New Years Resolutions

Ah, the dreaded resolutions that last for a couple weeks and then go waltzing out the door.  And yet most people still come up with a few every year.  I'm no exception, though like many others I tend to fail pretty quickly.  But this year I'm rather determined to actually succeed at a few.  So I'm going to mention my overall resolutions for the new year and then I think I'm going to start doing what a friend of mine does on her blog and have monthly resolutions.  I like the idea of doing that because it makes the things you want to do more achievable because you're planning for a month, not the whole year.  If you have some free time, I'd encourage you to check out her blog because its awesome:  Press On To Know/Christ-Like Life.

So, overall resolutions for this year:

A Year in Review: 2013

Here we are again at the end of another year.  Does it seem to have gone by really fast to anyone else?  I have to admit this has been a fairly uneventful year, which is kind of nice.  Still, I feel I have been very blessed this year so I thought I would share a few events from the year with pictures for some and others just mentioning them.  So off we go down memory lane.

Last year I had the opportunity to act in A Christmas Carol with a group of very talented people.  There were a number of people there that I didn't know, but I ended up getting to be good friends with two of them and at the beginning of the year the three of us got together and went to a double feature of The Hobbit:  An Unexpected Journey and Les Miserable.  Needless to say we had a lot of fun with each other.  Following that, we got together because the guy in the picture (I'll avoid using names just to be safe) had never seen Lord of the Rings, so we had a Lord of the Rings marathon.  During one of the nights we were watching, the girl's sister joined us.  We'd already met her during the play and she quickly became a part of our little group.  Our Lord of the Rings marathon turned into a weekly get together that has been going on nearly every week since.

Twelve Songs of Christmas

With it being just a few days before Christmas, just about everyone is listening to Christmas music. I love Christmas music and I'll admit that I will occasionally listen to it before Christmas, you know in like June.  But, I generally try to stick with listening to Christmas songs around this time of year and listen to them as much as possible.  Also, today was just a long, stressful day at work and I think I'm starting to get an ear infection (again), all of which did not put me in the greatest mood and I needed some cheering up.  Que Christmas music blasting through my speakers.  And so with all that in mind, I've decided to share my twelve favorite Christmas songs with you.  So, hope you enjoy!

#1 The Christmas Shoes
I have always loved this song and thought it was such a beautiful song and story.  You might want to have some tissues nearby watching the video, I know it always makes me cry!

How To Create An Awesome Action Scene 3

Here it is, Ladies and Gentlemen!
The short movie that I acted in back in November is finally completed and available for viewing in all its awesomeness.  It is really good and, as I stated before, was a lot of fun to film.  I'm so blessed to know such talented people.  There's no blood/gore or profanity, just several gunfight scenes which are pretty epic.  So grab the family, gather round and enjoy!

Chicken and Veggies

Since I like to cook, as has already been established, I've decided that I'm going to broaden my post topics to that of food as well.  I really enjoyed sharing my experience of baking my cake for Thanksgiving and I gotta figure that someone out there will probably appreciate similar posts.  Also, I recently watched Julie & Julia.  Fantastic movie, if you haven't seen it, you should.  Anyway, moving on, I recently got a Pinterest account, one of those things that I'd heard about for ages and actively avoided because it was so popular.  Well, I caved and I have discovered a whole new fantastic world.  Not even kidding, I love it.  One of my friends has been griping at me because I've been pinning so much and blowing up her Pinterest board.  Whoops!

Probably the most exciting thing I've found for me is all the recipes.  There are so many!  I'm trying not to collect too many so I don't overwhelm myself with all the possibilities.  Since I had yesterday off of work because I was up until 4 am watching the midnight premiere of The Desolation of Smaug, more on that in my next post, I decided to cook dinner.  And since I was cooking dinner, I figured it would be fun to try one of the recipes I'd found on Pinterest.  And so was born the idea that whenever I tried a new recipe, I could blog about it and let other people know if it was really good or bad or if I'd done something differently, etc.  So if you like to cook, I hope this is helpful and fun and if you don't like to cook then maybe it'll inspire you to bust out the pots and pans and make something yummy.

