first and foremost… i miss blogging!!!  haha.  okay, now that i’ve gotten that out….

so i was sitting at mars, updating facebook and twitter, listening to some chill music, drinking my tea, avoiding my work, and thinking i was pretty cool.  and then i was sad.  out of nowhere!  it was weird.  i tried to shake it but for about 45 minutes i just sat and couldn’t quite understand.  i had to move.  so i left my stuff with ashley, and took off.  and i walked.  and prayed.

“Jesus… what’s going on??  where are you??  what do you want??  why am i out in the humidity walking around?? what the heck!!”

i couldn’t clear my mind enough to think or pray much after that.  so i walked through the park and a tiny little child pointed at me on the swing and said something about me being white.  i was confused, but then i waved.  the 3ish year old boy laughed and laughed.  it made me giggle.

as i went passed the basketball court 2 guys came up by me and tried to hit on me. “hey G.  whats your name?  don’t i know you?  where you goin?  come on babe, talk to me.  come on back.  why you ignoring me?”  for a second i thought about being angry.  but instead i laughed.  i gave them a little backwards wave and they continued saying something.  i couldn’t hear because i was giggling to myself.

then as i headed back towards mars, i passed an older man sitting on his porch.  he waved and smiled at me so i smiled wide and waved back and said hello.  he started speaking spanish to me!  and guess what…. i knew how to respond!!!  i mean, i took 4 years of spanish.  that should be normal.  but i am NOT good at it at all.  but we had a nice little conversation.  very short.  but man, he was pumped.

then i just knew.  Jesus was like, “hey, i love you.  you know that.  it never changes.  now do what i would do and interact with people!”  i’m not really sure what that means, or if it even makes sense to anyone but me.  but i’ve been around a lot of people talking about the verse “we love because He first loved us” and it just makes sense.

so as i spend my summer trying to figure out where my life goes after Drake, i’m super thankful for these random moments.  especially because they’re way too random to actually make sense without Jesus.

also, i think He wants to teach me about having no judgement/assumptions about people.  but that is a work in progress for sure…..

i’ve probably heard this phrase about 800 times in the last 3 weeks. “offense is a choice.”  and before that, i’d never once thought about it, let alone believed something so absurd.  a choice?  are you kidding me?  i mean i would never choose to be upset about some barista i don’t know being a jerk, or getting cut off on the interstate, or a friend blowing off our coffee date.  of course i could choose to not get mad if i knew that the customer in front of me had ordered the most complicated low-fat extra espresso double caramel half hazelnut extra foam latte, or realized that i had swerved into the right-hand lane just as the car was trying to merge, or known that my friend had 3 tests the next day.  right?  so given the circumstance i guess i can chose to not be offended.

how much easier is that?  if i smile at the barista and give a simple order maybe she won’t quit her job.  and maybe, had i gotten mad at the car in front of me i would have sped up, trying to vent my frustration and ended up crashing my car.  and arguing with my friend when she’s stressed doesn’t do anything but upset her more and probably ends in a pointless argument instead of giving her the break/study time she needed to ace her tests.  yeah these are all extreme, but they’re all possible…

but why do i need to know the situation before i decide to chose to not get upset?  i think what i’ve realized is that i don’t.  i really don’t.

and even more, i think that to be able to fully love others i have to understand this.  that’s not to say that i won’t stand up for myself ever [because that's another lesson i'm learning right alongside this one]. but the peace i get from it makes me thing that it’s so imperative.  so i choose to not be offended.

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Put your iPod or other music player on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the NEXT button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
4. Tag friends who might enjoy doing this as well as the person you got this from.
_ – _ – _ – _ – _

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?   Wordplay (Jason Mraz)

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?   Leave the Pieces (the Wreckers)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?  Big Crash (Less Than Jake)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?   Getcha Head in the Game (HSM)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?   Don’t Want to Miss a Thing (Aerosmith)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?   Tears & Rain (James Blunt)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN?   Superfreak (Rick James)

WHAT IS 2+2?  My Salvation (Shawn McDonald)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?   Beautiful Stranger (Madona)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?  Come Right Out and Say It (Relient K)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?  Mockingbird (Toby Keith)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?  Wasting Time (Jack Johnson)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?   Cool Thing (Rascal Flatts)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?   Amazing Grace (Christ Tomlin)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?   Death Bed (Relient K)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?   Ridin’ (Chamillionaire)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?   Big, Blond, and Beautiful

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?   Weird (Hanson)

WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?   Get Away (O.A.R.)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?   Jane (Ben Folds Five)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?   The Rum Tum Tugger (Cats)

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?   The Frug (Rilo Kiley)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?   Mother Father (Dave Matthews Band)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?   Walking With a Ghost (Tegan and Sarah)

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?   Honky Tonk Badonkadonk (Trace Adkins)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?   Alcohol (Bare Naked Ladies)

