Perfecto

Today, it is 74 degrees. The air is warm, the sky is blue, the breeze is gentle. It's a perfect day :D Absolutely perfect.

Things That Make Today Amazing:
1. The weather is warm.
2. It's FRIDAY.
3. It's the first monthly Family Fun Night at my church.
4. There was a little raccoon on our back deck (second story) this morning. Second time, same little furry offender. Sometimes my dog Licorice freaks him out and he ends up "treed" on the porch railing. Cute as freakin' button and not rabid. He's curled up in the V of a tree about 30 yards from the house as I type.
5. My insane friend Kirsten is coming to Family Fun Night and to spend the night :D

This pretty much describes our friendship.

So, until later, EVERYONE HAVE A GREAT DAY/HOPE YOU HAD ONE!

~Kendra

Pool Faith

Hey! Well, so far, there are some AWESOME family stories!!! Y'all, this is EXACTLY what I had in mind! You guys are freaking amazing! :D I laughed out loud. Your families are pretty awesome XD

For any sad souls who don't know what I'm talking about, I'm having a crazy family stories contest. Read this post for details!

Today the sermon was cool. Our pastor compared the different styles of faith, to the way we play in the pool!

Are you the kind of person who jumps right in?
Or are you one of those people who steps in one step at a time?
Or maybe you're someone who just sits on the edge and dangles their feet in the water?

That's how it is with faith and God. Some people just want to dive right in! They want all of God, more of God, they're so excited!

Some people are more slow-moving. They don't take things all at once, they like to ease in and explore God little by little. They're more cautious.

Then there are some people who only want a very little bit of God. Just enough to keep them headed to Heaven and away from Hell. They don't necessarily want God all up in their business, but he's a good hobby. They just want to feel the cool pool water, but not much else.

The first and second styles are just different, I think, but there's something to watch out for in the third. We don't want to be those people who want "just enough" of God. We should want to dive in, or at least eventually be surrounded by God's power!

After all, when you look around the pool, who's having the most fun? The jumper-inners, or the foot-danglers? XD

~Kendra

Church vs. Building

Trick question: is this a church?
No. It's not. This is a church:
Lots of times, people get confused about this. What is church? It's not the building, it's the people. When God talks about "the church", he is not talking about four walls, but the Christians who meet in them.

Why is this an important distinction? You know, I'm not a Bible scholar. Not even close. But I'm going to take a stab at this. I think it has something to do with focusing on the spiritual rather than the worldly. People get distracted when they care more about the building than what God's doing in peoples' lives.

Having a place to meet is great, but often people mistake the building itself to be holy. That's not true. It's just a building. Four walls with tons of chairs, a couple of bathrooms and sound equipment. It doesn't matter how fancy or expensive or state-of-the-art your building is. The important thing is the church--the people! The love and friendship and spiritual growth and wonderful things God is doing.

This distinction between the Church and the Building has always been very clear to me and most of the kids at my church. Why? Because we've moved a lot. Until very recently, my church has never owned real estate, and our pastor didn't want us to. We've met in ten different locations over the last ten years, but our church has always been the same, no matter where we were meeting.

Places We've Met
- My house
- The school cafeteria
- A nursing home
- The school gym
- Another church building (the church met on Saturdays, so they let us use it on Sundays)
- The new building of that church ^
- Matt and Katie's house
- A humongous garage
- The Long House
- The new building, "Connection Point"

Today, my church packed up all its chairs, tables, shelves, music stands, paper towels, trashcans and couches and moved out of the Long House and into Connection Point. Who moved all the stuff? The Church. Not the building, but the amazing people in it. Today seemed like a good day to remind everyone what's what. Jesus commanded us to go and make disciples, not build million dollar buildings with elevators and fancy carpet.

Just keep that in mind. As always, Jesus doesn't care about putting on a show or having a building, he cares about our hearts, he cares about the people, he cares about the Church.

Record

Dudeeee.

It takes real talent to screw up every part of my whole life! Yay for me! I beat a personal record of sucking!

Ignore me -_- I'll get over it.

~Kendra

Day Five On This Alien Cloud of Joy

It's not like I don't feel the sad/crappy/annoying/suckish things that happen, it's just like they roll off because I have better reasons to be happy.

School is going fine. Nothing to report there.

Writing is nonexistent. But I'll get inspired sooner or later.