British TV Shows In Quotes

Sometimes I wonder, as I'm sobbing over the death of yet another character in one of the British tv shows I watch, if this is healthy.  Is it good for me to watch shows that draw me in so easily, that captivate me, get me attached to the characters to the point where when they're in pain I hurt for them or if they die I'm left crying my eyes out?  And yet that's what makes them so fantastic, because they can do that.  Because they make you feel something, look at the world in a different light.  Because some of the things the characters say make you really think, make you look at your life differently.  They let you dream, let you believe even a little bit that maybe those amazing things you see episode after episode could be real.  There's something special about that.

The Journey Begins

As many people know, last month was National Novel Writing Month.  I'd heard about for a couple years but never participated mostly because I was a bit daunted by the idea of having to write 50,000 words in one month.  On top of that, I usually didn't have the time to just sit down and write or when I did have some free time, writing was not what I wanted to do.  This year, however, I decided to give it a go.  Years ago, back when I was still in high school, my two best friends at the time and I decided that we should each write a book.  In some ways they were similar because we were really into dragons and fairies and Japan at that time so they had those elements in it and then they also all revolved around three girls we based off of ourselves and our friendship.  I never got far with mine.  I would get a couple chapters in, give it to my friends to critique and then re-write parts of it with their suggestions.  I think the whole concept of the story changed at least three times.  It had been years since I'd even glanced at the manuscripts I had so I honestly didn't remember a whole lot other than the very general idea, which I still liked.  I had just never been able to find a way to go with it and write what I wanted to.

Caramel Apple Cake

For Thanksgiving this year, I decided to go ahead and bake the dessert and try something new.  A month or two back I had picked up an issue of Food Network magazine.  It had some really good recipes in it, but the recipe I really wanted to try was this cake that had been made to look like a caramel apple.  It was absolutely amazing and it was rated as easy, so I figured it would be something fun to make for Thanksgiving to kind of shake up our normal menu.  Since I had to work Thanksgiving, I made the cake the night before.  The recipe said that it would take about two hours, but with it being my first time, I figured it might take more like two and a half to three.  It took five.  For all that the recipe said it was easy, it was not.  I'm guessing it was rated easy because you made the cake using box mix instead of from scratch and there weren't all that many ingredients.  Actually building the cake though was far from easy.

Back To School?

Okay you see that picture.  That could be me in a couple years.  Well, not the food, but you know, the hand garnishing that amazing looking dish.  Okay, I'll give you some context so you can stop looking confused, or if you're not looking confused, well, then, I don't know.  Anyway, since moving back home, there are times when I'll flip on the tv, not very often, but on occasion when I'm eating or doing something in the kitchen.  Most of the time there's nothing good or appropriate on so I've taken to watching Food Network, because, hey, I like to cook and bake and its always interesting to see what other people are fixing and get some good ideas.  My parents noticed this since I fix dinner a couple days a week and usually when they get home that's what I have on.  As we were watching one of the shows while having dinner a week or so ago, my dad made a comment that I should consider going to culinary school since I like to cook so much.  I was a bit surprised, because, well, culinary isn't exactly one of the "practical" college degrees that my parents used to always suggest I go for.  Now don't get me wrong, I know my parents have always had my best intentions at heart when they suggested those practical degrees, but I know I could never do something like business or accounting or even something like being a teacher.  No, no, no.  I would die of boredom or in the case of being a teacher, I think I would lose my mind trying to deal with kids.  I like kids, I think they're cute and all, but I only like them from a distance if I don't know them.  The only kids I actually like dealing with are ones that I know and even then I don't think I could do that everyday unless they were my own.  But that is in the far distant future and not something I'm going to worry about right now.

