Cianti - Knox Jewelers - Minneapolis Minnesota - Round Engagement Rings - Split Shank, Trellis, Bianca
April = Scrooge
Is it un-Christian if I dread Christmas? I'm not looking forward to it at all. I would like to skip it altogether. If it were up to me, I would go to church on Christmas day, sing 3 Christmas songs, and be done with it. I haven't always felt this way. Christmas used to be my favorite holiday. I would look forward to it for months. However, moving further into my 20's, and seeing all of my grandparents die off, as well as seeing my siblings find partners and have children, Christmas just isn't what it used to be.
In fact, this week I was at Walgreens and as I walked down the Christmas aisle, I heard the music playing, and began to tear up. I thought of my grandparents, and how they are gone now. I was very close to them, and I won't be seeing them anytime soon. I also thought of Christmas as a little girl. How warm and safe it felt to be with my whole family. I miss that feeling. Maybe it means that I don't have enough faith in God, that I haven't felt warm and safe for a long time. Maybe it means that I don't appreciate my family enough right now. Maybe I am just lonely. Any way, I don't know how to get that feeling back.
I think that I need a Christmas miracle. Whatever that is, I don't know.
One Hundred Crashing Jetliners
I just finished the book The Hole in our Gospel by Richard Stearns (World Vision President)
I wanted to post this excerpt because it hit home with me.
I want you to imagine for a moment that you woke up it this morning to the following headline: "One Hundred Jetliners Crash, Killing 26,500." Think of the pandemonium this would create across the world as heads of state, parliaments, and congresses convened to grapple with the nature and causes of this tragedy. Think about the avalanche of media coverage that it would ignite around the globe as reporters shared the shocking news and tried to communicate its implications for the world. Air travel would no doubt grind to a halt as governments shut down the airlines and panicked air travelers canceled their trips. The National Transportation Safety Board and perhaps the FBI, CIA, and local law enforcement agencies and their international equivalents would mobilize investigations and dedicate whatever manpower was required to understand what happened and to prevent it from happening again.I feel like God is stretching me. This book has helped with the process. It is uncomfortable at times, and throughout this book I found myself weeping...but I think maybe that was the author's point. For a while now, I have been asking God, "Where do you want me to go?!" But maybe the more accurate question is, "What do you want me to do?!" And for that question, this book has the answer. Give what you have. Time, talent, and treasure.
Now imagine that the very next day, one hundred more planes crashed- and one hundred more the next, and the next, and the next. It is unimaginable that something this terrible could happen.
But it did- and it does.
It happened today, and it happened yesterday. It will happen again tomorrow. But there was no media coverage. No heads of state, parliaments, or congresses stopped what they were doing to address the crisis, and no investigations were launched. Yet more than 26,500 children died yesterday of preventable causes related to their poverty, and it will happen again today and tomorrow and the day after that. Almost 10 million children will be dead in the course of a year. So why does the crash of a single plane dominate the front pages of newspapers across the world while the equivalent of one hundred planes filled with children crashing daily never reaches our ears? And even though we now have the awareness, the access, and the ability to stop it, why have we chosen not to? Perhaps one reason is that these kids who are dying are not our kids; they're somebody else's.
I recommend this book to anyone. Whether you are a Christian or not...your eyes will be opened a little wider.
Fat Pants
So today I tried on my fat pants. A random idea I had while pretending to do my homework. They are alot bigger than I remember. I immediately smiled when I got them on, and there was no way they were going to stay up without me holding them. I made my mom take this photo. It was and is a great feeling, however, once I held them up, the emotions and the tears came flooding back.
Its a sorrowful feeling in a way. You hold open this large pair of pants, hardly believing that at one time they were almost too small for you. I never realized that I was that big. There were even times when I looked in the mirror and thought that I was pretty. And others told me the same. Now I look at the photos from back then, and wonder if people could see something that I can't. I look at the photos, and look at the guys who I was attracted to, and think, "Wow, Ape...not a chance." Not that big people are repulsive, but that the guys I chose, were completely shallow...as a lot of guys are (I'm sorry, but it seems true).
Something funny to me, is that I feel like I have become alot less shallow when it comes to the idea of dating someone. I feel better about myself, and so I am less critical of the physical appearance of who I end up with. This makes me happy, becuase 1. I don't think that God intended for us to be so set on physical appearance and 2. This means that I can focus on more important things like a man's character and passion for life and loving Christ.
