sicko

how am i feeling today, you ask?

not very awesome. i took a two-hour nap around three, and woke up at 5:30. since waking up, i’ve slowly started to feel better but i still feel gross.

more later.

How He Loves Us (story)

Things I got in the mail today.

Today I decided to get the mail. It’s something I rarely do, because it’s not often that anything great comes in there. If I do get anything, it’s usually just a bank statement or a credit card application.

However, today I was greeted with a plethora of mail….

It was pretty much like Christmas as I sat there and ripped into the envelopes; one was a credit card application, one was a magazine subscription offer, but the rest………

What you are looking at is essentially a great day in a mailbox.

*$15 iTunes gift card from utalkback.com, a survey company I joined through American Eagle
* my Air 1 tax receipt. I don’t know why, but it made me smile. Christian radio was a big part of my dad’s spiritual journey the months after he got out of jail
* free Starbucks drink (holler, Starbucks Gold Card!)
* letter from the city of Beverly Hills saying that they will dismiss my citation from September (parking ticket) and I don’t have to pay it. YES!!!

Then I watched The Secret Life of Bees, which is even more devastating than the book. Probably because now I am seeing it and not just trying to imagine it.

one day.

I’m not a romantic.
The thought of being in love doesn’t make me get all giddy.

But every so often, I think about how great it will be to find someone. Not to complete me, not to save me, not to love me..

but to not hurt me.

My friends are the best in the world. They are full of joy and love and depth and character. Knowing them makes me a better person. This has nothing to do with my friendships. I’m so happy in my friendships.

However, every so often a person comes along and teases my heart. They are either willing to invest a little bit, or they pretend like they’re willing to invest a lot. It just never seems to work out, and it kind of sucks. It’s not that I’ve invested a lot or that I feel really secure in the idea of that person, it just kind of makes my heart perk up a little bit and go “me? really?”

On these days, when I take my overexcited little heart and tuck it back in its bed and tuck it in very carefully, I can’t help but think about when it can really stretch and wake up.

I’m not in a state of heartbreak. My heart is growing and learning and becoming strong. and it’s waiting.

but one day. It will just be great.

One day.

Mocha Club Online Event!

On Tuesday, January 26th at 8 PM Central (that’s 6 PST and 9 EST) the Mocha Club is hosting a live event featuring three of my ALL TIME FAVORITE ARTISTS, Dave Barnes, Matt Wertz && Brandon Heath. It costs $1.50 (that’s .50 per artist! Cheapest tickets EVER!) and the money goes to benefit Mocha Club’s clean water projects in Africa. The project builds clean wells in Sudan.

I first signed up for the MC through Matt Wertz and have had the HONOR of working quite a few MC tables for both him and Dave Barnes.

To read more about the Mocha club, please go to: THE MOCHA CLUB. Have you noticed that on my 101 things to do in 1001 days, one of the things is to add 5 members to my Mocha Club team??? Just saying…………

And a promo video.

SPREAD THE WORD!!!

more 101 progress.

Even though my list isn’t completely finished, I’m hard at work on getting things crossed off. Two weeks ago, my mom and I made banana walnut bread. I kept meaning to take a picture of it………… BUT INSTEAD I ATE IT. hah.

I’m here in Pacifica, CA with the Birks. Today we woke up to a lot of wind and rain, and all decided to cancel our trip to the museum. Instead we’re all in pajamas with no plans on getting out of them all day. Graham and I are watching CSI. Two days ago, Stacy and Emily and myself went to a thrift store downtown SF and then Stacy stopped at a park where we could see the Golden Gate Bridge, thus completing another one of the things on my list! Unfortunately while attempting to take a zoomed in picture of the bridge, I realized that my camera has a weird black mark when you zoom in. I spent a half a day thinking about buying a new camera, but decided against it. Anyway. Here is the Golden Gate Bridge… from a distance.

It’s weird how a week ago I felt like I’d not been here in FOREVER, but as soon as I got here.. I felt like it had only been a week. So so so happy to be here.

1/12 books read – I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

Alright. I am committed to doing 101 things in 1001 days. First of all, I need to figure out when that would make my last day.

Second of all, I have clearly not come up with all 101 things.. so I am taking suggestions, unless they’re from Bradley or they include deliberately awkward things. BRADLEY.

One of the things on my list was to read one book a month for a year. Today I finished reading Joshua Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye. ………I know, right?

This book has been in my life since the beginning of time, and by that I mean my sophomore year of high school. One of my closest friends read it and went crazy. Since then I’ve noticed a weird trend, where girls will read this book and become incredibly fanatical about some new faith ideology. It becomes a bit of a second-hand faith, in my opinion. While I do find the writing of others to be highly important, influential and intriguing (Madeleine L’Engle is my spiritual mentor, though I never met her and she is no longer alive) there is a point where we have to test what we’ve read against what we know, what we read in the Word, and what the Spirit is saying to us.

This does not discount Josh’s writing. In fact, I was surprised with how much of the book I agreed with. Not that I read the book expecting to fight with it, but I expected to have way more controversial stuff that completely transformed the minds of those girls I know. A lot of what is written makes complete sense. Guarding our hearts, protecting our purity, being marriage-minded but not with tunnel vision, avoiding premature intimacy……… things that are GOOD and RELEVANT and can help guide us into a more conscious place to engage in the opposite sex with.

One of my favorite quotes from the book came from the chapter about how to respond to people who respond poorly to the person’s decision to stop dating. It says

Don’t concern yourself with being right in others’ eyes. and don’t secretly hope that their lives will fall apart so that your opinion will be vindicated.