Because of A Knife

Isn't it funny the things that bring people together again?  There's that person that you've had a falling out with or you just grew apart or something happened, and you figure that it's all over, nothing is ever going to change that, and in some cases, maybe you don't want it to change.  I had that happen recently.  If you had told me six months ago that I would be talking with ex-best friend, trying to hang out and sitting next to each other, I would have told you to go have your head examined.  No lie.  And if you had told me that the event that would cause us to really start talking would be me going to her house to borrow a knife, I would have sent you to an institution.

But that is exactly what happened.  The two of us hadn't talked, civilly or at any length, for probably one to two years, although in more recent times, really since my grandfather's death, we'd actually talked a few times.  But what changed everything was the day we were at our house in Edgewood, finishing packing for our move and we realized we hadn't brought a knife to cut our sandwich.  So my mom had me call, hmm, I'll call her Mary, though if you know me, you probably know who it is anyway.  Anyway, so my mom had me call Mary and ask her if I could borrow a knife.  She said sure so I headed next door to pick up the knife.

Don't Fall

Pretty much everyone has heard the quote "Don't make a girl fall for you, if you have no intention of catching her." I can't tell you how often I have seen and heard this quote. One of the most common ways I've heard it, is when a girl likes a guy, but he has no interest her. So she'll got on about how he made her fall for him, but he didn't catch her, which obviously was not his fault. So, honestly, I've gotten kind of sick of hearing this quote. On the one hand, I do like it, just not used in that way. However, I did find a quote that I really love and that fits perfectly.

Time Heals

Update:
I originally published this post on my grandmother's birthday going on three years ago.  I find it funny that I was surprised that after two months the pain of my grandfather's death was still there, was still fresh.  Almost three years later just re-posting about my grandfather's death on my new blog as I move everything over had me sobbing.  Even now re-reading this post, I can feel the tears running down my face.  I had no clue then how much my grandfather's death would change me, would define me.  I wasn't prepared for the deep depression it plunged me into that shattered my world and left me drowning in a sea of pain and sadness.  Almost three years later and the wounds still haven't healed.  I'm beginning to realize that maybe they never will.  True, I have more control of my emotions, I can hold back the tears if I need to, I can hide the pain, but the wounds are still raw.  Though they don't happen as frequently, there are still days when I hate myself for not having spent more time with him, that I blame myself for his death.  So much is an internal struggle, the desire to go visit his grave for the first time since he was laid to rest, yet not having the strength to make the trip on my own.  With the holidays coming up, I miss him even more and I find myself realizing that things are never going to go back to the way they were before his death, no matter how much I may want them to.

Surprise and Delight

So, again, I'm blogging about what I'm learning at the tea room. There are just so many awesome things to learn there, I could probably write several books. But what I wanted to talk about today, is serving. I'm a server at the tea room. Now for me, most of the time I think of a server as someone who takes your order, brings your food, then maybe checks in on you every great once in a while. There's really not a whole lot of interaction and for the most part, they have this attitude of, "This is a job, this is a job, this a job." They don't seem to be there to really serve.

At the tea room, I'm really discovering that being a server means to be a servant to the customers. It's not just a matter of, "here's your food," and plunking it on the table and walking away. It's interacting with the guests, asking them how their day's going and really wanting to know the answer. It's working hard to make their table look beautiful, making sure the pillows are all plumped and placed where they should be, and making sure the areas vacuumed clean. All little things that can make a big difference. It's making sure the food trays look absolutely delicious and beautiful at the same time. It's tasting the tea multiple times and making sure it tastes perfect so the guests can enjoy every sip. It's making sure that no matter how rushed we are, everything is done excellently. It's making sure that our guests come first before anything else. There are a hundred little things we do just to make that time relaxing and refreshing for them.

Steeping in God's Word

Okay, so weird title, right? Well, it is unless you're into tea. So, again, I've been learning a LOT at the tea room. Everything from how to set up food trays and arrange the food on them to setting the tables, from making tea to making resets. There's a whole lot to learn, but something I got thinking about now, is something that I just learned from watching the tea being made.