Family is a'ight, which is basically as good as it gets XD

Sickness is getting better. Now my throat just hurts, but I think it's from coughing. I got sick of being sick yesterday and decided I'd be done with it today. So far so good. I've scheduled myself to be 150% back to normal by Saturday at the latest, lol :D

Guess what happened Monday? ELLIE (bff :D) TURNED SWEET SIXTEEN!!!!!!! WooT! :D

Music: I'm swimming in glorious iTunes cash from my birthday :D And I want more music. But I'm being really picky and I can't find anything I want. I dunno. Any suggestions? In general, I have really eclectic taste in music. However, I don't do country, Disney stars trying to sound sexy, or praise-and-worship type stuff (like, I don't really enjoy Michael W. Smith, lol). So...lol, if you're dying to help me out, I need music XD

Other awesomeness: Cavender is coming to church on Sunday :) And then he's coming to my house, then to a friend's birthday party with me. Awesome.

That's all. kBai.

~Kendra

S-N-O-W

Well, looks like another giant snowstorm :D :D :D :D Today has been wonderful!

Last time we had, what? sevenish inches? This time we have TEN INCHES OF SNOW!!!!!!! Last time we had, how many? five families come to our street to sled? This time we have TWELVE FAMILIES!!!!!!! WOOT!! One of the best parts about snow is getting together to share the experience with friends--and lots of hot chocolate!

My church never cancels, but we didn't expect a lot of people to show up. We actually ended up with thirty-nine people, though! Worship was really laid back and kind of impromptu. It was great; everyone was a bit hyper, grown-ups included :)

After church, we came home and had lunch, then chilled for a while before going to play in the snow. I didn't really feel like playing in the snow, but I was planning to go anyway. That is, until I fell asleep on the couch. I must have been tireder than I thought. I slept for about an hour before waking up to find everyone gone to play in the snow. (I do remember my mom telling me that sometime...LOL, I was really out, okay?)

I felt so much better after the nap, and I got dressed and ran to end of the street. Even more people than yesterday! Everything was perfect. Sunny, no wind, and the Hill was seriously packed down and slick. The sleds flew! I didn't get cold once, and ended up taking off my coat (not the Soft Jacket, my actual COAT :P) and gloves.

It.
Was.
Awesome.

Pictures for proof (captions on the BOTTOM [I usually put them on the top])!

The boys race!Katie and Kaitlin sledding!Matt wipes out XDMaddie getting ready to sled. (I sometimes babysit for her and her brother, Ryan. Maybe you remember hearing about them?)My dad and Joey. Joey is blind and autistic, but so much fun XDLizzy :)Ryan, Maddie's older brother.Maddie and Licky XDMy mom in the red, Mr. Leon (Matt and Katie's dad), and then Matt.

13 Christmas Legends

First of all, let me draw your attention to the poll on the right! Can we get all 80 followers to vote? Well? CAN WE? Yes or No? ;)

The Open House was today! Lots of goodies and even more friends! Wow, I had a great day! We had an amazing guest band at church called "Ember". (Ironic and awesome, right, all you FF?) The band was made up of kids ages 15-college freshmen. Boy, were they on fire for God! When I see people like that, it gets me so excited! I wanna be like these people! The lead singer/lead guitarist used to play the drums for my church a few years ago; that's how we know them. Yeah, he's super talented. He plays the drums, guitar (acoustic and electric, obviously), piano, bass, and he sings! He might do more and I just don't know about it, haha! But anyway, that was a great start to a great day.

Next was the Open House. That was so much fun. We teens hung out downstairs until the little kids invaded our territory (lols), and then we were forced out into the freezing screened-in porch. We played LotR Risk! I had no idea how to play. This guy named Jes and Daniel tried to teach me and Brianna how to play. Well, apparently, the colored spaces are divided into even smaller spaces. I didn't know that. (It all seems painfully obvious now.) I didn't really get it, and Jes was giving me Matt Lessons (those I-Won't-Really-Tell-You-What-To-Do-Just-What-You're-Doing-Wrong lessons), and I kept putting my guys in his "territories". Of course this is before he told me about territories.

And then he had to explain how the archers are 1, the cavalry are 5, and the eagles are 10. Well, I started calling the numbers "points", just so I could call them something when explaining them to Brianna, but NOOOOOOO they're not "points", which is apparently very important to Jes and Daniel.

I was about to give up and call it a "boy's game", but I stuck it out and actually beasted up some territories, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I did especially well considering they kept picking on the territories where I had only one lonely little guy. LOLS, the whole thing was just really hilarious, but I think it's a "you had to be there" thing. Sorry for wasting your time, lol!

Then we played charades, with Katie ("little sister") telling us all what to be. I was a house, Rudolf, a window and a book among other things. Haha, someone was a bookshelf, and Katie took it upon herself to be snow. She stood on a chair and launched herself scrunched into a ball. *shakes head while smiling* Ya gotta love that will-be-eleven-in-36-hours girl :)

So then I texted this guy named Daniel (not the usual Daniel) for a while as my family and I ate "real" food and watched Cosby.

