Sick, ANTM and Devotions - A whole mix of a post

Being sick is the worst. I woke up the other morning with this terrible head cold. It feels as if my head might explode because it is so full. I am praying that it will be disappearing very quickly becuase my midterms start next week and I just don't have time to be sick right now!

On a postive note, tonight was the 2 hour season premiere of ANTM. It looks as though it is going to be a very amusing season. There are some pretty intersting girls out there. I already have a couple of favorites that I will be hoping for that will make it to the end.

Tomorrow Dan, Bonnie and Cole are going to the States for the weekend, so I will be home by myself, which will be very much welcomed. There is nothing like a quiet house all to yourself sometimes. I intend on getting some very good studying accomplished for the midterms next week.

I have been very good at keeping up with my daily devotions since the beginning of lent. This past week I have been reading through 1 Samual and I came across the story of Hannah and it struck me. This is why. She was a neat woman. She was so devoted to God, so patient in waiting for a child and being somewhat content with where she was in her life despite her deep desire to have a child of her own. Then when she finally becomes pregnant, she praises God like crazy and ends up offering up her son to God as a thank you and a sacrifice for the blessing He has given her. The reason I thought this was a cool little story was that I find myself unlike Hannah. I become quite impatient with God and I want more in my life...I want a good guy, etc. But God has a different plan and I needed to be reminded of His faithfulness to me and trust that He has this wonderful and immaculate plan for my life. Then there's the things God has already blessed me with, big and small things, but I have failed to give them back up to God. Am I serving God with the gifts He has blessed me with? Am I willing to give to God what is important to me in my life?
Anyway, those were some of the questions I have been asking myself over the past little while and I am looking forward to seeing what other things God has to teach me through these readings.

MakeOvers

Last night Steph, Aimee and I head met up at Kristy's place to hang out for the evening. My thoughts had been that it would be a very low key sort of evening of just talking and finding out what's going on in each other's lives. It certainly started out that way, however at about 10pm we had the brilliant idea of doing some makeovers.

Before & After

It was all seriousness until it was time to choose lipstick. Well...Kristy brought out her stash and there was quite the array of colours. Before you knew it, everyone was putting on lipstick. Here were some of the other results:

Aimee and Steph looking all too good! Nice tattoo and pipes Steph! Look at those muscles.

Pucker Up!

Kisses from Kristy - her lips match her shirt!

Check out the difference between the lips of everyone else and myself. Compared to the rest of them, it looks as though I have no lips. Amazing what lipstick can do when you go outside the lip lines. They can get so much bigger.

Back to seriousness...sort of. What a beautiful group of girls

40 Days and Counting...

Well today is officially the first day of lent. Among all of my thinking in the past number of days about lent and whether to give something up or not, I have decided to give something up for lent. Normally after supper in order for me to wind down and get back into my school work, I usually have a drink of either a Long Island or rum and coke. Well, no longer. For the next 40 days I am going to cut the relaxation drinks out of my life and instead replace it with spending that time in God's word. It would appear that I am going to the wrong places for my source of relaxation and peace and calm. So I am going to unwind each of my days in the presence of Christ. What could possibly be a better way of relaxing?

As for a brief update on my week so far, it has been another up and down week. I have been having signifacant jaw related problems with my TMJ joint. It's extremely painful and I have lost many hours of sleep over this excruciating pain. Thankfully I go to a school where I have massage therapists who are able to help me out and provide some kind of relief for the pain. I haven't felt any change yet, but I am hoping that the tension will be alleviated soon.

"You'll take delight in God, the Mighty One, and look to him joyfully, boldly.You'll pray to him and he'll listen; he'll help you do what you've promised.You'll decide what you want and it will happen; your life will be bathed in light.To those who feel low you'll say, 'Chin up! Be brave!' and God will save them. Yes, even the guilty will escape, escape through God's grace in your life."

