I've been reading Blue Like Jazz for the second time. I read it the first time a few years ago, and it almost seems like a brand new book to me now because of where I am in life that I hadn't been before. The things that I passed over pretty quickly the first time are really hitting hard, and I'm loving the book even more than I already did. I wanted to put some portion of the text on here, but I have marked down so many amazing passages that it was hard to narrow it down. So trust me, this is just one of the MANY amazing parts of the book..read it if you haven't, and read it again if you have!

"I suppose what I wanted back then is what every Christian wants, whether they understand themselves or not. What I wanted was God. I wanted tangible interaction. But even more than that, to be honest, I wanted to know who I was. I felt like a robot or an insect or a mysterious blob floating around the universe. I believed if I could contact God, He would be able to explain who and why I was. The days and weeks before a true commitment to Jesus can be terrible and lonely. I think I was feeling bitter about the human experience. I never asked to be human. Nobody came to the womb and explained the situation to me, asking for my permission to go into the world and live and breathe and eat and feel joy and pain. I started thinking about how odd it was to be human, how we are stuck inside this skin, forced to be attracted to the opposite sex, forced to eat food and use the rest room and then stuck to the earth by gravity.
I think maybe I was going crazy or something. I spend an entire week feeling bitter because I couldn't breathe underwater. I told God I wanted to be a fish. I also felt a little bitter about sleep. Why do we have to sleep? I wanted to be able to stay awake for as long as I wanted, but God had put me in this body that had to sleep. Life no longer seemed like an experience of freedom....[a bit later]
I see it now. I see that God was reaching out to Penny, and I see that the racism Laura and I talked about grows from the anarchy seed, the seed of the evil one. I could see Satan lashing out on the earth like a madman, setting tribes against each other in Rwanda, whispering in men's ears in the Congo so that they rape rather than defend their women. Satan is at work in the cults of the Third World, the economic chaos in Argentina, and the corporate-driven greed of American Corporate executives.
I lay there under the stars and thought of what a great responsibility it is to be human. I am a human because God made me. I experience suffering and temptation because mankind chose to follow Satan. God is reaching out to me to rescue me. I am learning to trust Him, learning to live by His precepts that I might be preserved." -Donald Miller, author

Really good sermon by Mark Driscoll about prayer. I highly recommend watching the full sermon if you have time (just a little over an hour,) but here is a two minute short from the full sermon. I know you have two or three minutes if you have the time to read my silly little blog ;)

http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/pray-like-jesus/pray-like-jesus/pray-short

Mandy wanted me to paint her "something pirate" so I did this...wish my my phone's camera was better so the details were shown :( but oh well, this was so fun to paint! haha

Someone very dear to my heart that I fell in love with at camp is named Amelia. She is pretty much the true meaning of a soul sister to me, and even though we haven't kept up like we should recently..I think about her every day. Mainly because she carved this amazing piece of wood for me that is hanging on my wall and is one of the first things I see when I wake. Anyways, she wrote this recently and I just love it....I guess you could say it is her reflection looking back on her first year of college. If only everyone could be so insightful so early on. Enjoy.

"1) There is a lot I don't know.

2) Even the things I think I know about, well I don't actually know that much about.

3) Wikipedia has changed the world.

4) Literacy is about as necessary as food, water and shelter.

5) Pride is not just something the prideful deal with.

6) Pride destroys.

7) Neither formal education or experience should ever be elevated over the other. Both are of equal importance and equal value. However; both can be invalidated if you don't make use of them.

8) A lot of things I've always considered 'wrong' have more to do with stylistic preference than ethics.

