eVil

i am hormonal and downright evil, at least thats how i feel. hopefully i save face a little and put on a nicer act, but inside i am just plain mean, irritable, pissy, on edge, you name it, i'm pms-ing. hormones can be brutal. i am brutal when affected by hormones....enter my realm at your own risk.

paTienCe, or LacK theRE oF

Joey came home last night. today was a really rough day. not entirely his fault, not entirely mine. Love and patience are what im in need of. and sleep. im spent. thats all:)

dOGs

faM

fRienDs

uN pEtitE PIcasSo

soLd

a friend (who happens to be my proctor's wife..) introduced me to this new little Tostito concoction a couple days ago, and i am sold... great little chip, this one is. check it out.

SticKs aNd sToneS

i kind of agree with the statement,

"Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me."

at least based on personal experience, i can agree with it. words don't hurt me. they have a totally different affect, sort of. i see myself as being kind of like a sponge. the words thrown my direction can't hurt in and of themselves. you cant really hurt a sponge, it can get mashed or whatever but always bounces back to its original state. instead, words tend to permeate my soul, and at an unconscious level, they seep in and become part of my being. need a visual? think of one of those sea sponges. it can soak up all kinds of liquids, and still it still remains the same, at least by looking at it from the outside. and so i am with words. hurt me? no. change the dynamics of my soul and innerworkings? yeah, at least if i really admit it. and so it is. unfortunatly, as in everybody's life, some of those words have a way in corroding us. and that sucks. somebody, not too long ago, spoke the following words to me, in a very tender moment, mind you.

"You are fucking damaged, all you'll ever be is fucking damaged. everyone knows you are damaged goods." these words didn't hurt me. i "knew" they were invalid and only said out of anger and hatred. life went on. the shock-value faded. and yet there seem to be moments where these words spring up from the depths of my soul. i dont even know what brings them to the surface...burning a piece of toast, leaving an immeasurable amount of school work to finish until the last second (again..), thinking about the future or ever finding anyone who would want to be with "damaged goods". and then a lightbulb goes off in my head and i realize, aha, those words have gotten the best of me. they weren't discounted or simply chaulked up to coming from a not so nice person. uh-uh. they've become part of me. a part of how i think and therefore act. i know this. but how do i change it? i was picking my brain this morning, early early this morning, and trying to come up with some kind of answer. a couple hours of tossing and turning, and suddenly i had a bright idea. turn to the only source of answers, of TRUTH. (um, hopefully someday that will be an automatic thought, you'd think it would be by now, but usually i still need at least a couple of hours to try and figure it out myself, if not longer..i guess thats why sanctification is a process...) so i turned to Him. and He answered....shocker huh:)?
apparently, I am not alone in the whole damage factor. i'm assuming David may have felt this way when he wrote in Psalm 69:4, "...I am forced to restore what I did not steal." i am probably totally offbase in this interpretation, for i profess not to be a Biblical scholar, but based on his circumstances at the time and the rest of this chapter, im thinking David was feeling damaged. by his own sins. by the sins of others against him. damaged enough to feel the need to restore the damage, damage that apparently was not even of his own doing. he goes on and futher describes the details of the damage. it could have ended there. i think i would have ended it there, "here, let me write about how miserably damaged i am and how much my life seems to suck sometimes because of the affects of this damage. the end." but not David. and i quote, from verse 13 onward,

"But I pray to you, O LORD,

in the time of your favor;

in your great love, O God,

answer me with your sure salvation.

Rescue me from the mire,

do not let me sink;

deliver me from those who hate me,

from the deep waters.

Do not let the floodwaters engulf me

or the depths swallow me up

or the pit close its mouth over me.

Answer me, O LORD, out of the goodness of your love;

in your great mercy turn to me.

Do not hide your face from your servant;

answer me quickly, for I am in trouble.

Come near and rescue me;

redeem me because of my foes.

YOU KNOW how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed;

all my enemies are before you.

Scorn has broken my heart

and has left me helpless;

I look for sympathy, but there was none,

for comforters, but I found none.

They put gall in my food

and gave me vinegar for my thirst.

....I am in pain and distress;

may your salvation, O God, protect me.

I will praise God's name in song

and glorify Him with thanksgiving.

This will please the LORD more than an ox,

more than a bull with its horns and hoofs.

The poor will see and be glad-

you who seek God, may your hearts live!

The Lord hears the needy

and does not despise His captive people!

Let heaven and earth praise Him,

the seas and all that move in them,

for God will save Zion

and rebuild the cities of Judah.

