{the wind did it}

He was just sitting there, you know. Not really moving and I didn't think it was particularly my fault...I had just walked up on him. So I kinda just stood there and looked at him for a bit. Couldn't think of anything else to do. The clouds up in the sky were making weird shadows on the sidewalk, and it was kinda cold you know that fall cold that still has some sunshine but is basically deceiving because it is cold. I guess its the wind that does it. I don't mind too much because I love wearing jackets and sweaters and scarves and mittens...it kinda hides me to an extent, more than I could hide behind say one of those spaghetti strap tank tops. Don't get me wrong, I mean they're cute and all, but nothing you can pull up to your chin and pretend that you're hiding from everyone around you, you know. So I did that, pulled my green striped thrift store sweater up a little closer to my chin and decided that maybe he didn't like me staring so I decided to look up at the clouds. They were pretty, starting as these clumps of white, so dense they were almost grey. And then as the wind kept moving it [yes, it was the wind making it so cold, I'm sure of it] but as the wind kept moving it, it started to spread across and dissipate into the air until it disappeared entirely. As if it was promising to keep together to form some sort of shape in the sky that we little people down here could sit around and make guesses about, but then it laughs and disappears before anyone can say anything worth remembering. People are kinda like that. I don't know if I mean the not having time to say anything worthwhile or like the clouds. But people are like that. I'm not much of a cynic, but sometimes I just know these things. Its like a gut feeling but then I'm never sure what my gut feeling is about until after it happens which of course makes it pretty useless. Lots of things would be pretty neat if we knew what we were supposed to do with them beforehand. Kinda like with this guy...maybe running into him was some great opportunity to be compassionate or something like that but right now I was just staring, and not even at him anymore but at the clouds. So I looked back at him and realized that his gaze was still looking straight ahead, just like when I first happened across him in the allyway shortcut home from the grocery store. I had just bought some flour to make cookies for my little brother's birthday party, I didn't really want to but sometimes moms just give you that look and you know you'd better just get your butt out the door and buy the flour, which is why I didn't have any money left. Just a few pennies and I think giving him pennies would have been more of an insult. So if I had known, I woulda grabbed a few extra dollars, but here was my gut instincts failing me again. He still didn't change what way he was looking. I looked a bit closer and his body wasn't actually moving at all. He was stiff, kinda like a woman stuck in one of those bodices they used to wear way back when, except not breathing. So I pulled out my cell phone and called the police to let them know a dead man was sitting in the alleyway. Well not really sitting, but I didn't actually know what else to call it. I guess he was kinda propped up or something. He must have died from the cold, even though it was sunny. I think it was the wind that did it.

Prince Charming is an Alien

[revised after a conversation with Hilary Grunder who helped me figure this out a bit more]

Yes, that is what I said. Prince Charming is an alien. But before you think I am a chronic cynic, please let me explain.

In today's "someday my prince will come" culture, the idea placed in the heads of many young girls is that someday that perfect man will come and rescue them from their troubles. For years, many of us have lived lives of struggle where our value and worth are often called into question and we hide and change ourselves to simply survive. We live day by day hoping that someday everything will be different and this struggle will soon be over. That one day, we will be rescued from all of this.

That doesn't sound so bad...right? And so often our expectation is that a man will come and, just like in Cinderella, take us away from our evil stepmothers and finally show us what it is like to be loved and valued and we can live happily ever after. But when Prince Charming also has struggles...suddenly we feel un-rescued. And suddenly, everything seems the same and we are right back in the same situation we were before. So this idea of Prince Charming coming to rescue us leaves no room for him to be human. How completely unfair to the wonderful men who come into our lives! Which is why I think Prince Charming must be an alien. Now if that works for Cinderella, great. I personally say, no thank you.

I would much rather be in love with a man. A man who is human and will struggle, but a man who I can also stand beside as we seek to find the answers to our struggles in God. For that is the only person who can actually rescue us, both women and men. The only one who can come and take away our problems entirely and be completely steadfast and perfect for us to rely forever in the future is Jesus Christ. Our culture, subtly, tells us to place our hopes of salvation upon a romance and a Prince coming to rescue us. In one very beautiful way, romance is picture of salvation and men are, I think, a type of Christ figure to help us to understand the way that Christ loves us. But place the responsibility of salvation upon their shoulders is entirely unfair and only destructive to both sides. So first and foremost, we must hold onto Christ, the first lover of our souls and our only true Savior.

And yet, God did in fact give us romance for a reason. I seems that there is something inherent to romance that helps a person learn to love and be loved, and in some real sense men do rescue women. They show us what it is like to be loved in a tangible way, to have a friend to come alongside as we struggle not to fix it all but to help us seek the one who can fix it, to understand our value, and many many other things. They can be and are our heroes [I have personally experienced more healing and restoration because of the wonderful man God has placed in my life right now, than I have in a very very long time].