9) There is a fundamental difference between the things you believe because you've been told to believe and those that you actually believe because you believe them. Jesus asks Peter in Matthew who Peter says Jesus is? Jesus doesn't care what others have said. He only wants to know who Peter says He is. Later in John Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him. Peter responds automatically. Jesus asks again. Peter responds again. Jesus asks yet a third time, changing the kind of love He is questioning. Peter gets sassy and says with extra emphasis yes. Presupposing the supremacy of Jesus as God you would think that Jesus already knew the answers to all those questions but he asks them anyway. If this is the assumption we can also assume that the inquiry of Jesus was more for Peter to develop a further understanding of his own belief than for Jesus to affirm Himself. There comes a time in every individual`s life where they address those same questions whether they acknowledge it or not. I thought I knew who I thought Jesus was. Then I realized that if I really believed Jesus was anointed my life would look a lot different. The move towards that is happening. Digesting deep, spiritual truth is not glamorous. Sometimes I say it hurts like Hell. But really, I don't really know what Hell actually feels like so when I say it hurts like Hell I actually mean "it hurts like what I would think Hell would feel like."

10) I always knew music was powerful. But furthermore, it heals. Seriously. If you don't know what I'm talking about you aren't listening to the right stuff."


Beautiful. I love you, Amelia

but missing you already, as usual! Love you so much, Chris!

How often I forget that statement. You could say that today was a day filled with coincidences and chance, and that the universe was perfectly aligned for my benefit--but 1)I don't deserve for ANYTHING to be aligned for my benefit, and 2) the older that I get, I realize even more that believing in the fate of "chance" not only takes a jab at God's perfectly planned blueprint of life, but it lessens the enormity of the fact that He IS sovereign. He is. And thank...well..GOD that He is sovereign, because what a mess life would be if that were not true.

What a mess I am, imperfect, impure, and unworthy..and still You take perfect care of me. I love you so much, Lord. SO MUCH.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. – Romans 1:20

This verse reminds me of my philosophy class and the ongoing debate of God verse science. It's never been that way for me. Science can only exist because God exists and has always existed and engineered the world so perfectly. If we are made in God's image, and he made scientists, engineers, etc..then how can they "prove" to themselves that there is no God..they think they outsmarted him with their scientific findings? Don't they realize that anything they could possibly discover or invent is only because God made them that way? Everything is too perfectly engineered to be "by chance" or purely science.

Yes, that was the name of the magazine article I read the other day about the hardships of older people that are diagnosed with incurable or hard to treat illnesses. I won't get into the complete story, but the main synopsis is that an "acceptable" solution is becoming divorce for these couples. The article centered itself around a man and a wife where the husband was diagnosed with dementia. They were not wealthy, and since "continuing to pay for treatment would eventually put her (the wife) on the street, divorce was the best option." They were married for 44 years. Nothing disturbs me more than reading stuff like this. They didn't even write this as if it were a terrible thing. The best way you can express your love to someone is by loving them THROUGH the hard times, through their sickness, through their expensive disease or illness treatments. You could not pay me an INFINITE amount of money to walk away from Chris, and we aren't even married yet. What if my dad just walked out on my mom when she had her breast cancer, or if she walked out on his heart disease..it makes me sick to think about. For anyone out there that thinks this is okay, I hope that in your vows on your wedding day you will leave out "in SICKNESS and in health, until DEATH do us part," because i'm getting sick and tired of hearing that divorce is okay, not a big deal, and perfectly acceptable. Cases of infidelity with no chance for recovery is the ONLY way this should even become an option. And only an option after every thing else was attempted to recover the marriage. Our generation better start changing this terrible divorce rate. Your wedding day is not a celebration of your love at that moment. It is a public declaration, contract, and PROMISE in front of everyone there and God that you will be loving, caring for, and supporting that person 5, 10, 20, 50 years from that second. Until DEATH separates you. UGH.

I could write my name by the age of three
And I don't need anyone to cut my meat for me
I'm a big girl now, see my big girl shoes..
It'll take more than a breeze to make me
Fall over..fall over..fall overboard.

With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God.”

My mom will be so proud because yes, I did block out the meeting locations and sections so that you crazies can't stalk me. Haha, kidding. At least I hope so...

Super pumped about the Marriage and Intimacy class. Not so pumped about statistics, but what can ya do.