Then people will settle there and possess it;

the children of His servants will inherit it,

and those who love His name will dwell there."
because of the early hour and a fitful night of tossing and turning, i must bring this discussion once again, back to the sponge. at this point, no matter what words have been absorbed in the past, a consious choice must be made. i've got competing substances fighting for the satuaration of my soul. one's origin is hate and sin and satan. the other's origin is pureness and love and TRUTH. one's motive was to tear down, the other's to build up. one's goal is death, the other's is life. and I choose to believe the Truth, i choose to let this fill my soul and saturate my sponge. i know there will be remnents of the other words that may pop up here and there, but saturate, they will no more. they cannot, for the truth will not become muddied with lies. and the truth is what i now stand upon. they will not hurt, and they can no longer saturate the depths of my soul. my sponge has been rung out and then rinsed with fresh water. im sure it will have to go through that process alot, but I can know I'm not alone in that (thanks to David) ok. thats it.

smiLeS

does anyone ever do something for you that just makes you want to smile. like smile as they're doing it, but then as time goes on, it makes you smile more and more just thinking about what it was they did or said that made you smile in the first place? that happened to me today. someone made me smile. and as today has gone on, i've continued smiling as ive thought about that original smile-provoking gesture. it was nothing extravegant, but it was unexpected. it was not necessary, but it was out of love. the kindness involved proves a God is involved. in His children's gestures, and in creating smiles. im smiling right now, for im thinking about what put the original smile on my face:)

hE goT OLd (aLL of A sUddEn...)

where'd my baby go? he seems to be a little boy now, and i feel like i missed when that happened...

HeaLinG?

i heard this analogy once and i liked it. there are 3 tables. one of the tables is beautifully set with delicate china that looks way too nice to even eat off of. the next table is empty, but on the floor next to it is a placesetting of that same china, broken though, into a million different pieces. its been shattered and the fragments of it lie there on the floor. on the 3rd, the place setting is back on the table, but instead of the perfect looking china like that of the first, this placesetting looks as if it had been the broken one, but had been glued back together. this is a picture of how God can use us. He made us as like the china of the first table. beautiful. whole. shiny. perfect. yet because of the fall, because of our lives stenched with sin, we've all been broken. some of us pretend to have only broken into a couple pieces, some of us admit we've been crushed into millions of pieces. the 3rd table reminds us of our Maker. perfectly capable of bringing us back to our perfected glory in Eternity, yet willing to begin that process in the here and now, gluing us piece by piece into a picture that resembles our full redemption placesetting waiting for us on the otherside. in the meantime, i think, its the gluing process that is most important. today, especially here in 2006 America,it seems as though everyone wants that quick fix, the instant cure, the 10 steps to be healed. i don't think thats how God planned it. in fact, i think sometimes(dare i say most times..), Hes even working when we feel as though we're just being broken into more pieces. after time continues to go on by, with no, "IVE BEEN HEALED" moments of epiphany (which im sure happen to some..) maybe it feels as though i've been forgotten. but thats the miracle of God's plan. theres never been a moment where i've felt He's picked up all my scattered, shattered pieces and glued me back together. He does it differently. His style seems to be piece by piece. day by day. moment by moment. apparently i have so many pieces to put back together that sometimes i don't feel His hand gently gluing and arranging the pieces back because they are so small. but every so often i realize, hey, this part of me has been healed. or i don't think this way or that anymore, God's changed that part of me. or this part no longer hurts . ive had another piece thats been redeemed. and slowly as it seems at times, i realize that pieces are getting glued back together, I am healing. God is going piece by piece. and He reminds me, that only the broken placesettings can be used by Him here on earth. Perfection will come, someday, but in the meantime, the brokenness has a purpose. its those being glued that God will use for His glory. He will use each and every cut and hurt and piece of that broken china for His glory. Maybe to help someone else start the process of getting glued up. who knows. but He promises to heal the broken. and then He uses their brokenness, all for His Glory. its a fabulous process really. doesn't feel fabulous lots of the time. but then you realize that feeling is just part of the process too, and concede. ive conceded. ive begun to be glued.

aN InSight

I have been realizing lately, as i lie in bed, how truly hard it is to really think about one or two things at a time. although i've always known this about myself, it seems lately to be really really frustrating because there seem to be so many things that i would like to truly p0nder and ruminate on, and yet within 5 or 10 seconds I'll realize that I've already thought and moved on to something else, usually more then once in that short span of time. even trying really hard to focus on one thing, my mind somehow drifts elsewhere and try as i might, i can't help it. there are moments of pure concentration, don't get me wrong, but the second i consciounsly think about having been able to concentrate, that moment is lost, and my mind is once again off to something else. so anyways, for some reason last night, i realized how to describe this inner working of my brain and the thoughts that come in and out of my head. its a perfect analogy as to what i feel my thoughtpattern resembles, and it may not make sense to anybody else, unless of course, they too have this problem. so, there is this screensaver on my computer, i think its on every computer, except maybe for apples, because im so not up on technology, so i dont knwo what those things have for screensavers. anyhow, this screensaver has been on every computer i've owned so far and is called mystify. its like these rotating polygons that everytime they hit the side of the computer screen, they change shapes and colors. go look at it, im sure your computer has it too. anyways, in a way, this is how my brain works when left to think freely (and most other times as well..!). it holds a thought for a few seconds as it runs across my consiousness and then it seems to hit a wall and turns into another thought or idea that runs its course and then hits the next wall which changes it again, and so on and so on. yea. so on one hand, its handy because i can get through a lot of subjects in a very short amount of time(although its hard to recall most of them) but its also very frustrating because I feel as if so many things are so important to grasp and hold onto while i sort them out inside my head, but it seems as though my brain is against that type of thinking. bummer! this isn't craziness, although it may seem to sound that way. i think its just another facet of attention defecit disorder. add=mystify screensaver.