~ Job 22:26

The Season of Lent

With the lent season quickly approaching, I have been contemplating over the past few weeks what is that I might give up. I have yet to decide. Upon hearing from others I began wondering if I was asking the right questions. Perhaps I should not be asking what I need to give up to spend more time with God but rather what can I add to my life that would develop my relationship with God?
I will be the first to admit that I am not very good at very many of the Spiritual Disciplines. For example, I am not very good at the meditative, solitude, prayer, reading the bible and simplistic disciplines. I wish I was much better, but the truth is I'm not. I am much better at the disciplines that don't require as much work for me. I get A+ for the stewardship and service disciplines because for me, those are where my gifts lie. I am ashamed to say that I often justify my lack of intimacy with God by saying that I am serving Him in other ways and that is all the time I can give to God right now. I make excuses.
For the past number of weeks I have been struggling where I am at in my faith and where prayer and reading God's word fit into my life. The choices I have made in the past number of months have been deliberate choices to fulfill my present life rather than my relationship with my Creator. I have neglected him on purpose. So I guess it's no wonder that I am feeling incomplete and dissatisfied with my current relationship with God. It's because I am not giving Him my all. I am not putting in the effort.
So for lent this year I am going to spend 30 minutes each day reading God's word and listening to what He has to say to me. Please feel free to keep me accountable as I can guarantee that I will stray at times. Thomas Merton says it nicely,

"Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life ."

So I pray that through the weeks of lent that my meditating in God's word and listening to his voice in my life will be firmly rooted in life and that these disciplines will not only last the 40 days of Lent, but would instead become a consistent practice for the rest of my life.

"Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul." ~ Psalm 143:8

Greys Anatomy

Did anyone watch Grey's Anatomy last night? Talk about breath taking. I seriously just sat there and bawled. And McDreamy was even more dreamier in his wet long hair over his eyes. Oh just so good! What are people's predictions as to what is going to happen with Meredith?

Discouraged

I am discouraged. Not at anything that has been done or said but rather I am discouraged with myself and where I am at in my journey. For the last year I have been apart of a group called Renovare. The purpose of this group is to practice spiritual diciplines within your daily life and to meditate on classic writers and theologans such as Francis of Assisi, John of the Cross, Henri Nouwen, Teresa of Avila, just to name a few. For the most part I have enjoyed doing these daily readings and developing a deeper knowledge of who God is and what He requires of us in our daily lives. Yes there have been some little "God moments" in the last year, but lately as I have listened to others in the group and have read some of the readings, I have felt like I don't quite measure up. I feel almost inadequate. God doesn't speak to me the ways everyone else seems to experience Him. I feel like here I am trying so hard to be the person God desires me to be and I just don't quite measure up. I hate it.
At tonight's monthly meeting, my discouragment and my own thoughts about myself and the place in which I am at on my journey almost drove me to tears because I feel so frustrated with myself.
At times I feel like life is swirling around me and I am in the middle at a stand point, somewhat numb or frozen. My entire life has become school. I love school, I love what I am doing and I believe that it is definitely where God wants me to be, but everything else in my life is 5 steps ahead of me and I am left behind. At the end of the day when my studying is done, the last thing that I want to do is open another book or have another conversation with another person. And for some reason it seems as though God takes more energy than talking with a friend when it really shouldn't. I am tired and exhausted and somedays all I want to do is cry. I want so badly to be able to experience God and to hear his voice and direction in my life, but I can't seem to do so with all of the craziness going on in my head.
So I find myself tonight feeling lost and broken. I am here on my knees and I suppose this is the time where it's ok for me to throw my hands up and say "God, here I am all of me. Please take me."

The Baby and Kids Show

Today Cole and I headed off to the Baby and Kids Show at the Convention Center. The main purpose of our excursion was to see the Backyardigans. Cole thought it was the greatest thing ever. I was surprised at how many activity centers they had for kids. We jumped in some inflatable things, drove jeeps in Cartown and did a lot of coloring.