But all that to say...Prince Charming is an alien. Sorry Cinderella. It makes a great story though...I still think there is something beautiful about fairy tale romances, and we can actually learn a great deal from them, but they are not real, that is all.

{also, this song i think perfectly exemplifies what I am talking about. Not at all to bash on Taylor Swift, I actually love her music and I actually really like this song and think there actually quite a few good things to be gleaned from it, but it is also a very good reminder of how our culture is conditioning girls to look at men and I think it is very harmful to both genders...so listen to it if you like and see what I mean}




Also, another song that addresses the need to find the Lord as our Salvation. I'm not sure if they are Christian...but the song certainly can speak to this topic.

Show Me What Im Looking For - Carolina Liar

Since Now Is the Perfect Time to Prove This Point

The desert of Southern California gets its water from two places: Colorado and Northern California

Northern California sends water to Southern California down the California Aquaduct[see picture]

Up here, we are rationing water.

As in, we turn off the water between the beginning and end of our showers..otherwise, if we use too much, we get huge fines.

I am sure that if I went to Biola they would still be watering the sidewalks.

That is all I have to say.

Reading List and Summer Projects

So this summer I am attempting to read a number of books ... and once I get the reading list for the Trinity Meta-Torrey I shall be adding those into the top priority places. I plan to write on some of them [maybe all?? but that is too ambitious to set as a goal...i'll only frustrate myself!] So here is what I am reading:

Currently - Till We Have Faces ~ C.S. Lewis [such an amazing book...still not sure all that he is doing with it, want to read it again once i know the ending. But if you have not read this book -- READ IT!]

Future books:

At the Back of the North Wind ~ George MacDonald

Lilith ~ George MacDonald

Life of Moses ~ Gregory of Nyssa

The Problem of Pain ~ C.S. Lewis

Miracles ~ C.S. Lewis

The Holy Spirit: Eastern Christian Traditions ~ Dr. Stanley Burgess

The Holy Spirit: Ancient Christian Traditions ~ Dr. Stanley Burgess

Then some poetry by Eliot and MacDonald

So we shall see how that goes. I also have a number of projects going on this summer. With blogging I am wanting to finish up the series on Faith and the Faithfulness of God [for those of you following, this has a good ending, I promise] and also start a series called When Science Has No Answer that will be a series of documented miracles from our church for the purpose of archiving them and also having them to look back on and see God's faithfulness to help inspire my trust in Him for the future. I posted one a long time back about my sister's healing.

As for other projects, I am helping to lead a college group this summer so that is exciting. The focus is going to be service projects and ministry to the poor as we read and apply the book of Acts. I am really excited about some of the ideas that the group is coming up with...this is going to be a great summer in that respect!

Also *hopefully* making a music video for a local band called Signed by You. Their song Popular Demand is quite interesting and I look forward to collaborating with them to make this project. Its just that age old problem of time and money. meh.

Other than that I am working at Tuesday Morning still, taking a math class online, and trying to reconnect with family and friends.

And James is coming to visit in 16 days!!! Wooooooo!!!!! [not a project, but i'm still excited :) ]

Overall a lovely summer. Yes, a lovely summer indeed.

Faith Part II - The Problem of Job

~Behold, all that he has is in your hand~ Job 2:3

So I had fallen off the monkey bars [read post below for context]. Here was my problem…Job. I have never been so emotionally struck reading a book before. I cried and cried while reading the book [at this point I want to thank Katelynn Camp for her kindness in letting me cry on her futon]. I was at a breaking point when I opened up that book. My mom’s cancer was at a critical point excruciating pain forever in her voice over the phone, my sister had been talking to me just a few days ago, locked in her room with a 103 degree fever, shaking and crying because she was so afraid she would get my mom sick and that she would die. My Dad was overworked, trying to hold 2-3 jobs at a time just to pull my family through. I had finally begun to address personal issues in my life, and I was overwhelmed, convicted, condemned and afraid. I wanted things to settle down, but my family’s track record was not in favor of such. How did I know if once we got through this major illness, another one would not follow closely after its heels as it so often did? What the heck was God doing? Didn’t he see how my parents had sacrificed everything to serve him? How could he let a child so young as my little sister was suffer through such horrible pain and social stigma?

And then came Job…with his gut-wrenching questions of God. If I was feeling like I was suffering, how great the pain and sorrow of this dear man of God must have been. To have lost so much, so quickly. Where was the sin that he had committed? Job knew he was blameless before God, a man of righteousness, he had not horrendous sin to atone for [not to say he was perfect…but he was not hiding idols in his tent or some other gaping-hole-in-the-earth-swallows-man-and-family type of sin]. And his friends ramble and rant. And God stays silent.

