It's weird to think that within a year I will have gone to school in Oregon and then be in Africa. I've never done anything as crazy and spontaneous as this, even though I haven't done it yet.
I'm EXTREMELY excited for it all. I'm excited to meet new and wonderful people. I'm excited to have the Oregon and the Ugandan culture under my belt. I'm excited to see the world and the beautiful places God has created.
Then there comes moments of doubt and nervousness. It's scary to think I'll be doing this on my own, without my friends there beside me. With this also comes a sense of freedom that I've never truly felt before. That's not to say that I'm 100% ecstatic about that fact either.
I can't wait to be immersed in another culture and learn from them.
galksa;solijceo;!
Yeah, this blog is kind of worthless, but these are just thoughts on "paper"
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
You know, that lovey dovey stuff.
I'm in the longing mood.
I just want a cute story of how boy meets girl. boy pursues girl.
Jennifer just broke up with Joey a couple weeks ago and I was wondering to myself. Is it harder to long for something that you've never had the chance to feel, but see all around you? Or is it harder to long for something you've had at your fingertips and felt the potential but never truly felt?
Maybe they're equally hard.
I don't know, but I would like someone to just come into the picture. That'd be nice.
Maybe it's this spring fever going around...
I just want a cute story of how boy meets girl. boy pursues girl.
Jennifer just broke up with Joey a couple weeks ago and I was wondering to myself. Is it harder to long for something that you've never had the chance to feel, but see all around you? Or is it harder to long for something you've had at your fingertips and felt the potential but never truly felt?
Maybe they're equally hard.
I don't know, but I would like someone to just come into the picture. That'd be nice.
Maybe it's this spring fever going around...
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Amazement
(I had to post it on here too!)
I’ve been really worried about how I would come up with my $300 deposit for George Fox University. The later I turn it in the lesser chance I have of a good roomate- but neither I or my parents have the extra money to pay the deposit. So I have been praying that somehow the money will come up. I prayed and prayed and just trusted that if this is what God wants, somehow I will come up with the money. My sister told me the other day that she would help me pay, but I wanted to atleast pay half. I didn’t know how the heck that would happen. I was beginning to lose faith that this is what God wants.
After my Agape meeting this morning I went to my mail box and I had an envelope that just said, “CPO #458”. I open the letter and the letter is just saying to trust God and this person went into detail that I have a heart for God’s people and that God is my provider. He or She then quoted philippians 4:19 “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus”
Inside was $150. My half of the deposit. The letter wasn’t signed, it just said “With all of Christ’s love, your friend in Christ.”
I have a sneaking suspicion as to who it was, but they obviously want to remain anonymous.
God WILL supply. This person gave above and beyond what I would expect from anyone, and I am so thankful. I am beyond grateful.
God is so amazing, and I love His people and their hearts. :)
I’ve been really worried about how I would come up with my $300 deposit for George Fox University. The later I turn it in the lesser chance I have of a good roomate- but neither I or my parents have the extra money to pay the deposit. So I have been praying that somehow the money will come up. I prayed and prayed and just trusted that if this is what God wants, somehow I will come up with the money. My sister told me the other day that she would help me pay, but I wanted to atleast pay half. I didn’t know how the heck that would happen. I was beginning to lose faith that this is what God wants.
After my Agape meeting this morning I went to my mail box and I had an envelope that just said, “CPO #458”. I open the letter and the letter is just saying to trust God and this person went into detail that I have a heart for God’s people and that God is my provider. He or She then quoted philippians 4:19 “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus”
Inside was $150. My half of the deposit. The letter wasn’t signed, it just said “With all of Christ’s love, your friend in Christ.”
I have a sneaking suspicion as to who it was, but they obviously want to remain anonymous.
God WILL supply. This person gave above and beyond what I would expect from anyone, and I am so thankful. I am beyond grateful.
God is so amazing, and I love His people and their hearts. :)
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Memory.
I walked outside to weed out the flower bed, as I do every Spring. This time as I pulled away the dead weeds and found new, growing Easter Lilies I remembered the first time they were planted.
5 years ago. With my Grandpa.
5 years and running, they have been a simple reminder of the man I admired so greatly. When I stepped back and took a look a solitary tear ran down my cheek. I told Mom to come out and look and I asked her if she remembered when those were planted. I tell her I planted them with Grandpa. She smiles and says, "There he is."
My Grandpa was a wonderful gardener. As long as I can remember he gave me tours of his backyard and told me of all the different flowers planted. It was beautiful. This is the greatest way that I can remember him.
As an Easter Lily.
5 years ago. With my Grandpa.
5 years and running, they have been a simple reminder of the man I admired so greatly. When I stepped back and took a look a solitary tear ran down my cheek. I told Mom to come out and look and I asked her if she remembered when those were planted. I tell her I planted them with Grandpa. She smiles and says, "There he is."
My Grandpa was a wonderful gardener. As long as I can remember he gave me tours of his backyard and told me of all the different flowers planted. It was beautiful. This is the greatest way that I can remember him.
As an Easter Lily.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Request.
Prayer. That's all I ask. Yes, I believe that it helps. It's helped every single time that things like this have come up.
I know that you readers probably don't remember every single blog I've posted but...
I posted a blog a while back questioning God. Questioning why the heck He would let this happen. At the time, my parents and I were 2 days away from being evicted from our house. I saw my parents faith crumble into pieces. I saw my Dad cry; he felt like he could do nothing to provide for us. Yet, here I was, so upset and broken down- praying. I prayed that this situation would turn around. Low and behold, my Church gave us half of the money that was owed. AND. The people told my parents that as long as we came up with half of the payment, they wouldn't evict us.
Praise God, right?
Well, now.. my Dad just quit his job today because he physically couldn't do it, and the job was too fast paced for him that he wasn't understanding it. Right now, my parents have $200 to their name, and one more paycheck coming. Just pray that my Dad can find a job quickly. Otherwise, I don't know what happened. The possibility of eviction is right there, I can taste it. It's lurking, just waiting for it's chance to strike.
I'm not exactly scared, I know that God is here with us. No matter what happens, he won't leave us. I'm not saying that I'm expecting everything to be okay, I just know that through this I will NOT lose my faith.
Prayer is appreciated.
:/
I know that you readers probably don't remember every single blog I've posted but...
I posted a blog a while back questioning God. Questioning why the heck He would let this happen. At the time, my parents and I were 2 days away from being evicted from our house. I saw my parents faith crumble into pieces. I saw my Dad cry; he felt like he could do nothing to provide for us. Yet, here I was, so upset and broken down- praying. I prayed that this situation would turn around. Low and behold, my Church gave us half of the money that was owed. AND. The people told my parents that as long as we came up with half of the payment, they wouldn't evict us.
Praise God, right?
Well, now.. my Dad just quit his job today because he physically couldn't do it, and the job was too fast paced for him that he wasn't understanding it. Right now, my parents have $200 to their name, and one more paycheck coming. Just pray that my Dad can find a job quickly. Otherwise, I don't know what happened. The possibility of eviction is right there, I can taste it. It's lurking, just waiting for it's chance to strike.
I'm not exactly scared, I know that God is here with us. No matter what happens, he won't leave us. I'm not saying that I'm expecting everything to be okay, I just know that through this I will NOT lose my faith.
Prayer is appreciated.
:/
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Update on Oregon.
"I felt compelled by this school as I was looking through it, and yes I know mostly everything can look good on the internet but it was a weird feeling. I have no idea what this means.
I haven't been feeling that great about Greenville lately and I'm not so sure why.
I even called my Mom to talk about the possibility of transferring. She told me to just keep praying about it. Don't worry no rash decisions will be made. This was just something that has been coming up and I don't know what I'll do about that yet. Who knows maybe I'll stay at Greenville next year, or maybe I'll go to Oregon.
