Cheap Thrills

Good morning/afternoon/night!

That's much easier to put. You see it's morning right now, but I won't finish this until at least the afternoon. I might not even post it until tonight though! It's a complicated process but if it was easy it wouldn't be mine. Over-complication is my specialty!

So far today has been great! A little prayer meeting this morning. A little in the book of John. And a little Ben Rector to top it off. Who, by the way, will be at George's on October 28th! Please let me know if you're going so we can go together!

I hope you had a great Labor day weekend! Mine couldn't have been more perfect. My least, yet most favorite person in the world was here! I jam packed our weekend with the fair, the farmer's market, cheap thrills, hiking, Camp Rock 2, sour gummy worms, Naked, church, and then the lake! I am so thankful for her and my friends and my new friends and for fellowship and for Green Valley Bible Camp for bringing us together. I couldn't have asked for more! But so much more was given to me.

While our weekend was great, and yours probably was too, not everyone's was. In case you haven't heard the devastating news, a local girl died on her way home from the John Mayer concert in Tulsa on Friday night. I heard about it at church and while I forgot about it at the time, I was reminded again later when some of my younger church camp friends were updating FB statuses in remembrance of her. I don't know her, but I saw that many of them were writing on her wall, so I did a little investigating to find out more. She was a senior at Har-Ber High School and she was only 17 years old. She's beautiful and she is going to be greatly missed by not only her family, but her peers. As I read through her FB page, I was encouraged by her life and what she had on there. And this is where I'm at today.

So yes, I suppose I am a creep, but I'm curious, and can't control that very well. I have so much that I want to say about the situation and I feel as though so much is being said to me through what happened, and I feel like there are opportunities left and right and I just hope that I take them all. For now, there's just one point I want to make and I'll get to the rest in a matter of time. And that is? To put it simply: I Am Legend.

I was reading through a few of the posts to Micayla's wall and there's no doubt in my mind what an amazing, funny, charming, and inspirational girl she was. Although I don't know her, I started to feel very upset for the loss. I do understand loss, and I understand losing someone to an unfair situation. The feeling of being robbed of a blessing. It's all too real for me, and I hate for her friends and family and for my friends that knew her to feel anything like that.

But of course, in the midst of my frustration, I found this on her quotes:
"Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace."

I'm not sure how many people that have been posting on her wall have read this, but I hope that at some point, they all do. I don't think it could have been said any better and there it was. At the very top. Peace. The one thing people probably need to hear more about right now. Dealing with the loss of someone you love isn't about how quickly you can get over it. It's not about how fast you can forget and get back to work. Really, I don't think it's something you can ever just get over. It may always hurt just a little, but that's the importance of peace. You don't have to like the outcome of a situation, you might never know every detail of what happened or why, but fully trusting God is the bigger picture. Trusting God should give us peace. Overwhelming peace, I'm sure. Because when we fully commit ourselves to Him, we have nothing left. That's the way it's supposed to be I think. We're supposed to be left with nothing because we aren't anything and God is everything. Right?

*Intermission* So I started this yesterday...being Tuesday. But it's now today, being Wednesday. I promise not to sleep until I finish my thoughts this time though!

So I continued to read through her page and I bought into her humor and could see joy in her face in the pictures I skimmed. She didn't seem like just any girl. She still isn't just any girl. She is legend. The posts on this girls wall are witness to the kind of life this girl led. People that don't know her, know of her faith. Her wall is covered with comments about what a great influence she was, and how even now she's inspiring people. One comment was about how she had wanted her school to join together for something, and to be more like a family and the commenter said Micayla was finally getting her wish. What an amazing girl! What an amazing Christian.

I've read even more comments about how she's brought people to their faith. This is serious stuff. Remember on my birthday when I talked about wanting to be so strong when I die? There's not a doubt in my mind that this girl is the embodiment of that. There's not a doubt in my mind of where she ended up. There's not a doubt in my mind that God was using her, and is still using her. That's the most wonderful thing I could ever ask for and she was only 17! I'm not going to lie, when I was 17, I thought I had bigger fish to fry. Verbally, God would have been at the top of my list of priorities, but in reality, He couldn't have been closer to the bottom. When I was 17 I was more focused on the "cheap thrills" of life than anything everlasting or where my soul ended up. It wasn't until recently that my priority list reversed it's order!

Life is fragile. That's obvious. We still have to take it by the horns though. Micayla Patterson knew exactly who she was and had an identity in Christ. I think it's safe to say that she lived by that everyday. She didn't skip out. She has a legend.

You and I? Well I guess we're in the process of fixing our legends. Toss the cheap thrills for some eternal adventures. Get out of the dark by starting up our lights. Start shouting from mountain tops. Become more malleable. Learn to be more dependent. And give it all up.

"Do not love the world or anything in the world...For everything in the world....comes not from the Father but form the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." 1 John 2:15-17

"Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things...Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry...But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator." Colossians 3:2-10

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:19-21

"Each tree is recognized by its own fruit." Luke 6:44

"I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth..." Isaiah 42:16

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in teh house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, theat they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:14-16

"Let the desert and its towns raise their voices...let them shout from the mountaintops." Isaiah 42:11

"...'Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand'..." Jeremiah 18:6

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and lean from me, for I am gentle and bumble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28

Overloaded? Sorry about that. I hope you understand what I'm saying. I hope that I start doing a better job a living the way I should be so that when that day comes, I leave behind a legend not of myself, but of the life I led for Him.

