Things that have not changed:
1. I am awesome
2. Gilmore Girls is hilarious and my favorite show.
3. Jess is cute.
Things that have changed:
1. I do not like cold weather. I used to say I preferred cold weather to hot. That was false. My circulation does not work properly and thus, cold weather is miserable.
2. I want to to work with teenagers. Ever since I was little, I've wanted to work with kids. I'm not always great at communicating with peers and adults, but I can talk to kids. Kids are awesome. They're easy; talking to or playing with kids is one of the things that comes most naturally. I can teach a kindergarten/first grade Sunday school class with no preparation and I do it well. But my...passion, I guess, for the past few months in teen girls. I love them; they are awesome...they are also more complex and more difficult.
Thus semester both of my opportunities for working with young kids (preschool-1st grade) went away or different reasons. However, in my one Intercultural Studies class, I am writing my big capstone paper, basically what my major has been working towards for the past 4 years, on teenage girls. Yep. My one last big ICS thing isn't about culture unless you think teens are aliens from another world, which some do. Anyways, I have to go to class now. My youth ministry class. I just wanted to write really quickly and tell you all how my life has changed, because I think it's funny.
So...thanks Horizons girls, for sucking me in. For making my life plans far different than what I thought they'd be 3 years ago. Thank you Rusty or making me a junior high leader. Thank you lady from the missions fair last year who told me that I should think about social work. Ach...I actually need to leave now
Vaya con Dios!
Monday, October 18, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Ruby Slippers
I love Jonalyn Fincher. I've never really met her, although she did speak at a chapel at Biola last year with her husband. But she is really smart and really good at articulating her thoughts into a really amazing book called Ruby Slippers. It's about women, the soul of women and a lot of other things. Men should read it too because it is..fantastic.
I've been reading it slowly over the past couple weeks and I still have one chapter left, but I'm so distracted by her ideas ad I want other people to know what she says because she talks about a lot of things that I think are important.
I tried to start writing to talk about the book, about what she says. But I was 1 giant paragraph in and had barely started talking about what's important in he first chapter. But the book is seriously seriously awesome. her chapters can be long, but they're all so so good. She's talking about femininity, how it's been used to force women into a specific 'gender role' and used to constrain who we think we 'ought' to be. She talks about what femininity should be, how God designed it and how God designed women to bear His image. As a woman, I bear God's image just as much as a man does. I bear God's image in my soul, in the attributes and characteristics that I share with Him, attributes and characteristics that are different that the attributes and characteristics of men.
She talks about six broad, general traits of being a woman, six things that most women have. They're not things that are necessary to e feminine or to be a woman, but they're general 'family characteristics,' is what I think she calls them. She says that no women is ever ore or less feminine. Whether I'm sitting on my couch in a tank to and basketball shorts (as I am now) or dressed up for prom - I am always a woman and I am always feminine.
The chapter I read today talked about some of the weaknesses of women, things we tend to do. She frames them as our strengths and our attributes gone bad and says that men's weaknesses are often the same thing. She talks about a tendency to be passive aggressive, to send silent, subtle barbs at other women to hurt them. She talks about her own tendency to end over backward to please someone, about women's emotional sensitivity to others and how we need to be needed, and why that's a bad thing. She talked about the tendency of women to not like other women, which is something that always bugs me so much. I always hear from girls that "I just don't like other girls" and I understand what they mean but it's so...awful to perpetuate a 'girl-hating culture.' (Another book I read Reviving Ophelia talked about our girl-hating culture). She talked about our tendency to classify things as feminine or girly and dismiss them, to think that more masculine things are better and cooler and thus to degrade women.
I feel like I could read this book over and over and continue learning from it. I read the first couple chapters last year and loved it, but when I started it over this year, they were just as good. I want other women, other girls, to read this book. I want them to know and understand what she talks about.
I love Ruby Slippers. You should read it. I will seriously buy it for you. Email me, Facebook message me. It is the best ever.
Vaya con Dios.
I've been reading it slowly over the past couple weeks and I still have one chapter left, but I'm so distracted by her ideas ad I want other people to know what she says because she talks about a lot of things that I think are important.
I tried to start writing to talk about the book, about what she says. But I was 1 giant paragraph in and had barely started talking about what's important in he first chapter. But the book is seriously seriously awesome. her chapters can be long, but they're all so so good. She's talking about femininity, how it's been used to force women into a specific 'gender role' and used to constrain who we think we 'ought' to be. She talks about what femininity should be, how God designed it and how God designed women to bear His image. As a woman, I bear God's image just as much as a man does. I bear God's image in my soul, in the attributes and characteristics that I share with Him, attributes and characteristics that are different that the attributes and characteristics of men.