The day was awesome. Playing Risk is like the best thing ever. It was really, really, really funny, but a definite "had to be there" thing unfortunately.

Okay, now for what you've really be waiting for: the Christmas Countdown!

THERE ARE ONLY THIRTEEN DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!!! OMG!!

Hmm, what should I do thirteen of?

Well, thirteen is supposed to be a "creepy" number, so why not something sort of mysterious? Thirteen Christmas Legends anyone? (The four with the * are the ones I suggest checking out!)

1. The Story of Black Peter

2. The Snow Maiden and Grandfather Frost

3. *Legends of Nature at the Nativity

4. The Christmas Spider

5. *The True Story of Santa Claus

6. The Magi

7. Twas the Night Before Christmas

8. The Legend of the Boar

9. The Legend of the Evergreen Trees

10. *The Legend of Mistletoe

11. The Legend of the Nutcracker

12. *The Legend of Christmas Stockings

13. The Legend of the Candy Cane

MERRY THIRTEEN-DAYS-UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!!

14 Open House Goodies

Whoa! Followers gallore! Haha, thanks for following (again) JT Norlander and achieve1dream!

Also, [no name] was wondering if anyone else is having trouble "accessing" the playlist on the side?

Fourteen days until Christmas! Two weeks! Except Christmas is on a Friday, so it seems like it should be thirteen days, but if you count it out, we're all set to hit 0 days on the 25. I know there's a reason for this, but I'm not a number brain so I'm basically just not going to try to figure that one out. Lol :)

Today was the [insert name of small town] Christmas Parade! My church always sets up a stage where our band plays and then a tent where we give out free hot drinks and goodies. It's always fun, I love [insert name of small town]. Everyone is so friendly and awesome. A bunch of us (Cassie Roads, GracieTheFirst, Lizzy, Katie ["little sister"], David and Daniel) walked to Dollar General. We ended up buying Wint o Green mints and dinner mints. We're crazy :)

It wasn't 18 degrees like I thought it was supposed to be. It actually wasn't that cold. I think it hung somewhere around the mid 30s maybe? Anyway, it wasn't too bad, and I walked away with my fair share of candy :)

Tonight my neighborhood is having a "progressive dinner". Some of you probably know what it is, but it's a 6 (I think) course dinner and for each course we go to someone else's house! The first stop is wine tasting; my family is bringing our own sparkling grape juice :) Just for the record, we don't see anything wrong with Christians drinking wine, we just don't, haha!

Tomorrow is my family's annual Open House. I may have mentioned it before. My mom and Lizzy make tons of Christmas goodies and people come eat them with us. It's supposed to be from 2-5, but there are always some people hanging around at like 8 *cough* Matt and Katie's family *cough* :)

So, now the part you've all really been waiting for, the Christmas Countdown! What will we do today...?

Fourteen Foods We Have At the Open House! (If you want a recipe, just ask :D)

1. Peppermint pretzels (pretzels dipped in white chocolate with crushed peppermints)

2. Cookie dough truffles (chocolate chip cookie dough balls dipped in chocolate)

3. Cheese wafers

4. Moravian sugar cookies (you've never had one until you've had my mom's!)

5. Pizza bites

6. Cinnamon-sugar pretzels

7. Veggies and dip

8. Double-chocolate-chip cookies

9. Hot apple cider

10. Red velvet cake (sometimes)

11. Ham-'n'-cheese puffs

12. Almond cluster candies

13. Lemon bars

14. Bacon roll-ups (bacon wrapped around a Club cracker with cinnamon)

Hope your mouth is watering :)

MERRY FOURTEEN-DAYS-UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!!

Keep the Focus...

I had an amazing day with Matt ("little brother"), David, Daniel, and Matt's wii sports!! Brothers :) Right after reading and writing, they're next.

I love my church. No offense, but it's the best church in the world ;) Why?

1. The music is amazing. Our drummer is better than most drummers in professional bands. He's a Legend. We end up playing songs until the originals sound bad :)

2. Everyone is on fire for God. There are no lukewarm people. Everyone is close to God, and doing His will 100%.

3. Everyone is like one big family. It's like, I'll tell your kid to stop picking his nose and you'll tell mine not to run in the parking lot. Kids get left at church all the time, and hitch a ride with someone else. Once you hit the church building property, it's all good. You know your kids are safe; someone is watching them.

