My Dream Man

If you’re a girl, most likely you have “The List” or have been told you need to have “The List”. (At least for most of my readership. :) ) If you’re a guy, you most likely know about or have “The List”. If you haven’t heard of it, “The List” is a list that some people encourage girls and guys alike to have. It lists all the qualities that you would like your future spouse to have. However, I — yes, again — got to thinkin’. ;) “The List” displays a lack of trust in God. True, it’s good to remember that you want to marry a Christian, virgin, etc. but to list that you want “a strong leader”, “a guy who likes kids”, “a girl who’s willing to hunt”, “someone who likes punk pop”, etc. is almost pointless, and not to mention self-reliant. The way it’s pointless is that you most likely won’t be interested in someone who doesn’t share the same interests. Obviously, a hunter is not going to hang out with/be interested in a girl who’s huge into PETA. And similarly, a girl who adores kids won’t be interested in/hang out with a guy who couldn’t stand them. It displays self-reliance in the way that we believe we know ourselves and needs and wants better than God Himself does. Does He not number the hairs on our heads? Does He not care for us, sometimes giving us situations we did not wish for, knowing that it will be advantageous to us in the end? So why would we try to override His omniscient knowledge with our trivial lists? Also, as a sidenote, this is all trivial. Does it really matter in the end whether or not someone listens to a certain style of music or watches a certain genre of movies? (Considering the choice of music/movies isn’t evil, of course. :P )

One last thought: A good friend of mine once saw one girl’s “The List” and said that lists like that intimidate him, since he knows he cannot be that man all the time. His attitude was one of “Why bother? I know I’ll never be able to achieve that anyway, so pursuing her would be purposeless.” Even though the girl who wrote the list probably understood that the man she marries will never be that way all the time, she didn’t realize that her standards might scare away some completely potential and worthy young men.

Maybe it’s just a good idea to get rid of lists altogether. Hold certain standards but remain open. Only God knows what is best for you. Why try to plan what only God knows?

Nothing More Than Apathy

“It’s coming down to nothing more than apathy
I’d rather run the other way than stay and see
The smoke and who’s still standing when it clears”

Over My Head–The Fray

Rather than hook with you an exciting introduction, allow me to start this post with a question: How many times have you seen Christians with this attitude? This attitude of total apathy, that someone else will take care of it, because I, I of course, am too busy and have already made my weekly offering to “the church” (which is, in fact, only a building, but that is a different topic, for a different day). The attitude of sadness and irritation over our moral decline, but hey, what can you do about it? All nations fall, right? They hear “Be the change you wish to see in this world”, say “Hey, great concept, really amazing thought”, and do what the next day? Go to work, keep your mouth shut about anything that goes against God, because “I’m not pushy”.

American Christians are in a total state of apathy. The ones that aren’t are called radicals. “Hurrah!” we say, “Good for them! But that life is not for me, oh no, I can’t do that.” What would you say if I said this life was not about you? What really matters at the end of your life? For God to say to you, “Well, congratulation, I’m so proud of you, you never stepped outside your comfort zone”? Or for Him to say to you, “You fell crazily in love with Me and did all you could. You lived for Me, you died for Me. Everything you did was for Me. Well done, My good and faithful servant.”

As a Christian, Christ is within you. Anything you say about yourself, you are saying about Christ. Replace “I” with “Christ” every time you make an excuse. “Christ can’t afford to make that sort of donation to World Vision. Christ doesn’t have the time to go on a missions trip. Christ doesn’t have the interest in traveling to that conference, He’d much rather focus on buying a house.” Would you ever say that about Christ? Would you ever say that Christ didn’t have the patience to work with misbehaving inner-city kids? Would you ever say that Christ didn’t have the optimistic spirit of others and couldn’t help but spread doom-and-gloom everywhere He went?

Perhaps I am a little zealous at this point because of the past few chapters I’ve read in Crazy Love by Francis Chan. Perhaps it is only a stage. But I pray, I pray with my whole heart that it’s not a stage. My life was made by God, for God. If I can’t live for Him, what is the sense in wearing Christ’s name? One cannot call themselves an engineer, then commit 30 minutes a day to being an engineer and spend the rest of the day being a zookeeper. One cannot call themselves a Christian, then commit only 30 minutes a day to being one. In a way, this is a bad example, because being an engineer would not be your identity; however, being a Christian is. Christian is what you are. You are not who you want to be, because in the end, you don’t matter. To borrow a comparison from Crazy Love, you are only an extra. People don’t watch the movie to see you, they watch it to see God, the main character. There are several other characters in the movie, but in the end, what do we really care about? That we were happy? Or that others saw that we loved God with all and every fiber of our being?

