Change, monotony, and life.

i feel as if i should write about something today, but i’m really not sure what exactly.

i’m quite an introspective, self-reflective person, so i often think back on the past and consider where i am today – for example, where i am now compared to where i was a year ago (physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, etc) is so drastically different, but in a good way. and i’m thankful for that. but i’m also amazed at how different our lives can change, sometimes quickly and sometimes gradually without us even realizing a change has occurred.

another issue that i always seem to come back to is that of monotony – at times, i am caught up in the newness and excitement of life, as i was two months ago – and then there are days when the sheer monotonous aspects of life get the best of me; and i’m left wondering how we turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.

something to think about, i guess. as if i didn’t already have enough to think about…

Real love

Where Is the Love?

By Sierra McConnell

A favorite pastime between my best friend and I is to compare the culture we were brought up in with that of the one we are currently living in. We both come from fairly liberal societies in the north and, for the time being, are stuck in an ultra-conservative society in the south. We have both grown up learning to love everyone, regardless of who they are, where they come from, what they believe or what they look like. Neither of us were brought up by atheists, Satanists or any other “heathens” most people think our parents must have been. We were both taught that God’s Word is Truth and that the Father loves the entire world enough to send His only Son so that people could believe in Him. We both have left the church in pursuits of other things at one point or another in our lives, but we both still held these things we were taught throughout our wanderings off of the path. We were both very aware that when we arrived to our school in the south that people were going to be more conservative and we would meet a considerable amount of other Christians.

We never thought we would associate Christianity with unloving.

We’ve met hundreds of people claiming to be Christians. They are militantly pro-life, pro-death penalty, pro-war, anti-gay and very Republican. They only listen to music that says Jesus at least twice per song, and watch movies that have no violence, swearing, sex, and (most importantly) do not question the religion they have grown up with in even a small way. The vast majority of these people tell the world that they must be like them in order to be saved. This scares me. Not for myself, really. I’ve learned to block out a lot of things in the year that I have lived here. It scares me for the people here and those who are going to be told they’re going to hell for not believing the same way.

There’s nothing wrong with having any of those beliefs. While I don’t necessarily hold to all of them, I have no problem with others having different beliefs than I do. I do, however, have a problem with people saying that these beliefs are biblical and the same that Jesus would hold. I cannot see the justification for protesting in front of abortion clinics, yelling things like “slut,” “murderer,” and whatever else to women while claiming to be a Christian. I cannot see justification for claiming to be pro-life before birth but being anti-life by being pro-death penalty. I don’t understand how these people, who claim to be Christians can shun the homosexuals or prostitutes because they are “sinners in need of a savior,” as the prayer goes. I’m fed up with hearing that as Christians we should not be associating ourselves with these or any sinners, that we must have a great “fellowship” with other Christians who believe exactly the same way as we do, who don’t challenge us to think. That’s not what this whole Christianity thing is about.

Aren’t we supposed to love everyone, regardless of who they are? Loving those who don’t believe the same way I do makes me a non-Bible-Believing-Christian. Does being a Christian mean that I am not supposed to love everyone? If it does, I don’t want any part in this anymore.

There has to be a better way.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”” (Matthew 22:37-40, TNIV).

Love God. Love your neighbor. That is what this thing, this belief, this faith, this life is about. Why, then, do we find it so hard to love? Why do we have such a hard time with being around those who don’t believe like we do?

I think sometimes we get so caught up in our Christian culture, we create these false images of Jesus in our minds. We see Him dressed in khakis and polo, only being around those who praise Him most, never with the broken, the losers, and the ones that society rejects. We feel that while He is too holy to be with these people, we also feel that it is our obligation to try and save them ourselves. Jesus does not want us to stand on our soapboxes, claiming hell and damnation for everyone who doesn’t agree with us, telling them they must be saved. We have thousands of tracts we could give them to solve that problem for us. Jesus does not want us to ask them if they’ve ever told a lie, thought a lustful thought, or hated someone with the air of righteousness, as if we’ve never sinned, and then tell them that liars, adulterers and murderers go to hell and they are right along with them.

Think about it. Jesus would not tell us to do things like that. God would not tell us that we are too good for others.