4. NO DRAMA. Gosh, I hate drama. Lots of churches I know get all wrapped up in lots of "he-said-she-said" crap. We don't do that. At all. Ever. There is 0 gossip at our church. If someone has a problem, they go to that person and DEAL WITH IT. We're about to move into a new building, one that we'll have to design. Guess how we're doing it? Together.

5. No deacons. Um...I'm not really sure what those are to be honest, but apparently they're like "elders" of the church that are great, except when they get stuck in their ways and power hungry...or something...

So, yeah.

And this was the most contradictory, hypocritical post ever.

The entire point of a church is not to be awesome. It's to show how GOD is awesome. But in this ranting post about how great WE are, I think I've missed the point of having a great church. The point of having a great church is not to pat yourself on the back (not that I was doing that, really), it's to glorify God.

Yes, my church is awesome. Why?

Because God is awesome. It's all because of him.

Remember to keep your focus. It's not about you, it's not about me, it's not really about the whole world.

It's all about God.

Character Day: Taking Sibling Rivalry To a Whole 'Nother Level

FIRST: Thanks, Lady Brainsample, for following! I love your name.
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Character Day:

One of my own today--a character that resulted from my temporary obsession with Chinese culture.

Of course, to have a story set in actual China would be too simple. I have to create my own fantasy world based on China (see, that way if I get half my facts wrong, it's not wrong because it's MY world. See how it works? XD). I have no idea how exactly Chinese the culture will be. I've added some things, and will probably change some things, too. The one-child rule was ditched because of my obsession with big families.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever written a story about an only child...(Well, Darren is an only child).

Anyway. Back to my character. Her name is Gembira, and she's fifteen years old. She has twelve siblings, including a twin brother.

The culture she lives in is much like China in its system of honor and respect, but I added the rule that your older siblings are also to be honored and respected, and boys are generally valued over girls (not an original concept, especially for Chinese culture).

This creates a very interesting relationship between Gembira and her twin brother, Gan. Gembira is the older of the two, but Gan is a son. Who has more authority? They often have arguments over this, but at the same time share a close mental and emotional bond.

Gembira's personality is curious and unsatisfied with life, but she mostly sticks to tradition and obeys the rules of society. However, in her mind she is constantly questioning the status quo. She's the third daughter in her family, preceded by Darpana, the practical and harsh "oldest daughter", and the long-suffering but unimaginative Fara.

Gembira struggles between trying to be the perfect daughter and wanting to question the family's way of life. She feels that she has just as much to offer as her brothers, but she has trouble accepting those thoughts as legitimate because of her upbringing.

The story (if it goes anywhere) will begin with Gembira's oldest older brother getting married, followed by a terrible fight between her and Gan (her twin brother). The argument becomes so severe that it is brought to the attention of the parents. Father sides with Gan, being a son, and Mother follows his lead. It is decided that [insert something terrible that I haven't decided yet] is to happen to Gembira.

By this time, even Gan is horrified and wants to help his twin sister, but cannot go against his parents. He decides to help Gembira escape somehow.

The story from there is fairly generic in my mind so far: Gembira is thrust into the world where men rule and girls drool, and she probably gets the help of an "unlikely friend" (how cliche, I know), and discovers more about herself and the status quo and how it's unfair.

OR.

Gan might end up going along with her for some reason and that same stuff happens.

It probably won't be that generic, but I haven't thought through the plot very far yet XD

So, there's Gembira, a curious and unsatisfied victim of unfair upbringing struggling to find herself, no thanks to her power-hungry but close twin brother.

:D

For all the other family-and-character-obsessed people, here's a handy list of all the things you didn't need to know about Gembira's family. The list includes the names of her siblings, their ages, and their name meanings. I found some pictures from Google that sort of look like the character. You can click on their name to see the picture (I didn't have much luck at all with the brothers). Sorry Gembira is in a bathing suit. There's no reason for that except that her face looked kind of like I imagined her looking. *shrug*

Name - gender (hey, it's hard to know by the names sometimes!) - age - name meaning

1. Aran – brother - 25 – forest
2. Bien – brother - 23 – sea
3. Eun – brother - 21 – silver
4. Darpana – sister - 19 – mirror
5. Chet – brother - 18 – brother
6. Fara – sister - 16 – flower
7. Gembira – sister - 15 – happy one (Ironic, right?)
8. Gan- brother - 15 – dare; adventure
9. Hikari – sister - 14 – light; shining
10. Izanami – sister - 12 – welcomes others
11. Jun – brother - 11 – obedience
12. Kiet – brother - 9 – honor
13. Lek – brother - 7 – small person
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Gracie and Krevan both got the answer right to yesterday's Fact or Fiction.

China is considering renouncing its one-child law.

