Studying for Senior Comp....

I was studying the vast amounts of Bible knowledge necessary for the Senior Competency Exam, and I kid you not, the dogs came up and kept me company just like you see here. Aww! :)

What happens when I work at home...

Who can get anything done? :)

Happy November!

My extra pictures:

Baylee, the little one.

Abby, who loves to lie on me (have I mentioned she is like 75 lbs.?)

And of course our beloved Samson, who's been a little weary of these new dogs. The girls don't have the manners that he does, and often step on him if he is in their path. Poor kid.

A growing family

Here I am with the newest members of our family, Abby and Baylee. We got them last weekend- they're Great Pyrenees.

Abby, the one on the left, who's very obviously invading my space, does this on a regular basis. My first clue was right before these pictures were taken, when she walked up to me, stared me in the face (about 1/2 an inch or less from touching me) and then literally sat in my lap. LOL...needless to say, I didn't let her stay there, but she still tried to be buddy-buddy with me as you can see here:



The black dog on the far left is Samson, our other dog, a flat-coat retriever. It's interesting if they are all together, because they all want my attention at the same time! Thankfully there are only three of them.. :) I have more pictures but I don't have them accessible at present, so they'll come later. Times have been crazy, so my new furry companions have been a welcome distraction.

Gilbert

My family decided we had a bunny-shaped void in our lives, since we just lost our 6+ year old rabbit friend, so we picked up this cute little guy named Gilbert. He's really small and will stay that size! Even if you don't like pets you have to admit he is precious... :-)

The Fog

As a coastal dweller...fog is most definitely not a stranger here. I see it on my way to work and school; some mornings it is so thick, it's zero visibility.


Sadly, sometimes this is what life can seem at times. Zero visibility. Hard to focus, hard to move. Come to think of it, where am I, where am I going? This is SO not an okay position to be in!


"The fog" represents a form of confusion. Perhaps as a result of a flashback to the old life.


The Lord's been doing a lot of work in my heart. Like the sun burning straight through the fog, so He cuts through the wishy-washiness, the zero visibility.







This figurative "fog" is every bit as dangerous as the real thing. To try to maneuver your way through life when you can't see where you are going is bad, to just sit there because you can't see in order to go anywhere is even worse.

I've heard before from my mom, that in regard to being called to live for Christ,

"stop turning aside to old neighborhoods. You don't live there anymore."

Just when you don't think you need that reminder anymore, you find that you do. Thank God for reminders! May God grant us the grace and the humilty to move on in this new life and serve Him wholeheartedly, without looking back.

(disclaimer: neither of these pictures came from my area...the first looks like it did, but the second is from the UK)

Age approaches...

I realized today that I am almost twenty-four.

This was an interesting realization, because at my age, my mother had three children and was well-established in running her own home. Me, I am a workoholic, I definitely do not run my own home, and to me, kids are usually the whining, screaming, or crying noises I hear at stores. (Okay, while that statement is true, I really don't hate kids! Really.) Life seems to have taken forever to get to this point, yet has still gone by so fast. It feels like yesterday when I was standing in line to get my college ID picture taken, and that was nearly 6 years ago!

This looming agingness of mine seems to have made me pretty contemplative. For example, I was sad the other day, and someone very close to me had reminded me that this attitude can and will affect others, whether I mean it to or not. I thought, what? Let me be sad if I want! In essence, I still was acting like that whiny little kid. Things were not going my way and I figure, well, if I am upset enough, maybe things will? Who knows! Whatever the case it did not work, in fact quite the opposite happened.

I have been learning a great deal about what God requires of me with my attitude and my conduct. It has been a hard lesson to learn; quite humbling. Somehow I find myself trying to justify my thoughts and actions because of pain and heartache, because of fatigue or being over-occupied. I cannot blame other people for my actions, as I am responsible for them. I learn now, that no matter what I think I feel like doing, I must rise up and bless His name. It's not about me.

Discipline

In my younger years, I spent quite a bit of my time training in the Korean art of Taekwon-do.

I learned to implement 5 basic tenets:

Courtesy
Integrity
Perseverance
Self-Control
Indomitable Spirit

I trained hard. I am not a hefty or strong physique by any means, I, of all my sisters, was always called "delicate" and I hated that. I worked twice as hard in an attempt to make up for it.

This art required a great deal of concentration and coordination. Somehow this equaled strength. The discipline factor resulted in a lot of crazy things.

For example, one of the requirements to move up in rank was, of course, board breaking. For the sake of training we used re-breakables, which were plastic and interlocked down the center like a sort of puzzle. Pine boards were reserved for testing only, and the re-breakable plastics were actually much harder to work with (they had only one point at which to break, whereas a piece of pine has many). I can remember slamming my fist into these boards at least a dozen different moves, traditional, knife hand, two-knuckle, ridge hand, you name it. After I wound up with bruised and sometimes bleeding knuckles on many occasions, my teachers saw that I would probably break my hand before I broke the board, and decided to offer me elbow breaks instead.

