Sunday, April 25, 2010
Writing
Writing as been coming at me from all directions lately. Not paper writing or school writing, the kind that makes your heart groan to think about, but "being a writer" writing, the kind that flows easily (or sometimes not so easily) from brain to hands to keyboard and makes the writer feel like a little part of their soul is represented on the screen. I read two blog posts today that really made me think, one by a writer I follow on twitter John Acuff and another by my friend Annie Morgan, who is an amazing writer. John wrote that someone recently asked him what his secret is to being a writer and to making a life of following his passion. His answer was simply that he writes. He makes the decision every day that he is going to write. He doesn't contemplate whether he feels like it or ask himself if he has more productive things to do, he just writes, for better or worse. Annie's thoughts were a little more philosophical. Today is her 20th birthday, and it has prompted her to start a 365 day project she calls "The 20th Year". Her goal is to write every day for the next year about her life, with the goal of capturing some more of the fullness of life and of exploring what it means to her to be a writer. Both of these entries really struck me because both of these people are taking their passion and their gift and doing something with it, where I feel like I am not doing anything with mine. I've always been too busy in the past (that's part truth, part excuse), but this year I've had plenty of free time and I have done nothing. I don't need to write a book, I can start small. Annie is keeping a blog with the intention of making it a channel for her writing rather than just a method for keeping up with friends. I want to do something like that, to really own my gift and stop just thinking about it. I suppose I will start here. I know myself well enough not to set a goal of posting every day like Annie is, but more often, and with more care to what I write? I can do that, and I think I will. But I'm done just thinking. I will.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Some good things
Just some good thoughts from last night I wanted to share.
If you want to be a Christian, prepare to die.
So intense!! So true though. We have to die to ourselves and our desires, which hurts and is uncomfortable but totally makes me want to die.
"God turns us into totally new creatures. It's not like we're flowers and he comes along and makes us bigger, brighter, flowers. It's like we're flowers and he says I'm going to turn you into a kitten!"
I thought this was the funniest thing ever. I busted into a huge fit of giggles after Chris said it, and then everyone else started laughing too, only they were laughing at how funny I thought it was. Am I the only one that thinks this is absolutely hilarious?
I'm super tired today. The end of the semester sucks. It's hard to believe it's almost over.
If you want to be a Christian, prepare to die.
So intense!! So true though. We have to die to ourselves and our desires, which hurts and is uncomfortable but totally makes me want to die.
"God turns us into totally new creatures. It's not like we're flowers and he comes along and makes us bigger, brighter, flowers. It's like we're flowers and he says I'm going to turn you into a kitten!"
I thought this was the funniest thing ever. I busted into a huge fit of giggles after Chris said it, and then everyone else started laughing too, only they were laughing at how funny I thought it was. Am I the only one that thinks this is absolutely hilarious?
I'm super tired today. The end of the semester sucks. It's hard to believe it's almost over.
Crazy Day
So today's been pretty eventful
I started the morning with a phone call from a woman from the financial aid office at Warren Wilson telling me that I've been awarded a $4,000 transfer honors scholarship, which is awesome, but it's not even close to the $18,000 I was hoping for, so while I managed to sound very excited on the phone my first thought was "Oh crap". I immediately jumped into thinking "What am I going to do? What should I do?" Because I now have no money to pay for my super expensive dream school and no plan b, because I couldn't afford the application fees to anywhere else. After a few minutes of this I remembered that God had control of the situation, but I didn't really feel it and still spent all day trying to have faith but still on the brink of mentally hyperventilating. I'm very disappointed in myself, because a year ago God completely pulled the rug out from under me and when I found out I couldn't go to the school I'd already committed to go to I didn't even blink, I just said "What are you doing to me God? Where am I going?" and this time it took me most of the day to calm down. Perhaps part of that is due to the fact that I had to work today, so I didn't have time in the morning to sit down and pray, but when I got home in the afternoon it only took a few minutes of prayer for God to really calm my heart and remind me that he's got it under control. After that I was just annoyed with myself for my lack of faith. How did i end up going backwards in a year? How does that happen?