She talks about six broad, general traits of being a woman, six things that most women have. They're not things that are necessary to e feminine or to be a woman, but they're general 'family characteristics,' is what I think she calls them. She says that no women is ever ore or less feminine. Whether I'm sitting on my couch in a tank to and basketball shorts (as I am now) or dressed up for prom - I am always a woman and I am always feminine.
The chapter I read today talked about some of the weaknesses of women, things we tend to do. She frames them as our strengths and our attributes gone bad and says that men's weaknesses are often the same thing. She talks about a tendency to be passive aggressive, to send silent, subtle barbs at other women to hurt them. She talks about her own tendency to end over backward to please someone, about women's emotional sensitivity to others and how we need to be needed, and why that's a bad thing. She talked about the tendency of women to not like other women, which is something that always bugs me so much. I always hear from girls that "I just don't like other girls" and I understand what they mean but it's so...awful to perpetuate a 'girl-hating culture.' (Another book I read Reviving Ophelia talked about our girl-hating culture). She talked about our tendency to classify things as feminine or girly and dismiss them, to think that more masculine things are better and cooler and thus to degrade women.
I feel like I could read this book over and over and continue learning from it. I read the first couple chapters last year and loved it, but when I started it over this year, they were just as good. I want other women, other girls, to read this book. I want them to know and understand what she talks about.
I love Ruby Slippers. You should read it. I will seriously buy it for you. Email me, Facebook message me. It is the best ever.
Vaya con Dios.
Friday, October 8, 2010
You know what, I would save the receptionist. Just wanted to clear that up.
I love the Office. It is my favorite show, maybe close to rivaling Gilmore Girls in sheer awesomeness. Not quite, but definitely close. A lot of the reason I like it is because of Jim. John Krasinski is definitely not bad looking and the character of Jim is so awesome.
For the Women's Care Ministry I'm a part of this year, we're leading a book study on Captivating. The primary thing the author talks about is the three deep, soul level desires of all women, which are to be romanced, to be an irreplaceable part of a great adventure, and to unveil beauty. I've only read the first chapter so far and I don't remember the rest of what she says, but these things definitely fit me. I think my love of the Office and of Jim relates to these desires. I want to be Pam, to have a guy totally in love with me, who doesn't give up for years, who proposes in a gas station in the middle of pouring rain. Maybe not those exact things...but I love Pam and Jim's story. Jim's super funny and awesome and funny and...I'm not good with adjectives.
In Captivating, Stasi Elderedge talks about a woman's desire to be romanced, to be pursued by a man and to be his priority. She talks about getting flowers and love letters from the guy she ended up marrying and I'm like...that's so cute. I want that too. But at the same time, I feel like I shouldn't talk about wanting this. I'm almost embarrassed to be writing this right now, like it's too personal. There's a song by Bethany Dillon called Beautiful and in it she says that she wants to be beautiful, to make someone to stand in awe, to be amazed by her inner and outer beauty. I posted the lyrics on my MySpace once, a couple years ago and felt almost embarrassed that I agreed with her then. They're...too deep, too close to my heart.
To admit that I want to, I yearn to, be romanced and pursued is...it feels girly and weak and desperate. I can and do live and get along without a man in my life; I'm a whole, complete person by myself. I don't live and wait for the time when there is someone pursuing me...but it's still something I want. It's why I wish Jim was real.
Vaya con Dios.
For the Women's Care Ministry I'm a part of this year, we're leading a book study on Captivating. The primary thing the author talks about is the three deep, soul level desires of all women, which are to be romanced, to be an irreplaceable part of a great adventure, and to unveil beauty. I've only read the first chapter so far and I don't remember the rest of what she says, but these things definitely fit me. I think my love of the Office and of Jim relates to these desires. I want to be Pam, to have a guy totally in love with me, who doesn't give up for years, who proposes in a gas station in the middle of pouring rain. Maybe not those exact things...but I love Pam and Jim's story. Jim's super funny and awesome and funny and...I'm not good with adjectives.