I nearly broke my arm the first time I made such a board break. I have no idea what it was that drove me to try and try and try again, when I only ended up injured and frustrated.

I guess the main reason for this strange perseverance was, I was trained to obey. Over time I learned to ignore pain and fatigue and keep going. Part of this was a result of my teacher's threats to make us do knuckle push-ups in the unpaved parking lot or run laps barefoot around the neighborhood...

Upon a little reflection, I have realized how dedicated I was. I practiced, practiced, practiced. And now? Do I work that hard at anything anymore?

I call myself a Christian, am I disciplining myself unto godliness? I claim that God is of the utmost importance in my life, but do I live like it?

I like to think I am a hard worker, but do I really push as hard as I can to meet a deadline?

I say I make good use of my time...but we all know there is always room for improvement!

As for money...I definitely could get by without some of the things I spend money on. Am I being a good steward of whatever is in my responsiblility?

Life could/should be so much richer than it is. God has gifted me so much, and I am lethargic and think that I'm okay, when I'm not. I'm not saying we should discipline ourselves quite in the fashion that I did for taekwon-do, but similar. If something is right, do it even if it hurts. Do it even if no one else can carry on anymore. Do it until you like it and learn to love it!

It is my prayer to learn discipline once more, but to be able to implement it into my life as it was designed to be.

Weeds

I've been hearing/reading interesting ideas lately, by professing Christian people. Ideas like,

• Christians can swear, drink as much as and whatever they want, and keep whatever company they want,
• Listen to whatever music they want, watch whatever movies they want, read whatever magazines they want, go wherever they want, you name it....

AS LONG AS THEIR "HEART IS RIGHT" with God.

People, what on earth?

Earlier today I spent a little time cleaning out my iTunes library and my iPod...again. Last time was not quite thoroughly enough.

"Wait!" you say. "What about the beginning of this post?"

What about it? I was thrown into a whirlwind of thought by those ideas. Not at all new ones to me, but I really thought through them this time, I want to know how this sneaks into my life. When I took inventory I realized that I still have music that needs to go. I have movies that will go too. A close friend helped me realize that if you have to sit and think about what's wrong with something...then it needs to go. If it requires that much thought, then 9 times out of 10 you are just trying to rationalize. Or try this one, if you had the mindset I mentioned, that it's ok to do any of those things, then ask yourself this:

If God were to ask you why you did it, what would you say?

That ought to wipe out pretty much every stupid, time-wasting habit we have. People pride themselves on the "ability to think" for themselves. A lot of students exit Master's College in particular, feeling as if they have been brainwashed, feeling as if they have been forced to think "biblically" one way or another, and all of a sudden, now they are free to be themselves. If that is true, that is so sad. For an environment that encourages godly behavior, to say it is like jail, well, that pretty much tells us how much you care about God. What a shame.

As a Christian I don't find that I am at all at liberty to "think for myself", I am a slave for God and am to do what He requires of me. Did any of those ideas at the beginning of the post mention holiness? No. Holiness will never be found in a "thinking for myself" attitude because holiness requires thinking in a way that would please God, thinking how He wants us to about these issues in life. It requires living my life in such a way that there should be no question as to who I belong to. And yeah this can be difficult, especially if everyone around you is doing something different. Maybe we are called to be strangers and aliens here. What a thought. If you belong to Christ, I pray this post prods you to check for weeds and get some Round-Up and/or pull them out. If you don't want to, if you like those weeds I mentioned, and don't want to get rid of them, maybe it's time to take inventory...and see if you are even a Christian. By what you do/don't weed out of your life you will show who you are, and who you belong to. If your heart is right with God, you won't be comfortable with weeds, you will pull them out, no matter what it costs you.

2007- My Year in Review

For those of you who have been much involved in my life, you know what sort of things last year brought my way. A lot of frustration, a lot of confusion, a lot of mistakes. And then the same sort of cycle, over and over, seeming endless.

(The ridicuous maze to the right is to give you an idea of what life seemed like)

I had enough in my life that at the time I'd thought would have been enough to make me happy, but it never was enough. Still the same cycle, I never seemed able to change.

Then, as the book of Ephesians states, there was a "But God..." in my life. In November, God intervened in my life. He saved me from that vicious circle of sin, and has begun a good work in me. This documents the most important time of my life. Everything else pales, in fact, nothing else last year is even mentionable in comparison, other than the following month and a half of growth. Praise God for being the One capable of breaking that cycle of sin, otherwise I'd still be in it.