Do not think me gentle because I speak in praise of gentleness, or elegant because I honour the grace that keeps this world. I am a [wo]man crude as any, gross of speech, intolerant, stubborn, angry, full of fits and furies. That I may have spoken well at times, is not natural. A wonder is what it is. (Wendell Berry)

Saturday, March 31, 2007

In response to Heather's post.

Here's some of my handwriting:

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Toast

I love toast.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Daily Bread

The last Oasis service we had, Warren spoke on the phrase "give us this day our daily bread" in the Our Father (or Lord's Prayer if you're not Catholic). I must say, Warren did a fantastic job, and I was doing powerpoint for him so I got a copy of his notes and I stole them and took them home and reread them. The most convicting part for me was the amount of time I spend every day with God. I'm not spending enough. I don't love the Lord the way I should, and the funny thing is, I really want to- I desire to love the Lord more than anything else, but I don't know how. I pray for that on a regular basis and lately things have been getting harder and worse for me. I think there's a reason for that. God is bringing me to the end of my rope, and he's doing a pretty good job. Much like Paul, my desires and my actions have a hard time matching up. Not that I'm comparing myself to Paul... but it's comforting to know that Paul didn't have it completely figured out either.

Question of the day:
What's your favorite thing about God?

My answer:
I know this is really simple and doesn't do God justice, but He wakes me up when my alarm doesn't go off. It's happened to me more than 10 times, where something will happen to my finicky phone and the alarm will shut off but God always wakes me up ONE MINUTE before it was supposed to go off- just so I know that it was Him. There have also been times where I don't have an alarm with me but I need to get up at a certain time (usually early) and I'll pray about waking up at a specific time, and I'll always wake up right at that time- like down to the exact minute. God is cool that way.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Lots on my mind

Has there ever been a time in your life where everything seems to happen all in the same month? For some reason this semester is that time for me. The way I cope with it is not a good one. I tend to sleep too much, watch too much tv, spend too much time on the internet, not do the things that I'm supposed to do, even though I like doing them, because it's just "another thing" on my list to do. So instead of being really busy and productive, I have an overwhelming amount of things to do and think about and I end up doing none of them. That's bad. Usually I work pretty well under chaos and pressure, but that's when emotional things are not involved. If I have a lot of stuff to DO then I seem to get it all done and be pretty productive. However, if there are a lot of things happening that I have to mentally process and they are things that I'd rather not think about- I don't DO anything. I just shut myself off from all normal activity until it goes away. This time it isn't going away.
This "defense mechanism" or whatever you want to call it has never not worked before- and it certainly hasn't lasted as long as it has not working. I'm running out of ideas on how to cope. I'm not allowing comments on this post because I don't want any advice. I am going to figure this out on my own, but I could use the prayers. Right now I'm praying that God would give me enough grace to not be lazy and to not be dehabilitated by my thoughts and what's on my mind. Sleep and mindless activity is taking over my life. God needs to re-take it over. That's always hard because when God takes it over I become much more aware of everything that is happening to me, my own sin, my family, my school, basically my own inadequacy to do ANYTHING and I tend to be right where I started, which is overwhelmed. Anyways, I wasn't planning on writing any of this, it sorta just came out, I wanted to post something because I feel bad that the Candirú post comes up when you click on my blog. At least all of my problems are mental and I don't have a Candirú stuck in my butt.

Monday, March 12, 2007

The Worst Way to Die

I haven't had a lot to write about recently, then all of a sudden lots of things fall in my lap. Of all the things that have happened recently, I think the following is the most interesting.

Today in my class "Environment and Development in Latin America," we were talking about the dangers of the Amazon. Among those named were things like the wild boar, palm fronds (really heavy apparently and can gouge your eye out if it falls while you are looking up) and the Candirú.
The Candirú is a type of fish that lives in the Amazon River and is about six centemeters long. It is attracted to human and animal waste. The Candirú, as soon as it smells said waste, will travel in the direction that the waste is coming from until it can't travel no more, if you get my drift. Then it will shoot out these spiney things and attach itself to its host. EW. It can only be removed by surgery.
In my opinion, this is officially the grossest thing ever. I'm really skeeved out.