Random Update #2

The creativity in me is coming out... I am going to try to update you in 10 word sentences.  Exactly.  It's a creative challenge for me, and pragmatically keeps this update short (and maybe somewhat amusing as I try to summarize my life).  I'll put them under categories so that you know what I'm talking about:

ENTERTAINMENT/RANDOM:

- GLEE IS BACK and my life is now complete again. 

- Singing in the shower is problematic with other girls around. 

- Rain, rain, stay here today, I love when it's cloudyandgrey. (It didn't rhyme if I didn't cheat!...)

- I have a new painting that's (almost) done (pictures soon)!

- I love seeing my Daddy lots, because I love him.  :)

- Broncos are slightly disappointing, but they'll always be my team.  :)

CLASSES:

- Biology tests really freak me out... and there's one tomorrow.  

- Said Biology test means I should study instead of this.

- Shoutout to Chumley - I think I rocked my Lit Midterm.

- Sensai: She's a tough girl, hit her harder! Me: *smile/cringe

- Breaking a board with my hand is still VERY intimidating. 

- Sociology equals moody, depressed, fired up; Sociology equals restless Katherine. 

- Spanish test today should've been easy, think i did decently.

LIFE

- Feeling foolish - forgetting God doesn't gently ease me into things.

- Contemplating official church membership because I think I need it.

- I love me some nutella pretty much every single day.

- Not working out much as I should, having fun instead.

- Want a job coaching again, because I love it lots!

- Needing a little kid fix, I miss all my munchkins!! 

- Food is decent, I love mexican and grilled cheese.

- Wishing football and church didn't interfere, makes my life hard.

- Thinking it's weird that you people read and enjoy this! 

That's pretty much all I can think of at this point.  Much love to you all! I love phone calls if you're ever feeling bored.  :)

One Word Changes Everything

"God loves us through the good times and the bad."

How many times have we said that, or heard that?  Having grown up in a church, I've heard that statement, or some derivative of that statement a thousand times.  Think about that statement for just a second.  What exactly does that mean?  Until a few days ago, I thought it meant probably what most other people think it means - that even when things get hard or messy, and even when our imperfections come out, God still loves us.  It's a pretty astounding realization, no matter how many times you hear it; that a perfect and perfectly holy God could still want to be a part of our utterly unholy lives.  Kinda cool, no?  The God who made the entire universe loves me - not just me as a number, but ME.  Amazing.  And it would still be so cool if it just stopped there.

But it doesn't.  Think about that statement again.  "God loves us through the good times and the bad."  Normally, when we think about this statement, we think about the "through" part as being passive.  But this is not a passive God I'm talking about.  This is not a God who sits back and just watches, this is not the god of Deism, this is not a God who is comfortable just observing the universe as a trivial chess game full of expendable pieces while he sits back in his comfy cloud-lay-z-boy recliner in his great grecian robes with the corinthian columns supporting his great house behind the pearly gates.  No, this is an active God, a God who directly and deliberately intervenes in our lives.  And so what does that mean for a God who "loves us through the good and the bad"?  It means that "through", that crazy word we throw in the middle of that statement, is active.  God doesn't just sit back and Love us while we heal ourselves through the grief and agony of our friends dying, or through the trials of a divorce, or through the challenges of financial troubles.  No, this is a God whose Love is what pushes us through the bad times.  This is a God who actively Loves us and transforms our hearts, whose Love is that thing that turns "through" from a word that means while, or during, to a word that means that His Love is the one constant in a world of chaos. And isn't it amazing?  God, a Holy God, could Hate us through the good and bad, or Shame us through the good and bad, or Anger us through, or Force us through, or any other number of things that would be completely justifiable (because He is, after all, God).  But no, He chooses to Love us through.  Love.

Now read that statement again:  "God loves us through the good times and the bad."

Amazing!

Shuttle Reflections on 7-year-olds

So I took the shuttle today from campus to Tenleytown (for those of you who aren't aware/familiar with DC, my campus is located about 3/4 of a mile from a metro stop (the Tenleytown stop), and, since I'm paying out the ass for my education here, the school was nice enough to provide regular, free shuttles to and from Tenleytown. Hurray!) to go to CVS and run some other errands.  It was a quick, easy trip, and fairly uneventful.

