Things of today...

Today I lost the last tiny bit of respect that I might have had for Emily Dickinson. This poem is part of a song we're singing in choir, and once I got past the trippy wording, I realized what it said...hence ruining her for good in my mind.

Gah! This kind of theology is so upsetting. I mean it's right there in Hebrews!

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We had an interesting announcement in choir tonight. CAS (the creative arts society) was have a free pizza and condoms night. Yes, and it's everything that it's name would indicate. They give you free pizza as a draw (though it's hardly necessary...which is the lamentable bit) and they have someone [presumably...i never went, but know people who have] talk about safe sex and the like and then pass around a bag of assorted condoms and you take as many as you like.

I just breaks my heart, quite honestly. To think that one of the most precious things God gave us....and that He said was "very good".....is being so terribly abused.

Sex is for marriage! And for nothing else. You know what it is outside of marriage? Fornication. Once again. Pick up a Bible- it's in almost every single list of sins that are made.

Gah.

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On a happier note- God is awesome. And turns little-to-no practice time into worship that praises Him mightily. 'Tis good.

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I learned something very interesting in pscy class today: so....basic psyc 101 lecture- there are pleasure centers in your brain, to which a molecule called dopamine binds when you experience something enjoyable. (There's a reason why "dope" is derived from dopamine. When you smoke it, it creates more of this molecule which binds to the pleasure centers making you happy/ high.)

People who are easily addicted to things (drugs, alcohol, and most anything you can get addicted to) have more pleasure centers in their brains than the "average" person. So when they ________ (fill in the blank...say, have a drink) they enjoy it more than a "normal" person would. The dopamine has more places to bind to, and you feel happier.

So if you've been addicted to something in the past, you're predisposed to becoming addicted to something else (or the same thing) again.

It's just a matter of psychology.

And we wouldn't be able to overcome any such obstacles without His love, mercy and grace.

It's just the Truth.

Why?

Why do I spend so much energy in mixing with the freshmen? Why do I break my shell of introversion and start a conversation when I'd just as soon sit in silence? Why bother? Why try?

Because I was first loved by Someone who didn't have to do what He did for me.

Christ didn't have to die on the cross to bring us closer to God. God didn't have to send Him to do so. But He did. And in so doing showed us love.

And sometimes freshmen, I think, know what it means to be unloved more than most people our age. They're in a new place, with new people, and they haven't found people who care enough to love them.

Without love, life is not much fun to live. It's kind of a drag to look around a room full of people and think "Wow, no one in here cares enough about me to even say hi."

Why?

Because someone else did it for me, and in so doing pointed to the One who loves more than we can ever imagine.

That's why.

I dare you to move

Such an excellent song. God is good

Days like this

Days like this make me glad I have a lofted bed- otherwise I would have crawled into it by now and gone back to sleep. But I don't feel like exerting the effort to do so.

Days like this it doesn't help that it's dreary outside. Perhaps if it weren't I'd be a little less dreary myself.

Days like this, I'd go hungry if I didn't have food in my room. Again, too much effort to go anywhere to eat.

Days like this I'm glad my roommate has class. So I can sit here doing nothing. Knowing I have a hundred things to do, but not having the energy or ambition to do any of them...

Free at last, free at last

I don't know how I got thru 19 years of life without listening to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech.

If you have too, listen to it. Tomorrow will be the anniversary of its delivery date.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk

It's one of the most powerful things I've ever heard. Truly amazing.

The Singing Butler

I love this painting.

Torn

I've yet to find the line between helping and enabling. They say it's where your helping the person changes from helping them to hurting them, but that's not an easy line to draw. I want to help. But I don't want to intrude. I want to make it better. But I don't want to be a crutch for you. I don't want you to forget how to walk.

We'll let it go for the night. Prayer is good.

A lament

I had a disturbing conversation with a friend today. He was talking about his ex-girlfriend, and how things had been since the two of them broke up at the end of last semester.

The conversation, in paraphrase:
Yeh, after we broke up she started dating another guy. And after 3 months of dating him she says she loves him just as much as she loved me before. Which tells me one thing: she never really loved me as much as she thought she did. And the thing is, she said she's breaking up with him before she comes back to school because she doesn't think she'll be able to stay faithful to him...