FALSE. That law is here to stay, at least for a while. They are, however, allowing families to have two children IF both the mother and father were only children. Interesting, isn't it?

Sorry, Krevan, you were just a little too late! Congratulations, Gracie, for being the first correct guess! Here's your award:

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Today's been fine. It's raining, so that means the church thing was canceled, so that means I can go to play practice!! Yay! As much as I was looking forward to hearing the church band play, I'm glad I get to got to play practice. I really do love it.

I've listened to NOTHING except Mulan (oh, well, I listened to the LotR soundtrack while I did math, as usual) for about 48 hours. I have never, ever, ever been so totally emersed in something in my whole entire life. (With the exception of being consumed by physical science during exam week last year.) I listen to Mulan, think Mulan, read Mulan, quote Mulan, dream Mulan. I've listened to the CD five times in two days (it's 57 tracks long, people), and had Mulan dreams several nights in a row. I've had nothing but Mulan songs running through my head absolutely-no-freakin'-lie-CONSTANTLY for three days now.

Miraculously, I still love it. Completely do. I don't see how it's possible, but I do. (Haha, I've still got three weeks to go, though.)

School is school. *shrug* Nothing really new there. "Pilgram's Progress" = FTL, but maybe a little less than before.

Still drowing in Latin, but not quite as badly.

Writing...well, Gembira's story has been getting on fairly well for me. (Fairly well meaning a page and a half and ton of back story and character sketches, lol!)

Thanks for reading, I love hearing from you!!

P.S. Also, don't forget tomorrow is Question Day! If you have a question, no matter how weird, awkward (within reason XD), random, generic, or silly, I'd love to hear it!

Missed: One Brain Half

God Day:

Er...Not now, y'all.
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Sorry. It has so been one of THOSE days. As much as I really have tried to put on a happy face, today did not go well for me at all, as much as I think I hid it.

I got up, thinking that the day was going to go differently, and when it didn't go how I thought, I was pretty disappointed.
I was hungry all during church.
I woke up just kind of stressed out because tomorrow is Monday, which is gonna be bleep.
The sermon just did not hit me at all today.
I didn't feel good this afternoon.
I had to go to youth group, which I feel is at the moment led by slightly hypocritical people. (They DEMAND us to be consistent and faithful with coming to youth, and yet they cancel on a dime because they "want to spend time with their kids" or something.)
I got so hot playing outside at youth, then I came inside, and it was the same temperature.
I was just feeling so stressed and not looking forward to tomorrow at all when the work load will hit me like a ton of freakin' bricks.
I really miss the other half of my brain that decided to be lame and quit doing Classical.
I really miss the other half of my brain. Really a lot. It is so not the same without it. So not.
Chores.
Suck.
Crap.
Crapp.
Crappp.
The end.

Sorry for being depressing.

~Kendra

P.S. Oh, and my nose hurts from getting hit in the face at the soccer game yesterday. All this stupid little crappiness just makes me wanna cry, you know? It's nothing big, just a lot of little things.

:'(

Mary and Martha: God's Custom-Made Love

So, today was definitely a cool day.

1. Cavender came to my church.
2. The sermon really spoke to me.
3. I had the first play practice.

I'll talk about the second cool thing last; it'll be my thing for God Day.

So, Cavender came to my church today! That was cool. He said he really liked the music, which is my favorite, too. I think our church really does have awesome music, and the band members are all really into.

Play practice went well, I think. We just did a read-through of the script and listened to the songs on a CD. Mushu (the little dragon) is played by a girl who definitely does it justice. The girl who plays Mulan is awesome. The guy who plays Captain Shang (Shang + Mulan = falling in love, duh ;D) is pretty good. He can sing pretty well. If he can just hide that southern drawl a little...Lol! No, really, he did fine. Mulan's father is...not good, and neither is the Emperor. I think the guys were just nervous, though. And it was the very first read through.

I'm, just in case you didn't know this, doing the voice for a big Hun puppet -.- Lols, I'm okay with it now, though. I'm also in the Ensamble (yay for singing and dancing with everyone else), and a hairdresser. I forgot to mention that last night. The hairdresser is going to be my favorite, probably. It's a tiny part with no real lines, but in a song, a have a quick singing-line all my myself, and then some with the other hairdressers and stuff. I picked out a couple of harmony parts, so I'm looking forward to being able to do them. I really hope I get a harmony part and not just the melody...
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God Day!

So, the sermon today was about Lazarus. Let me just do a quick run-through of this story. It helps me to do that. So, Jesus and his diciples are just kind of hanging around, and a messenger comes and says to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love is sick."