Cole driving his Jeep in Cartown

Cole in his glory at the show...this is his excited look

Sports Camp

On Friday mornings Cole and his friend Sam go to Sports Camp at Pan Am Pool. Today I happened to not have any classes at school so I had the opportunity to go and watch them. Today was an extra special day because they got to go canoeing in the pool. This is definitely something that they look forward to. As you can tell from the pictures, this is a very exciting activity.

Cole and Sam

I am a Sophomore!!!

I am back into the swing of things with school this week. I have passed my Freshman courses and have continued on into Sophomore. It's going to be a very crazy couple of months (till June) of school. I thought my social life went away last semester, but I'm even more busy than ever before. I now have 4 evening classes throughout the week at various points in time during the next 5 months, but I must say classes this semester are a lot more intersting. Harder, but definitely more hands on and interesting. The classes I am in are Sports Injuries, Pathology(not quite so interesting), Basic Massage 2, Anatomy 2, Nutrition, Hydrotherapy (this class includes mud wraps, seaweed wraps and other fun water therapies), Associated Therapies (Hot Stone Massage for example), and Clinic (I will actually be working on real people with real problems, so that's very exciting. It makes it feel more real).
It has been fun watching the new Freshman trying to figure the life of school out. As I see them panicing over the course load and trying to grasp the idea of having a test everyday, sometimes 2 per day, the memories of that being me only 5 short months ago makes me laugh. It's crazy how fast time flies.

I Love Jesus but...

This is worth the watch. It's hillarious

The Week at a Glance

The week has just seemed to have flown right by. So here is what has been happening in my life over the last few days.

Last week Friday a good friend of the family died suddenly of a brain anneurysm. She was only 47 and has left behind her husband and 2 young kids (19 and 14). The funeral was held this past Wednesday. It was by far the saddest funeral that I have ever attended. I hadn't cried like that in a very long time. I have spent a lot of time over the past week contemplating the reasons why God would possibly do this to this amazing family. I have not yet come to any conclusions. I guess God's plan and thoughts are so far beyond our understanding. There are times when we just cannot fathom his reasoning.

Thursday morning I decided to tackle my closet and do some organizing and purging. I still had boxes in there that I had not yet unpacked since moving back in with Dan and Bonnie in August. I suppose organizing my closets was something I could never really justify while school was going on because I felt like I should be studying instead. Well this week I had zero guilt. I did not have anything to study for, so I organized. I got ride of 2 large garbage bags and 2 boxes of clothes that I no longer wear or fit me anymore. Kristy took home quite the haul of clothes. I am so glad I have people I can pass my clothes down to.

In the afternoon I got to hang out with Cole. It was a very full afternoon of fun.

This is the fort Cole and I made in the basement. When it was completed, the 2 of us crawled inside and read stories. ---->

After supper, Kristy came over to watch Greys Anatomy. We watched a really good episode, finished off an entire bowl of popcorn and had long island iced teas. Good times!

Friday was a very relaxing day. I didn't have anything really planned during the day, so I hung out with Bonnie and Cole a little bit, had a nap and woke up just in time to help get supper ready. Aimee joined us for supper before Kristy picked us up to head over to Lauries. The evening was very low key, but still tons of fun. I love hanging out with these girls.

This is the Strawberrt Ruhbarb pie I made for Girls Night.

We watched Footloose (which I must say is a pretty great movie, although I don't think everyone thought so right Kristy?). Oh well, I thought the movie was great, especially the music. Gotta love the 80's!

For Christmas I received these awesome cookie cutters from my dear friend Bre. They are called "A.B.C. Cookie Cutters" and they stand for Already Been Chewed. So this morning was the day I decided to try them out. I used a basic shortbread recipe, which I would not reccomend as they crumbled. A lot of them broke. I think next time I'll use a sugar cookie recipe instead. They were a lot of fun to make.

Here were the final products: