It’s Not About Me.

People nowadays are always searching for an identity. Many people find their identities in things like their talents, maybe acting, singing, sports, writing. Others find it in what they do or their career, such as a mom, a pastor, a teacher, a lawyer, or whatever else. Some also find it in other people, their family, friends, boyfriend or girlfriend maybe. Everyone wants something that defines them, something that gives them worth. While talents, careers, and relationships are certainly aspects of who a person is, that is not all that they are. Who you are is so much more than that! Your worth doesn’t come from any one of these things. It doesn’t even really come from who you are. Rather, it comes from who God is.

I’m going to be honest here. This is something I really struggle with. I want to believe that what I do isn’t what matters, but let’s face it. The world tells us that what we do, say, look like, etc are what define us. And when that’s being poured into your head all the time, it’s hard to ignore it! So lately I’ve been trying to go to God’s word and see what He says my worth comes from.

God is a kind, loving, just, merciful, powerful, amazing God. He created the entire universe out of nothing. Can you imagine being that creative? I can’t! I can barely think of status updates, let alone an entire…everything! But of all the things He created, He formed us in HIS image. Woah. I am made in the image of my Savior. The God who controls the heavens and the earth. Now, don’t get me wrong, we are NOT gods. However, we are made to imitate God, and have a relationship with Him. So we are made in the image of our incredible God. And not only that, but this same God keeps us as “the apple of His eye!” How amazing is that?! Our God is jealous for us, passionate for us, madly in love with us. Wow.

The more I realize who God is, the less it matters who I am. I just want to be found in Him. I just want to imitate Him. My worth comes from being a precious, loved daughter of the King of Kings. If God treasures and values me, then shouldn’t my worth comes from that? That means so much more than any earthly praise. My friends are amazing and I love them, but when it comes down to it, being a jewel in the crown of the Lord is SO much more exciting. And yes, I love mock trial and my music, but really, being an adopted and predestined child of our God is worth so much more!

Until we switch our focus from who we are to who God is, we will never be truly satisfied with ourselves. I honestly believe that. Because we really aren’t worth it. We deserve nothing more than death. But because of GOD, we have been given a purpose, and a new life. He’s where our identity and value comes from.

Confession.

I have a confession to make.

I’m not ok.

I like to pretend I’m fine.

Put on a smile, so no one else is bothered.

But I’m not always ok.

I don’t have it all together. 

Somedays I just want to give up.

There are days I just feel alone.

A lot of times I just don’t know what to do.

So I make stupid mistakes.

And I hurt people I care about.

Then I beat myself up about it.

And I starting listening to lies.

Lies telling me that I’m not worth it.

I’m not enough.

No one likes me.

Why would they?

I’m just another stupid kid.

But I have another confession.

It’s ok not to be ok.

Yeah, I have my bad days, but so does everyone else.

I have more than my fair share of good days too.

Without the bad days, how would I learn to trust God?

If I was perfect, then I wouldn’t need a savior.

But I do need a savior.

And I have a Savior.

He is enough.

He is worth it.

He is the truth that sets me free. 

Maybe I’m just a kid, but with His help, I can do great things for Him.

 

So maybe I’m not always ok, but does it matter? No one is always ok. That’s why we need the love and forgiveness of an all powerful and merciful God. And the best part is, He gives it to us freely. 

Thoughts: Psalm 51:17

“My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, you, God, will not despise.” 
~Psalm 51:7

Before we can really understand this verse, let’s think about what the words actually mean. The dictionary defines the word “broken” means something that is reduced to fragments, ruptured, torn, or not in working condition. The word “contrite” is used to describe something filled with regret or remorse, and the desire for atonement. Just keep that in mind.

Psalm 34:18 tells us that the Lord is near to the broken hearted, saving those crushed in spirit. We also see throughout the Bible that he has an intense love for us. And when I say intense I MEAN it. He is passionate about us, and jealous for us, even to the point of sending His own son to die for us. That is crazy love. When I care about someone, I want to show them. I want them to know that I’m there for them, no matter what. One of the hardest things for me to see is someone I love in pain. I just want to comfort them and tell them that everything will be ok. I want them to give me the pieces of their fractured heart, trust me with their mistakes, and let me help them be healed. (Through God’s grace of course!)

That’s how God feels about us. When He sees us broken and full of remorse, He wants us to run to Him and full give Him our hearts and let Him heal us. He doesn’t despise our brokenness, rather, He sees it as a chance for His children to learn to trust Him, and rely on Him. That’s a beautiful thing to Him.