The messenger is talking about Lazarus. Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary are good friends of Jesus', so they figured Jesus would want to know that Lazarus was sick. Really sick. Like, about-to-die sick.

Instead of going right to Lazarus' house, Jesus is just kind of like, "Oh, yeah, okay" and he hangs out in the little town where he is for a few more days.

Finally, he says to his diciples, "Okay, let's go see Lazarus. He's fallen asleep, and we'll just go wake him up."

The diciples are like, "Uh, but isn't sleep probably the best thing for him?"

Jesus: "I mean he's dead."

They go to see Lazarus, and when they're close to his house, Lazarus' sister Martha comes out and says to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. But I know that even now, God will give you whatever you want."

She's pretty much saying, "I know you're the Messiah, so why didn't you DO SOMETHING?"

She's kind of mad. She's like, if you're so amazing and powerful, why didn't you stop this from happening? Why didn't you FIX IT?

*cough* That might sound just a little familiar...maybe...

May 24th: "Then four years later, God takes him away. Uh, ouch. Thanks a lot, God."

July 17th: "WHY COULDN'T I HAVE HAD BROTHERS? IS ONE BROTHER TOO MUCH TO ASK? ONE? ONE??"

August 2nd: "Why had God taken Him away from me? Why on Earth would a good God do that? It's like someone punching you in the face."

March 23rd: "God created the Heavens and the Earth, surely he could give me my older brother!!"

...

Hmm.

A little later, the other sister, Mary falls at the feet of Jesus and says, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died."

The way she says it is more like, "How could you be so unkind to your friends?"

Don't you love me, God? Why would you let this happen? Don't you care?

Of course, Jesus ends up raising Lazarus from the dead, but only after he meets both sisters where they are. With Martha, he takes the logical route.

Martha's argument is a simple Modus Ponens:

If you are the Messiah, then you could have saved my brother.
You are the Messiah.
Therefore, you could have saved my brother. (And yet you didn't.)

Jesus talks to Martha about how her brother will rise again. Martha is kind of like, "Yeah, thanks, I know he'll rise again at the ressurection and all."

Jesus says, "I am the ressurection!"

He's like, Martha, listen to me! I AM the ressurection! It's me, it's here! Your brother will rise again.

Mary comes to Jesus not from the logical and theological angle, but from the emotional, friend-to-friend angle. Jesus cries with her. He's really sad! Lazarus was his friend! He's upset. He cries with Mary.

Jesus meets us right where we are. Right where we need to be met. Whether it's logical or emotional, or somewhere in between.

As my pastor said in the sermon this morning (ALL of this is borrowed STRAIGHT from him, by the way), "God's love is not one size fits all, or most. God custom fits his love for us."

That was a great sermon anyway, but add on my whole issue with God not giving me a brother, then giving me one and taking him a way, and the sermon is flat out AMAZING.

It COULD NOT have been more spot on. I come to God from Martha's angle, as demonstrated in my post excerpts. God, you created the Heavens and the Earth. And you didn't give me a brother?? If you're so great, fix this injustice!

I also come to God from Mary's angle a little. God, if you love me, why would you do something so unkind? Why dangle my life's desire in front of my face, and snatch it back? Don't you care for me?

I know this has been a very long post, and sort of jumbled and probably at parts unclear, but I just needed to get in writing how much this morning's sermon hit me. Everything was exactly fit to ME! This story is, literally, ANCIENT, and I've heard it, probably also literally, A HUNDRED TIMES, and it's never been so clear to me.

Every detail fits me. It's even about losing a brother and being mad at God because he could have prevented it and didn't.

It takes my breath away, y'all.

I could elaborate more, but I know you must be tired of the ranting, so I'll stop. I just want you to know that I KNOW that God is watching out for us. He knows what he's doing. And every once in a while, he might throw an tired ol' Bible story at you and revel a whole new meaning.

Thanks, God.

The Beaches of Ministry

Memory Day! :D A peek into my past...

When I was around two years old, I attended play practice for the Christmas play at my church. I was too little to have a part, but I went along anyway, I guess. During a break in practicing, the adults went aside to talk about some details and make some decisions. Meanwhile, I convinced the older children and teenagers to march around the sanctuary being camels. When the adults looked up from their planning, there was a train of teenagers stomping around the sanctuary pretending to be camels—with me at the front of the procession.

Haha, I don't know if that should really count as a memory--I don't remember it all that well. Mostly I've just heard the story told.
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First: Thank you, Rochelle Blue for the question! Yay!! So, the rest of you guys are off the hook--for now -.-

Classical Conversations (my weekly "school") was today. It went much better than last week. My class is slowly getting back to its old self. In biology, we looked at a piece of thread and some cheek cells under a microscope. That was pretty interesting, fun, and funny :) I had the best cheek cells :D Lots of epitheleal (spelling??) cells to sketch.