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?   Oh Happy Day (Sister Act 2)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?   Stop Playing Guitar (the Promise Ring)

do you remember the life size barbie??  and by life sized they really meant 3 feet tall (at age 7 i guess that is the size of life though)  anyway, she was awesome.  i never had one, but a friend of mine did.  we would do her hair, and dress her up, and put make up on her.  and man did we think we were cool.  i even remember walking to walgreens, and buying a disposable camera to take pictures of all of the ways we dressed her up (let me tell you, my mom was not thrilled to develop 35 pictures of life size barbie…).

one day though, for whatever reason, we realized that maybe we could do the same thing, but instead to each other.  i remember taking all the stuff to the basement, so that no one would find us.  we giggled the whole time.  we had 80’s blue eye-shadow, and hooker red lipstick.  we were wearing plastic dress up heals, with velcro dresses pulled over our t-shirts and stir-up pants.  our hair was sticking up in all directions, held in place by pastel butterfly clips and those cheap plastic barrettes with birds and hearts on them.  and as soon as we finished, do you know we wanted to do?  show the world!  we went up to her family, and danced around the living room, making faces and showing off how sweet we looked.  they all laughed, probably because we looked like idiots.  we were laughing too, but more likely because we were thrilled to not just be making up the life we wanted barbie to have, but living it out ourselves.

and guess what?  yep.  you got it.  this reminds me of jesus.  here’s how.

so i was talking to amy today about my life, which is no big surprise.  and i was trying to convey to her the newness i’ve been feeling in my relationship with jesus.  before, it was like i knew all of the awesome stuff about him.  i had gone through and made inventory of all of the possibilities of jesus and how he can affect lives.  i’d even taken the time to step back and look at other peoples situations and see how applying jesus could totally change it.  lately though, i’ve been having my own moments with jesus.  times when i can’t even explain the peace and comfort that have come out of my interactions with him.  needing him, giving him my all, accepting what he says about me.  now, it’s not at all easy.  in fact, looking at other peoples lives and applying is much simpler than trying to do it to myself.

you know, kind of like doing make-up, or hair.  it’s way easier to evenly put eye-shadow on someone else.  or to do the back of your friends hair rather than your own.  and we all know you can’t really tell how your own butt looks in something, which is why you always take a friend shopping.  but just making someone else look cute isn’t nearly as enjoyable.  your head might be sore from the hair style, and your feet tired from shopping, but at the end of the day, it feels so good to be the one who’s all done up.

and at the end of the day, it’s so much better to have experienced life with jesus instead of  just watching it happen in the people around you.  some people might laugh about it, thinking that i’m kind of crazy.  but i’ll be smiling along with them, because it feels so good to put away life size barbie, and love jesus for myself instead.

there’s this group that i try to stay involved in (sadly, i don’t always get around to going with my schedule…) called Greek Street Fellowship.  it’s a bunch of people who are in greek houses who are chalenging the ideas of greek vs. christian, and instead saying greek AND christian… why not?

it’s not very big, and our discussions tend to go around some of the same 4 or 5 topics, and there are times where we don’t have much to say or talk about, but the group is learning and growing in the way it works and that’s cool to see.

last night, we were talking about how to put god into our everyday lives, and the girls leading started out by saying that they too struggle with this… and not just that they struggle, but that they, in fact, feel that they fail at this and want to get better.

i like that.

in society, if you’re failing at sometihng should you teach it?? NO WAY! if my profs told me they failed grad school, but want me to sit and listen to them teach for three hours a week, am i going to listen??  nope.  without a doubt i’d walk out of class (okay, well only if other people did, because even though i like to be rebelious, i’m still a rule follower who’s afraid to get in trouble by myself. haha)

but us Christians, we’re weird.  or at least we should be i think.  it should be opposite.  we should want the people who are self-proclaimed failing at something to teach on it.  because if they know they are failing (and assuming that they want to know Jesus better) then they want to get better.  they know that they are failing, and, being passionate about Jesus, they want to fix it.  they want to find the verses, stories, ideas, etc, to turn themselves around.  they aren’t just doing it as an assignment that they know needs to be done, they are doing for themselves too.  because they need it just as much, if not worse than the people they’re talking to.

so in that sense, they will give us, in their mind at least, they best inforrmation they can.  they have gathered the best of the best.  it would be the A+ paper instead of the B- one that has the information, but isn’t quiet as passionate.

so let’s learn from the failures around us.  literally!

there was a time in my life when blogging was key to my weekly, if not daily, routine.  not so much because i have mind-blowing ideas to share, and definitely not because of the non-existent large crowd of readers anxiously awaiting for me to spill myself onto a page [or screen i suppose].  a little part may have been because, at first, it felt trendy and cool to have my very own blog.  and also because it’s much more appealing than any homework i have for sure.  but i think the real reason is that it’s sort of like accountability.  not that anyone ever has, or ever will, reprimand me for not blogging.  and i never did it because i felt guilty or obligated either.  it just felt right to take the things i was thinking and struggling with and flush them out, make them into actual comprehensible thoughts rather than the jumbled mess they were in my head, and then write them.  and i really desired to write them down.  even if i sometimes felt a little pressed for time or energy, i did it because i really wanted to.  it made the concepts more real, but it also made them feel like attainable goals and ideas that i wanted for my life rather than nice abstract thoughts that would eventually float away.

