Being friends with a boy can make you an alcoholic

Read here:

http://health.msn.com/health-topics/addiction/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100184658&gt1=10710

birthday

I wish I had the words to tell you how blessed I feel today. All I can do is smile, cry, and say Thank You.

Worth it...

Eight and a half years ago, I moved to Cleveland, Within two and a half months, I had met six of the seven people who became the most influential part of my time at Lee. At the beginning of the second semester, I met #7.

If I were to write down every memory that involved these people, I would not have the pages or the words. I believe, with all of my heart, that God divinely orchestrated all of us meeting each other, for both a time and season, as well as forever. That sounds really corny, but I don't care. For my graduation (I was first), I wanted all of us to get together, dressed up, and take a good picture. (See, I'm not as materialistic as you might think.) We had a fight while taking the picture, but it still turned out pretty good. Of the original eight, five are now married, and one has two kids.

I forgot how good it was to be around my friends, and how much I missed them. This weekend, Adam married Ashlee. It was a beautiful wedding that only reminded me that I want a wedding, not some "I do's" in front of a random minister on a Tuesday. I want a real, full-scale, hopefully-not-breaking-the-bank kind of wedding.

And I want all of my friends there too.

Pictures from this weekend (post to follow soon!)

TYGFTHT

Thank you God for the hard times.
Thank you for making me incapable of seeing what is in front of me.
Thank you for not always giving me what I ask for when I want it because You know I won't know exactly what to do with it.
Thank you for making things difficult so that I see that Your Grace really is sufficient.
Thank you for not answering all those tearful requests to let this boy and that boy be "The Boy".
Thank you for closing doors when I have no strength of my own to close them.
Thank you for not responding to my frustration and foolishness so that I can hear you in the quietness.
Thank you for making me wait.
Thank you for making patience a virtue, and a good thing.
Thank you for rough patches that cause me to grow.
Thank you for "sandpaper friends" who are divine instruments to rub away things that are displeasing in your sight.
Thank you for the thousands of words that articulate pain and suffering.
Thank you for tears that wash away those words I can't articulate.
Thank you for uncomfortable situations that make me lean on You.
Thank you for waking me in the night to show me that worrying is futile and that I must talk to You.
Thank you for the burdens.
Thank you for wrestling with me in the night.
Thank you for loving me enough that you fight for me.
Thank you for loving me more than I can comprehend that you sent your son to die for me.
Thank you for being so incomprehensible.

I know that few of us really sit down and thank God for the hard times, but we have to. And in retrospect, I am always thankful for those hard times, whatever they may be, because I see how God uses those situations to shape and mold me into who He wants me to be.

"He's still working on me... to make me what I ought to be. It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the earth, Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient He must be! 'Cause He's still workin' on me."

Challenge 2!

Last year... I just adored Sunburned's 2006 CD! She sent me a copy in January or February, and it's so good! And ... it has left me thinking about every song I hear this year... so that I can compile my own 2007 Soundtrack of my Life.

My soundtrack is all over the place, musically speaking, but that should come as no surprise.

(I was surprised that either noone read my last blog, or y'all thought I was too fragile or crazy for comments.)

But... irregardless, I've had a blast compiling songs that describe my roller coaster year.

One of my favs this year is Over You, by Daughtry.
Here's a nibble of the chorus:
"Well I never saw it coming
I should have started running
A long, long time agooo!
And I never thought I’d doubt you
I’m better off without you
More than you, more than you know
I’m slowly getting closure
I guess it’s really over
I’m finally gettin’ better
Now I’m picking up the pieces
From spending all of these years
Putting my heart back together
‘Cause the day I thought I’d never get through
I got over you!!!

And of course, there are some old school tracks that describe my year with precision.

What would be on your soundtrack???

Uh oh.. here goes.

I haven't blogged in almost a week, and frankly the last things I blogged were passing info and crap.

I feel some shame/worthlessness in that.

I am happy to write that my brother has a new job that he will start the first of 2008. Yay JM.

There are other, very deeply personal notes that I could add to that, but alas, they are 1) deep and 2) personal, and don't belong on the blog. If you get my drift.

I am not in the Christmas spirit. I have something that has been wrestling in my spirit and I haven't done it yet and I don't know how to approach this, but I know that if I don't do it -- it's sheer disobedience, and I don't want to let it get that far.

That probably makes no sense.

But, I'm not in the Christmas spirit yet.

Although, A Charlie Brown Christmas comes on TV tonight and I really love that movie.

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Twenty years ago next Thursday, my own personal Nagasaki came down and shattered alot of the naivety that I knew.

And I have spent the last two decades of my life trying to figure out how in the HELL to make sense of it all.

That's what I spent my weekend thinking about.

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I did color my hair this weekend... and I love it!