As North American Christians, we need to repent of making God in our own image instead of being made in His image. We need to repent of making Jesus out to be one who condemns instead of saves (John 3:16-17). We need to repent of showing the world only what we are against instead of what we are for. We need to repent of letting a beautiful faith be turned into a synonym of hate.

relevantmag.com

proverbs 29:11

A fool gives full vent to his anger,
but a wise man keeps himself under control.

more relationship advice.

Looking for Love

By Colette BouchezWebMD Feature

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MDon July 1, 2006

In the pilot for the ABC television show Desperate Housewives, character Gabrielle Solis (she’s the beautiful ex-model with the gorgeous rich husband, big house and bottomless bank account) sets the tone for the series with this simple but poignant statement about her marriage: “I have everything I wanted—but I wanted all the wrong things.”More than just a catchy phrase, you don’t have to be an unhappy (or desperate) housewife to get what she means. Indeed, when it comes to choosing a life partner, experts say too many of us remain clueless about what we really want and need—one reason so few of us seem to find it!”We go round and round, and we date and we date some more and we think, yes! We have finally found the secret to landing that perfect mate. And still the divorce rate goes higher and higher,” says psychologist Gilda Carle, PhD, associate professor at Mercy College and author of Don’t Bet on the Prince—How to Have the Man You Want by Betting on Yourself. Clearly, says Carle, something is going wrong.If you’ve already figured that part out yourself, take heart. Psychologists say the key to getting off the dating merry-go-round often requires nothing more than taking time to get to know yourself before you try to get to know someone else.Here are five ways to help you do just that:

• Define your core values.
• Understand your emotional needs.
• Identify your love pattern.
• Test drive a potential relationship.
• Once dating, go in for a three-month checkup.
• Define Your Core Values
• Understanding your core values is at the heart of truly knowing your needs.
• “These are the things about yourself that are not likely to change. They are the tenets you grew up believing and that deep down inside still seem to fit into your life no matter what else changes,” says JoAnne White, PhD, a therapist and instructor at Temple University.Indeed, White tells WebMD that no matter how many qualities you put on your list of “must haves,” nothing matters quite so much as finding someone who shares your core values. “In the end, they represent who you are and what you need. They are the deal breakers,” says White. While core values are different for every person, they often touch on such personal issues as:
  • The desire to have children
  • Religious beliefs
  • How you deal with money
  • How you make important decisions
  • The importance you place on honesty, integrity, fidelity
  • Even how you view divorce itself

  And while we all have heard that opposites attract—and experts say they do—when it comes to the really big issues in our life, shared values are still what count the most. “When it comes to our most important and lasting relationships, it’s similar core values that becomes the glue that cements a couple together,” Carle tells WebMD.

• Understand Your Emotional NeedsWhile core values may form the foundation of who we are, our emotional needs often define the finer points of our relationships. Psychologist Dennis Sugrue says we must acknowledge those emotional needs before we can find someone who can fill them.”A need for intimacy, for sexual gratification and satisfaction, a need to be honored and understood and even accepted by our partner, these are all important aspects of who we are. Each of us has our own way in which these needs must be met in order to feel happy and secure,” says Sugrue, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School and co-author of Sex Matters for Women.Understanding what fulfillment means to you, he says, is paramount to finding a partner with whom you can feel satisfied and happy.The one caveat: Trouble comes when we look for a partner to fulfill us in ways that, ultimately, we can only fulfill ourselves.”If you are looking to a partner to make you feel worthwhile, to make you feel happy, to rescue you from a bored or unhappy life, if you are seeking someone to make you feel complete or whole—well then you have some work to do, because these are needs that are never going to be met by any one other than yourself,” says Sugrue. To put those demands on someone else is to set up yourself—and the relationship—for failure.
  