I understand that much of this is probably gibberish. They’re only thoughts flowing from my brain to my fingers in an unorganized and quite confusing fashion. It’s likely I’ll sit down soon and convert it into something more structured. But until then, I want you to think about it. Are you apathetic? Or are you in love — and showing it.

"Taking My Sin, My Cross, My Shame"

Last Thursday, a friend on Facebook posted a video featuring the song "You Are My All In All" sung by Nichole Nordeman and Point of Grace. I watched the video, being slightly familiar with the song, and it brought me to tears. Unlike many other contemporary Christian songs, the lyrics are meaningful, humble, and reverent. My mom's favorite passage is "Taking my sin, my cross, my shame/Rising up again, I bless Your name". Friday morning at breakfast, she told me it meant a lot to her because she could never imagine doing that herself. It takes such an awesome Individual to do that. She also made mention that He was a gentleman. This made me think of something I had read at one point. (If you know where it could have been that I read it, please tell me!) God is the only god of all men to sacrifice His Son for an undeserving people. This alone sets Him far apart from other gods. The fact that He would send His only Son to bear our sins, our crosses, our shames when we have done nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to deserve it is way beyond just interesting, touching, or cool. It is awe-inspiring, humbling, worth crying over.

Perhaps brought on by these reflective thoughts, I have finally heeded God's call. For months now, He has been calling me away from my dependency on the internet. Being stubborn, lazy, and habitual, I have each time told myself and God that I didn't need to cut back, I'd get things done, and it'd all be okay. But it's not. I do need to cut back, I wasn't getting anything done, and it wasn't all okay. Why on earth have I been struggling so much with whether or not I can guard my heart? Because my heart was being called away from God, and it was becoming very vulnerable. It's no one's fault but my own that I did not have the self-control to set limits for myself. But I no longer need be slave to my dependency. "The truth will set you free" indeed. I have finally realized the truth about my addiction and the experience will hopefully be freeing. At the time, it hurts. I am still proud and want to toss my resolve out the window; I want to go back to my old ways. But the only way things will change is if I change. And I believe cutting out much of my internet time will change quite a bit for me. Thanks for putting up with my rant; it's still pretty fresh in my mind and heart and I'm feeling the need to talk it out several times.

Ever growing, ever changing, ever seeking, ever hoping. May we all be drawn closer to Him during this week following the celebration of His resurrection.

If At First You Don't Succeed...

I've been thinking a lot about persistence lately. I seem to have a pretty good dose of it, despite my lazy and procrastinating nature. But I have been thinking about it very much lately because of a few happenings in my life.

First, I put together a get-together of homeschool alumni through HomeschoolAlumni.org. "Dreamer" describes me well, but I've hardly ever had to actually go through with my dreams yet. So it has taken a lot of persistence on my behalf to help my parents organize it, as well as communicate with my guests. Some days, I'd really like to quit. "False alarm, y'all, I've decided not to have a get-together." Yet, I keep going. Day after day, level after level of excitement and nervousness. It will all come together, we will pull it off.

Secondly, and what feels like most importantly, is my novel. I usually do get mid-novel blues, which is when one feels very disappointed in themselves and the novel as well as discouraged enough to think about quitting. Basically, it's a period in which the author drags his or her feet in finishing it. So, I've got mid-novel blues. On top of that, the trial run for the word processor I was using to write it ran out. I started to switch the document over to OpenOffice, and discovered the page margins and sizes and whatnot are all different. That gives me a totally different page count. I know, I know, I should be going by word count, not page count, but I do things the hard way the first time around. Let me tell you, it's not paying off. But I finally got it close enough to make me happy, and started writing, after I had writer's block. I was feeling good about it and was eager to finish the chapter. However -- dumb me -- I forgot to save the document. While I was reading English Literature (and feeling good about getting caught up there), my laptop restarted because of updates. When it came back to life, I went through the recovery steps to get all my work back and it didn't give it to me. Read that? The recovery system recovered nothing. So I researched the problem to see what I could do to get all my beautiful writing back. Absolutely nothing. OpenOffice had a bug, and I needed to update if I wanted the recovery to work properly. Of course, that doesn't help the stuff I lost, so I updated and restarted today. I haven't had nearly half the success I had yesterday, but all my material will come back and maybe it'll be even better this time around. Unfortunately, I've been having my doubts.

Needless to say, I've perfected my sigh lately. All this keeps me looking to Him, ever constant, always recovering lost material. It's comforting to know that even if I quit, He never will. It also strengthens my resolve to keep going. Might take a little longer than I expected, but I will reach the finish line.

[Insert Title Here]

On January 21, 2009, our rabbit Elizabeth gave birth to six beautiful kits (baby bunnies). I was able to witness the birth of three of them, reminding me yet again how miraculous babies and birth are. Four of them were brown, and two were black. This was the first time we had ever had that ratio of colors.

