Kind of a Tough Decision

I made kind of a tough decision recently, but one that will ultimately pay off for the better in the long run. I know many people were hoping to spend time with me this summer and maybe hang out a little bit more than this past year that I spent at Roberts Wesleyan, but, I sadly will not be returning to Avon this summer. I made the decision to work on campus this summer. I know, I know, I had a reliable job at the nursing home and have a wonderful family that misses me, but here's the deal, at the nursing home last year we were extremely understaffed in the department that I worked in, so I got a lot more hours than I should have. As of right now, the dietary department that I work in is fully staffed, which means that I would be lucky to get 6 hours a week. In the painting job that I have for the summer on campus, I will be working almost 40 hours a week. That's a LOT more. So, although I will have to buy all my own food, I will still be making many times over what I would prospectively make at the nursing home back in Avon, and hopefully make enough so my parents won't have to help me out at all in the financial department this coming school year.
I love you all back home and promise to come visit. <3

"Don't tell me what to do!"

"Don't tell me what to do!" I can't tell you how many times I hear college students say this phrase, and I'm sick and tired of hearing it. There are people out there who are wiser than you in certain areas, or maybe they have something to speak into your life that is worth you hearing and listening to. Maybe you need to be called out on a behavior or a continual sin that you do not realize is still in your life until someone "tells you what to do". But people don't listen, do they? They always think they're right.
When I think back on the Bible, anyone who was considered "wise" had advisors who, in a way, told them what to do. David was constantly looking to Nathan for help. Solomon had his advisors. God sent numerous prophets to the people of Israel to tell them what to do. For heaven's sake, Jesus TOLD people how to live their lives! If you don't want people telling you what to do, might as well stop living your life by the Bible.
Without people "telling you what to do" you ARE going to stop growing, and it is the people who aren't growing that God won't use.
I am sick of the world's "Don't tell me what to do!" attitude.

Where is Home?

Tonight is my last night home before heading back to school, and never before have I felt reluctance in wanting to go back. Sure, I'm ready to go back, hug my friends, get back into the routine of things, and get learning once again, but there has been a question running through my mind lately that is not lost. I feel as if my life is split between two worlds. My world of school and my world of home. Which one do I belong in? As much as I love school, and sometimes slip up and call it home, it will never truly be home to me. And yet, when I think of home, it's not the same any more. The best way that I can put it is in a combination of two songs. The first is Copeland's song "The Day I Lost My Voice" and the chorus describes how I feel when I have to pack and leave one of my two "homes":

I've got my life in a suitcase

I'm ready to run, run, run away...

I've got no time cause

I'm always ready to run, run, run away...

Cause everyday it feels like it's only a game

I've got my life in a suitcase, a suitcase, a suitcase...

That line, "I've got my life in a suitcase," has become all to real to me. It's become so easy to pack up all those meaningless things that we validate as our lives into suitcases (or in my case a navy bag) and move on. Especially easy for a college student who really does not have all that much in the first place.

The second song that really has hit me kind of speaks for itself. Jon Foreman's "Southbound Train":

I'm headed home

Yeah, but I'm not so sure

That home is a place

That will ever be the same...

Being in college for almost six months now has changed me immensely, and one of the ways that I'm realizing more and more that it has changed me is in the way that I view home. School is not my home, and, in many ways, my parent's home does not feel completely like home any more. Some how I have grown to feel like I have no Earthly home and time and time again I am realizing that my only true home is in heaven with my Father God. And with this realization, bad or not, I feel as if I will never have a true home on this Earth again. I long for home, but not one here, and is that necessarily a bad thing?

Poetry Anthology?

My senior year in high school, I took a creative writing class. One of the big assignments of this class was that at the end of the year we would make a booklet of our favourite poems and short stories with pictures. Today, as I was milling through my room at home, I came across a copy of my poetry anthology, named after Copeland's song "Good Morning Fire Eater". I think my favourite pare about this book was the cover:

It's an old French circus poster! I thought this one was so cool and I thought it worked with the eccentric qualities of many of the poems that I had written. So, as I was reading through the book, I thought it might be fun to share some of my favourites with you over the next few days. Tonight's is one where we were given a picture to write the poem about and a line that we had to use. This is the poem I came up with:

Coffee

Her world was a place of loneliness

Where the world would pass

By without a glance

She would stare into her coffee cup

And see the reflections of her soul

The black and cream would swirl together

Reminding her that she was alone

She would ponder life and love and happiness

None of which she had

The gathering darkness could be seen

Through the windows from where she sat

The bitterness that she felt

Was mimicked by the coffee

Burning her throat as it went down

The world passes by

Her world was a place of loneliness

The Fear of God

Lately I've been listening to the song "The Fear of God" by Showbread more and more. Every time it comes up on my iPod, I have to play it over again because of what it says. Every time that I hear the song, it completely wrecks me. It says:

Dear God, why should I think You're good in a world that's falling apart?
The flags and lies, picket signs raised high, the endless enveloping dark
Now here we sit, drifting further from You, two thousand years on their way out
Now here I am, as I've grown to know You, still haunted by my fears and my doubts
Just a man, just a vapor, just a waste of your space
All the good that I've done is in spite of myself
I'm not sure that I can look You in Your face when I finally set foot in Your kingdom
Dear God, what went wrong? We hate ourselves, we hate our brother
We so desperately want to find our way, and all You say is "love one another"
And little babies starve to death, emaciated, out of breath
Unfaithful wives make vows untrue, husbands beat them black and blue
Junkies vomit in the streets, writhing, twitching in their skin
Sell themselves to die some more, rotting from the outside in
Parents steal the innocence from their children, scared and shaking
Drink away the guilt at night, brings quiet to the endless aching
And evil men boast on TV, swimming in a sea of wealth
While misery beds honest men, and lonely people kill themselves
And everyone cries out Your name, as the world is raped by selfishness
And no one knows the way to heaven, we only know the emptiness
And the storm it rages in my heart, and the endless empty roars in my ears
My world is coming all apart, I've no strength left to dry my tears
And through it all I hear Your voice, breaking my heart, breaking my will
Calms the storm inside my soul as You whisper "peace, be still..."
You place Your hands around my heart, You quiet the emptiness in me
A king that kneels, a God made a servant, You set the captives free
You wait for me, a wretch of a man, no record of wrongs do You keep
You are comfort when I mourn, You are strength when I am weak
Jesus Christ, the king of kings
Though we ache, though we cry, never break, never die
We sing of His great love again and again
And His love reigns forever, and forevermore
Forever and ever, Amen