Good night! I love you dearly. I hope you join me on Saturday morning at the Farmer's Market! I'm getting a head band :)) Have a fantastic Thursday. And Friday. And weekend. And did I mention I love you?

Jerk-Face

Oh hey! Happy Thursday! Night at least...

I hope you had a great day! I had walking this morning, that's always good. I saw an old friend, also good. I led my first chem e meeting, I hope I did well. Oh yeah, and I was a big fat jerk...maybe not as good as the rest of those.

That was a nice and subtle :))

First I'll start with some very important verses:

"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:48

"Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ." 1Corinthians 11:1

"And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus." Ephesians 2:6&7

So I guess I'll go back to a situation from what I think was last weekend. You see, I'm not even sure when it happened. Just that it happened and after it did, I blew it off. It wasn't a big deal to me, but it should have been.

The book I was telling you about the other day, Red Letters, is all about being like Jesus and leading lives of love. It was all about AIDS in Africa, but being like Jesus doesn't just pertain to extreme situations. I know you know that, and I consciously know that, but clearly I need a little more practice.

In 99% of cases, I love meeting new people. On this particular off day, I was less than enthused to have game night with girls I had never met before. It was a mixture of things, but I shouldn't use that as an excuse. While we were in the process of starting a new game, I rudely stated that this was wasn't the better way of playing for whatever reasons and one of the girls didn't hesitate to comment back. I left after that game in a worse mood, and then completely forgot about it.

Until today.

This morning I was in the HPER and a girl walks up and sits directly across from me. I recognized her, so I smiled but she looked away before she saw. And then I realized that she had been the girl that had disagreed about the games. The whole time she was in front me, she stayed on her phone and wouldn't look up. She left soon after that.

First of all, it was a game. Not a big deal. At all! There was no reason for me to be rude. I was there to hang out with my friends and their friends and there's not a doubt in my mind, that I left a terrible impression of myself. I wouldn't have wanted to see me today either. Second, I'm a huge hypocrite! I sat here and blogged on Tuesday about how awesome I had been doing...NOT. I talk about wanting to live and love people, but that's not a "whenever I feel like it" kinda thing. Living by example isn't something I can choose not to participate in sometimes. Even if it is for only an hour or two.

That girl has no idea that I was at Service Saturday that morning, let alone that I wake up and read my Bible and pray everyday. How would she? I might as well not wake up early if I'm not going to commit to being a different person, a more Jesus person, ALL the time. Not just when I feel like it.

In my book there's a part that talks about how we should put things that are on God's heart at the top of our priority lists. To love people more than we love ourselves because God loves us more than enough. That if we take care of His priorities, He takes care of ours. But there are a thousand more verses like the one from Ephesians of why I should do this. Not because I want God to take care of the things that I can't (although I do), but because it's the least I could do. Being Jesus to people, loving them unconditionally, no matter who they are, IS being like Christ. I want to move to Africa and love people there, but I can't even love people here. God has done so much for me lately and I blew it!

Jesus never got a break from being Jesus. There is not a time I can think of that He wasn't the most amazing, most kind or most loving man in history. That's who He was supposed to be. God does so much for us, and Jesus died, the least we could do is be a little more nice. I say we. I don't mean to drag you into the same low category I'm currently in, but let's me honest, we're not always nice. We slip up, we forget, and hopefully we regret it. I had the chance to make up for it today, but when she wouldn't look at me, I felt ashamed of my behavior. I can promise you, if I ever see her again, I'm going to apologize for that night, no matter how many months has passed by.

All I'm saying is that we could all be a little more conscious of how we act. We don't have to be perfect all the time, but I do think we should strive to be and apologize when we're not.

On a brighter note, this is the 2nd blog in a week! I'm sorry I didn't blog in a whole month and am now overloading you.

On another bright note, I ran into a friend today who I hadn't seen in a long time. He got to tell me about his time China (which was actually a long time ago now) and I tried to catch him up on new things in my life. When we left I was thankful for friendship and fellowship :))

While I'm on the topic of fellowship: I really enjoy going to the farmer's market. It's in my top 5 favorite things to do. I usually walk around a few times. Get what I'm there for. And then I sit in the shade and read. I've been thinking, and if you'd like to join me, that'd be lovely. I promise not to bite your head off. I like to be there pretty early and I usually sit on the wall in front of the Town Center. Pretty soon it'll be over, and it'll be too cold to sit outside so I want to take advantage of this now. Please come join me :)) And maybe Facebook me to make sure I'll be there!

I love you. I'm sorry if I've ever been mean to you. I'm a work in progress. Thanks for keeping up with me :))

Here's a quote my wonderful roommate left me with, and I thought it was absolutely relevant. It's now Friday, so have a great weekend!

"Preach the Gospel at all times; when necessary, use words." Saint Francis of Assisi