It would be hard for me to go Oregon, but for some reason I'm not ruling it out yet. The months to come will be full of deliberation. "
-I posted that in January and the only thing that has changed is that it has become real. It's become a possible decision in my life.
I can't get past this. I thought for a while that I was just being unrealistic in thinking that I could go, pay more for college, and work it out. No. I wasn't be unrealistic, I was being doubtful. I was putting God into this box thinking that He couldn't do this. That He wouldn't ask me to leave my friends and my family for basically an entire school year. August through late December- Oregon. Early January through May- Uganda.
The thing is, He isn't asking me to leave them, because I'll still have them. He's only responding to the fact that I made a conscious decision to drop my nets and follow Him. I told Him that I would follow to the ends of the Earth. Well, here it is.
More than that though, this is something I WANT to do. I want to pack up and get out of here. I want to start in a new place. I find that intriguing. The only down fall is, I won't be here with all of the great people I call friends.
I just want to share the Author's Note from Donald Miller's book Through Painted Deserts. It's a book about his journey in a hippie van with his friend Paul from Houston, TX to Portland, OR. For the record, I keep this book with me at all times, it's my favorite book (I've read it probably 10 times) and I've never felt more excited/happy/compelled with this book until I learned the possibility of actually leaving.
IT IS FALL HERE NOW, MY FAVORITE OF THE FOUR seasons. We get all four here, and they come at us under the doors, in through the windows. One morning you wake and need blankets; you take the fan out of the window to see clouds that mist out by midmorning, only to reveal a naked blue coolness like God yawning.
September is perfect Oregon. The blocks line up like postcards and the rosebuds bloom into themselves like children at bedtime. And in Portland we are proud of our roses; year after year, we are proud of them. When they are done, we sit in the parks and read stories into the air, whispering the gardens to sleep.
I come here, to Palio Coffee, for the big windows. If I sit outside, the sun gets on my computer screen, so I come inside, to this same table, and sit alongside the giant panes of glass. And it is like a movie out there, like a big screen of green, and today there is a man in shepherd's clothes, a hippie, all dirty, with a downed bike in the circle lawn across the street. He is eating bread from the bakery and drinking from a metal camp cup. He is tapping the cup against his leg, sitting like a monk, all striped in fabric. I wonder if he is happy, his blanket strapped to the rack on his bike, his no home, his no job. I wonder if he has left it all because he hated it or because it hated him. It is true some do not do well with conventional life. They think outside things and can't make sense of following a line. They see no walls, only doors from open space to open space, and from open space, supposedly, to the mind of God, or at least this is what we hope for them, and what they hope for themselves.
I remember the sweet sensation of leaving, years ago, some ten now, leaving Texas for who knows where. I could not have known about this beautiful place, the Oregon I have come to love, this city of great people, this smell of coffee and these evergreens reaching up into a mist of sky, these sunsets spilling over the west hills to slide a red glow down the streets of my town.
And I could not have known then that if I had been born here, I would have left here, gone someplace south to deal with horses, to get on some open land where you can see tomorrow's storm brewing over a high desert. I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God's way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.
I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.
Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn't all happening at once.
Time has pressed you and me into a book, too, this tiny chapter we share together, this vapor of a scene, pulling our seconds into minutes and minutes into hours. Everything we were is no more, and what we will become, will become what was. This is from where story stems, the stuff of its construction lying at our feet like cut strips of philosophy. I sometimes look into the endless heavens, the cosmos of which we can't find the edge, and ask God what it means. Did You really do all of this to dazzle us? Do You really keep it shifting, rolling round the pinions to stave off boredom? God forbid Your glory would be our distraction. And God forbid we would ignore Your glory.
HERE IS SOMETHING I FOUND TO BE TRUE: YOU DON'T start processing death until you turn thirty. I live in visions, for instance, and they are cast out some fifty years, and just now, just last year I realized my visions were cast too far, they were out beyond my life span. It frightened me to think of it, that I passed up an early marriage or children to write these silly books, that I bought the lie that the academic life had to be separate from relational experience, as though God only wanted us to learn cognitive ideas, as if the heart of a man were only created to resonate with movies. No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath:
I'll tell you how the sun rose
A ribbon at a time...
