I Miss You

Current mood: gloomy

So, do you ever go back and reminisce (holy cow! I actually spelled that word correct the first time! SIMPLY AMAZING!) about your college days, or your younger years. Ha! I can say younger years, cuz Im 26 ½ now! It seems like its been at least three, maybe even four years since Ive been out of school, but apparently, I graduated in 2004. Weird, eh? Anyways, I had some really awesome friends. Sometimes things get weird for absolutely CHILDISH reasons and you become distant, and then sometimes you just really suck at keeping in touchor maybe they do. Although, maybe it was intentional cuz they were only friends to get help with homework. OR you just graduated before them, which makes it REALLY easy, so it seems, to lose touch, because your world is entirely different once outside of the campus walls. And for those still in school are simple only in the school world, and its really difficult for them to reach outside of classes, homework, part-time jobs and what-not to their friends who have moved away. Plus, college students cant really afford gas (especially right now 3.15/gallon or more)shoot! Many students dont even own a car!

Its really amazing when you are able to make really close friends, and really devastating to lose them! no longer able to share their life, their thoughts, their fears and their joys with them. And no longer are you able to share your new life with them. With girls, thats a big one! Especially when you always talked about the kind of guy you want to marry, how many kids you want to have, and where you want to live.especially then, you miss it when they are not around.

Hey, remember those friends that turned out to be really weird? Those are the ones youre glad to lose touch with. Especially if you lived with em. Some relationships are in fact, really healthy to say good-bye to. But I think there has only been one relationship like that from college, in fact, in all my life so far, that Im relieved to finally have gone. The rest, I miss. I really miss.

*One of the most precious friends that I miss: Rebekah
*One of the most fun ones Ive had: Jessica (What happened to you? Both Kristin Lie and I miss you so very much!)
*And a group of my other loved ones: Pete, Janelle, Andrea, Danielle, there are more, and not all of these have I completely lost contact with, but the after-college days really have made it hard.

**The good news, my old roommate, Mackenzie, and I have gotten in touch again, almost 2 years later and I am so very glad! So who knows, right?

God moves in mysterious ways! And if Ive hurt any of these truly wonderful people, then I am truly and am regretfully sorry.

Love Story: You’re The Main Character

Current mood: contemplative
Category: Blogging

**If you dont want to read all the ramblings and want to get to the main point, skip to The Main Point.**

**I haven't edited yet cuz I got to run errands**

So I had this thought a few days ago. It seemed to make so much sense then, but Im afraid that when Im spaced out into my world, my disconnected thoughts make perfect sense to me, mere breakthroughs, really, but the second I open my mouth, um, well, (lots of commas) turns out to be not so much of an epiphany like I had thought. Oh well.

I mean, seriously, look at the intro to this thing? Talk about rambling, but perhaps I will come out with it. Please bear (RrrOARRRR!) with me on this one.

Hmm, I need some theme music, hold on...aahhh, Copeland, sounds good. Actually I could use some Acceptance, but I havent a clue where that CD is.

So now that Im obviously an expert on marriage now (married 7 1/2months), Im starting to realize something. My husband, Josh, is a very, VERY talented guy! Wait! Thats not what Im realizing, I already knew that. I guess Im not quite to the part about defining my realization, but Ill let you know when its time. He's (josh) an amazing artist, and probably one of the best sculptors around. He sees the world through very different eyes than my own. His attention to detail is amazing! He sees so much beauty around him, especially in nature. For an example, this past winter, Josh, his mom, and I went to go see an artist showing their work in downtown Kirkland. I cant remember his/her name, but the sculptures were absolutely amazing! The detail, the creativity, and even the concept behind the art was great, very imaginative. (Uh, I didnt usually grasp the concepts though, surprising, right? They had to tell me.) Josh and his mom would just stare at each sculpture, oohing and aweing, pointing out all the coolness about it, and even return to the art for another long glance, making sure to take every detail in. I, on the other hand, look at the sculpture for about 30 seconds, maybe a minute, and Im done. Sure, the sculpture is good, REALLY good, but what more could I possibly see if I joined them and their long stares at the art? Ya, I saw the color and the detail, but what is grabbing their attention for so long?

Now, its true I have some ADD, and many would tell me to throw in a lil hyperness into the ADD formula, but at least Im controlled for the most part. My attention span isnt as long as most, so by the time that Josh and his mom got to the third sculpture, I had already started my second round of the gallery. Maybe Im just less appreciative about art, but then, thats not really the case. Its amazing, but I dont go on like a lot of art appreciating citizens.

