705 days.

Well someone told me the other day that someone looked up to me.
It made me happy. It was also very encouraging.
It made me feel like me trying to be who I am is really worth it.
Anyways. The girl who looks up to me, I look up to her to. She's younger than me but I don't think that matters. Anyone can influence anyone. I think that everyone thinks differently. I believe that everyone is different based on what they've been through and how God created them to react and how to take things. Through that we can open new doors to how others think. People are something that really show me how amazing God is. He is an artist. The most amazing one ever. Because honestly all the art in the world is derived from him, from how he created each artist to think and the things they've experienced and the good that God has brought out of every situation in their lives.

Today God helped reassure me that everything will be okay. I sometimes forget that and need a reminder. Today was one of those reminding days.


Today I ate 4 dough nuts, 4 cupcakes, and 2 cookies. I'll regret that later. :p

Anyways I hope everyone looks at things positively this week!

I'm a cat.

And I'm getting to know myself better lately.


So I'm reading this book Mara lent me called Girl Soldier and I've never realized how much crap was going on in the world. This stuff has been going on all of my life.

I really want people to know about all of this
but you can't exactly just walk up to someone and have a nice conversation with them about things like this.


Kara is a pirate.
Just ask her.


710 days. :]

.

I was talking to Seth this morning over breakfast or lack thereof. And he said that he wished that he could fast forward the world.

I definitely feel like that right now.

I want to fast forward.
Pretty far forward too.
Maybe 711 days from now

Yeah I counted down the days.
Is that messed up?
well I really don't care.

I'm ready to have my freedom.
I'm sick of being imprisoned.
I know I can't do certain things because of it too.

Mom

So I'm going to talk about something I haven't talked about in a while. My mom. I think maybe that's why I've been so angry lately. I try to pretend like nothing ever happened and I'm just fine, but something did happen and I'm not fine.

My mom is getting better. It makes me so happy, but it makes me want to see her even more than I already did. My mother is alive again. That's how this feels to me. For a while there it felt like she died. She wasn't herself. She was this overemotional wreck because of freaking alcohol and drugs. She turned into someone that I never knew, someone that I never wanted to know. She's coming back now though. I don't know why or how. Maybe it took her hitting rock bottom to change her. I didn't think she was ever going to come back, but she is! It's a lot to feel. It's kind of overwhelming. I've been crying a lot because of it. It's kind of weird too, cause I don't think I really know why I'm crying besides that I miss her. It reminds me of the boy on the invisible children video that cries because he misses his brother who was kidnapped. He didn't know if his brother was dead or alive at that point.


I talked to my Grandma Rose the other day. I really want to see her. She really is an amazing woman. She sits in front of the television and watches the world go to waste. But she has hope. She has faith and she prays. She prays everyday. And she still values little things. I feel like my mom and my grandma are the only two people in my family that I can relate to on a spiritual scale. And my spirituality is who I am, so they're really the only people I can relate to at all.

Anyways. My mom is taking classes. I think they're some type of alcohol anonymous classes or something of the sort. But she's getting better. I can tell just by talking to her.

Yup she's turning into my mom again. She says she worries about me a lot. She says she watches the news a lot. It reminds me of my grandma. Mom says she sees all of these awful things about girls my age getting kidnapped, raped, beaten, and killed. She says it reminds her of what happened to Tracy. Tracy was my mom's cousin and as a kid, one of my mom's best friends. She was taken as a girl and raped and killed. I think she was 16, but I'm not sure. But yeah my mom's been worrying.


So hopefully I can get my license in mid-August and get a car soon afterward. I'm basically hired as a lifeguard this summer, I just have to pass a class in May and I've got it. My mom is going to be my inspiration. But yeah After I get a car and my license, my first trip will be to Pennsylvania. Hopefully I can go up there Labor Day weekend. I hope Kara or someone will come with me. Maybe I'll be on my own for once. That might be nice too. So yeah I'm ready for next year to start.

Anyways. Things are looking up.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. :]

Sigh.

You know that feeling where you've always known one thing and then it randomly sinks in?

That happened to me today. I've realized that if I want something I need to sacrifice some things for them, like anything in life. But Yeah I think I might try a little harder with some things. Cause it's cool when people say things that are good, but when they actually do them, then it's so much cooler not to mention really inspiring.

I mean sometimes when I get stressed out about something like school or money I think to myself about God and how much more he matters than any of those things. God is life and if I'm not taking that as seriously as I should and I know it, how can I call myself a Christian. If I choose something over him, how can I say that I really believe in him and in what the bible says?

Anyways I know some people are probably thinking that I should have made this decision a LONG time ago, but I don't care what people think.

I'm going to try to make focusing on God and I mean REALLY focusing on God a habit.

I just need to keep my head on straighter than I normally do.

Man, God is so much deeper than people perceive. I think a lot of people just look at him as the good guy. And he is, bt he is so much more than that.

Anyways I need to go to bed.
So I hope everyone has a good rest of the week!

Indiscribeable bonding.

So I've noticed in our youth group and among other people the bonds that we share.