Now, when you make tea, you only want to let it steep for a certain amount of time or else it either gets really bitter or it loses all its flavor. Steep it too little and you get watery tea. Steep it just right and you have the perfect pot of tea. With that in mind, I kind of thought of a kind of "parable" similar to the one about the seed and the soil. This is kind of how I figured it.

Time To Pray

So, as most of you probably know, I am now working at the St. James Tea Room. It is truly the best job I have ever had, despite the fact that I have the tendency to stress myself out and over-think things. Still, God has been teaching me a lot through it and I wouldn't change a thing. And today, God taught me a truly important lesson.

Each morning, before we start work, everyone working the first shift gets together and we have little devotion. This morning, one of my dear friends made a comment that stuck with me. She said that she always makes sure to pray that everything will go well during the seating before each seating. She also said, that the days that she doesn't pray, she struggles. For me, that was an excellent reminder for me to be sure to pray before each seating. I hadn't done that on Wednesday and I had struggled to keep up with everything and get things done. Today, I made sure to pray and ask God to help me, and it was amazing how much better everything went! It was just totally in awe of how God helped me out. I didn't feel as stressed and everything went pretty smoothly.

I was thankful for the reminder, to pray to God at all times, even about little things, or things that seem insignificant or just straight forward. God can do amazing things when we trust Him and let Him take control. And every prayer brings us one step closer to our Heavenly Father.

This post was published on Friday, May 6, 2011. 

Heart versus Mind

One of the quotes I hear most these days is "Listen to your heart" or "Follow your heart." As a matter of fact I just did a cover the other day of a song called Listen to Your Heart. But should we actually listen to and follow our hearts? I don't think so. "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9) This is one of the first verses I ever learned in AWANA. But so often times we still listen to our hearts especially when comes to relationships. For me, when I like a guy, my heart tells me to run before I walk, and I can tell you, I already have a problem of falling way too hard, way too fast. My heart will tell me that he's perfect, he's the one. And when my head reminds me of the little things that might be an obstacle in our relationship, my heart simply tells my head to shut up and that love conquers all. In other words, my heart says go and my head says no. Typically for me, neither wins exactly. Obviously I'm still single and I've only dated one guy, so I've never had the guts to walk up to a guy I like and ask him out or anything, but on the other hand, that doesn't mean that I don't stop thinking about him.

A Heavy Heart

It is 2:30 in the morning and I have to be up by 5 am so I can be to work by 6:30.  By all rights, I should be in bed asleep, but I'm not because something has been weighing on my heart since yesterday afternoon.  As I mentioned in my post last night, I read a blog about someone's views on The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and the like.  I'm not going to name names or anything, but I really struggled with what was said.  In the post, the author stated that these books and the movies based off of them are of Satan, that there is nothing good about them.  Anyone who knows me can probably imagine that I immediately had an issue with this.  I've always known people who didn't want to watch or didn't want their kids watching Harry Potter or even Lord of the Rings, though to a much lesser extent, because of the magic involved.  I could understand that.  I didn't think any less of them and the fact that I did read and watch them didn't seem to affect them either.  But as I read this article I felt like I was being attacked, felt that I was less of a Christian because I did enjoy them and that if I didn't do away with them then I was serving Satan, not Christ.  It hurt, it still hurts and as I said, my heart feels heavy.  I have to admit, my first instinct was to lash out at this unknown person.  How dare they make me feel this way.  You know how people talk about hitting non-Christians over the head with the Bible won't turn them to Christ?  Well, that's how I felt, like I had just been hit over the head and I didn't like it.

Innocent or Not?

Update:

So, just a very quick update here about this post.  This will probably be the only post that I publish out of chronological order, but due to another blog post I read earlier today about someone's views on The Hobbit and other similar movies/books, mine and others opinions about said post, and the fact that several of us mentioned that this person should have targeted other films (I mentioned Twilight), we were all challenged go write our own piece about the films we mentioned.  Since I already wrote mine, I decided that I would re-upload it at this time.  So here it is again and for now, just ignore the beginning part about Harry Potter since I will publish that post in due time.