The crucial problem that I have with this book lies in chapters 1-2. In the beginning of the book, as you all know, God and Satan talk. The conversation goes like this [abridged from ESV]: The Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth…” “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away evil?” “Does Job fear God for no reason?...You have blessed the work of his hands…but stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” “Behold, all that he has is in your hand.”

Okay, so correct me if I was wrong, but it seemed like God was almost taunting Satan with Job. Why does He even bring Job up at all? To show off about how great some of his followers are? And if perhaps I am going too far here…in 2:3 God admits that Satan “incited me against [Job]. Why does Satan have this sort of ability? Should God, the almighty God, be able to be incited by Satan? What is God up to? It feels as if Milton is right that God is just using humanity to get one up on Satan. God could not possibly be so petty. And also, for those of you who have always heard [as I have] that Satan was the one who caused the suffering but God simply stood by and allowed it to happen…nay. In 42:11 the scripture says [and this is the narration not a person speaking…since many times in this book people say things that are quite faulty] “[they] comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him”. The context of this verse is at the very end, after Job has repented and given sacrifices to atone for his sinful friends and the Lord is restoring Job’s fortunes. So in the context of this seemingly resolved situation, God is given full, active responsibility for this suffering and evil. It sets up God as the giver of evil. Not Satan. And I had…and honestly still have…no idea what to do with this.

How do I trust a God who does this sort of thing? Who seems to allow so much suffering in my own life and in the lives of my dear friends. And my faith was shaken. For I had not ever truly believed and had firm foundation that God was good. I had been taught as much…but when it came to it, I don’t think I believed it. Or else, would I have been so shaken. And these questions seemed insurmountable. And God’s answer was only “I am God, you are man” and a rebuke for seeking to understand the ways of God. How could this be enough for Job? Who only chapters before [9-10] had complained that it is impossible to bring a suit before God, for who could judge God and tell Him he was unjust or unfair. The account would forever go unanswered, because he is so much more powerful than we. So if God was unjust, who could stop Him? Perhaps the best way to avoid suffering was to follow the Greeks and try to be just pious enough to avoid disdain or pleasure. Then at least God would leave you alone and not boast about you to Satan and then have your children all killed and land destroyed. When considered in human reasoning, this seems the best course of action.

But then, I knew that was wrong. So what was I supposed to do? How was I to trust God? I felt lost and turbulent and so lost not having the foundation of faith that I had always clung to in the past….

New Perspective on Faith - Part I

~Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.~ Hebrews 11:1

This past semester has been trying to say the least. I have been truly tested in my faith in God. I used to think that I trusted in God...until I realized I didn't. Have you ever had one of those moments when you were certain you could do something, knew how to handle it perfectly [or at least sufficiently] only to realize that you couldn't do so at all? It's one of those moments like when you were in Kindergarten and the 3rd graders were all going across the monkey bars and you know for a fact you can do it too. So you climb the ladder and reach your tiny hand to grab ahold of the first bar. You grip tightly. Confidence rises...you know that you can do it. You swing forward onto your next hand, you've got this. Another hand and it keeps going...but suddenly your strength begins to fail. Your fingers slip. Stubbornly you try to grip tighter, but it's too late. You feel sick as the bar begins to slip away. Your feet kick, as if they can help to push you back up. But no use. Finger by finger you slip. Shame washes over you before your last finger even slips from the bar. Your eyes are hot with unshed tears. And then the fall. Hardly noticeable. The pain from the fall is nothing compared to the overwhelming shame and guilt. Then you run. Run from the embarrassment. Run to save face as best you can. Run to feel your shame alone.

That is what it feels like to realize that you do not really have the faith in God that you think you do. I realized that this semester [more of this story to follow, but this is just my intro to a series of posts I want to publish on Faith], but the wonderful thing about falling off the monkey bars is that you have the chance to get back on them. You have the chance to actually learn how to climb across. For as long as that child thought she knew how to cross, she would never learn. But as soon as we fail, we finally get the chance to learn to do something right. So, as long as I thought I was trusting God when really I wasn't, I would never actually be able to trust him. But in failing, I was able to learn the hard process of building trust in God. And I pray that as I post what I have learned about Faith, perhaps it may help others as well.

Directing Project 1

This is my first directing project from this first semester. My roommate Stephanie and I actually did this to each other...haha. It's been fun :) The girl who shows up first is supposed to be Stephanie and the second girl is supposed to be me [as far as story goes...for anyone who was wondering]. Otherwise, it is just a fun short film. Enjoy!



PS. My apologies, I cannot make the widescreen format fit the blog window...i'll work on that one eventually.