It's a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn't matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be.
So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.
And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you:
Leave.
Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.
-I read this author's note for the first time in a couple of months the day after I had searched and found George Fox. I was bored and I pulled it out of my bag. I usually don't read the author's note when I start the book again but I did this time.
Oregon's everywhere now. George Fox ads are everywhere now. Things referring to leaving are everywhere now.
I was looking around for tumblr layouts and on this janky tumblr layout page I found on google there was a george fox ad. (i've never seen one before this)
I was on a coffee date with my friend Brittney from College and the coffee collar was made in Portland, Oregon.
I was watching "the best places I've ever been" with my mom this morning and the first place was a beach in Oregon.
My COR 102 class has had this theme for the past month- The Exodus. We're trying to write ourselves into the Exodus story which is about transformation, and leaving.
There was an activity for Vespers the other night and when you came in you got to grab a card with a picture on it. Out of 100 possibilities, I picked up the card that had a person walking away with a backpack and books in their hand, at a university.
Those are only a few off the top of my head, but this is always on my mind.
If I don't go, I'll regret it for the rest of my life. I'll always wonder, "What was waiting for me there?"
I haven't been feeling that great about Greenville lately and I'm not so sure why.
I even called my Mom to talk about the possibility of transferring. She told me to just keep praying about it. Don't worry no rash decisions will be made. This was just something that has been coming up and I don't know what I'll do about that yet. Who knows maybe I'll stay at Greenville next year, or maybe I'll go to Oregon.
It would be hard for me to go Oregon, but for some reason I'm not ruling it out yet. The months to come will be full of deliberation. "
-I posted that in January and the only thing that has changed is that it has become real. It's become a possible decision in my life.
I can't get past this. I thought for a while that I was just being unrealistic in thinking that I could go, pay more for college, and work it out. No. I wasn't be unrealistic, I was being doubtful. I was putting God into this box thinking that He couldn't do this. That He wouldn't ask me to leave my friends and my family for basically an entire school year. August through late December- Oregon. Early January through May- Uganda.
The thing is, He isn't asking me to leave them, because I'll still have them. He's only responding to the fact that I made a conscious decision to drop my nets and follow Him. I told Him that I would follow to the ends of the Earth. Well, here it is.
More than that though, this is something I WANT to do. I want to pack up and get out of here. I want to start in a new place. I find that intriguing. The only down fall is, I won't be here with all of the great people I call friends.
I just want to share the Author's Note from Donald Miller's book Through Painted Deserts. It's a book about his journey in a hippie van with his friend Paul from Houston, TX to Portland, OR. For the record, I keep this book with me at all times, it's my favorite book (I've read it probably 10 times) and I've never felt more excited/happy/compelled with this book until I learned the possibility of actually leaving.
IT IS FALL HERE NOW, MY FAVORITE OF THE FOUR seasons. We get all four here, and they come at us under the doors, in through the windows. One morning you wake and need blankets; you take the fan out of the window to see clouds that mist out by midmorning, only to reveal a naked blue coolness like God yawning.
September is perfect Oregon. The blocks line up like postcards and the rosebuds bloom into themselves like children at bedtime. And in Portland we are proud of our roses; year after year, we are proud of them. When they are done, we sit in the parks and read stories into the air, whispering the gardens to sleep.
I come here, to Palio Coffee, for the big windows. If I sit outside, the sun gets on my computer screen, so I come inside, to this same table, and sit alongside the giant panes of glass. And it is like a movie out there, like a big screen of green, and today there is a man in shepherd's clothes, a hippie, all dirty, with a downed bike in the circle lawn across the street. He is eating bread from the bakery and drinking from a metal camp cup. He is tapping the cup against his leg, sitting like a monk, all striped in fabric. I wonder if he is happy, his blanket strapped to the rack on his bike, his no home, his no job. I wonder if he has left it all because he hated it or because it hated him. It is true some do not do well with conventional life. They think outside things and can't make sense of following a line. They see no walls, only doors from open space to open space, and from open space, supposedly, to the mind of God, or at least this is what we hope for them, and what they hope for themselves.
I remember the sweet sensation of leaving, years ago, some ten now, leaving Texas for who knows where. I could not have known about this beautiful place, the Oregon I have come to love, this city of great people, this smell of coffee and these evergreens reaching up into a mist of sky, these sunsets spilling over the west hills to slide a red glow down the streets of my town.
And I could not have known then that if I had been born here, I would have left here, gone someplace south to deal with horses, to get on some open land where you can see tomorrow's storm brewing over a high desert. I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God's way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.
I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.
Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn't all happening at once.
Time has pressed you and me into a book, too, this tiny chapter we share together, this vapor of a scene, pulling our seconds into minutes and minutes into hours. Everything we were is no more, and what we will become, will become what was. This is from where story stems, the stuff of its construction lying at our feet like cut strips of philosophy. I sometimes look into the endless heavens, the cosmos of which we can't find the edge, and ask God what it means. Did You really do all of this to dazzle us? Do You really keep it shifting, rolling round the pinions to stave off boredom? God forbid Your glory would be our distraction. And God forbid we would ignore Your glory.
HERE IS SOMETHING I FOUND TO BE TRUE: YOU DON'T start processing death until you turn thirty. I live in visions, for instance, and they are cast out some fifty years, and just now, just last year I realized my visions were cast too far, they were out beyond my life span. It frightened me to think of it, that I passed up an early marriage or children to write these silly books, that I bought the lie that the academic life had to be separate from relational experience, as though God only wanted us to learn cognitive ideas, as if the heart of a man were only created to resonate with movies. No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath:
I'll tell you how the sun rose
A ribbon at a time...
It's a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn't matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be.
So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.
And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you:
Leave.
Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.
-I read this author's note for the first time in a couple of months the day after I had searched and found George Fox. I was bored and I pulled it out of my bag. I usually don't read the author's note when I start the book again but I did this time.
Oregon's everywhere now. George Fox ads are everywhere now. Things referring to leaving are everywhere now.
I was looking around for tumblr layouts and on this janky tumblr layout page I found on google there was a george fox ad. (i've never seen one before this)
I was on a coffee date with my friend Brittney from College and the coffee collar was made in Portland, Oregon.
I was watching "the best places I've ever been" with my mom this morning and the first place was a beach in Oregon.
My COR 102 class has had this theme for the past month- The Exodus. We're trying to write ourselves into the Exodus story which is about transformation, and leaving.
There was an activity for Vespers the other night and when you came in you got to grab a card with a picture on it. Out of 100 possibilities, I picked up the card that had a person walking away with a backpack and books in their hand, at a university.
Those are only a few off the top of my head, but this is always on my mind.
If I don't go, I'll regret it for the rest of my life. I'll always wonder, "What was waiting for me there?"
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
What Can You Do?
Well, I'm 19 now. I won't lie, this birthday was probably my worst.
1. I wasn't at home at all for the celebration of my birthday. My Mom called me as my day started and sang Happy Birthday to me. She said, "It really stinks not having you here. We'll celebrate as soon as you come home next. I love you baby girl." I mean, I know I won't be home for several more of my birthdays, but I think that's why this one was so hard. I'm going to Africa. I'm hopefully going to live in Africa for some time and I don't know how much longer I have to celebrate my birthday with my family.
2. (sorry in advance, Jason) Mother nature decided to join the party and bring her monthly gift. ON MY BIRTHDAY. So most of the day resulted in me being irritable, emotional, and tired- laying around with a heating pad most of the day.
3. I just felt like crying all day long. Except for the time when I got to read all the love on Facebook :). I love my friends!
4. Nick was planning on surprising me at my birthday party. So on top of having to cancel my party, Nick was home with the intentions of seeing me AND I WASN'T EVEN HOME.
I'm sorry to complain, but I was not a happy camper. Oh on top of that- SNOWPOCALYPSE?!
I wouldn't have minded if it meant that I didn't have to go to class. but I did.
Suck.
1. I wasn't at home at all for the celebration of my birthday. My Mom called me as my day started and sang Happy Birthday to me. She said, "It really stinks not having you here. We'll celebrate as soon as you come home next. I love you baby girl." I mean, I know I won't be home for several more of my birthdays, but I think that's why this one was so hard. I'm going to Africa. I'm hopefully going to live in Africa for some time and I don't know how much longer I have to celebrate my birthday with my family.
2. (sorry in advance, Jason) Mother nature decided to join the party and bring her monthly gift. ON MY BIRTHDAY. So most of the day resulted in me being irritable, emotional, and tired- laying around with a heating pad most of the day.
3. I just felt like crying all day long. Except for the time when I got to read all the love on Facebook :). I love my friends!
4. Nick was planning on surprising me at my birthday party. So on top of having to cancel my party, Nick was home with the intentions of seeing me AND I WASN'T EVEN HOME.
I'm sorry to complain, but I was not a happy camper. Oh on top of that- SNOWPOCALYPSE?!
I wouldn't have minded if it meant that I didn't have to go to class. but I did.
Suck.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Oppression.
It's one of the things that makes me sick.
My friend here at college: Raped. After 2 years she is still having flashbacks because it wasn't confronted when it happened. This was because the cops wouldn't believe her. Her parents said that God was telling them she didn't need a counselor (which she obviously does.) She's constantly being told that she made it up in her head. If people truly saw how she acted and how this has affected her life, If people watched her cry and try to rationalize what happened- they would know. She isn't lying.
The homeless: As you guys know, I go on a homeless outreach. This past Saturday the people who were here last year re-united with a homeless man named Alexander. Dirty Roots formed a relationship with this man, took him to the eye doctor and bought him glasses, hung out with him, prayed with him. They thought they were making progress, but then he was back in jail. Yesterday they saw him again for the first time.
I met him for the first time, he was so nice and gentle. I was talking to him and he said, "You know what? I really appreciate all that they have done for me. They are such a good organization. They accept you where you are. This cycle I'm in- it's vicious. I'm constantly being judged by a criminal act on my record from the 80s. I just got out of jail and I'm in a halfway house. They expect me to pay them $35 a month. How the hell am I supposed to do that? I have no income. People won't hire me because of my record." He then sees a small girl running around and he says with a sad look in his eye, "They are so innocent". This man will do ANYTHING. He will pick up trash from the street, but no one will hire him.
Poverty has a face.
Our judicial system! I've had my fair share of hearing about awful lawyers/cops/guards. I went to a tent city as well last weekend and we met an attorney who told us of how he wanted to turn this building that the homeless were living in- into a club. Because that's exactly what St. Louis needs, another club. So he also told us that he wanted to build more huts for the homeless along the river in the tent cities. We took his card and we went our way (feeling sketch about it). This Saturday we met with the tent-city "mayor"- O.G. (original gangster.. haha). Also, O.G. owns three homes. He gave all of that up to help girls on the street who have been raped. So his tent-city is full of women who have been abused and he treats them all like his daughters.
O.G. tells us that this attorney we met was full of crap. That he just wants to take all the glory for himself to make himself look good.
Gosh.
My heart is breaking for these people. But even through these awful times, I still see God moving in and within them. In each story there is a chance for redemption.
My friend from college- She wants to help people and to minister to people who are going through or have gone through what she has. She wants to go to a counselor to get it all figured out so she can in turn help others.
The homeless- Each Saturday we get to laugh with these people and share love with them. I get to meet grateful people that most people push to the side. I get to be preached to by the homeless. It's a beautiful thing. It truly is.
O.G.- HE GAVE UP HIS OWN HOMES. He has a distribution center basically through that. He doesn't take more than he needs, and he sends extra things to other tent cities in the national parks in Missouri. He is still running the tent city and he loves what he does. Passion. It's great.
Through the Oppression I see the face of God. I'm so glad I've been called to Ministry.
My friend here at college: Raped. After 2 years she is still having flashbacks because it wasn't confronted when it happened. This was because the cops wouldn't believe her. Her parents said that God was telling them she didn't need a counselor (which she obviously does.) She's constantly being told that she made it up in her head. If people truly saw how she acted and how this has affected her life, If people watched her cry and try to rationalize what happened- they would know. She isn't lying.
The homeless: As you guys know, I go on a homeless outreach. This past Saturday the people who were here last year re-united with a homeless man named Alexander. Dirty Roots formed a relationship with this man, took him to the eye doctor and bought him glasses, hung out with him, prayed with him. They thought they were making progress, but then he was back in jail. Yesterday they saw him again for the first time.
I met him for the first time, he was so nice and gentle. I was talking to him and he said, "You know what? I really appreciate all that they have done for me. They are such a good organization. They accept you where you are. This cycle I'm in- it's vicious. I'm constantly being judged by a criminal act on my record from the 80s. I just got out of jail and I'm in a halfway house. They expect me to pay them $35 a month. How the hell am I supposed to do that? I have no income. People won't hire me because of my record." He then sees a small girl running around and he says with a sad look in his eye, "They are so innocent". This man will do ANYTHING. He will pick up trash from the street, but no one will hire him.
Poverty has a face.
Our judicial system! I've had my fair share of hearing about awful lawyers/cops/guards. I went to a tent city as well last weekend and we met an attorney who told us of how he wanted to turn this building that the homeless were living in- into a club. Because that's exactly what St. Louis needs, another club. So he also told us that he wanted to build more huts for the homeless along the river in the tent cities. We took his card and we went our way (feeling sketch about it). This Saturday we met with the tent-city "mayor"- O.G. (original gangster.. haha). Also, O.G. owns three homes. He gave all of that up to help girls on the street who have been raped. So his tent-city is full of women who have been abused and he treats them all like his daughters.
O.G. tells us that this attorney we met was full of crap. That he just wants to take all the glory for himself to make himself look good.
Gosh.
My heart is breaking for these people. But even through these awful times, I still see God moving in and within them. In each story there is a chance for redemption.
My friend from college- She wants to help people and to minister to people who are going through or have gone through what she has. She wants to go to a counselor to get it all figured out so she can in turn help others.
The homeless- Each Saturday we get to laugh with these people and share love with them. I get to meet grateful people that most people push to the side. I get to be preached to by the homeless. It's a beautiful thing. It truly is.
O.G.- HE GAVE UP HIS OWN HOMES. He has a distribution center basically through that. He doesn't take more than he needs, and he sends extra things to other tent cities in the national parks in Missouri. He is still running the tent city and he loves what he does. Passion. It's great.
Through the Oppression I see the face of God. I'm so glad I've been called to Ministry.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Tent.
I walked around a tent-city today.
Eye opening.
7 out of 10 Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless.
Try that one on for size.
Eye opening.
7 out of 10 Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless.
Try that one on for size.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Hold the Phone.
Holy. Crap.
I have to read this book.
I got to read the first chapter, let me just share a little of what I found to be the most convicting, true reality of American Christianity. This is exactly what I've been trying to say. What I've been thinking about.
Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of these eager followers of Jesus in the first century. What if I were the potential disciple being told to drop my nets? What if you were the man whom Jesus told to not even say good-bye to his family? What if we were told to hate our families and give up everything we had in order to follow
Jesus?
This is where we come face to face with a dangerous reality. We do have to give up everything we have to follow Jesus. We do have to love him in a way that makes our closest relationships in this world look like hate. And it is entirely possible that he will tell us to sell everything we have and give it to the poor.
But we don’t want to believe it. We are afraid of what it might mean for our lives. So we rationalize these passages away. “Jesus wouldn’t really tell us not to bury our father or say good-bye to our family. Jesus didn’t literally mean to sell all we have and give it to the poor. What Jesus really meant was…”
And this is where we need to pause. Because we are starting to redefine Christianity. We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with.