• Identify Your Love PatternSo how do we go about finding the kind of person who can meet our emotional needs and share our core values? Experts say we should look for clues in the good relationships we already have with friends and family members.”Think about relationships you’ve had—or currently have—that bring out the best in you,” says psychologist Dennis Lowe, PhD, founding director of the Center for the Family at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles and a professor of psychology. “Think about the relationships in which you have felt you could grow and the ones that left you feeling fulfilled. Not just romantic relationships, but any relationships with family and with friends.”Also important: Think about the people who make you feel safe and secure, the people with whom you can be yourself. Eventually, he says, a pattern of personality traits will begin to emerge. Not coincidentally, these will be the same traits that will serve you best in a romantic partner.”You are looking for not only character traits, but also ways of relating to you, and you to them. Look for what has worked in previous relationships,” Lowe tells WebMD.White agrees: “In the end, it’s often the people around whom you feel the most comfortable that possess the kind of traits you need for a lasting partnership.”
• Test Drive a Potential RelationshipLooking inside yourself can help prepare you for a successful relationship, but eventually you must apply what you’ve discovered—and begin seeking a partner. Unfortunately, it’s at this point where many of us make some heartbreaking mistakes.One of the most common mistakes: Believing that a person whose looks and personality you like also possesses the important qualities youneed for a long-term relationship—before you really know the person.”There’s something called cognitive dissonance—meaning your head believes one thing and your heart believes something else. When you are in the throes of those toe-curling tingles, believe me, your heart is going to overrule your head every time,” says relationship coach and matchmaker Melissa Darnay, author of Dating 101.When your sense of logic finally does come back—which Darnay says takes about 120 days from your first toe curl—suddenly your heartthrob may not seem so appealing. It’s equally frustrating when you’re still “feeling the buzz” and your partner isn’t.Darnay says many such problems could be avoided, if we viewed new relationships like they were a new car—starting with the “test drive” known as “dating.”"At the early stages of any relationship you should be dating—and that’s dating, not sleeping with—at least three or four different potential partners,” says Darnay. This will give you the emotional distance and time you need to get to know them before you get too serious with any one person.
  
• Go In for a Three-Month CheckupIf the relationship progresses and you like what you see, within two months time you can start dating more seriously, perhaps even exclusively. But within three to four months, Darnay says, it’s back to the new car analogy for one more spin around the relationship block.”No matter how good a new car is running, you’ve still got to take it in for that three-month checkup. The same is true for relationships,” says Darnay.That checkup should involve honestly answering some tough questions about your partner, including:
  • Is he really as honest as I first thought?
  • Does she have the same moral fiber I thought she did?
  • Does he really possess the kind of core values that mean something to me?
  • Is she who I thought she was?

  If the answers are no, pay attention. Experts say red flags are red for a reason—so you can see them! If your partner isn’t making the grade, cut your losses fast and run, says Darnay.”Remember,” she says, “you can change a person’s socks, you can change their haircut, but you can’t change their core values—or yours.”
  

this about sums it up.

We need to be really bothered once and a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, something real?
- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

reality check

A World Within the World

By Anna Smith

Our minds are such an intricate part of our bodies aren’t they? One minute we can be thinking about a memory that takes us back to a certain place in time instantaneously and the next minute we can be thinking about “So do you pronounce it Care-e-mel or Car-e-mel?” As we go through life we often find ourselves in this tension in our minds. We wrestle with the tension between truly logical and intellectual thoughts and with thoughts that just simply leave us questioning. If there is one thought pattern that I find myself in most days it is a thought pattern that I like to call “The world within the world.” It is a place that I find myself armed for battle with what is truly real and what is simply imagination. Usually I camp out at this tension driven thought pattern when I am thinking about my relationships with people.

It is a wonder to me, how in our minds we can make anyone to be what we think they are or what we want them to be. We create our own worlds for them complete with childhood pasts and memories and climatic events that always some how end up in our favor. We decorate them with fancy words and we cater to their emotional needs as we assume we actually understand them. We magnetically turn their steps in directions we are most familiar with…and all in the name of Happy endings. We then take a step back from our emotionally generated world and we smile, as it is everything that we could hope for, only to find ourselves walking out the front door to discover that we were never a part of our story.