Being married lets you experience the world through a whole new point a view, that is, the one belonging to your spouse. Before youre married, that special someone points out the things they like, sometimes you agree with their likes and other times you think their weird! But when youre married, you live with the person, sharing the same life/world around you, but they experience that same life/world in a whole other way than you do. And you share, very intimately, those experiences. In marriage, it goes much deeper than he sees blue as the coolest color in the world, and automatically thinks that if all food was blue that it would DEFINITELY taste better than it does now, because logically, blue always tastes better. Ha, thats how I think, actually. Although, even if green beans were blue, those still could taste gross. Their flavor cant be fixed. AND then she might think thats absolutely the stupidest thing to think of, and a waste of brain energy, and loves the world as it is, and cant get over how wonderful Brussels sprouts taste, and that turning them blue is absurd. Seeing each other differently is really amazing. It's good to have someone else's point of view, as long as it's good, hehehe. Believe it or not, seeing the world differently is very important, even when they do things that might be annoying.

For instance, I, like most girls nowadays, have to fight daily that Im ugly, my body is so imperfect, scared about gaining weight, bad hair days which equal ugly face days (although Josh cant understand that, cuz he says my face stays the same no matter what the hair does. But its all about how hair frames the face, right ladies?) I fight that Im a bad mommy (step mom for 7 months now to a 6yr old and 9yr old son) and that Im a bad friend and that I can't hear God anymore.

But my husband sees me as radiantly beautiful (thank God for his eyes/point of view), and tells me so every day. As my partner for the rest of my life, he encourages me constantly in all the areas that I believe Im failing. Through his eyes, I am his most cherished gift from God. Hmmm, through his eyes, hehow I see me. I guess that Im less appreciative about myself.

Why would anyone want to love me like this? WHY??? I suck, so much! Im so selfish, coldhearted at times, compassionLESS all the time. I really lack that ability to have sympathy for others. Why would Josh love me like this?

Marriage:
Marriage is basically learning how to love another...love AN* OTHER, fully, unconditionally, and with a servants heart. Its not about having to compromise daily to live a mediocre marriage/life, but its all about SERVING someone other than yourself, so that you can have a marriage that is full with love and life and full of trust and respect for someone else. A marriage that is Self-LESS. Its about learning how to completely empty yourself for an other, and youll never be closer to anyone than the one that you are married to, because you are tied to them lawfully, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. This doesnt happen before you are married to someone (Im sure you all know this, but sex is NOT commitment), even if youve been living with them for the last fifteen years! Why? Because it has NOT yet been made as a commitment to love someone else until death parts you from each other. Just because you live with someone or even if all you have is an engagement ring up until the very moment of saying I do, are you committed to someone or they committed to you.

So marriage is supposed to be a blessing from God (despite what hollywood would have you believe). It isnt supposed to be settling for the best that you can get, or that you probably deserve to get. Look! Through your eyes, you are LESS APPRECIATIVE OF YOURSELF. Your BEAUTIFUL, WONDERFUL, MAGNIFICANT, INTELLEGENT, EMOTIONAL, CREATIVE, UNIQUE AND LOVELY design is worth a heavenly encore of applause and cheering. For yesterday and today, you are celebrated. Oh, and tomorrow. Our eyes are deceiving, but its so important to get to see ourselves through some elses eyes that love us, whether it be your spouse, parent, friend, child(ren), or relative, please dont look away from them.

The Main Point:

Through Someone Elses Eyes: A Point of View, Deserving Your Attention
So there I was, stuck in my epiphany cloud, thinking how grateful I am to share anothers...An- Others pare of eyes to see my world through, blessing me with a chance to experience things through anothers perspective, unlimited by my lack of appreciation of my self and of all the beauty and possibilities surrounding me. But heres the clincher. Yes my husband is a wonderful, kind, selfless, and loving guy, but for me to only rely on his EYES to see who I am might be kind of ridiculous, right? My husband is only human, after all, and can have bad days, altered perceptions (maybe Ill piss him off some day and hell actually say to me, I really dont like you right now), and may be selfish, and if I let those emotions determine my self worth, I could be in trouble, because those words/thoughts/emotions teemed up with my, already, messed up perceptions about myself, could utterly destroy me. But did you know that marriage is basically a horizontal illustration of how our vertical relationship is supposed to be with the One that created us, God (Curt Brunk)? Our relationship with God is supposed to be intimate, just like with our spouse. If you are in a healthy relationship with God, fully understanding who you are, who God is, and HOW PRECIOUS you are to Him, then nothing that anyone could tell you would destroy your understanding that you were created with purpose in mind, and that you arent a mistake. I dont really know anyone personally that has actually established that point (not all the time), but I know a few close ones. So its not that I solely rely on my husbands words full of love and affirmation, as GREAT as they are, but I MUST solely rely on what God says about me ( It's through His eyes that matter. Everyone else's sight will fail me at some point). And I believe that it is imperative that you know this too. Depending on where you are with your belief of what God is, despite what you have heard from the media, or even from people who claim to be Christian, and yet feel that its their right to tell you what a failure you are, how selfish you are, how unlovable you are...ect. I feel that there are some basic things that everyone should hear and know. You should know that you were created and designed specifically for plans that God has for you. You bring pleasure to God, for He created you. You werent made with a mistake, you arent a meaningless being living in a meaningless world. All of those "Christians" who have told you otherwise are wrong, and will be judged for that. Never has God commanded His people to go out and judge the world. He said go out and Love the world. Yes, believe it or not, way back in Jesus' day there were MANY church officials who studied all of the commandments, and enforced the rules of God, judging all around them. They were called the Pharisees. They knew all the rules, and yet even Jesus called them hypocrites. They failed to see Gods purpose. It was to love, not judge. Why? Because all where created by Him and for Him. You, no matter what youve done, or plan to do, or might do, whether Christian or atheist (although, wouldnt it be nice to have hope in something other than yourself?) hopefully, at some point you will hear the true and real message, unsoiled by selfish hypocrites, about Jesus' love for you and understand that you are here for purpose. If you still doubt, send me a message. kind of freeing, eh?