In Captivating, Stasi Elderedge talks about a woman's desire to be romanced, to be pursued by a man and to be his priority. She talks about getting flowers and love letters from the guy she ended up marrying and I'm like...that's so cute. I want that too. But at the same time, I feel like I shouldn't talk about wanting this. I'm almost embarrassed to be writing this right now, like it's too personal. There's a song by Bethany Dillon called Beautiful and in it she says that she wants to be beautiful, to make someone to stand in awe, to be amazed by her inner and outer beauty. I posted the lyrics on my MySpace once, a couple years ago and felt almost embarrassed that I agreed with her then. They're...too deep, too close to my heart.
To admit that I want to, I yearn to, be romanced and pursued is...it feels girly and weak and desperate. I can and do live and get along without a man in my life; I'm a whole, complete person by myself. I don't live and wait for the time when there is someone pursuing me...but it's still something I want. It's why I wish Jim was real.
Vaya con Dios.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Bittersweet
I hate my youth ministry class. Hate it hate it hate it. Also, I really love it. The content is awesome, the reading is really interesting, and the professor is great. However...it makes me sad every week after class. I miss my Horizons students so much after talking about ministry and about teenagers for 2 hours. I spent my whole walk back to my apartment tonight trying not to cry. We talked about mentoring today in class, what a mentor is and isn't, how to set-up a mentoring relationship, and other stuff. I wanted to have a youth group to use the stuff I'm learning. I want to be a volunteer with a youth group. Well, actually, I want to be a volunteer with Horizon's youth group. When my professor was talking about how to choose students to mentor, I had a good list of girls in jr high and high school that I'd love to mentor, that I think are 'ready,' that would benefit from it. But it's all focused on personal contact and meeting regularly and...stuff I can't do from 300 miles away. I miss the junior highers. I miss the high schoolers too.
Sometimes I hate even being at Biola. I know it's where I'm supposed to be and I love my friends and I'm learning so much in and out of my classes...but I want to be home. If last semester was my hardest semester (which it definitely was), this is the semester I want to be here the least. I've wanted to be home so much, to be able to talk to students (not kids) and to be a real part of Horizons, not just some random girl who shows up every month or so. I want to build deeper relationships with students and it's harder over email. People forget to reply or just don't reply and continually trying to talk feels like I'm harassing them.
I miss Becky and Tiffany and my sister. I feel like I'm having a little pity party for myself here. I guess I basically am. I wish I could be two people. Or that my life and my heart weren't split in half, between here and there. I wish I wasn't stuck in a place I don't want to be. But...then it's not about me, is it? As selfish as I am and as much as I would love to just quit school and do what I want, I know God wants me here. I know that I'm going to do social work. Missions was always my idea; social work appeared out of the blue when I was looking for a missions-related job. I hope I get to stay in Peoria; I hope I get to be more involved with Horizons when I graduate (which is only 8 months away!). But God's plans aren't the same as mine; my life is going to be different than how I imagine. I'm working on being open to God's will, to seeking that even when I'm depressed and just wanting to be home. If you pray for me, pray for that. If you want me to pray for you, let me know and I will. Every day. I'm not even lying. If you're from Horizons and you read this, I miss you.
Vaya con Dios.
Sometimes I hate even being at Biola. I know it's where I'm supposed to be and I love my friends and I'm learning so much in and out of my classes...but I want to be home. If last semester was my hardest semester (which it definitely was), this is the semester I want to be here the least. I've wanted to be home so much, to be able to talk to students (not kids) and to be a real part of Horizons, not just some random girl who shows up every month or so. I want to build deeper relationships with students and it's harder over email. People forget to reply or just don't reply and continually trying to talk feels like I'm harassing them.
I miss Becky and Tiffany and my sister. I feel like I'm having a little pity party for myself here. I guess I basically am. I wish I could be two people. Or that my life and my heart weren't split in half, between here and there. I wish I wasn't stuck in a place I don't want to be. But...then it's not about me, is it? As selfish as I am and as much as I would love to just quit school and do what I want, I know God wants me here. I know that I'm going to do social work. Missions was always my idea; social work appeared out of the blue when I was looking for a missions-related job. I hope I get to stay in Peoria; I hope I get to be more involved with Horizons when I graduate (which is only 8 months away!). But God's plans aren't the same as mine; my life is going to be different than how I imagine. I'm working on being open to God's will, to seeking that even when I'm depressed and just wanting to be home. If you pray for me, pray for that. If you want me to pray for you, let me know and I will. Every day. I'm not even lying. If you're from Horizons and you read this, I miss you.
Vaya con Dios.
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