Cassidy and her family stayed for dinner (Domino's pizza), and we went to the revival service at another church where our church band played again.

We have the best church ever :P We play real music, clap, sing, and praise God! Some of the people were kind of shocked that we actually had DRUMS and ELECTRICE GUITARS, but after a few minutes, they seemed to like it. Of course, by the end of the songs, the 23 people who showed up from our church were basically the only people still standing :)

I liked the pastor's sermon a lot. He talked about how funny it is that we make plans, clear our schedules, pack up, load up the car, rent a beach house, take our stuff down to the beach, put on sunblock, set up the chairs, and then try our very best not to get wet or sandy.

Huh?

He said that that's kind of how some of us Christians are about God. We're really excited, but then we get to the "beach" of ministry where it can get a little uncomfortable, and we're ready to step back out of the water. It was really thought-provoking, and the pastor was really funny.

Well, I'm supposed to get off the computer at 10:15 since school started, and it's 10:20 right now, so I better go. Thanks for reading, and PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, don't hesitate to ask questions for Question Day :)

Thanks for reading, y'all!

OHH! I almost forgot! (Shame on you, Kendra.) I've been tagged by the lovely Bethany, a fellow LotR fan.

Rules: Tell 30 things about yourself! It's as easy as that.

1. I have never ridden in an air plane.

2. I can sometimes make my eyes change between blue and green, and once I made one blue and one green at the same time. I don't know if that's even really possible, though. Maybe it was just the light.

3. I used to have hair almost down to my waist.

4. I can speak Elvish a TINY bit.

5. I wear my mood ring on my left ring finger all the time, and when I get married, all my friends joke that we'll have to have a Ceremonial Removing of the Mood Ring :P

6. My favorite candy is M&Ms and Hershey Kisses.

7. I hate jelly beans and skittles.

8. So far, this is the oldest I've ever been.

9. I'm obsessed with names.

10. I love eerie sounding music.

11. Indian (like, the Asian kind, not the Native American kind, lol)/Arabic culture is my favorite.

12. I take a long time to make decisions of the heart.

13. I like pizza hot, warm, and cold, and I will eat it three meals a day for days on end if posisble. I never get tired of it. Really. Never.

14. I'm terrified of crane flies.

15. Only about six people call me by my really-obvious nickname.

16. I love food, but I don't like to eat. (I cannot explain this at all.)

17. I'm addicted to the computer.

18. I used to start tons of clubs when I was younger.

19. I used to want to be the first woman president.

20. Getting new followers makes my day. (Really, it does. I have no idea why. I guess it's just good to know that people care about what I have to say.)

21. I go to the best church ever XD

22. My biggest, deepest desire is to have an older brother.

23. My favorite books ever are the "Farsala Trilogy" by Hilari Bell.

24. I *love* the classic Disney movies (especially Aladin).

25. I love the Disney show Phineas and Ferb.

26. So do my parents. We actually got my dad a Phineas and Ferb beach towel for his birthday.

27. I'm singing the Cheetah Girls' "It's Over" for my audition. IF, that is, I can find the sheet music...*moan*

28. Kendra means "fire-sprung", but Kenda means "from the clear, cool water"

29. Smells remind me of things.

30. I have a weakness for older brother characters.

The end :)

I tag...

Abby
GracieTheFirst
Cavender
BJHamrick
Ciaraaa:)

Questioning God (not an original thought, just original wording)

Okay, so, let's say you've gone hiking. You're just walking along sweating and swatting gnats and hoping ticks aren't dropping on you when all the sudden this random guy pops up and invites you to his little cabin over there. Since this is a hypothetical situation, you agree. The guy leads you back to the cabin, and you both sit down on his porch and have a glass of lemonade.

Then he announces that he is Jesus, aka God (derr ;) ).

You can ask him one question. One question. ONE QUESTION.

Now, I know some of you don't believe in God. I know that at least three of you are opposed to the idea of God. Well, just pretend. This is not going to be a conversion thing, it's just an interesting exercise we did in youth group, so you're safe.

Now. What's your one question?

Let's think about it. You're face to face with God, and you can ask him anything you want. It probably won't be "Whose idea was it to make misquitos anyway? It was the Holy Spirit, wasn't it? I knew it. He's so transparent."

*clears throat*

Anyway.

So, think of your question.

Like, now. Stop reading and THINK OF YOUR QUESTION. Make it good. This is your one shot to take advantage of Mr. Omniscient.