A Crazy Cat Lady Post.

So tonight I was taking care of my cat Poco. This includes brushing her, feeding her, and occasionally picking her up. As she was eating and I was brushing her, I suddenly thought of a really strange analogy. What if, (don’t take this the wrong way,) I was God, and Poco was me? (I warned you it was weird.) But the more I thought about it, the more I saw how it actually made sense! God takes care of me. He feeds me, He provides for me, He knows my every need and He takes care of it, even more than I know. That’s what I do for Poco. I take care of her, even when she doesn’t know it, and just make sure that everything she needs is taken care of before she even knows she needs it. Isn’t that what God does for us? He takes care of everything we need, before we even know the need exists. He took care of our need for a savior, while we were still sinners and didn’t even recognize our sin problem. He has everything planned out for us, so that even when we don’t know what’s coming next, we can know that God has it under control.

Another thing that we did for Poco was take her in.We adopted her from her owners, and brought her to our house, which was strange for her. She was really sick when we got her, but we took her anyway. As she’s been at our house, she’s gradually gotten better and better, until she’s almost completely healthy now. Same thing with God. He took us in while we were still spiritually sick, and made us His. While we’re still spiritually immature, He helped heal us, and grow us until we were spiritually mature and healthy. He adopted us as His sons and daughters. Isn’t that amazing? 🙂

Ok, so if you’ve met my cat, you’ll know she’s not the most friendly cat on the block. Whenever we pick her up, she’ll meow and whine and try to fight back against us until we put her down. What she doesn’t realize is that we’re picking her up for her own good! Sometimes we’re moving her out of the way of aggressive toddlers, or maybe putting her somewhere away from where the vacuum is so she’s not scared of her wits. (She is the definition of the word “scaredy cat.”) That’s exactly what happens with us and God. When we go through hard times, it’s our natural response to whine, complain, fight with God, ask Him to get us out of it. But what we don’t see is that He’s with us the entire time, carrying us through the hard times for our own good. We’re always in His arms, and we shouldn’t fight them! God knows what’s good for us, and we should trust that He will always take care of us.

So there’s my strange, crazy cat lady analogy post. I’m not really sure why I posted it. I just felt like I should. Kinda weird. Yup.

Humans > Animals.

This year in school I’m reading a lot of 20th century literature, and a common theme in a lot of the books is the devaluing of humans. Whether it’s by making robots greater than them, taking away names and identities, making sacred things trivial, making animals equal with them, I don’t care. I think it’s wrong. And I believe the reason that people are being de-humanized so much nowadays, is that God’s been taken out of the equation.

Now you might be thinking, “What does God have to do with that?” Good question. 🙂 Without God, there’s no creator. Without a creator, we weren’t made for a reason. Without a reason, we have no purpose. We’re just random chance. So why would humans be special? Why would we be set apart? Well, without God, we wouldn’t be. We would be equal with the animals. After all, we would have all just been random chance, and it doesn’t really matter what we do. When it doesn’t matter what we do, we just revert to our instincts and everything is meaningless. We simply exist. We live for pleasure. There’s no point to what we do. Some people decide to try and get ahead by making a lot of money. Some people go and party it up, have sex, drink beer, just live for fun. Some people don’t do anything at all. But if we’re really honest with ourselves, we’re going to find that there’s always going to be a desire for something more than that.

So what more is there? Well, when we believe that we do have a creator, everything changes. We have a purpose. We were formed for something. And what’s even more amazing, God made us in His image. I don’t think any of us can grasp how incredible that is! God is loving, just, perfect, and so much more, and we’re made in His image. That doesn’t mean that we’re perfect, but it does mean that we have a soul, and He’s made us to desire Him, be with Him, and become more like Him. That’s the difference between us and robots, animals, nature…anything else in God’s creation. We have a soul. We’ve been given God’s spirit. We are made to be with God. While the rest of creation is amazing, and we should praise God for it, it’s no where near as amazing as humans are. Psalm 139 says, “I praise YOU because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”  The word “fearfully” means something that inspires awe or praise. The word “wonderfully” means something unique and set apart. So that means that we were made to be set apart and inspire praise. But praise of what? The beginning of the verse answers that when it says, “I praise YOU.” So we are made specially to inspire awe of our creator, Jesus Christ.