A nice, middle-class, American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn’t mind materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who would not expect us to forsake our closest relationships so that he receives all our affection. A Jesus
who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts, because, after all, he loves us just the way we are. A Jesus who wants us to be balanced, who wants us to avoid dangerous extremes, and who, for that matter, wants us to avoid danger altogether.
A Jesus who brings us comfort and prosperity as we live out our Christian spin on the American dream. But do you and I realize what we are doing at this point? We
are molding Jesus into our image.He is beginning to look a lot like us because, after all, that is whom we are most comfortable with. And the danger now is that when we gather in our church buildings to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead we may be worshiping ourselves.
You can check out the whole first chapter here: www.radicalthebook.com
Friday, January 14, 2011
Love.
So I'm at a new stage in my life.
I feel worthy to be loved. I deserve to be loved.
That means a lot coming from my mouth.
I feel worthy to be loved. I deserve to be loved.
That means a lot coming from my mouth.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Dreaming,
I want to leave. To experience life. I want to see the hospitality of good people and sleep on couches, or in a car. I want to drive down a two lane highway with my friends in the car without a destination- not a word spoken with the windows down on a sunny day- arms resting on the door frame where the window would be. I want to spend nights outside under the stars admiring His creation. I want to experience the life that God would want for us. Relational. To love His people. To love this life because we only get one story. Not getting caught up in the politics of the Church or the Government. I want to spend my life helping others and loving others. I want to spread joy where there is sorrow, happiness where there is hurt and light where there is darkness. I want people to know the God I serve and love. I want to let people know that they belong in this story. Let people know that they have a place in society.
People might say these are only dreams. Well, I'm only eighteen (almost nineteen). I'm allowed to have dreams. And who knows, maybe I'll be the person that actually follows through with those dreams.
People might say these are only dreams. Well, I'm only eighteen (almost nineteen). I'm allowed to have dreams. And who knows, maybe I'll be the person that actually follows through with those dreams.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
New Thought.
So I was just looking around at Seminaries and Grad Schools in Oregon/Washington when I came across George Fox University. I found that they have a pretty cool seminary program for Missional Leaders. I also found that they have an awesome campus and, from the looks of it, a great undergrad program. It's also REALLY close to Portland. For the next hour I find myself looking all over this website and for some reason looked into Transfer admissions.
I felt compelled by this school as I was looking through it, and yes I know mostly everything can look good on the internet but it was a weird feeling. I have no idea what this means.
I haven't been feeling that great about Greenville lately and I'm not so sure why.
I even called my Mom to talk about the possibility of transferring. She told me to just keep praying about it. Don't worry no rash decisions will be made. This was just something that has been coming up and I don't know what I'll do about that yet. Who knows maybe I'll stay at Greenville next year, or maybe I'll go to Oregon.
It would be hard for me to go Oregon, but for some reason I'm not ruling it out yet. The months to come will be full of deliberation.
It would be logical for me to stay at Greenville, but I don't have anything that has me set in stone and can't get away.
http://www.georgefox.edu/college-admissions/index.html
^^Check out how beautiful that campus is!
I felt compelled by this school as I was looking through it, and yes I know mostly everything can look good on the internet but it was a weird feeling. I have no idea what this means.
I haven't been feeling that great about Greenville lately and I'm not so sure why.
I even called my Mom to talk about the possibility of transferring. She told me to just keep praying about it. Don't worry no rash decisions will be made. This was just something that has been coming up and I don't know what I'll do about that yet. Who knows maybe I'll stay at Greenville next year, or maybe I'll go to Oregon.
It would be hard for me to go Oregon, but for some reason I'm not ruling it out yet. The months to come will be full of deliberation.
It would be logical for me to stay at Greenville, but I don't have anything that has me set in stone and can't get away.
http://www.georgefox.edu/college-admissions/index.html
^^Check out how beautiful that campus is!
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
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