When I got on the shuttle, the only seats available were in the back, so I headed back there and sat down, only to realize that the seats along the back are a tad bit higher than the other seats in the bus, and that they seem to lean back just a bit...  Which was fine, I just scooted myself back a little and sat back to relax for the ride, and make a list of everything I needed so I didn't forget anything.... only to realize that my feet didn't touch the floor!  Which was awkward at first, but then fun.  And of course, being the thinker I am, I spent the ride contemplating this odd situation rather than making a list... Here's what I discovered: That when your feet don't touch the floor, it's awkward because this is an experience you haven't had since you were about 7.  Which made me giggle a little bit to myself.  For the last year I've been acting, thinking, and speaking like an adult - partly just because I am actually growing up (crazy thought), and partly because most of the people I work with are crazy and immature, and somebody had to be mature enough to say "hey, you, stop flirting with your boyfriend and watch that little boy whose about to drown, I don't care that you're in love with him, save the small child!" and other things of that nature, so I had to turn off the adolescent part of my brain and turn on the adult part.  And once I got here I discovered that it was harder than I thought to turn OFF the adult part of my brain once it was on... I had a hard time switching mindsets back to a normal 19-year-old college student. (I did, after about two weeks, make the transition and it's been fine.) And here I was, sitting on the bus and feeling a little kid.  And watching the other girl who was sitting next to me with her feet swinging as the bus bounced and stopped suddenly and turned sharply, trying so very hard to cover up the fact that she felt really awkward with her feet swinging like a game of Jello in the mountains too.  And I smiled.

Oh, and discovery number two: it's also very hard to cross your legs when your feet aren't touching the floor... which I'm pretty sure is the reason the guy across from me was laughing.  Moral of the story: oddly high bus seats make everyone's day a bit brighter.  ;)

My Superpower

I'm the strongest person in the world.


I've now been through 4 classes of Sociology, and in case you didn't read my last post, it's my favorite class!  But it's also very very challenging, and I find myself asking some daunting and very very hard questions during class.  I wanted to share some of them with you:

1. Newspapers over the last decade have dropped from a 10th grade reading level to a 3rd grade reading level.  Why is our society continually lowering the bar to the lowest common denominator, rather than raising the bar and asking people to meet a standard?  How do we fix this problem?  No Child Left Behind is a perfect example of a government-sponsored act involving this phenomenon... How do we reverse this thinking?  
2. Economically, Capitalism MUST grow or it dies.  Stability is not an option in Capitalism, only growth.  But... is there a limit?  What happens when we reach that limit?  How can we preemptively stop this from happening?
3. Because America is, in fact, one of the few (partly because of it's unique emancipation) former colonies that has achieved a developed state and economic power by following a western modernization model, how does this affect our worldviews, and more specifically our charity views?  
4. How should/can we interact in a completely globalized system WITHOUT increasing the gap between rich and poor?  Is there a good model from history, or do we need to develop a new world model?  How does corruption affect/play into the global economic system?
5. What's the best model for charity?  How does one suggest you should go about helping other undeveloped countries without damaging their political, social, and economic structures?  Has this ever been successfully and practically implemented?

These are just a few of the biggest and most daunting questions I've come across in just 4 days of class.  And although this is exactly the sort of thing I want to spend my life dealing with, from a classroom standpoint, it seems absolutely daunting.  And completely impossible.  I love this class - it's provocative, it's perfect for me, it's about questions and thinking and people and government and harmony.... And yet every time I go into that class thinking, hoping, questioning; during the class, it's a roller coaster that takes me from anger to apathy to compassion to humility to shame to pride to frustration to apathy again and ultimately to sheer confusion;  by the time I come out of the class, I have no idea what it is that I'm feeling other than extreme and consuming hurt.  And it makes me ask if it's worth it.  To let it hurt, to make me cry and want to hit people and scream and go live in a hole where I can just pretend that none of this exists...  Is it worth it?  

And then I remember the collage I'm working on, with one of my favorite quotes of all time.  It goes like this: 

"What is, therefore our task today? Shall I answer: "Faith, hope, and love"? That sounds beautiful. But I would say--courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth. Our task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature...we lack a holy rage--the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets, and when the lie rages across the face of the earth...a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God's earth, and the destruction of God's world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that restlessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until it conforms to the norms of the Kingdom of God. And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish...but never the chameleon." 

And then I remember the famous verse -- With God, ALL things are possible.  ALL things.  Not just the things that I see are possible, but literally anything.  I could be invisible if God chose to make me.  I could have any super power in the world.  But my prayer today is that God can give me the power of super-human strength.  My weakness becomes His strength, and in Him, my strength.  I pray that God will give me the strength to let it hurt more than anything in this world, that God will continually be my guide, my companion, my rock and my salvation, that God will fill me with His spirit, and that I can do whatever it is that God calls me to do with His strength.  I will not change the world.  I will not be famous, I will not win a Nobel Prize, or be on Oprah, or become a famous author, I will not become some icon of peace or world harmony.  But I will change lives.  And I will love people with all of my heart, and when I run out of my heart and my imperfect, limited love I will give them God's perfect and limitless love.  I will be the strongest person in the world.