lists part duex

Things I really don't like

war

individualism

food that smells/tastes like dirt (tea, lettuce, ect...)

being broke

disorder/clutter

open shower curtains (close them...that is what they are there for!)

sitting on a couch with people I don't feel comfortable with

the selfishness of my extended family

seeing my reflection in windows

sinus headaches

asymmetry

working nights

people who aske too many or stupid (yes there are) questions

when intellegent people use the words, retard, gay, queer ect... use your vocabulary!

lists

Things I really like

waffels

toast

music

tv (west wing is my favorite series)

matt damon

cuddling with the dog (minus the face licking)

NOT wearing shoes

pedicured feet

fake nails with a french manicure

being challenged at church

genuine people

the cathedrals in red square

a fresh haircut

soothing feeling of chapstick when my lips are dry

art (I can appreciate anything but that crazy modern stuff in the basement of the art insitute)

getting mail, funny text messages, e-mails

one hour photo processing

hearing my mom laugh

the face of my neice (and soon the cry of my new nephew)

and empty movie theather

sleeping until I want to get up

giving people small gifts

thoughtfulness

girl scout cookies (specifically the red box, chocolate peanut butter)

the safety of my bed

making bold decor choices

any day that I don't have a sinus headache

being in charge of things... I hate athority

watching a movie with friends (on the same couch)

being goofy

learning

I feel like my brain is turning to mush. How do I continue to learn after formal education has ended?

(even as I write that last question it seems stupid) Does one go to the library and pick a book and start reading? For some reason that seems too simple. Simple perhaps because I have become dependent upon the internet, google has become my best friend. Who needs to learn about a subject to get a specific piece of information when you can skip all the reading/learning and google some key words.
There is also the issue of credibility. Maybe it is our generation but I do not take anything at face value. Even if I don't realize I'm doing it at the time, I question every thing that I hear. That is the root of my problems with authority. (but that is a topic for another blog)... With all of the ways to gather information and all of the ignorant people in the world how can you trust what you read. On the news you hear stories of school textbooks being wrong or omitting important facts. I guess that is why we have brains..to filter.

Excuses. That is what I keep thinking as I am typing. These are all excuses because I'm too lazy? Because I am secretly fine with what I know at the moment? Or maybe because I already feel like I don't do anything with the knowledge I have so why would I want to get more. The saying knowledge equals responsibility has always weighed heavily on me. My thought is often, Lord can you just make me ignorant of this?

Once in college I really wanted to understand the happenings in the middle east. I was very upset, and remember exactly what was going on, the night I found out Bush declared war. I was scared. I've always liked news magazines and got a subscription to Newsweek. I tried every week to read completely the articles. I was lost, there was too much history I didn't know, there was no context from which to start. I think I needed 'the middle east conflict for dummies'. Just the differences in names threw me, my brain couldn't separate them they all ran together. That I don't think is a matter of intelligence or interest, just a thing my brain can't get because I didn't grow up getting familiar with their names. I kind of started thinking, do they even know what the problem is? Do they ever step back and think man this is immature? So I gave up trying to understand it was too much to figure out. I think I needed a class from someone who really got it.

I just remembered a class in college that I could not understand. The professor was a very intelligent man, he 'got' what he was teaching...he thought it was great. However when he talked I could not siphon out what I needed to learn (oh, the tangents he would go on.) I ended up dropping the class and taking it another semester with another professor, and I think I did fine.

There was another class like that as well, human biology. I studied ten hours for the first test I was determined to get a good grade in that class. You could ask me anything from the book and I knew the answer. My grade on the first test...a F. I was crushed...what the world!..a F!. The test was like foreign material to me. He was asking to apply concepts he wasn't even sure I understood. I was there to learn, and he was too smart to teach me. I was not the only having that trouble in the class (thank goodness). Unfortunately that class is the worst grade on my transcript. I was so discouraged I almost didn't show up for the final exam. My friend called my room three minutes before class encouraging me to come. In pajamas I rushed across campus and took the test, I was the first one done. Taking that test saved me from failing the class. Thank you Amy!