 

Clint almost got into ze east voods! MOCK TRIAL 2012 :)

Mock trial this year was epic. Spectacular. Wonderful. Fantastic. Beautiful. Powerful. Stupendous. Amazing. Basically, it was beyond description. And  honestly, I don’t know why. I’m going to try to write about how great our teams were, the competition, the memories, the work, all that jazz…but to be honest, I don’t know if I can. It’s not something that can easily be put into words. It was just the atmosphere, the emotions of it, the people…something about it made it wonderful. But I’ll try my best to explain it. 🙂

A big part of why this year was so great was because BOTH of Marion’s teams made it to state. So instead of the awkwardness of last year, where we couldn’t really be genuinely happy about making it, when we heard the verdict this year, we immediately ALL started cheering, running around, hugging each other, crying a little…all that good stuff. I’m pretty sure I’m never going to forget the phrase, “Guess vat? Ve are going to STATE!” 🙂 It was just really cool to be able to have the experience of state with both teams. That meant more scrimmages together, more practices, more memories, and definitely better friendships with everyone on the other team.

Another reason that this year was so great was the case itself. Can you say COMPLICATED? There were so many things to figure out, that after we actually started working on the case (which took forever,) there was some new point or idea we found almost every week. At first it was frustrating because we had to re-write so much, but it definitely made this case different from last years, and made me think a lot more. (Thinking was last year’s thing though.) The trials that my team, (the Titanium Raccons!) were in were each really unique. Our first round at regionals was easy. The team we faced wasn’t very prepared. That ended up being really good, because it gave the newbies a safe place to start. The second team we faced at regionals was a little hard, but what stood out the most to me about them was how disrespectful they were to the judge. I mean, seriously. The judges had given up 6 hours of their Saturday to listen to high schoolers argue, can’t we give them a little respect for that?! That team bothered me. But they were good, in their own way. And we will certainly never forget our singing Quincy from that round. 🙂

And then there was state. WOOT!

So I guess I’ll talk about each of our trials there. The first round we were government, and it was so nerve-racking for me. Brianna and I (the witness I was directing,) had some trouble with our direct at regionals, s0 we’d recently re-written it, and I was SO nervous that she was gonna forget it. But guess what? SHE DIDN’T! Not even close. She did wonderfully, even getting a couple 10’s I think! The rest of that trial was kind of a blur to be honest. All I remember is having the John Avery Whittiker judge, and being really impressed with how everyone on our team stepped up their game.

Second round at state was HARD. We ended up going against the 2nd best team in Iowa, Urbandale. We held our own, and I’m so proud of my team for that. I had to cross this scary, half-gangster, Shean who didn’t answer any of my questions directly, so I’m pretty sure I got a little aggressive there. So much fun. Closing was hard because I didn’t have a lot of the facts I needed, (STUPID HEARSAY,) but it went ok. All of our witnesses did great, and our lawyers did pretty good too! I might go as far as to say that was our best trial, not because of how well we did individually, but because of the fact that the B team from MHSAP held their own against the number 2 team in the state.

Final round. Pretty much went awesome. We only lost 1.5 points for the whole trial, and Cole got to talk about Clint Eastwood. And he got nominated for best witness. And everyone was awesome. I love my team.

Then there were awards. The other team got 7th, and the good sportsmanship award. Cole and Sebastian got all-state witnesses, and Ryan got all-state attorney. That wasn’t really what stood out to me about the awards though. What stood out most to me was how I reacted, and how everyone else reacted. Yeah, we all wanted all-state nominations, but when someone on our team got them, we were genuinely happy for them. I mean, when Cole got his I started crying a little. It was so great. Marion finally did good!

But what I’m going to remember most about mock trial isn’t the awards or the trials. (Except for maybe Clint.) What I’ll remember most is the little stuff. Brushing my teeth with Brianna and Kaitlin, the Knave bandana trio, Cole’s freakouts about Keith Urban, Swat’s no-back voice, Tribbs finding out “Tiffany” had a boyfriend, Gabe making Allie cry with his cross, Phil’s therapist voice, Reagan…being Reagan, Alyssa pretending to be a secretary from the Disco Boarding Academy, Steven just being boss at everything, Sebastian’s fishfaces, and all the other moments and memories I have. Even listening to songs like Big Green Tractor and Smile remind me of mock trial. I miss it a lot. But I’m really looking forward to seeing how it goes next year! It’ll be weird having the seniors gone, but a lot of them are staying to coach. Who knows? Maybe next we’ll make it to finals? Robins is going to have to lose it’s reign of terror sometime, right? 🙂