I feel as though this song is a wake up call. A call to come out of our comfort and our complacency and help those who are hurting around us. Those people that we never notice, never see, they need our help and this song reminds me of that. Sometimes we need something like this to remind us of what we're really here for.

A Night Out On The Town

Today I was hanging out with one of my friends and we decided that we wanted to do something together tonight, but weren't really sure what we wanted to do. So, we decided to ask another mutual friend of ours if he wanted to do anything with us, since he usually has some sort of sense of what's going on around Rochester. We decided that the three of us would hit up one of the coffee hot spots downtown and then head over to a show at RIT for a bit.
Around 9ish, we all met up and headed over to Java's for a bit. Java's is literally my favourite coffee shop in Rochester. Well, there might be a better one, but I haven't been to it yet if there is! The three of us hung out there for a while, talking and hanging out, laughing and just kind of having a blast until it was time to head over to RIT for the show.

Katie and I at the Lovin' Cup for Revision's show

The band Revision was playing at this little bar on RIT's campus called the Lovin' Cup. The band was pretty sweet, and the three of us were having a blast listening to music, jamming out in our own little way. There was a group of people up towards the front of the stage dancing like crazy, and obviously drunk, and we couldn't help but laugh at them. That was until one girl decided the single me out. I became her "project" for the night. She noticed that I really wasn't dancing, and neither was my friend Katie, so she came over and dragged the two of us up to the front to get us to dance, all the while Sen sat back and laughed. Now, I really don't dance, and when I try, I just end up looking stiff and awkward. This girl had obviously noticed this and was trying to make my dancing not quite as awkward. I found this to be hysterical. She kept grabbing my hips and trying to get me to sway them more, grabbing my arms and trying to get me to move them, grabbing my shoulders to get me to loosen up. She would yell into my ear, "When I went to my first concert, I barely danced! I used to be JUST LIKE you!" All I could think to myself was, "Just like me? You mean sober?" and I would laugh. She would go off and dance like a maniac, but if she looked over at me and noticed I wasn't dancing, she would come over to try and get me to dance more. Eventually, I got tired of it and headed back to stand with Sen in the back in hopes of escaping. This worked for me, but unluckily not for Katie. When she decided to come back and join Sen and I again, this girl came back and dragged her back up to the front. Luckily Katie wanted to dance more than I ever did and was a good sport about the whole thing. All in all though, this girl had us laughing pretty hard for most of the night.
Once the concert was over, Katie and I were sitting at a table together waiting for Sen who was talking to one of the guys in the band. As we were sitting there, the drummer from Revision came up and started talking to us. Now, I hate to say it, but long ago I discovered something about being a girl who goes to concerts. I discovered that if you get the chance to talk with either one of the merch guys or a band member, if you flirt a little bit, you can often get some sort of free-be. So, being slightly savvy on this, I admit, I flirted a little bit with the drummer while talking about the concert and such. The pay off for this? About half way through the conversation he stopped and said, "Hold on, lemme go grab you a cd." Score. He came back with the cd and Sen came over and joined us, and the four of us talked for a little bit. Needless to say, we're going to be trying to get these guys up to Roberts at some point for a show and we got a free cd out of it!
By this point it was close to 1:30 in the morning and we decided that it was about time to head back to school. So, we climbed back in the car and talked and laughed about all the fun and craziness that had gone down. And I still can't dance.

Graffitied Watertowers

I know, I know, it's been quite a while since my last post, but things have been quite crazy around here. Since we are nearing the end of the semester, I have projects to complete, papers to write, and exams to study for. It's all in the life of a college student, but you know what? I'm thankful for it all. I'm one of the few people who get to go to college to better their education. I have three hot meals a day and a warm room to stay in. And a great group of friends.
As I've mentioned before, I've been going to a small group on Sunday afternoons and I've become pretty good friends with a couple of the people in the group. Yesterday when we met, we all decided to go on a walk together. The house that we meet at every Sunday isn't too far from Highland park and the reservoir that's up there, so we headed up to take a stroll around the reservoir and check out the legal graffiti that is on these water towers up there. It turned out to be a crazy time hanging out with these people. All of us are quite artistic in some form (probably one of the reasons we all get along) so looking at the graffiti turned into quite an interesting experience. Since one of the girls in the group works in a photo studio, half of the walk turned into a photo shoot.

Me, Erica, Paul and Sen

The one who's actually climbing is Jon, who is a member of Push Physical Theater, hence the ability to climb the wall. The rest of us are wannabe's.

One thing I've learned about college is that somehow everything ends in snuggle/nap time. It's the natural way things go. Being all tuckered out after the walk, we all crashed on the couch. What you can't see is that I'm on the other side of this pile. Like I said, it's the natural course of things.

So, life's been good. I'm glad to be back at college after break, and I'm so glad that God's given me a wonderful (and crazy) group of friends to spend time with.