~~*~~

Alright, so I did a Harry Potter blog post, now I'm going to do a Twilight one, mostly because I've had several friends recently ask me why I dislike Twilight so much.  Now I'm just going to talk about the books.  If I did the books and movies, it would be a novel, seriously.  I do want to state right now that I'm not trying to judge anyone or make anyone feel bad about liking the books or movies, but I think there are some very real issues here that need to be addressed that are cleverly hidden in what most would consider a typical teenage romance series.

Redwall

Since publishing my post titled Men and Guns, I've had a number of people ask me what on earth Redwall is.  Well, let me tell you, it is one of the best series I have ever read and probably the one I have read and re-read the most.  I read the first three books of the series way back when I was a second or third grader in elementary school and I have never looked back.  The picture above is of my book shelf with 20 of the 22 books of the series.  I do own all of them but I had the two missing ones with me at my apartment and have yet to unpack them.  But that is beside the point.  Redwall is a series that was written by the brilliant author Brian Jacques.  Sadly he passed away on February 5, 2011.  I cannot even begin to describe how heartbroken I was when I found out that one of my favorite authors had died and that the stories of Redwall were at an end.  He wrote the series starting with the first book, Redwall, published in 1986 all the way until his final book, The Rogue Crew, published posthumously in 2011.

The Voice of Courage

When you think of the word courage, generally certain images jump to the forefront of your mind that define that word for you:  soldiers most often, people standing up for what they believe in, sacrifice, doing something no one else has, and the list goes on.  A lot of the time when people think courage, they think about big events, big people who define that word for them.  But what about those smaller events, those ordinary people?  Courage isn't always big, sometimes its small.  The quote in the picture above is one of my favorites because it shows that courage doesn't have to be big for it to make a difference.  In fact, I've found most often that courage is fairly small, small but powerful.  Courage, to me, is a voice, that little voice that whispers that you can do it, that encourages you to step outside of your comfort zone, to do great things.  But its something that you have to listen for because it can be so small.  It can be easy to ignore, to push back and to give into fear and doubt.

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Freak Out

In case you don't know already, I am a huge Doctor Who fan.  Single best show I have ever seen.  I wish American TV was more like British TV.  We have nothing even remotely this brilliant in the states.  In any case, I won't get started on how disappointed I am that I am not British.  I would make a fantastic Brit in my opinion.  But in any case, the 50th anniversary of the show is on November 23rd and they are airing a special episode!!!!!!  In case you haven't noticed, I am super super excited.  What's even more exciting is that they're having a special showing of the anniversary episode at a couple of theaters in town next Monday and I get to go with my closest friends!  Being that its a British TV show and I haven't had cable to be able to watch it live, I always have to watch it on my laptop.  I can't even begin to imagine how amazing its going to be on the big screen.

If you've never seen Doctor Who before, I would highly recommend you check it out.  You can find it on Hulu or you can also find episode online by googling it.  I know some people have trouble getting past the first couple of episodes, but if you try watching it, just stick with it, you won't regret it.  Personally I was hooked within less than five minutes, but that's just me.  The acting is incredible and the stories are just absolutely brilliant.  If you want to check out a cool little trailer with my face in it (yes, I was nerding out when I discovered I could do this) then follow the link!

See Me In Doctor Who Opening Title

A Simple Life

 

A lot of the time when people hear that I want to make a living as an actress, they automatically figure I want that life for the fame and fortune.  They think I want all the fancy dresses, the parties, the awards, the big houses, etc.  The funny thing is, that's not why I want it all.  Dresses?  Give me a pair of jean and a t-shirt any day.  I'm not a big fan of dressing up.  Parties?  If you've seen me at a party, I'm generally the person standing awkwardly in the corner feeling very uncomfortable and out of place.  Awards?  Sure they're great, but they're not needed.  Houses?  Why on earth would I need or want more than one?  And most people who know me pretty well, know that I don't like really big houses, I like something much simpler.

The only reason I want to work as an actress is because its what I love and for the most part, I don't think I'm terrible at it.  Sure I still have a lot to learn, but I think I'm at least decent.  And if I am terrible at it, well, I can only get better.  But sometimes I wonder if I could handle it all, all the stress and craziness of that kind of life.  Yes, I would be doing something I loved but would all the sacrifices I would have to make for it be worth it?  And the other aspect that I think about from time to time is that I would like to get married eventually.  According to some, at 22 I'm already starting to get old which I personally think is ridiculous.  But I sometimes wonder, in that industry is it possible to find someone to marry who isn't going to cheat on me with his co-star or decide he wants a divorce?  Hollywood marriages notoriously end in divorce with very few lasting for any real length of time.

Men and Guns

Earlier this week I had the absolutely amazing and very fun opportunity to act in a short film a friend was making.  Needless to say, it was pretty much one of the best things that has happened to me this year and served as a way for me to see how different theatre is from film acting.  Personally, after Monday, I have to say that I really like film acting.  There's something intoxicating about it.  Maybe its the realness and the environment.  I'm not totally sure, but I loved it.  In any case, it was an action movie, so there was a lot of running around, some fight scenes, and, obviously since we all had guns as you can see in the picture, some firefight scenes.

My Grandpa, My Hero

Growing up, I had two main men in my life: my dad and my grandpa. My grandpa was there from the moment I was born. He was one of the first people to hold me and he was there almost every day afterward. There were times when I spent more time at my grandparents house than at my own home. We did so many things together. It was my grandfather who taught me how to fish, to love being outside. I went camping with him, my grandmother and my parents countless times. He taught me about horses and how to ride one. There were many times as a child that we went riding together with me sitting in front of him on the saddle. He gave me my love for horses.

Together we must have put together at least a hundred puzzles, if not more, seeing who could put together the most pieces. Together we planted blackberries and raspberries, eagerly awaiting their fruit. Once, when we saw the Energizer Bunny balloon setting down in a clearing not far from my grandparent's house, we ran to go see it and got to touch it. He took me on bike rides and drove me to the park. He joked and could always make me laugh. We played solitaire together and a hundred other games. He was my best friend. He saw me at my best and at my worst.

Open Eyes

So, as some of you all know, my family is moving back into town to a house that will allow my grandparents on my dad's side to come live with us. This move is what I was talking about in my last post. Basically, just as I said then, I've been really, really struggling with it. What's made it worse is that a lot of people, particularly close friends, have been acting like it's not really a big deal and I should just get over it. Not easy for me. I am a very emotional person and I get attached to things and people very quickly, and very easily. I have lived in this house for almost eight years. The best memories I have happened while we were living at this house. The best friend I ever had, our first dog, Shiloh, is buried in our backyard. This move means leaving him behind. There have been so many emotions going through me that I've felt like I was being ripped apart.

On the one hand there's the part of me that understands that we need to do this. My grandparents really do need our help, particularly my grandfather. It's being hammered home even now as my grandfather is in the hospital with the flu and is barely coherent. But then there's the selfish part of me that doesn't want to leave. That reminds me that this place we're going to is the last place I would ever want to live. Not just because of it's location which is bad enough, but also because it's so old and it doesn't feel like home. There's also the fact that this has all happened so fast that I'm still trying to process it. My life has become one endless cycle of work and packing. The only time I see any of my friends is on Sundays at church for a couple hours and most of that time is spent in the service and Sunday School, so there is very little time for interaction. And therein lies my other fear of moving. Already I feel as if my friends are slipping away as I barely see them anymore and when I do it feels like it's nothing more than just hi and bye. And if I'm living in town, at least thirty minutes away from them, how is that going to affect our relationship.

He Said He'll Never Let Me Go

So, I haven't blogged in a long time...again. A lot of that has been because although there is a lot of stuff that's going on in my life right now, major stuff, I'm not allowed to talk about it quite yet. So, I'll just talk about some of the things I've been learning from it.