God bless you.

Hollywood's Faith

Tuesday, May 02, 2006



Current mood: restless
Category: Religion and Philosophy

"5 Big Questions from The Da Vinci Code"
A brief guide.
by Christianity Today magazine editor Collin Hansen
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Already an international publishing sensation, The Da Vinci Code now is a feature film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks. The compelling story written by Dan Brown blurs the line between fact and fiction, so moviegoers have joined readers wondering about the origins and legitimacy of orthodox Christianity. This guide offers brief answers to five important questions.

1. Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene?
No. Mary Magdalene was certainly close to Jesus. She wept at Jesus' tomb (John 20). Jesus even entrusted her to return and tell the disciples about his resurrection. But we have no reason to believe they were married. Brown says that Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper reveals the secret. He writes that the figure to Jesus' right, traditionally known as the apostle John, is actually Mary. Not true. Artists often gave characters feminine features to portray youth. John was the youngest of the disciples.

Brown correctly observes that few Jewish men of Jesus' day did not marry. But why, then, did the apostle Paul, himself celibate, not mention Jesus and Mary when he argued that apostles could marry (1 Cor. 9:5)?

2. What about these alternative gospels that aren't in the New Testament?
It's true that the Bible did not arrive as a "fax from heaven," as Brown writes. The New Testament canon in its current form was first formally attested in 367. Nevertheless, church leaders applied important standards when compiling the Bible. Authors of accepted writings needed to have walked and talked with Jesus, or at least with his leading disciples. Their teaching could not contradict what other apostles had written, and their documents must have been accepted by the entire church, from Jerusalem to Rome. Church leaders considered earlier letters and reports more credible than later documents. Finally, they prayed and trusted the Holy Spirit to guide their decisions.

The so-called Gnostic gospels, many discovered just last century, did not meet these criteria. Many appeared much later than the Bible and were dubiously attributed to major Christian leaders. Their teachings contrasted with what apostles like Paul had written. For example, many Gnostic writings argued that Jesus did not appear in the flesh, because flesh is evil, or they rejected the Old Testament.

3. Were there really competing Christianities during the early church?
Yesin the sense there were many disputes about the nature of Jesus. And the church has done its best to vanquish challengers to orthodoxy. Once the church decided against the Gnostic writings, they gathered and burned all the Gnostic manuscripts they could find.

Later church councils convened to discuss other threats to Christian orthodoxy. Constantine, the first Roman emperor to make Christianity legal, called the most important of these meetings in 325. Leaders from around the Christian world gathered in Nicea, where they debated Arianism, which taught that God created Jesus. Brown writes that Constantine called this council so he could introduce a new divine Jesus on par with the Father. On the contrary, documents from before Nicea show that most followers of Jesus already called him LORD, the Yahweh of the Old Testament. The church leaders at Nicea rejected Arianism and affirmed that God and Jesus existed together from the beginning in the Trinity. This council produced the first drafts of what became the Nicene Creed, a landmark explanation of Christian belief.

4. What is Opus Dei?
A conservative religious group within the Roman Catholic Church. Opus Dei urges priests and laypeople to strenuously pursue sanctification through everyday discipline. The group has taken criticism for its conservative views, zeal, and secretive practices. There is no evidence that Opus Dei has resorted to murder; nor has the Vatican entrusted Opus Dei to violently guard the church's deepest secrets, as Dan Brown claims in The Da Vinci Code.

5. Does the Priory of Sion really exist?
Yes, but not as described by Brown. Researchers suspect that members of the real-life Priory of Sion, founded in 1956, forged documents that placed major historical figuressuch as Isaac Newton and Leonard da Vinciin an ancient secret society. There is no evidence for this group beyond dubious documents. Any story relating this group to a dynasty begun by Jesus and Mary Magdalene is a fanciful work of fiction.

