And yet we are called to use godly judgement. People will always be charged, ready for a debate. And in such arguments neither side will listen and simply becomes further entrenched in their original view. This is so discouraging to me. I don’t consider myself wiser or better than anyone. If anything I consider myself one of the lesser Christians, a silly girl who seems to constantly fall to doubts and worries of this life. I just fail to understand why people reject what seems to my simple mind as common sense, plainly written out in the scriptures… why do people no longer fight? Why do people no longer take a stand against sin? They preach a doctrine of love…but if you really love a person and care about the residency of their eternal soul wouldn’t you do everything in your power to teach them? Lovingly and firmly, instruct them? Where are all of God’s soldiers? What has happened to Christianity?