Now that you (theoretically) have your question, here comes the interesting part: That's the thing that's holding you back from God.

Even if you're already a Christian, there are little things that make us hesitant to commit ourselves to God. I have about a million little things and maybe you do, too, but the one question you ask will probably show you what your biggest "problem" with God is. Interesting, isn't it?

(Here comes the part where I get personal and start RANTING. I'll understand if you want to stop reading right here.)

I didn't say my question outloud in youth group, because I'm sometimes closed like that. Somehow it's so much easier to write my true feelings than to say them to someone's face. *shrugs*

My question is going to seem silly. It's going to seem stupid, childish, unimportant, and almost petty, but here goes:

So, God; why didn't you give me an older brother?

And that's it. After I had my question in mind, that's when the youth leader was like, "The question you would ask God is what's holding you back. That doubt is the main reason why it's hard to commit yourself to God." (Or, you know, something like that.) And I thought to myself,

Oh.

That's it. That's true.

That really is what's holding me back.

I may have said this before, but bear with me (if you're still with me at all). As long as I can remember, I've wanted an older brother. It's what I pray for every night, what I wish for one every first star, what I read some books for. Almost as soon as I could talk, that's what I asked my parents for. They explained that God hadn't given them a boy first. He had given them ME. And I, at two years old, was like,

SO? ADOPT.

Well, THAT never happened. And ever since, I've been wishing I had an older brother. In some ways, I think all my problems would be solved if I did. Like, I really think that. Everything that bothers me or is hard for me would be solved or at least helped if I had an older brother.

I want an older brother so bad I sometimes get crazy-jealous around people who have older brothers. I tell Maddie all the time how lucky she is to have Ryan, and never to take him for granted. I DREAM about older brothers. I write the dreams down so I can read them later. I read over certain passages of certain books on a regular basis and try to imagine that I'm the girl in the story, the girl with the older brother.

I'm telling you, it's the one thing I would give anything for.

I can't think of ANY GOOD REASONS for God NOT to have given me an older brother. WHY DIDN'T HE? Having an older brother would have solved so many of my life's problems and caused none. How is it possibly better for me to be brotherless? It doesn't make any sense to me. At all.

Joseph had ELEVEN brothers. Ten of them older.

Would it really have made a difference if he had had NINE? God could have given me the extra.

*sigh* I know it has nothing to do with God "running out of" older brothers. He didn't give me one for a reason. I just really wish I knew what it was.

Wanna know the most disgusting thing about this whole thing?

God sorta gave me an older brother.

Yeah. When I was eight. This guy came along who was just like the older brother I'd always wanted. For the first time in my life, I was really happy. Everything was great. I was so happy. I was thrilled. Like never before, my life was complete. Nearly perfect.

Then four years later, God takes him away. His family decides they don't want to come to our church anymore. Like *THAT*, I never see him anymore.

Uh, ouch. Thanks a lot, GOD.

At least that's what it feels like to me.

*groans* Dang it, now I've gone and made it sound like I think God is this big, insensative jerk. I don't really think that. Not really. It's just that...well, I am sort of mad at God for not giving me the ONLY thing I wanted. God created the Heavens and the Earth, surely he could give me my older brother!!

And he could. But he didn't. Which tells me something:

There's a reason for it.

I sure don't know it, and I may never know, but there IS a reason, and it's all for the best. I just need to remember that.

So, what's your one question? What's keeping you from turning to God?

(Sorry about all the ranting. I feel really bad about blurting all that out now. But after taking all the trouble to type it, I think I'll just keep it. *sigh*)

P.S. *GASP* I have another follower! Emma, YOU ROCK!!

A Friend From Russia and Knuckle-Cracking :)

It was cloudy last night, so I didn't get to see the moon.  :'( Lols, oh well.  Just for the record though, I love the sky:  stars, the moon, clouds; love 'em. :)

Well, today not a whole lot happened.  We went to church and then we went to this new family's house for lunch.  It was pretty fun!  One of the kids was adopted from Russia three years ago when he was ten.  I thought that was really neat.  His name is SO cool, but I don't want to say it without permission or anything.  Just in case he minds.  Anyway, it was fun.  We watched part of the movie "Meet Dave," which I thought was okay.  It wasn't great or anything.

*Sigh* Tomorrow begins another week of school.  Weekends never last long enough, you know? 

One of my New Year's resolutions was to stop cracking my knuckles.  I'm not doing all that well!  :)  Today I've cracked them like eighteen times.  :D Yes, I keep track.  Yet again, I'm even weirder than you thought.

Well, I guess I'll be going for now.  I'll be on youtube for a while though, so you can catch me there :)  (my username is embersmokeman)