My Journey With My Piano

I started piano lessons in first grade. A lady in my church taught me, and at first I was just like any other little kid playing piano, pretty mediocre. But I loved it. I still remember one of my first songs, Go Tell Aunt Rhody, and I remember how upset I was when I couldn’t play it at first. I really wanted to be able to play it well. So I worked on it! Some weeks my teacher would assign me about 3 songs, and I’m come to my lesson with 12 songs ready for her. Over achiever I guess. Around 4th grade, Mrs. Kelley started teaching me how to play chords, like for church and stuff like that. I LOVED that. I still do. By the time I was in 5th grade I could play Invention #1 by Bach, which is a pretty advanced song. In 6th grade, I played the song Linus and Lucy, and it was pretty much my signature song for a while. 🙂

The fall of 7th grade, we switched piano teachers. We went from nice, go-with-the-flow, go-ahead-and-change-the-song-if-you-really-want-to Mrs. Kelley to scale-loving, never-change-the-song Mr. Getz. It was a hard transition. I pretty much hated piano lessons the first year. The biggest difference was that we had to play the same songs pretty much the whole year. When I took lessons with Mrs. Kelley we would move on from a song as soon as I could play it. Not the case with Mr. Getz! When Mr. Getz gave me a song, he pretty much assumed that I could technically play it (at first, until he saw that I couldn’t always,) and then we would work on it for what seemed like forever, adding emotion, rises and falls, rubato, all that good stuff. And we would do competitions. Basically what that meant was that we would get a song in September and have it until recital in May. Yeah, I got sick of the songs, but I could play them so much better than before because I was being taught how to put emotion into them. I am a much more mature player now than I was with Mrs. Kelley. Both teachers were necessary to get me to the level that I am at today though, because Mr. Getz has taught me a ton of technical stuff, and how to make a song come alive, but Mrs. Kelley really helped me start to love piano. 🙂

The biggest obstacle with my piano playing is that my fingers get very sore every winter/spring. They get stiff and sometimes I can’t even bend them and move them quickly enough to physically play the songs that I have. It’s MAD annoying. In fact, they’re getting stiff as I type this right now! Lucky me, they always get worst around our second competition and recital. That’s pretty lame. Do you know how frustrating it is to know that you are able to do something, but not be able to do it just because your body won’t co-operate? It’s the worst. So a combination of that frustration, the stress of competition, and the fact that piano was becoming a chore to me lead me to decide not to play piano this year.

I like to enjoy music. I like to experience it. And when I was taking lessons last year, I played piano as little as possible. So I made the decision to take a year off piano this year to take a breather. And it has been SO good. I’ve been learning basic guitar chords, I’ve started really enjoying playing again, I’ve been looking into voice lessons, basically I am once again in love with music. And it’s great. I’ve missed it. Unfortunately, this is the time of year when I am unable to move my fingers that well, so I still can’t play the best, but I definitely made a good decision taking a year off. Next year I’ll take lessons again I guess, but hopefully I’ll still be able to enjoy it this much. 🙂

So there’s the story of my piano journey. I don’t know why I wrote it up. I just kinda did. So there you go.

In Memory Of…

On Tuesday I went to a funeral. It was for someone I’d never met, my aunt’s mom. But I was still really emotional by the end of the service, mostly because I spent most of the time thinking about all of the funerals that’ll come up at some point in my life. Specifically, my grandma, my mom, and my best friends came to mind…I’m really not looking forward to having to go to those funerals. I’m going to be a wreak for a long time. But then that got me to thinking about my funeral. What are people going to say about me? Am I going to be someone who changed peoples lives? Or just a funny girl that people will miss once in a while? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I want to be remembered for being godly, kind, and caring about the people around me. I want to make a difference.

It seems like everyone these days is talking about “living life to the fullest.” According to pop culture, (music, tv, movies, etc,) the “fullest” you can live life to is basically getting drunk, partying, bungee jumping, having sex, making as much money as possible, whatever. It’s all about what YOU want to do. But that type of life will never really make us feel full. It’s so contrary to what the world’s opinion of a good life is, but honestly, the best life we will ever have is the one that God intended for us to have. That’s a life where we love God first, love others second, and ourselves last. LAST. That means that you do what’s best for others. And even above others, you honor God in all that you do. That’s the type of life that will leave a lasting legacy. I’ve never heard someone talk about someone who passed away and say, “Oh yeah, they were always out drinking and dancing, they were so fun. They’ve changed my life for the better.” More often you hear things like, “They were always looking out for others. I want to be like them.”