I kind of miss being bigger sometimes. I miss always being warm in the winter. I miss feeling cozy when you are curled up on the couch. I miss being able to fall on my butt, and not actually hurt anything.
Things I love about losing weight. Like I've said before, my collarbones. Non-plus size clothes, not being sweaty, no heartburn, not accidentally clearing off a table with your stomach, not getting asked if I'm pregnant, feeling like I can go ANYWHERE God wants me to go and not worry about exhaustion, being able to have babies someday and play with them (this was one of the main reasons why I decided to lose weight), not being pre-diabetic...I could go on, obviously the good outweighs the bad.
I am approaching a year, since I started this journey. May 11th is the actual date. It has been really hard. And lately I have been losing incentive since the scale is moving a bit slower. I'm hoping that this photo helps me. Maybe it will help someone else too.
I wouldn't stop until I found something beautiful.
So I am now 27. 3 years from 30. Am I where I thought I would be 10 years ago? Absolutely not. Am I still happy? YES! I'm sure if you asked me 10 years ago, where I would be when I was 27, I would have said, "A MARRIED art teacher with at least 2 kids...and more on the way." Did I make a good attempt at achieving every part of that sentence? Yes...but oh the naivety of a 17 year old girl. Teaching art was fun...but not what I thought. I love art and I love kids...alot, but art in the public schools is disintegrating rapidly, and I have decided that I love the way art is therapeutic, and want to pursue it (I'm sure that musicians feel this way about music...I feel this way about both, and I have been having some exciting new ideas about putting God,art, and music together to help people heal. I've been praying that God puts a musician or two in my life to help :)
As far as being married, and having babies. There aren't that many things in my life where I feel confident enough to admit it, and I hope that people don't see me as someone who is arrogant...but I feel like I would be a really good mom. This Saturday in Kid-O-Deo, there was a little boy who I had to peel off of his mother, in order for her to get to the service. This little one did not know me at all, but just by holding him, and rocking with him, calmed his nerves, ended his sobbing, and minutes later he was playing with cars and puzzles. While holding him, I kept thinking, "This is one of the most wonderful feelings in the world." The other day at my job, I was working with the preschoolers, and this little boy didn't like that I was watching him and his friends play. He yells, "Go away!" Suddenly his friend Mike yells, "No! I LOVE her!" He turned to me and said, "I love you." I said, "I love you too!" I don't know if it is okay to tell children at my work that I love them (I really do), but when a child says that they love you...you say it BACK! I don't think that I stopped smiling for the rest of the day.
When it comes to wanting to get married, if you have known me long enough, you know that this is one of the things I want most in my life. One of the things that I have struggled so hard to trust God with. The older I get, the more I am forced to rely on Him...because the more impatient I become. I've never had a boyfriend. Everybody knows this...or you do now :) My mother claims it is because God knows that I can't handle a broken heart. Mothers are always so insightful aren't they? I've had my heart stomped on quite a bit, but only from not waiting for God's timing.
As a single person, you don't really know if these desires will ever be satisfied. It is scary sometimes to think that God doesn't have a partner for you. All of my siblings have significant others. And my parents have each other. I don't doubt their love for me, but sometimes you just start to wonder what life will be like in 10 more years, when you don't have someone who expects you home at night.
I believe that life is what you make of it. Even though I have shared some unmet desires of my heart, I don't really feel like I am sitting here...waiting for these things to happen. If I expect my satisfaction in life to come from these things, it is a slap in the face to God. It is a waste of perfectly good opportunities that God will create for me, if He chooses for me to be single. Maybe I am meant to always cuddle with other people's children. Maybe I am supposed to become a missionary and offer the skills I am learning as a counselor, to help young children who have had their hearts broken by disaster. Maybe I am supposed to be a stay-at-home mother. God will use me wherever he sees fit.
I didn't really intend to write about being single and childless today. I am just coming off of a great birthday weekend, one of the best birthdays of my life actually. God chose this weekend to show me how many people I have in my life who love me. The above photo is the group who showed up to Brunswick Zone for my birthday night. Five others came who are not pictured. I've known some of these people since birth(my siblings), kindergarten, high school, after college, and a few I have just met recently.