We walk into a world full of misunderstanding and somehow think that our wisdom is infinite, as we have discovered the secret to a perfect world. We take our experiences and infiltrate them into reality and somehow think that we have the answer. Too often we create worlds within our world; emotions hide in our heart as we desperately try to discover the answers to our questions. Too often we live inside these worlds amidst of reality. As if it is not enough to have pain in reality, we somehow maneuver our dream world mindset in ways to fit reality. It is no wonder we experience pain in relationships and frustration in friendships. It is no wonder we create awkward situations for ourselves, and walk away thinking that we are the biggest idiots ever and should never speak again.

Living in a world of “what ifs” can be beautifully haunting. It is beautiful because everything works out for our favor and it is haunting because the moment we actually face reality we realize that the dream world inside of our minds that we created, isn’t actually real. I started thinking about this one day when I found myself reading about someone and making up scenarios in my mind about “what if I were a part of their world?” I know, this sounds incredibly stalker-like and creepy, but do we not all do this in its various forms? As I was looking I paused and thought to myself, what is it that fascinates me about living in a world inside my head? It was then that I realized that in order to truly live, my fascination must be on everything that God created, rather than everything that I create in my mind. My fascination must be on the intricate beauty around me, rather than the finite beauty my mind creates. My fascination must be on the mind of Christ and its
 creativity and perfection, rather than my psuedo-sims world.

Sometimes I think we put more energy into the world we create inside of our minds with all of our “what if” scenarios, rather than into real relationships. I believe we see this in times where we are talking to someone and expect a certain answer but actually receive an answer that is completely opposite of what we anticipated. Perhaps it ‘s safe to say that this happens because we have created this person to be someone else in our minds and because of that, they should respond a certain way. I have seen this happen so often and usually what happens is that friends part ways, feeling hurt and misunderstood. I cannot help but wonder if there is a way that this can be avoided. I question things like: What is it I feel that I’m lacking in “real life” that I have to make up for in the form of “day dreaming?” Where is the disconnect?

Somewhere in my thoughts I’m brought back to this one basic and fundamental truth that brings me to question: “Do I really believe that God created me in His image?” I’m convinced that if we truly believed that we are as Genesis 1 says, “Created in the image of God” then we would live in a way that reflects that timeless truth. Instead of assuming things about people, we would look at them as having intrinsic value; they are worth getting to know. If we really believed this truth, we would have no need to create our own world because if we are created in the image of Christ, what could we possibly be lacking? If we really believed this truth, we would not only fight selfishness, but also pride in thinking that what we create is more beautiful and fascinating than what God created.

True fascination in Christ is recognizable when we look at ourselves and think “Why would I ever choose something my mind creates over the beauty that God holds?” It is with this fascination that hearts are changed and lives are lived in full.

relevantmag.com

humility.

Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.
Saint Augustine

 Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.
Saint Augustine

  There is something in humility which strangely exalts the heart.
Saint Augustine

 Life is a long lesson in humility.
James M. Barrie

A sarcastic person has a superiority complex that can be cured only by the honesty of humility.
Lawrence G. Lovasik

thank you, liz laribee.

www.freerice.com

im not sure if it’s legit, but hopefully it is – it’s pretty darn addicting.

i’m addicted.

i’m officially obsessed with the baking bites blog (see blogroll for link) and have considered quitting my job so that i can bake all day. i know, i’m crazy…

ohhhh, the holidays.

so apparently, christmas starts in november this year. it seems every year that christmas shopping/music/decorations get started earlier and earlier. im not a fan of this, since my love of christmas has dwindled over the years, right down to almost deep hatred for this holiday that has become so pagan and commercialized. i guess if i had kids, i would see the fun in it. and i know what christmas means to me, but having everyone else around you make it to be something it’s not makes you lose sight of why we celebrate it in the first place.

it’s funny how people think you’re crazy when you don’t like things such as animals and christmas – it’s like you’re the worst person ever. haha. at least i still like kids, though!

every year i try to get my family and friends to join me in a Buy Nothing Christmas (http://adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/bnxmas/) but I never have any luck. I guess people assume that i’m too lazy/cheap to buy gifts, but i’m not asking for gifts either; i just want to enjoy christmas without the frantic shopping and stressful decorating, etc. maybe one day….until then, i’ll oblige the shopping, the baking, and (maybe) the decorating.

if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. or something.