So, yeah, there are some very major changes going on in my life right now and I will fully admit that I hate it and I mean really hate it. It's been feeling like my world's coming apart, like I'm being torn apart inside. Most of that is due to myself and the fact that I am fighting tooth and nail against all that's happening.

Starlight Tears

This is a poem I had come into my head as I got out of my car and then it just kept coming as I wrote it down.  I don't really write much poetry, but I'm actually quite proud of this one.

At the center of an island
Many oceans away
Where there is only night and never day,
A young maiden sits.
Her hair is pale as the moon
And her eyes as deep and dark as the heavens
She wears a stained white gown
And cries her starlight tears.

Her delicate fingers strive to scrub away the stains
The stains that mar the once pure white gown
But they never fade
Always there
Always a reminder
And she cries her starlight tears.

In His Time

So, yesterday I blogged that I had decided that it was high time that I turn back to God and give Him control of my life cause I just hadn't been doing that and I'd been doing my own thing. Well, yesterday, I was given the perfect example of God taking care of His people if the choose to follow Him. For months now, ever since I came back home from college, I have been searching for a job. I've turned in innumerable applications, spent hours on my computer filling out applications there, flipped through newspaper ads, gone online, etc. I've gone into town several days a week to go check out places and did everything I thought I could. Thanksgiving Day, my grandfather tells me that he saw in the newspaper that Smith's was hiring. It didn't say which Smith's just in general. He told me to go online and fill out an application. So, that night I filled out the application, fully excepting it to be overlooked like every single time before.

Out With the Old, In With the New

Recently, I've been struggling with a lot of stuff.  Some pretty major emotional ups and downs and changes.  And finally, finally, today, I kind of just thought through things and decided that I really needed to get out of this rut I've been digging myself into for years.  I needed to turn around and give everything to God and let Him handle it.  I also realized that part of the reason I was have such serious emotional issues was because of my music.  I'm a Christian, yes, but that doesn't mean that I only listen to Christian music.  I've come to realize that little by little I have removed the majority of my Christian music from my MP3 player to make room for newer non-Christian music I had either heard or found.  As I thought about it today, I realized that at least 3/4 of my music was not Christian, and about 1/2 was not edifying or really good in any way.  I realized that I had started to subtly move towards some edgier music.  Nothing explicit, maybe a curse word here or there or a mild suggestion, but it was affecting me, and not in a good way.

The Gift of Friendship

There are many times when we take friends for granted. We assume they're always going to be there, that we'll be friends forever, that nothing will change or destroy that friendship. In one instant, in one act, you can lose the best friend you ever had. Over time, from petty little arguments and deeds, a friendship can fall apart. I've learned both of these from personal experience. And losing those friends, can be heart breaking. My dad always told me, that friendship is like a garden. You need to water it, to nurture it, to prune it to keep it healthy and to allow those plants to grow to their full potential. You need to have the initiative to take care of that garden and you need to be willing to give the time needed to care for it. It's exactly the same with friendship. You need to take care of that friendship, stay in contact, spend time together. When you don't any of that, the friendship starts to die. And there are times, when that friendship can't be revived.

Saying Goodbye

So tonight, unfortunately, was my last night with my youth group since I'll be heading back to college on Sunday. For me it's very hard to be leaving because I really have nothing to look forward to at Eastern except for my classes. I don't really have any friends there and since I'm really shy when I'm around people I don't know, I sometimes find it difficult to find friends. It also doesn't help that I have yet to find a good Bible Study group or church or anything. Here I have some pretty amazing friends, old and new. I have an awesome church that I absolutely love. I have my family all close by so I can go see them basically any time I want. So, needless to say, I'm going to very seriously miss home.

But, as in all things, God is faithful. This has been a very, very hard year so far and through it all, God has been there and has helped strengthen me. I have learned to trust Him in all things. I have been reminded that God has a plan and that, no matter how painful things get, no matter what happens, God does not make mistakes and there is something to be learned in everything. He has taught me patience in dealing with others. There have been times, especially when I was at school, when I have struggled with depression. Yet through it all, God has lifted me from the darkness and back into His glorious light, healing my heart and giving me strength.