January 29, 2009: One of the kits found dead underneath the water bottle.

January 31, 2009: One kit found dead under the basement sink, because someone had left the cage door unlatched and the kit crawled out. Another kit found dead between the nesting box and litter box.

February 5, 2009: One kit found dead in the cage. Another kit found dead in the nesting box.

As of 3 PM EST on February 5, 2009, that leaves us with only one surviving kit left. Being a rabbit owner and breeder, I am exasperated. What on earth could be wrong with the kits? Was it something I did? Elizabeth did? Was it just the way the kits were born? Whose fault is it? At this point, there is no clear answer. Chances are, it's a combination of incidents and situations and whatever else.

In other news, I have been extremely lazy, as well as productive. I have been seriously slacking in school. I am currently reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis which could take me about a day to read, but instead it's been almost two weeks and I'm not even halfway through. I haven't even begun to read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and I haven't touched Emma in weeks. I need to finish Consumer Mathematics and Science before May. I have about 15-20 books to read by then as well. Hand, meet Forehead. *whack*

But! I did say I was productive. At least that's what I call baking 156 gingersnaps, 197 chocolate chip cookies, 50-something brownies, and making 60 Oreo truffles.

My entire family has had the flu. I have escaped it so far. Chances are, I'll get sick tonight or tomorrow, but at this point I could care less. I've finally come off the sugar-high from last night and I'm feeling slightly irritable, at the moment, although very composed and apathetic. The oddest things are annoying me right now is all.

I got contacts on Friday and have been wearing them every day since. They're pretty spiffy. I like being able to see without glasses. My eyelashes are long and a pain, since if I don't hold them out of the way, they poke my contacts when I'm trying to put them in and flip the contacts or knock them off my finger. Yesterday, this happened and the contact landed on the toilet brush. I cleaned it very thoroughly, needless to say. And yes, I can feel them. Yes, I have put them in inside out and attempted to drive myself to insanity -- more than I already am, that is.

Life is good. The sun rises, the sun sets. I'm not sick with the flu yet. My parents love me, I love my family. And God still reigns. Tomorrow is another day, a day in which I will actually accomplish something. The time for lists is now.

Good Guys Finish Last

It wasn't until after I watched the movie and began discussing it with my mom that I realized what this character portrayed. The movie was Bedtime Stories. The character in question, a guy I would guess to be in his late twenties/early thirties named “Skeeter”. Played up as a poor, picked-on underdog, I'm sure many people failed to see his true personality. Several times throughout the movie, he displayed rude, selfish behavior as well as a poor work ethic and the opinion that he deserved better just for being a somebody's son. He is basically what I describe as a “loser”, not to mention “jerk”. Yet in this film, he is portrayed as the protagonist, whom everyone admires and likes, despite his shortcomings. Sure, he was “normal” and could be funny. But his crude behavior honestly ruined any desire of any sort to like this man. When a guy shuts the door in a woman's face twice purposely in an attempt to prove a point, I lose most of my respect for him. When he asks the same woman to pretend to be his girlfriend in an attempt to make other women jealous, I lose all respect for him. If he deserved respect, he would get it. Of course, in the end, he does one single thing respectable (at his father's ghost's prompting), becomes the hero, and gets the girl (the same girl whom he treated so disrespectfully).

Unfortunately, this portrayal of a “normal” guy sets low standards for today's young men. Maybe I am just overly aware of standards at this point as I am reading Do Hard Things by Alex & Brett Harris. But the point is, I cringe to think of how many younger guys saw how funny and cool Skeeter was depicted as being, in turn deciding it will be funny and cool to be rude, selfish, and even outright obnoxious at times. Hollywood needs to grow up, take responsibility, and give young men (and women, for that matter) role models worth emulating. Why do we complain about irresponsible, disrespectful “losers” and “jerks” when we depict them as “normal”, “funny”, “cool”, and even “heroes”?

Since starting this essay, I have kept my eyes open for any other examples and I found one in an unexpected movie. Supercross, which I do not recommend watching incidentally, is the story of two brothers. Throughout the movie, I described them as “Jerk” and “Loser”. The oldest brother was an arrogant jerk, the younger a good-for-nothing loser. However, during one scene, the younger (nicknamed “Trip”) displays moral good sense, looking away from a woman undressing, even though he should be “used to it” by now. Right there, during the movie, I exclaimed, “The loser is moral!” The guy not portrayed as cool, but as a loser, had some sense of morality. But, as he became “cooler”, he lost this sense of morality.

This does not even scratch the surface of this issue, nor does it address what Hollywood portrays as cool for girls. I do not expect this to be a profound revelation to anybody; therefore, you may take this as a rant and complaint. That is, most likely, what it is.