Congratulations if you have made it through all my late night, bored at work thoughts. I haven't made any decisions other than, I am going to go to the library on my next day off...stay tuned for what I find to learn.

recycling

I have been diligently recycling for over a year now.

Today as I emptied the small trash can where we put the plastic I thought, "man this is A LOT of work". Yeah, it is I thought to myself, but it is worth it.

Since I don't have the self control to stop drinking soda, thus making the demand for plastic bottles less, I need to at least dispose of the packaging responsibly.

It has felt really good to do this recycling thing. The amount of trash we make has reduced drastically, really try it you will be amazed!

Recycling glass, aluminum (cans both food and soda), paper, junk mail, plastic, and cardboard can get tedious. Different bins are required for each. For someone like me who likes things clean and relatively uncluttered having five different bins can be overwhelming. I will try to let it go, the alternative is buying this 300 dollar cabinet I saw in a magazine that has 6 compartments for recycling...it looked really nice.

Finally made up my mind

I have always kept my thoughts of abortion to myself, choosing not to educate myself so I don't have to take a stand. Honestly, the way that the in your face, protesting, "pro-lifers" act has detered me from taking a stand. I do not want to be associated with that group. I do not respect, the hate and judement that they spew, and how easily they are pulled into emotional arguments. Yes, as a follower of Christ I am to take stands on hard and unpopular issues. However, God does not call me to stand up for issues on a soapbox of hate. Today the daily devotional I recieve from Elisabeth Elliot solidified what I think I was always thinking. It explains so convincingly truth. I don't know why it took me so long to come to this conclusion.

I do not support abortion. There I've said it.

Author: Elisabeth ElliotSource: On Asking God WhyScripture Reference: Jeremiah 1:5
Person or Thing?
Not long ago Time magazine reported another triumph of modern medical technology. An unborn child, found, by means of a process called amniocentesis, to suffer from Down's syndrome, was aborted (terminated? quietly done away with? killed?). It was all very safe and scientific and sterile. Not only was there little danger to the mother, there was no harm to the other twin in the mother's womb. The affected child (Is that an acceptable word? Should I say afflicted? unwanted? undesirable? useless? disposable?) was relieved of its life by being relieved of its lifeblood, which was slowly withdrawn through a long needle which pierced its beating heart. This was called a therapeutic abortion. The word therapeutic means serving to cure or heal. The strange part about this case was that nobody except the aborted child was ill. Who then was cured? Who was healed?
It seemed a huge irony that only a few weeks later the same magazine hailed another medical breakthrough: surgery to correct an abnormal kidney condition known as hydronephrosis. The amazing part about this case was that the patient was an unborn child, again one of twins. Again, a needle was inserted-through the mother's abdominal wall, through the uterus, through the amniotic sac lining, through the abdominal wall of the fetus, into the bladder. The needle was not used to withdraw blood but to insert a catheter which would drain urine, thus saving little Michael's life.
"For all its promise," Time comments, "fetal surgery poses some difficult ethical dilemmas."
Difficult indeed but only if we refuse to call the thing operated on a child.
In the first case, the mother did not want it. Whatever she called it, it had every possibility of becoming a person, and only as a person posed a threat. When it was rendered harmless, that is, when the heart no longer beat, when it was, in fact, dead, she continued to carry it to term. Then, along with its twin, it was born. Its twin had been very like itself to begin with, fully capable of becoming a person, but now very different indeed-- wanted, desirable, "useful"--and alive.
In the second case, the mother wanted both the twins, the well one and the sick one with the swollen bladder and kidneys. To her, what was in her womb was her children. Could they possibly save the tiny thing? Was there anything they could do for her baby? It was (Did the mother ever question it?) a baby.
Dr. Leonie Watson said, "If they can do surgery on a fetus, then it is in fact a baby."
We recognize how far we have departed from what nature has always told any prospective mother, when we realize that arguments must be adduced, some of them even from technical procedures like fetal surgery, to prove that the living, moving, creature about to come forth into the world is a human baby. If surgery is possible, then it's a baby.
This is, of course, where the battle lines are drawn. Is it, or is it not? What is the thing to be aborted? What is the thing to be born? What is the thing on which surgery was done? If we call it a fetus does it make the ethical dilemmas less difficult?
Dr. Phillip Stubblefield, a gynecologist at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, argues that a fetus is only a baby if it can live outside the womb.
If we can accept this assertion, may we also assume that a patient is not a person unless "it" can survive without, for example, dialysis or a heart pump? Is a machine somehow more humanizing than a womb? Is it possible seriously to believe that successful detachment from the mother is what turns an otherwise disposable and expendable mass of tissue into what we may legitimately call a baby?
Katharine Hepburn recently sent out a letter (I suppose to nearly everybody, otherwise I don't know how I would have gotten on her list) appealing for $3.6 million to stand up against what she called "repressive legislation" to limit individual rights and reproductive freedom. She listed eight reasons a certain amendment which would prevent abortion on demand should be defeated. Not a single one of her eight reasons would stand up in any court as a valid argument against the amendment if the thing aborted were called a person.
That is the question.
That is the only relevant question.
When what Miss Hepburn calls "individual rights and reproductive freedom" impinge on the rights of a person other than the pregnant woman, that is, on a person who happens to be hidden, helpless, and at the mercy of the one entrusted with its life, are we who object hysterical, illogical, bigoted, fanatic? Are we duped by what she calls "simple outdated platitudes of television preachers" if we cry aloud against her and her kind?
Last week there was another scandal. A woman had been running nursing homes which turned out to be what an investigator called "human sewers." She made a great deal of money off another group of defenseless human beings--the elderly, who had something in common with the "fetuses" Miss Hepburn claims the right to dispose of. They, too, were hidden, helpless, and at the mercy of the one entrusted with their lives. People were outraged. These victims had not been treated as human beings.
Why all the fuss? Suppose we apply some of the arguments used in favor of abortion to the treatment of the indigent, the friendless, the senile.
If there is brain damage or deformity, the fetus (read also the senile or the crippled) may be terminated.
If the fetus's becoming a person, i.e., being born, would be a serious inconvenience to the mother, or to other members of the family, it may be terminated. As has often been observed, there is no such thing as a ''convenient" time to have a baby. All babies (and many disabled or bedridden people) are an inconvenience. All are at times what might be called a serious inconvenience. Love alone "endures all things."
If a baby is allowed to be born, it may become the victim of brutality. One solution offered for the "battered child syndrome" is abortion. What about the "neglected octogenarian syndrome"?
A sixteen-year-old high school student who has no prospect for a stable home and whose pregnancy will end her chance for an education is counseled to abort her baby. How shall we counsel a fifty-eight-year-old divorced man about what to do with his invalid mother? Taking care of her might end his chances for a lot of things.
If we refuse to allow medically "safe" abortions, we are told that we thereby encourage "back-alley butchery," self-induced procedures of desperate women, even suicide. By the same token, if we outlaw sterile injections of, say, an overdose of morphine administered to an old man in a nursing home whose "quality of life" does not warrant continuation, do we thereby encourage less humane methods of getting people out of the way?
Miss Hepburn deplores "cold constitutional prohibitions," prefers instead individual choice based on "sound advice from the woman's personal physician.'' Some of those cold constitutional prohibitions happen to deal with the question of human life and what we citizens of these United States are allowed to do for or against it.
That is still the question. What do we do with the gift of life? Shall we acknowledge first of all its Creator, and recognize the sanctity of what is made in his image? Shall we hold it in reverence? If any human life, however frail, however incapable of retaliation, is entrusted to us shall we nourish and cherish it, or may we--by some enormously civilized and educated rationalization--convince ourselves either that it is not a person, or that, although it is a person, its life is not worth living, and that therefore what we do with it is a matter of individual choice?
What is this thing?
We are faced with only one question. Are we talking about an object, or might it by any stretch of the imagination be a person? If we cannot be sure of the answer, at least we may pick up a clue or two from the word of the Lord which came to Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you for my own; before you were born I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations." To God, at least, Jeremiah was already a person. For my part, I will try to regard whatever bears the marks of humanity as God's property and not mine.
Copyright© 1989, by Elisabeth Elliotall rights reserved.

Love longing

want:

I want to be in love.

think:

I think I would be really good at it.

Being 27, never kissed, with only a couple of "relationships" (that were but weren't) can be both embarrassing and paralyzing. In case it wasn't implied enough, guys just don't look at me. God knows that I want a man...a man that is secure, a man that can see me in my brokeness and know immedatly...that isn't this girl,"I want to know more about her" I want a strong man.

The one time I was in love...really in love where the other person loved me back was almost perfect. Lacking only in the fact that he would never admit he was in love with me(irregardless that everyone around us could tell he was). I felt cheated by that experience. Cheated out of getting to feel wanted, cheated out of the possibility of a first kiss, cheated out of getting to say this is my beautiful boyfriend.

He was gorgeous to me and the more I supported what he did and saw his is potential as a man of God, the more I allowed myself to see a future, ministies we could be involved in together, the lives we could touch because of our mutual talents. Because with him lifting me up, depression got a lot harder to reach (it could go under the bed in a locked box for all I cared) because somone believed in me.

It is obvious the end to the story we fought, he got overwhelmed, it was not pretty, he transfered to another college and I was never to see him again. He is now married and we are "friends" on facebook, but have never spoken. I have looked through his profile and see that he still hasn't matured into the man I saw him becoming.

We both chose different paths and they didn't lead us together. I am grateful for that, I learned more about myself the six months after the "breakup" than ever could have in the next 6 years. It was amazing! I am who I am today because of that experience. Yes, there is still some baggage there, I will always feel disposible and replaceable because of what this person did to me. I have faith that someone can love past that.

Tonight I long to be in love...I think I will be good at it.

James 1:19-27

"19 Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. 20 Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. 21 So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.
22 But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. 23 For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. 24 You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. 25 But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.
26 If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. 27 Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you."

James 1:19-27 (New Living Translation)

These verses have so much to speak to my life right now.

Obedience is something for which I am striving, and failing more often than not. Failure not because of rebellion (I think), but maybe failure because of a feeling of hopeless unworthiness. I am incurable, and that is deflating. I will always struggling with this demon of depression.

I've gone kicking and screaming into accepting the hold depression has, and every so often find myself drawn back into the depths of darkness. Honestly it is embarrassing. No one wants to show their failures, their defects. I wear my failures; weight, depression, insecurity (no eye contact), social awkwardness out for the whole world to see. Rarely do I apologize for these because I aknowledge they are there (and find it cleansing to and seriously I think the world would get a lot of good out of people being honest about thier weaknesses and struggles...break down thoses walls...breakdown those 'social' expectations...let us get real!

What is funny is that I feel really secure, strong, and self assured at home in the cocoon of my home. Outside of my home I am insatiable in my hunger for approval and encouragment. I see disapproval and dismissive behavior toward me behind every smile, every turn, every everywhere.

These verses in James really encourage me to continue to look into the person of Jesus for my worth. To look into a mirror and not see a double chin and crazy chubby cheeks, to instead see the perfect reflection of God's love for me. Finding peace in the fact that he sees that in me everytime he looks at me (bad day or not).

I stand forgiven and blamless when I stand before my father.

God continues to lead me toward whole obedience. Obedience with my money (of which I have negative non) obedience with my speech, obedience with my attendance to activities, obedience to look for a new higher paying job with insurance, obedience to not give up.

Just as I commit others in my life into your hands and your will, father, I commit myself to you and will and am ready to take all that comes with that be it consequences to sin, or directions different than I might have planned.

I will claim your promises, and I will continue to try and be transparent in this process, cause how much would I love for others to be transparent in thier processes.

Its 2 in the morning and I am tired so I am sure that the last few thoughts have been a little loopy but I will include them because I'm sure I had something important to say :)

Benediction by: Jimmy Needham

No one is good not even one

The front pages of papers of children raped by rapist

Iraqi torture chambers

and we the blame claim we're blameless

Wrong all

And swelling up inside of us

there's this pride in us this arrogance

And our only line of defense

is the sense that

Im not as half as bad as this friend of mine

so I must be fine

We mean well don't we

Yet I've never seen good intentions

set a man free from

Hurt all

This poor unfortunate soul Filling a single void

with toy after toy with girl after boy

How boring this wasn't this meant to be Humanity's life story

Warring with Good saying what have you done for me

Bough all

Hanging out for six hours

marred beyond recognition

In complete submission to his father will

still A proclamation was made

louder than the loudest temptation

With more beauty than all his creation

More eternal than eternity

more angelic than the heavenlies

It

Is

done

for you are bought with blood

Accept

Rejoice

For freedom has come

Open eyes with a Closed heart leads to a lot of clumsiness

"You wouldn’t care so much
about what other people thought
about you if you knew
how little they did."

Just food for thought. I guess.
(I first heard this phrase while watching dr. Phil. While I think the solutions to things he proposes are sometimes simplistic, I really enjoy watching his show.)

My identity is something that I have really been struggling with the past few months. I feel like I am never going to be able to live in a place of love not fear, hiding, and shame. I make mistakes regularly, the SAME mistakes which I think, after a few times stop being mistakes and start being disobedience, sins, and blemishes. How do I take responsibility for those things, do what is right? (which could take a while), and still live in the freedom of Christ and not the bondage and lies of Satan? The sinner in me is so much more powerful than who I think I should be. That is my problem, I think about who I should be and not be based on others. I don't know who I want to be or who I am supposed to be. I find it easy to want to lie, easy for my first defense to be deception, easy to take the wide road, easy to be selfish, and easy to only do the minimum.

For around a year now I have been trying to be amazingly honest, I don't say I will when I don't want to. I try not to tell people what I think they want to hear. This has been a very eye opening practice for me. My answers are not always well recieved. If I ask of a request 'can I think about it for 10 min' I find that people really wanted an immediate answer or no answer at all. I find that intimidating. Another example; if I just choose to keep quite because I know that what I have to say is not going to be well recieved, or that the person is not ready to hear what I have to say. I sometimes have had to be obedient to Gods timing and bite my tounge. One day I will bite my tounge off belive you me. One the other end of silence is to speak the truth, and to let my yes to yes or my no be no with no feelings of guilt attached to it. For example; 'april do you want to read a missionary book' my first reaction was to say sure because I know that is what I was supposed to say. My actual reaction was I don't think that I do want to read a missionary book. After being pressured I agreed that I would take the book home but wasn't sure I would read it. That is a small example but, I have to tell you that this experiment of extreme honesty is working for me.

My current job is no more than an adult babysitter/maid position. I wrote this while sitting on the couch at work at 3:00 in the morning, eating reduced fat cheezze its, and watching the first season of 24 on dvd.

Obviously, I want to do more with my life. If anyone knows what it is and would like to send me a postcard telling me in BIG FAT letters what it is. I will forever be in your debt.
I do not pursue because I am afraid of failure. I do not persue because I am afraid of what I will discover. Fear that I will discover I will never have a family. Fear that what I am called to do will not make enough of an impact. Fear that I will become like my dad. Fear that I am not enough to be pursured, when I am tired and can't do it myself.

1 John 4:18 (The Message)17-18

When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.

Jesus Be that in me have the run of my house, mature me, free me, heal me, form me, show me how to love you.
Amen