What?!?!

again, i say

WHAT?!?!!??!?!?

Does the word "love" mean nothing these days? I mean honestly! How can you say that you love someone, but not enough to be faithful to them? Isn't that contrary to what it means to love someone??

*sigh*

Oh college. Here I am. Back for another fun-filled year. By God's grace, I'm getting to see this friend that I was talking to make some serious changes in his life. Turning towards God after years of being an atheist.

I pray that God continues to make such changes in people. That more may come to know Him every day.

Musings of a miscellaneous nature

~Yay for coming to college completely exhausted. I slept so well last night its not even funny. And as I rule I don't sleep well in new places for a few days until I'm acclimated.

~I'm liking my dorm room. It's pretty swell. Kinda the perfect size too; although movable furniture would be really nice.

~It's my second day here, and I went for my first run today. I like that. I missed running. I've always maintained that it's like a shower for your insides- afterwards you feel so clean!

~Hands down I'm an introvert. So why is it that most of the time when I'm in a group I'm the outgoing one?

~I love having an introverted roommate. It makes life so much easier, and my room so much more relaxing.

~God is good. It's going to be a great year. I can feel it!

Goodbye, goodbye. Parting is such sweet sorrow...

It just caught up to me. I just sat down and thought about it, and realized that this summer completely flew. Not just in the sense that all summers go fast.

No. This one whizzed by at lightning speed.

All good things do I suppose. We were looking at those English books today (I'll tell you what was up with that if you like...) and I couldn't help but think that was the longest summer ever. Because it was (not completely...but mostly) awful.

It seems like I just got a job at Ruby's yesterday. Though my bank account would say differently.

It seems like we just had our first lotr meetings last week. But we've got a movie to prove otherwise.

It seems like May was not long ago, and yet...

It's good. I'm excited to go back to school. Ready? Maybe not. But I'm excited!

Here I go again...but not alone.

Pre-game

Going through my notes on Biblical manhood and womanhood before talking to Pastor Sigrid, I came across a great quote that Piper used:

“In my view, America’s greatest need is for husbands to begin guiding their families rather than pouring every physical and emotional resource into the mere acquisition of money.”
~James Dobson

Political parties

I've decided to switch my party registration. Not that it matters for the upcoming election, but I'm doing it anyway. I've come to realize that it's possible to be a conservative with several liberal tendencies, and absolutely impossible to be a liberal with a lot of conservative ideals.

Hey dol merry dol ring a ding dillo

I'm excited to go back to school. I'm glad that I can finally say that. Glad that I've put my trust in God and put my fears aside. Glad that I've accepted that whatever will happen will happen, and that He has control over it, not me.

Packing today got me psyched. (Although it could have just been the room-cleaning aspect....)

I'm ready to move back in. Ready to re-start dorm life. Ready to live in smaller quarters, with fewer things. Ready to live on a floor, with roommates.

And yet...

I wish that were do-able without leaving my friends. I wish I could mesh the two. Wish that I could say with certainty that I'd see them all before Christmas break.

I mean, honestly. You can't find people this cool anywhere else!

Family Ties

You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your relatives.

And while they are the people who've raised you, they're not perfect.

And then you have yourself in a quandary of sorts: loving them as they are, but praying you don't grow up to be the same. Or marry someone who grows up to be the same.

Oh the world we live in...

My friend sent me this link, it's ridiculous beyond reason...

Wikipedia may be normally accurate, but it's got some major issues.

See for yourself....

Nostalga?

I've officially maxed out my bookshelf. The one I got in 4th grade, that I swore I'd never be able to fill.

And in an attempt to clear some space, I attempted a second round of cleaning it out, to donate books I no longer have a use for.

But unlike last time I couldn't get rid of any of them.

At this point, I've got the following shelf organization:
-religion books/Bibles/hymnals....obviously not going anywhere.
-my row o' classics/ books I really want to read at some point- Tolkien, Lewis, and various
-books from high school
-misc- yearbooks, old textbooks that'll be helpful, etc...also staying put.

So, theoretically, I could regain 1/4 of my shelf space if I'd be willing to knock out that 3rd row. Which I thought would be no problem...all the books I wanted to burn all thru high school, I could finally rid myself of.