Here is what I did want to say in this blog. A few things that I have learned in this last year:
1. No matter what size you are, you will most likely always find something wrong with your body.
I was talking to my grad friends, and this was the consensus. Even if you aren't fat, you could be too skinny, you could have a big nose, you could be kind of hairy. We focus on imperfections. I thought that losing 100 lbs. would get rid of the insecure feelings I have about my body. Nope! Now there are new ones :) Oh well, my body and I are in love some days, and other days we avoid the mirror altogether.
2. It feels great to be where God wants you to be.
I really feel like I am right where I should be. God has blessed me so much in the last year, and I feel like he is pushing me, and stretching me, and putting new people in my life who love Him as much as I do. In the last 8 months, I have jumped headfirst into volunteering at my church. I love it. I feel so happy, calm, moved, loved, and about a dozen other words that describe what God has blessed me with in this place. I meet new people every week. I have to say that the time I enjoy the most is being part of the tech team, and hanging out with the guys/girls in the band (even though the worship pastor made reference to taking a dump, when he forgot that I was sitting right behind him. I'm pretty sure that this is going to give way to him feeling comfortable saying these things right in front of me. I accepted a long time ago that I went to the same university as these guys...and for the most part, Bethel boys are all the same. They talk about Jesus, music, pooping, and videogames in the same conversation.)
3. It's okay to be a sensitive girl.
I always cry on my birthday. I can't really explain it, maybe it is a life change that I did not initiate. Maybe I am caught between wanting a concert thrown in my honor, and not wanting too much attention...it really depends on the year I think. This year, I cried 3 times on my birthday. None of them were for bad reasons. First, I saw a sad movie. Second, the praise band at church did an amazing job playing a song that I love, and when music makes me happy, I cry...especially when it's live. And third, I was really amazed at how many friends showed up to my birthday. I think that I forget how many people care about me, mostly because most of these people I don't see that often. You forget that even though you don't see them, they still love you. I am loved :) Thanks Jesus!
Possible Baby Names
From the time I was 15 years old, I have been thinking of baby names. Lately, I've been getting creative...or not so creative. Take your pick.
1. Ramona Quimby Age 8
2. Juanita Fajita
3. Jasper Johns
4. Leonardo DaVinc-o
5. Russell Stover
It's time to get out of this town, there's no more fun to be found.
I need to get out of this town. I'm going completely crazy. Driving MYSELF crazy. I haven't been able to get away since last October. For some people, this wouldn't be a big deal. Work, kids, church, activities. Valid reasons to not get away. I can't do this. I am not made this way. I feel so exhausted. If someone pulled into my driveway right now, and said, "C'mon Ape, let's go!" I wouldn't even ask where we are going. I would just go. ANYWHERE!
In the last few years, I have realized that there are certain people in my life who God has given me...to remind me of who I am. Whenever I see them, I feel like I am home, even though they live FAR from my home. I feel like I get a piece back of myself that has slowly been sliding away. I haven't seen these people in about five months...some of them even longer, and I feel like myself... the person who I am certain of, is almost gone. I feel like this empty shell, just walking around...smiling at those who smile at me. Trying to give when I don't feel like I have much to give.
At the end of this month, I plan to take a trip to the east coast with my family. This will be a vacation. Unfortunately, many vacations with my family have left me feeling even more exhausted than when I am in the daily grind. Though I am looking forward to this trip, I realize that it takes up the money I would use to see my other friends...I'm taking donations.
God is doing so much in my life right now. I love my church, and I have developed a strong desire to read Christian authors, explore theology, and a desire to know MORE! Even the verses and stories in the Bible that I have read so many times before, offer insight...and I feel like I can feel the heart of those who were writing. This sounds cheesy, but it is true. I have begun asking God, "Where are we going?!" I am so excited to find out. I'm getting really excited for my trip to Nicaragua in August (and completely nervous for several reasons). I don't want it to be so far away. I've always felt God pushing me to travel, to offer support to those who are hurting, to provide help for those in need. Maybe that is why I am training to be a therapist.
My grandmother always told me that I was dreamer. This quality has stuck with me for my whole life. I can't imagine living a life where I live in the same house, taking my kids to hockey practice for 18 years. Having the same job until I retire. When I think about it, my eyes glaze over, and I think...BORED! There is whole world to see! (let me just say that I am terribly close to my family...I stopped by my brother's work this weekend, just to give him a hug. Going where God leads will be really hard for me. But how can you turn Him down?! I can't let my fear consume me).