i think my relationship with Jesus has become like my blogging.  when i started blogging, i was clueless.  it’s been about 9 months since i started writing, and i would say that i’ve grown more in that time than i ever have in 9 months in my life.  so i started off not knowing what was  going on or having any sense of direction, but throwing things out there, because i wanted to fight with it and learn in and feel it and deal.  it wasn’t always easy, and sometimes it seemed more like a habit or even a chore when i needed to finish it in time to study for a test or do an assignment.  but i really wanted to do it.  that’s like my relationship with Jesus.  i’m not positive where to start, and no one is going to get angry or punish me if i don’t.  but i want to.  so i’m just flushing out ideas on how to pray, and what to read, etc…  some of it will be just plain bad.  just as plenty of my blogs have been.  but some of it will be good.  and some of it i’ll come back and revisit and do over and over again, because it’s really good.  and i’ll grow up.  i’ll take the ideas of Jesus that i know and love, and struggle with them, and learn more about Him, and start to feel Him and really know Him.  and some days it will be hard.  it will seem like its scheduled and habitual.  but the desire is there, now more than ever, to know my Savior in a deeply emotional and personal way.

it suddenly make sense to me why so many people plan Jesus into their days.  why they have time devoted to praying in the morning, or they make sure they read their bibles for half an hour every day.  it used to seem so legalistic to me.  like they were only doing it to try to prove a point.  but, even though it may be tough, they still do it, not at all to validate their standings as Christians, but because at the end of the day, it’s a matter of the heart.  they “do” a lot, but only because it brings them to their desire.

so  this semester i’m going to do it for my desire.  i desire to think out loud and actually let myself be affected by the things  i hear and learn.  so i’m going to blog.  and i desire to know Jesus.  so i’m going to commit myself to opening up my whole life to Him, and to learning more about Him in the process.  i’m going to do for my desire.

sometimes I get the urge to run.  not like physical activity run (that would just be silly…) but to go somewhere.  to run away.  and by urge, I mean that feeling where I have to physically hold myself back, otherwise I’ll go.  somewhere really far away, and really random.  but why??  there isn’t anything here that scares me or is threatening me.  I actually like it here.  I love the people in my life, and where I live, and I have a great job, and I like all of my classes…. why do I get the urge to just go??

I’m not trying to run to anywhere specific either.  I mean, I do miss home sometimes, but I talk to my family enough.  and I go there every few months anyway.  I would probably drive in the opposite direction as home if I had the chance.

but here’s the really weird thing.  I don’t ever want to pack, or take anything with me.  I don’t want anyone to know I’m leaving either.  I just want to up and go.  at a random time.  in the middle of the week probably.  and just be gone for a little while.  I never have the intention to not come back.  maybe all afternoon, or even a few days at most.

I really don’t know why I get this way… but I’ve been thinking… I think it has less to do with me going somewhere new, and more to do with everyone else being here without me.  them seeing if there’s a difference.  for that time that I’m gone would anyone know?  would anything even change?

I wonder….

I love having plans.  if I make plans I write them down in color-coordinated markers in my planner.  if they are really important they get stars and when I’m really excited I’ll decorate them, just in case someone might look.  this way, if they were wondering which things I was looking forward to the most they would know.  I also hate when plans get broken.  not so much if they get replaced or rearranged, especially if it’s something like, we were going to go ice skating but it happens to be 59 degrees out today…  but when people cancel, or even worse, ditch out on plans, I get pretty upset.

I was pondering how many times I got upset in the last week about broken plans.  in under 20 seconds, I had three times in the last 5 days that it had happened, and I was pretty bitter about all of them.  and instantly I realized… something is not right.  there’s no way I should actually be that upset.  and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I just like to have control.  over the who-what-where-when-whys of my life.  because if I don’t plan, someone else will do it.  and they might invite someone who doesn’t always agree with me, or that I think is awkward.  or we could do something boring, or something that I dislike.  or maybe it won’t fit perfectly into my schedule.

then bam.  as usual, the brick in the face moment hit, and it came together.  control over my life feels nice, but is it best?  when I have control over the reigns it’s comforting.  I know me better than any other human being, so I can do the things that make me happy and I can plan the things that I want to do, and I can make sure my life stays in nice neat order without any waves.  but God knows things about my heart that I have even yet to discover.   and His plan is always best.  and He promises to not lead me astray, but to give me a yoke that is light.

I still don’t like this because it’s hard.  but I love this because it’s increadible.  what God says is, just don’t worry about it.  I’ve got everything under control.  how nice would that be if I just let that idea run wild in my life?  if suddenly sticking to my planner, I just lived and let God take care of the rest.  sounds pretty nice to me.