Which brings me to the second event, where God was cool enough to explain the whole thing to me at an awesome bible study I went to tonight. A few weeks ago, my friend Kat told me about "the hippie bible study", which is what she calls it but we're not supposed to call it that when we're there cause that's not actually the name of it. I've been trying to go since she told me about it but things kept coming up, but I guess that's the way it was supposed to happen because tonight was the perfect night for it. I met a few girls from my small group at Starbucks and then we all carpooled to the strip center that the church is in. I could see why Kat called it the hippie bible study as soon as I got it, because the floor of the small room was covered in rugs and there were couches in a semi circle around the room. There were two guys leading worship, one with an acoustic guitar and one with an electric bass. Both of them had dreads and the bassist had gages and a crazy mountain man beard like I have never seen before. The worship was great. I've never seen worship in a setting like that, so laid back with just the guitars, nobody standing, so much more quiet and intimate than a big crowd standing and singing. It was wonderful. I haven't been able to focus like that during worship in a while. I think I've gotten so used to the way worship is usually done with the band and everyone standing and acting excited that I've started to tune out and just get really easily distracted, which is frustrating but God's been helping me work through it by doing different things like stop singing or sit down during worship, which makes it easier to focus cause it's like dropping down beneath the layer or noise to a more intimate place. Anyway, after the wonderful quiet worship the guitarist (who I later found out is named Chris) began to teach. I've never seen anyone teach like that before. He just took a passage from Colossians 2 and read through it, then read it again unpacking it as he went, which isn't too crazy, it was a bible study after all, but he was so energetic and funny. His teaching was so serious and true but at the same time he wasn't serious about it at all. He kept cracking jokes and coming up with all these crazy metaphors. It was all very striking and I learned a lot, but all I'm going to write out here is God's answer to my question of how I managed to go backwards in a year so that I couldn't immediately and unquestioningly trust God in a crisis like I did a year ago. What Chris said was this: we tend to treat Christian knowledge like academic knowledge, like ok I've got the basics now on to deeper and more complicated stuff. The thing is, if you're not constantly savoring and contemplating the basics of Christianity, you're more complicated stuff becomes empty and you end up turning into a faker without even realizing it. I'm afraid this is what I did. In the last few months I got to this point where I was thinking "Ok, I've been a Christian for a while now, I need to be growing more now" I felt that it was time for me to focus on developing better Christian disciplines, like reading my bible more and asking God to break me of my pride and help me focus more (there are moments when I seriously wonder if I have ADD), and while those things are all very well and good, my relationship with God should come first, and the desired discipline and focus will be a byproduct of that. I don't have to worry about growing, because God will grow me. I never thought I would find this truth to be so tough, but as I'm writing this my human nature is protesting that I don't want so much to be out of my control. Did I always have a problem with surrendering to God? I don't think so. I guess over time he asks us to surrender more, and it gets harder to do so. It's ironic that my desire for growth caused me to not grow. Fail. Haha but I guess that's all part of the journey, right? We learn how to do things, and God tells us where we go wrong and gives us another chance to get it right, and another, and another.
So that's my day. I have been both majorly discouraged and majorly refreshed and reawakened in that very uncomfortable sort of way that only God can manage. So, I think I'm still going to Warren Wilson, I'm probably going to just end up taking out loans to pay for it. We'll see. On the bright side, in order to get the merit scholarship I wanted I could only get one B this semester, so I was seriously stressing out about my grades. Now, it doesn't matter so much : ) I don't have go get A's in everything, I just have to pass them all. I've been stressing about keeping my grades up for so long that this doesn't seem real yet. I hope the reality of this relief sinks in soon so finals will be a little easier.
I started the morning with a phone call from a woman from the financial aid office at Warren Wilson telling me that I've been awarded a $4,000 transfer honors scholarship, which is awesome, but it's not even close to the $18,000 I was hoping for, so while I managed to sound very excited on the phone my first thought was "Oh crap". I immediately jumped into thinking "What am I going to do? What should I do?" Because I now have no money to pay for my super expensive dream school and no plan b, because I couldn't afford the application fees to anywhere else. After a few minutes of this I remembered that God had control of the situation, but I didn't really feel it and still spent all day trying to have faith but still on the brink of mentally hyperventilating. I'm very disappointed in myself, because a year ago God completely pulled the rug out from under me and when I found out I couldn't go to the school I'd already committed to go to I didn't even blink, I just said "What are you doing to me God? Where am I going?" and this time it took me most of the day to calm down. Perhaps part of that is due to the fact that I had to work today, so I didn't have time in the morning to sit down and pray, but when I got home in the afternoon it only took a few minutes of prayer for God to really calm my heart and remind me that he's got it under control. After that I was just annoyed with myself for my lack of faith. How did i end up going backwards in a year? How does that happen?
Which brings me to the second event, where God was cool enough to explain the whole thing to me at an awesome bible study I went to tonight. A few weeks ago, my friend Kat told me about "the hippie bible study", which is what she calls it but we're not supposed to call it that when we're there cause that's not actually the name of it. I've been trying to go since she told me about it but things kept coming up, but I guess that's the way it was supposed to happen because tonight was the perfect night for it. I met a few girls from my small group at Starbucks and then we all carpooled to the strip center that the church is in. I could see why Kat called it the hippie bible study as soon as I got it, because the floor of the small room was covered in rugs and there were couches in a semi circle around the room. There were two guys leading worship, one with an acoustic guitar and one with an electric bass. Both of them had dreads and the bassist had gages and a crazy mountain man beard like I have never seen before. The worship was great. I've never seen worship in a setting like that, so laid back with just the guitars, nobody standing, so much more quiet and intimate than a big crowd standing and singing. It was wonderful. I haven't been able to focus like that during worship in a while. I think I've gotten so used to the way worship is usually done with the band and everyone standing and acting excited that I've started to tune out and just get really easily distracted, which is frustrating but God's been helping me work through it by doing different things like stop singing or sit down during worship, which makes it easier to focus cause it's like dropping down beneath the layer or noise to a more intimate place. Anyway, after the wonderful quiet worship the guitarist (who I later found out is named Chris) began to teach. I've never seen anyone teach like that before. He just took a passage from Colossians 2 and read through it, then read it again unpacking it as he went, which isn't too crazy, it was a bible study after all, but he was so energetic and funny. His teaching was so serious and true but at the same time he wasn't serious about it at all. He kept cracking jokes and coming up with all these crazy metaphors. It was all very striking and I learned a lot, but all I'm going to write out here is God's answer to my question of how I managed to go backwards in a year so that I couldn't immediately and unquestioningly trust God in a crisis like I did a year ago. What Chris said was this: we tend to treat Christian knowledge like academic knowledge, like ok I've got the basics now on to deeper and more complicated stuff. The thing is, if you're not constantly savoring and contemplating the basics of Christianity, you're more complicated stuff becomes empty and you end up turning into a faker without even realizing it. I'm afraid this is what I did. In the last few months I got to this point where I was thinking "Ok, I've been a Christian for a while now, I need to be growing more now" I felt that it was time for me to focus on developing better Christian disciplines, like reading my bible more and asking God to break me of my pride and help me focus more (there are moments when I seriously wonder if I have ADD), and while those things are all very well and good, my relationship with God should come first, and the desired discipline and focus will be a byproduct of that. I don't have to worry about growing, because God will grow me. I never thought I would find this truth to be so tough, but as I'm writing this my human nature is protesting that I don't want so much to be out of my control. Did I always have a problem with surrendering to God? I don't think so. I guess over time he asks us to surrender more, and it gets harder to do so. It's ironic that my desire for growth caused me to not grow. Fail. Haha but I guess that's all part of the journey, right? We learn how to do things, and God tells us where we go wrong and gives us another chance to get it right, and another, and another.
So that's my day. I have been both majorly discouraged and majorly refreshed and reawakened in that very uncomfortable sort of way that only God can manage. So, I think I'm still going to Warren Wilson, I'm probably going to just end up taking out loans to pay for it. We'll see. On the bright side, in order to get the merit scholarship I wanted I could only get one B this semester, so I was seriously stressing out about my grades. Now, it doesn't matter so much : ) I don't have go get A's in everything, I just have to pass them all. I've been stressing about keeping my grades up for so long that this doesn't seem real yet. I hope the reality of this relief sinks in soon so finals will be a little easier.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Long Overdue
Ok, so it's been a while since I updated this thing. I got my car back right when I stopped posting about not having my car. It's great to have it back but I wish I had been able to find a way to work walking into my schedule voluntarily, but so far I haven't.
School has been sooo busy!!!!! The end of the semester totally snuck up on me, and along with it all those end-of-the-semester papers and projects that I thought I had a ton of time to do and therefore haven't started yet. They're all due next week. And in 2 weeks, I move out of my apartment. 4 days after that, freshman year of college is over. That's weird! At the end of every school year I'm surprised by how quickly the school year flew by, but it seems as if this year has gone faster than the speed of light. Seriously. Usually there's a stage that sets in around November-February where that new-year-of-school charm has long worn off but the-end-is-in-sight excitement has not set in. I didn't get anywhere close to that this year. It's just gone from "cool I'm in college" to "hey sweet I'm on winter break" to "ok cool new classes. lots of work" to "holy crap it's almost over!". It kinda freaks me out. I really hope that every year of college doesn't go by this fast, because at this rate I'll be done and out in "the real world" in no time, and I don't feel anywhere even close to approaching prepared for that.
Realizing its the end of the school year has caused me to look back and think about how I've grown and changed since this time last year. A lot has happened: I've moved out of my mom's house, I've grown to love God more and learned the importance of having a community of fellow Christians for support, and I get along better with my family now. I feel like there should be more though, like the change from year to year should be drastic and easily noticeable. It certainly was this time last year, but maybe we only get a few years like that.
The bright side of time getting a jetpack this year: only 40 days until my second Teameffort summer : ) I am glad the wait went by so quickly. I'm excited!
On another note, learning more specific things that are wrong in this world has gotten me feeling like there are a million places I'd like to go and so many different people I'd like to help. For example:
1. In the slums of Brazil, there are so many orphans begging in the streets that shopkeepers will actually have them killed because having children begging outside their shops is bad for business. This is horrifiying. It makes me want to move to Brazil and open and orphanage in the slums so all those children can have a safe home to go to.
2. The female infanticide in India that Meagan has been writing about lately. Again, I want to go open an orphanage for baby girls in India now and just say "If you don't want them, give them to me!!!"
3. Africa. I don't know if I need to say more. Most of the diseases causing such damage there are completely preventable. Hundreds of thousands of children are orphaned every year because their parents die of AIDS. Then there are the child soldiers and the many refugees who have now found themselves with no homes. Or the villages that simply don't have access to good food and clean water. You see where I'm going with this.
4. The homeless in our own country. NO ONE SHOULD BE STARVING IN AMERICA!!!
Every time I learn about another group of people that is hurting I want to go to them and do whatever I can to help, but I know I can't do it all, and it's frustrating because I know it's not even my decision. Where I go with my life is God's decision, and I want it to be that way because I know that wherever He sends me is where I'll be able to do the most for Him and that it will be beautiful, I just want to know! This is bothering me more and more as I write this. I need to start praying about this.
School has been sooo busy!!!!! The end of the semester totally snuck up on me, and along with it all those end-of-the-semester papers and projects that I thought I had a ton of time to do and therefore haven't started yet. They're all due next week. And in 2 weeks, I move out of my apartment. 4 days after that, freshman year of college is over. That's weird! At the end of every school year I'm surprised by how quickly the school year flew by, but it seems as if this year has gone faster than the speed of light. Seriously. Usually there's a stage that sets in around November-February where that new-year-of-school charm has long worn off but the-end-is-in-sight excitement has not set in. I didn't get anywhere close to that this year. It's just gone from "cool I'm in college" to "hey sweet I'm on winter break" to "ok cool new classes. lots of work" to "holy crap it's almost over!". It kinda freaks me out. I really hope that every year of college doesn't go by this fast, because at this rate I'll be done and out in "the real world" in no time, and I don't feel anywhere even close to approaching prepared for that.
Realizing its the end of the school year has caused me to look back and think about how I've grown and changed since this time last year. A lot has happened: I've moved out of my mom's house, I've grown to love God more and learned the importance of having a community of fellow Christians for support, and I get along better with my family now. I feel like there should be more though, like the change from year to year should be drastic and easily noticeable. It certainly was this time last year, but maybe we only get a few years like that.
The bright side of time getting a jetpack this year: only 40 days until my second Teameffort summer : ) I am glad the wait went by so quickly. I'm excited!
On another note, learning more specific things that are wrong in this world has gotten me feeling like there are a million places I'd like to go and so many different people I'd like to help. For example:
1. In the slums of Brazil, there are so many orphans begging in the streets that shopkeepers will actually have them killed because having children begging outside their shops is bad for business. This is horrifiying. It makes me want to move to Brazil and open and orphanage in the slums so all those children can have a safe home to go to.
2. The female infanticide in India that Meagan has been writing about lately. Again, I want to go open an orphanage for baby girls in India now and just say "If you don't want them, give them to me!!!"
3. Africa. I don't know if I need to say more. Most of the diseases causing such damage there are completely preventable. Hundreds of thousands of children are orphaned every year because their parents die of AIDS. Then there are the child soldiers and the many refugees who have now found themselves with no homes. Or the villages that simply don't have access to good food and clean water. You see where I'm going with this.
4. The homeless in our own country. NO ONE SHOULD BE STARVING IN AMERICA!!!
Every time I learn about another group of people that is hurting I want to go to them and do whatever I can to help, but I know I can't do it all, and it's frustrating because I know it's not even my decision. Where I go with my life is God's decision, and I want it to be that way because I know that wherever He sends me is where I'll be able to do the most for Him and that it will be beautiful, I just want to know! This is bothering me more and more as I write this. I need to start praying about this.
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