Collin Hansen is associate editor of Christianity Today (www.christianitytoday.com). For more Christianity Today coverage, visit www.ChristianityToday.com/go/DaVinci
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Okay. So I have not read the book yet, true. But posting this wasn't to get people angry or to think that I'm a close-minded Christian, too stupid to look at "facts"..blah, blah, blah. I do look at the "facts" and I love hearing about them. I would like to look more into the facts that support my faith, but I'm a little busy right now. But to all of you who are confused about this book, does it not say in the beginning that it is a fictional story? Do you think this guy really "cracked" a code to Christianity? If you think that answers are in this book, then you might actually want to read about the people in church history and how the Bible even came about and how long it took for scholars to research the books' credibility and what kind of things the books had to pass to be included in the Bible. I'm not mad (cuz I'm quite sure that this blog could have a mad-tone) just frustrated that people base their knowledge about Christianity on a fictional book and movie. It really makes me sad, actually.

I'm sick. I don't know if I'm making sense.....**sneeze**.....blow nose....(hurry!)

"B" For "Bandana"

Sunday, April 23, 2006



Current mood: shocked
Category: Life

Oh My GOSH!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????
I can't believe that I witnessed someone acting like this, IN BELLEVUE!! Are there Bellevue gangs? Or perhaps he was from Renton or Seattle...but Bellevue?

I was walking out of my work which happens to be acros a bus center...uh, I mean transit center. NOw just to start off with, I am NOT by ANY means racist, so please don't get offended. If he was white, I would say he was a stupid white kid without a clue. But in this case he was a stupid, scrawny black kid, probably around 16yrs of age. It's hard to tell though. I can only go by his scrawniness and voice, and I know his voice wasn't his "real" voice, but more than likely his cool-tough-guy voice. On which he is totally and utterly deceiving himself cuz he sounds very uncool, and almost like just maybe, he's trying to re-visit his puberty-altering-high pitch voice, unstable with every other spoken word. Yes, very UN-COOL and UN-TOUGH.

Okay, enough with the intro, am I right? Sorry for the tone I'm setting, but I guess I'm just shocked.

So srawny-not-so-tough black kid (S.N.S.T.B.K. for short) was standing outside my work waiting for his bus, I assume. A bus had just pulled up to the stop to let off people and this tall white guy with large guaged hoops in his ears and a black bandana covering his head, at least 3 times bigger than Mr. S.N.S.T.B.K., walked off and passed by me and then pass S.N.S.T.B.K.. Now S.N.S.T.B.K. got all worked up and shouted in a really high pitched and annoying voice at the tall guy. Mr. S.N.S.T.B.K. shouted, "Hey man, you better take it off fu!! what the **** you think you do'n whearing that bandana?? TAKE IT OFF!!" Again, I must remind you to think of a really annoying high pitched male voice. Tall guy (has already passed him) turns around to face Mr. you-know-who and says, "What are you talking about?" Mind you, tall white guy is so shocked and is looking at S.N.S.T.B.K. with a look of absolute un-belief. So S.N.S.T.B.K. continues to tell tall white guy to take it off his head. And here it comes, perhaps the best part of this story, his reasoning behind such a high demand, " You better take it off NOW FU, cuz I don't know where you get that, but that's MY HOOD'S, man! Take it OFF NOW motha ******! It's my HOOD'S!!" Tall white guy responds, "Uh, i've been whearing this since I was a little kid." Turns around and continues on his way with S.N.S.T.B.K. yelling after him, while looking around him like he was gonna catch sympathy from the rest of the people standing around waiting for the bus.

Although this has taken minutes to read my babblings,the event happened in all but a few moments. When S.N.S.T.B.K. first began his whining, I just so happened to be walking right past his back and said, "you're stupid." Probably not the best thing to do, but he didn't hear me anyways. Now if I had actually gotten to talk to him, I wouldn't have been so rude, but I would have questioned his "hood's" rights to the black bandana. I would have asked if his Hood made/invented the black bandana and if so, why did they sell the rights to Walmart and every other drug store so that any white person could have bought the item for their little son to where, not knowing that inevitably, their son, 25 yrs later, would offend an un-cool 16yr old black kid whose Hood who exclusively had the right to whear the black bandana. Now, that last sentence was really long, and I don't know if it made that much sense, but I don't have time to edit this blog cuz my husband just started a movie and I am to watch it with him.

Perhaps I've been to hard on S.N.S.T.B.K., but on the other hand, ANYONE who literally WASTES any MOMENT OF THEIR LIFE getting offended over the black bandana is on a road leading them to always "be the victim" and to never take responsibility for their actions, blaming everyone else for their pain and "suffering" growing and floundaring in anger and hatred, utterly unaccepting to anyone outside of his Hood!

**sorry that utterly was used a billion times, but I kind of like it today. Usually I don't like the word. Weird, huh?


The end.