Chew on THAT for awhile.

Anyway. One book down, eleven more to go.

Waking up is the worst!!

The subject of this blog could very easily be misconstrued as some sort of emo, self-hatred post.
John Mayer once sang “when you’re dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part.”
I just think that waking up is the worst.

Sleep is really weird to me. It’s borderline creepy. Bradley and I did Sleepwalkers together at camp once, and I commented on how I hated walking around the sleeping camp, knowing that everybody was laying down horizontally in a zombielike unconscious trance. Just laying there. Not moving. Just laying. So creepy.

Anyway. As weird as sleep is, I do love it. In fact the worst moments of my day is probably when I wake up. I hate everything about waking up ; the process of being woken up (even if it is my body coming out of sleep, completely rested), the discomfort you suddenly are aware of (having to pee, your feet sticking out from the blanket, your pillows on the floor, a cat on top of you) and facing the fact that soon I will have to defy gravity and stand upright.

So this is what I think of waking up, as I was waking up:

AND. Even once I have gotten out of bed and made my way all the way to my bathroom, my unhappiness is still plastered all over my face…

but soon I remember how fun it is to be awake, and then I am excited to be awake and alive.

plus having my glasses on and being able to actually see the world probably helps.

In conclusion, being awake is awesome……. but the process to get there SUCKS.

101 in 1001.

This is something I started typing up in October, and was hoping to post it on January 01, 2010… not as resolutions, but as a fresh start. However, I got busy and was unable to. and then I couldn’t even think of how to finish this. So I stopped where I ran out of ideas for now. Suggestions welcome

The Mission: Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria: Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).

Why 1001 Days? Many people have created lists in the past – frequently simple goals such as New Year’s resolutions. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 Days (about 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organising and timing some tasks such as overseas trips or outdoor activities.

001. Take one picture every day for an entire year (007/365)
002. reach 100 of 500 Convos.
003. Eat a tomato
004. Fast.
005. Serve in the Philippines
006. Play music in a show-like setting.
007. Buy a cow for someone through World Vision.
008. Send 10 letters to Yves, the kid I sponsor through WV.
009. Eat only fruits and vegetables for a week.
010. Participate in 30 #truthursdays.
011. Blog every day for a month.
012. Buy five strangers’ coffee. (0/5)
013. Have a meal with my grandma 10 times (0/10)
014. Memorize the book of Philippians
015. Write 50 letters.
016. Have a girls weekend
017. Host a worship night.
018. Read one book a week for a month (0/4)
019. Read one book a month for a year (0/12)
020. create and sell 50 devo books (0/50)
021. read through the Bible 5 times (0/5)
022. Host a simple dinner
023. Give One Day’s Wages.
024. Attend Imago Dei five times (0/5)
025. Retreat to the Grotto for prayer 10 times (0/10)
026. Visit 10 new corps (0/10)
027. Donate my hair to locks of love
028. Discover 25 coffeeshops (0/25)
029. Add 5 Mocha Club members to my team (0/5)
030. Spend an entire day with Bramwell and Elias
031. Wake up at 5 am and read Scripture for a month (0/31)
032. Visit 3 new states (0/3)
033. Use up 15 lotions or body sprays (0/15)
034. Go a week without spending any money (0/7)
035. Climb a tree
036. Hike to the top of Multnomah Falls
037. bake banana walnut bread
038. sell $300 worth of stuff on ebay (0/300)
039. buy a new camera with $$ from #38
040. Drink only water for a week.
041. Watch all 6 Star Wars in order.
042. Finish coming up with 101 things.

EDITED TO ADD:

043. Go camping
044. Do my laundry once a week for a month (0/4)
045. See the Golden Gate bridge.
046. Sleep 50 different places (0/50)
047. Visit some place haunted
048. Move out of my mom’s house.
049. Participate in a marathon.
050. De-clutter my bedroom.
051. Sleep in the closet in Emily’s room.
052. Locate 5 new constellations.
053. Visit Aleen and pray with her twice before leaving.
054. Write a letter to an author.

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Wal-Mart destroys its unsold clothes.

This deeply grieves me. Not because Wal-Mart has the cutest, most desirable clothes. but because we are in a time of economic struggle, where parents can’t afford new clothes for their kids or a long-sleeved shirt that fits or a new pair of shoes that can keep their little feet warm. These are people who live four blocks down, in our city, who are two paychecks away from where we could one day be.

Here is a link to the article I read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/06/hm-wal-mart-destroy-unsol_n_413234.html

I read later that an H&M spokesperson seemed to be shocked by it and assured that it would never happen again, whereas Wal Mart said that it was probably an isolated incident and weren’t looking into it.

But now I’m wondering: what happens to all of the unsold merchandise from all over? There has to be loads and loads of it.

It made me think of what I read sister Marisa and her friends did recently in Nashville. Check it at her blog: http://marisavanhouten.blogspot.com/2009/12/great-garage-sale-giveaway.html .. why not? Why can’t we all have this kind of generosity, not just me and you (though we cannot refuse to be included) but also giant companies who can carelessly toss it out anyway?

So I challenge you all to call up a few stores near you and see what they do with their leftovers. About to expire food, unsold clothing, unsold clearance toys or books? Because there are empty cupboards, cold toes, uninspired kids and families not just across the world (which sometimes is easier to deal with because of distance) but in our neighborhoods, who could use these things.

Does this make anybody else burn with anger?