Some of my friends I've just recently started to feel the effects of our friendships.

Things have been kind of crazy lately. Mostly busy.
Because the kids in our youth group have been sacrificing themselves. Their time and money. Their lives. They've been striving to make a difference even if they didn't realize that was what they were doing. This is going to be something really big. Things have been changing and I'm very happy about it. I think we all needed a change. And whether we know it or not it's changing us to. It's making us stronger as a group and as individuals.



Nothing can express my excitement about this. I've been so ready for this to happen. This go along with some things that are happening in my life right now. This is real. This is actually influencing real people. Changing real people and real things. Stopping things and starting things. Not just acknowledging them or speaking of them but matching faith and action. Living for God.


Anyways I think we're causing a lot of changes in heart. I think we're encouraging people and making them think. We're making them notice and we're not stopping at that. We're charging full speed ahead into something that will require a lot of time, work, and God to get us through. We've been fortunate thus far about how things have turned out. But I think God is on our side. And that's our biggest support beam.


I've been gaining a lot of love and knowledge from kids lately. Here's something Seth told Kara and I tonight. :]


He said, "When you have a bad day and the rain is on your head, when a dog pukes on your carpet and your head gets chopped off, you gotta freak out!"

And I couldn't have said it better myself. :]

Have an amazing week everyone!

To understand.

Today was a day of understanding.

I understand that most people don't know what they're doing.
And I'm trying my hardest to respect that, because I sometimes don't know what I'm doing either.

Anyways I've been thinking a lot about what I'm going to do when I grow up. Well I mean I already know what I'm going to do, but I want to do a lot of things.

I want to be a missionary. Mostly because God is the only thing worth living for. AND because I want to make a significant difference in the life of people who are grateful and who don't know about God.

I also want to adopt kids. But it makes me think that when I get done with my missions work or when I come back home, I would be too old to start a family... So I have no idea what God has in store for me there. :\

But yeah maybe I'm getting too far ahead of myself.

Scattered Thoughts.

So the whole trying to say what I think and not caring what people think thing is going pretty well. I think it eliminates a lot of confusion.

Anyways I was kind of worried about the concert this weekend, but it turned out great! It went a lot better than I expected it to and we raised a lot of money. I also found out this morning that we raised over $6,000 for the 30 hr famine!

Anyways, this morning in youth group we talked about abortion. There was a unanimous agreement that abortion was wrong. But people seemed to have different opinions about under what circumstances and what not. I really thought much about it all until this morning and always thought that abortion was wrong and that was it. I never really put myself in someone else's shoes and considered why people do it. So this morning I determined that my opinion stayed the same. I believe abortion is wrong under any circumstance, but I also understand where people are coming from. My opinion is that in life you get things thrown at you that you didn't ask for. A 16 year-old girl could get raped and become pregnant and have a lot of problems because of it or a 7 year-old girl's parents could fight and drink all the time and eventually get a divorce and that would cause a lot of problems in her life as well. A girl's dad could have cancer and not want to go to the doctor to get treated for it and the whole family might suffer. In any case it's unpreventable on the girl's part. The girl may suffer the consequences, but none of it was her fault. I think that all you can do is deal with it. I mean that's why there are ways to get help. I mean accidental or unplanned pregnancies is what adoption was made for.

But I don't believe that we (as humans) have the right to determine weather someone will live or die and that's that. We have no right to play God.

Anyways. I think everyone in my youth group knows me as the girl who gets really worked up about children who suffer in third world countries and would adopt all of Uganda if she could. Which makes me happy. :p

ANYWAYS. wow I'm really bouncing from subject to subject. I was listening to Dennis's sermon this morning and it made me think about how much stuff that people here in America really need and how much stuff we are seriously convinced that we need. Honestly if we really only used money for the things we needed then we would have a ton left over. I just think it's kind of crazy about how convinced we are of stuff that we don't need. One thing that I think I don't need as much as I think I do is clothes. I mean I have plenty of clothes. And the reason I think I need more is because I'm dissatisfied with how they look or fit me. How retarded, right?! But Yeah I hardly wear half the clothes I own, so why do I need more?

Anyways I'm out of space in my journal and don't have the time or money to go get a new one just yet, so I'll probably possibly be blogging a little more until I get one :p

So I hope everyone has a fantastic week! :D

homesick

I've found that everyone, not just me, has a fear of not knowing what they're talking about.

I'll be completely honest.

I don't know much.

I like to pretend like I do though.

In effort to rid myself of this fear, I try to talk a lot without thinking much of what I'm going to say. Especially in youth group.

Maybe that's why people don't usually say what they think?

Out of fear of being wrong. But wouldn't it be better to feel stupid but be aware than to not know at all?

This weekend there is no stupid question. I know people say that all the time but everyone knows it's just cause they think they're supposed to.

Like I said earlier I usually don't know what I'm talking about, but I think I'm going to let my curiosity get the best of me now. I think it will be easier for me to learn that way.

Let's see how this goes.

I hope everyone has a good weekend.