But apparently it's not that easy. Even though I shuddered to look at the books on the far right (senior year English project books), and all but dropped a book when I recalled the memories of reading it, I couldn't get rid of them. I just can't. They're too much a part of me.

And maybe it has something to do with the fact that I wrote a lot in those books. A lot. And it'd not be too helpful to give them away. All my notes would make it impossible for someone to read.

But there's a part of me that wants to re-read them. Even Silas Marner. And The Old Man and the Sea. (blasphemy! I know!) Partly to re-read my notes. Partly to see what they're like without the pressures of school. Without the obligation of a project. Just to read them for fun.

And yet these books made my life miserable for 4 years...

Is this me just wanting to live in the past? Or just an excuse I'm making to keep some of my worldly goods? Do I just not want to erase the past? Or is there some part of me that just doesn't want to get rid of something I put so much of me into- even though it was too much?

Perhaps it's like my stuffed animals...I needed to be a few years detached from them before I could donate them....

Don't you understand? He saved me!

A video I don't believe I can watch too many times.

How great is our God. That He comes to us when we are so shameful, so ugly, so evil and claims us as His own. He takes us in His arms and heals our wounds and loves us even when we don't love Him.

How great is our God? Someday we'll be able to fully express it to Him.

Closet Skeletons

I had relatives who committed suicide. Far back enough that I never knew them, but close enough that currently-living relatives did.

"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." (Matthew 6:34)

So simple, and yet so difficult to accomplish. Especially if you're a control freak. You feel like you just need to be in control, and know what's going to happen.

Thanks be to God that such is not the case!

F minus minus

For starters....yeh, I'm using this account. You all knew it was only a matter of time before I made the switch. Though I will not abandon xanga just yet.

A more grown-up blog for more grown-up thoughts, I suppose...

Its amazing how captivating a little box can be. Nothing but flickers of light and bites of sound, and yet it can draw you in and keep you there. A clever device of satan, no doubt.

A whole day utterly wasted. (Well, from noon on anyway....)

It's so addicting. And it's twistedly so. Example: my parents are huge fans of Law and Order. What a sick show! Yes, I realize that atrocities do occur, but to watch it on the edge of our seats like fans at a sporting event....it's horrible. And nothing good comes of it. And yet, you see the first 5 minutes and you're there for an hour, wading through the violence, the drama, the crime, just to see it resolved.

And I suppose it hit home a lot today, because for the first time in I don't know when, I found myself watching tv by myself. I started with my family, but when people got up and left, there I was: glued to the tube.

Knowing all the while I had plenty that I could have been reading. Verses that I could have been memorizing. Or just chillin with Jesus.

How often do you hear people talk about how they're addicted to reading the Bible, or praying, or meditating on God's Word? Where they just started into something and then found the time flying by without them wanting to stop.

Not nearly as often as so many other things.

In fact, I wonder if I've ever really heard that sort of statement.

Thank God for grace. We would be nothing without it. How many graven images have we carved out for ourselves? When we've pointlessly wasted time that could have been spent in the Lord?

The Gospel for this morning was Matthew 13:

Now I've never been one for gardening, but I've done enough of it to know that it's hard work. You work all day long pulling weeds in the heat of the day, sweat dripping from your brow, knees and back aching from the work. Then you spend the evening watering the plants that you want to grow. And the next day, the blasted weeds are back. Your work is never done.

So it is with our faith, I suppose. We never reach that point where we can sit back and admire our lives/work/faith (which is all a gift anyway, so we should be giving thanks for it) (we will get that chance someday, and it'll be awesome!), because it's at that instant that satan is waiting to pounce. The weeds will grow back rapidly if there's no one tending the garden.

Actually the gardening is a better image than I'd initially thought.....

How do you garden?

On your knees.

How do we cultivate our faith? The same way.

And it's not something that can be done every so often, and then let alone. It's a constant commitment to delving into the Word, worshipping, praying, listening every day. Not just once in awhile.

And that's why we need grace, because that's way too big of a task for us to tackle ourselves.

I don't know if in our fallen nature it's even possible to become addicted to these sorts of things, but God willing, and by His grace, I hope to find out!