First Time For Everything

So I had a bit of an accomplishment today albeit one that I did not intend or anything. In any case, I ended up going to work today with no makeup. Yeah, I know that probably doesn't seem like big deal but for me it is. I always wear makeup. It doesn't matter if I'm making a five minute run to the store, camping in a tent, working at building site, etc. I always wear at least some makeup. My thought has pretty much been me - makeup = blah and me + makeup = decent. So the fact that I actually went to work today with no makeup on and I seriously mean, no makeup whatsoever, was an accomplishment and it was nice. Though I admit I had a slight panic attack when I realized.  Well, I guess that's all for today.  I just wanted to share my very tiny accomplishment in not completely freaking out when I realized I'd forgotten to put on my makeup.

This post was originally published on Saturday, July 24, 2010.

More Beautiful You

So I know this is going to be my second blog on the whole self-image topic, but it's something I've struggled with a lot so I talk about it some. In any case, I got thinking about it again today, or yesterday rather, when one of my Facebook friends posted this song, More Beautiful You by Jonny Diaz, as his Facebook status. This is probably my favorite song of all time and it's one that I listen to pretty much every day or at least once or twice a week.

Mirror, Mirror

So I was on my way home from work today and I was listening to my MP3 player when it switched to a Barlow Girl song called Mirror, Mirror. The song is basically just about how when we look in the mirror we kind of ask it if we're living up to the standards of the world. Do we look like the world wants us to look. As the song goes on it says that the mirror doesn't define us, the world's standards don't define us. We were made in the perfect image of God and that's what matters.

Half a Year of Learning

So basically we're about half way through the year 2010. A little over half a year actually. On the one hand, it doesn't seem like a lot of time, but for me it's been almost seven months of a lot lessons learned. This is my first blog attempt and I'm basically doing it just as a way to just express thoughts, opinions, dreams, desires, etc.

So, just kind of a brief summary of the first half of this year. The first five months of this year were pretty much spent at college. Those five months were some of the most stressful, painful, worst, but also educational months I have ever had. Despite the fact that they were terrible, they helped me get a lot of things in perspective. I learned a lot about relationships, what's needed to make them work, things to do and not to do, and also they helped me to redefine the kind of guy I was looking for. I also learned some lessons with school. With all the pain and stress and self-doubt, I really let my classes slip, failing one class and not doing so well in others. The result was the lowest GPA score I had ever had and I almost lost one of my scholarships.

So for me the lesson was that no matter how bad life is, when it comes to school, you leave all the bad stuff at the door and just get things done. The doubt, the pain and everything, you can't let that take over and ruin your life. You have to keep things under control, in perspective. The other thing about those months is that all the hardships drew me back to God. The school I attend does not have a very good Christian/church community and I never really developed any kind of close Christian friendships, so I found that I had started to slip away some. Those months made me run back to the one person I knew would always forgive me and take me back: Jesus. Since then I've been working at building my relationship with Christ and getting back into my Bible reading.

Changes

So I've been doing some work on my computer the last couple of days and I've been finding that its very confusing to keep all my internet stuff together because I have three different Google+ accounts:  one for e-mail, one that's attached to my YouTube account, and another that's attached to my blog.  As I've been working, its been incredibly annoying having to log out of one account to open another and then log out of that one to view something else.  So, I've decided that I'm going to go ahead and put everything under the one account I have with my e-mail.  But, of course, Google+ can't make that simple, now can they?  No, they have to make it so that there is now way to transfer blogs and YouTube channels and such over to another account.  Joy!  So basically what I'm going to be doing over the next couple of days is making a new YouTube channel (thank God I have all my videos already on my computer) and also working at transferring all my old blog posts over here.  Its going to be a bit of a process, but I think in the long run, I'll be happier with it.  No, actually, I take that back, with all the crap I'm going through to get all this organized, I WILL be happier, no ifs, ands, or buts.  So, here's to getting things organized!