The summer of 2010, a high school boy at our church passed away. He was the age of my older brother, and no one was expecting it. He had a really bad asthma attack, and passed away. Now, I never really knew Pat. (The boy who died.) But he has impacted me. After he died, the most common thing I heard people say about him was, “He cared for others so much.” His life and death have changed our youth group. We worked harder at filling his spot and caring for the ones that didn’t quite fit in. But for me personally, I just realized how even though it was awful that Patrick died, people were always talking about how much he loved others. I really want to genuinely care about the people around me and show them God’s love. When I die I want others to be changed by my life, and remember me for caring for and loving others. What do you want to be remembered for? Live it. You can’t want to be remembered as a baseball champ, and never have played a game, right? In the same way, you can’t want to be remembered for loving others, and still treat them with contempt and rudeness. I know that I need to work on this too, I’m far from perfect! I’m just kind of writing my observations.

The other thing that kind of struck me at the funeral is how fragile life is. My aunt’s mom had been diagnosed with cancer around Christmas, was put in urgent care about a week ago, and passed away a few days after being placed in UC. Patrick died when he was in high school, with no warning. My cousin got hit by a semi and died at about 13 a few years ago. Life isn’t a guarantee. So we should experience it. Notice the little things, like the look of a river, or the way a friend laughs when they’re nervous, or the way your brother’s hair looks in the morning. Don’t take it for granted. So yes, live life to the fullest! But the fullest that life can be comes when we love God, and love others. After all, Jesus even said that He came so we could have life, and have it abundantly! Let’s live life to the fullest. Through Christ.

Modest is Hottest :)

I think that modesty is one of the most under-valued character traits in our society. Honestly, most girls don’t seem to realize that it even matters. But I think it does! 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” When it’s put like that, modesty seems a little more important, doesn’t it? Our bodies are God’s temples, and if we aren’t respectful to His temple, we’re disrespectful to Him. I don’t know about you, but I definitely don’t want to be disrespectful to God! And my body isn’t even mine. It’s God’s. If someone took something that was yours, and trashed it, was disrespectful to it, and didn’t take care of it, would you like it? Of course not! Being immodest is doing just that. Taking something that’s God’s and trashing it.

Now, I realize that nowadays, people think that they have to be immodest to get attention, or to look beautiful/sexy. But that’s so not true! Some of the people that I consider to be the most beautiful are not immodest at all. Emma Watson, the actress who played Hermione in the Harry Potter series, (Swat, don’t explode!) says this about being modest. “I find the whole concept of being ‘sexy’ embarrassing and confusing. If I do an interview with photographs people desperately want to change me – dye my hair blonder, pluck my eyebrows, give me a fringe. Then there’s the choice of clothes. I know everyone wants a picture of me in a mini-skirt. But that’s not me. I feel uncomfortable. I’d never go out in a mini-skirt. It’s nothing to do with protecting the Hermione image. I wouldn’t do that. Personally, I don’t actually think it’s even that sexy. What’s sexy about saying, ‘I’m here with my boobs out and a short skirt, have a look at everything I’ve got?’ My idea of sexy is that less is more. The less you reveal the more people can wonder.” Now, that’s not the perfect definition of modesty, and she’s not the perfect role model for being modest either, but I think that what she has to say is interesting. It brings up another point about modesty, girls who dress really immodestly and then say they want a good guy…what!? Hate to break it to you, but you can’t load a trap with poison and expect a mouse to come. That is to say, if you dress immodestly, you’re probably going to attract guys who only care about your looks/body.

As a Christian girl, I want to do whatever I can to help my brothers in Christ. It doesn’t help them to dress immodestly. It helps them to dress modestly, so that’s what I try to do. I don’t always do perfectly, but I do try. And I believe that any Christian girl should do the same. God wants us to help build each other up, not be a distraction and problem for the guys around us. If you’re interested in knowing what guys think is modest or not, here’s a survey that two Christian, homeschool guys took on their blog, The Rebelution. Check it out if you feel like it. 🙂 http://www.therebelution.com/modestysurvey/

I guess the reason I wrote this post is because immodesty is something that bothers me. And I’ve avoided writing about it for a while, because I didn’t know how to write it without it being to weird, but I guess after my post yesterday, I figured I should just write it. So I did! Hope it turned out ok. 🙂

Oh Bother.

“When was the last time you were REALLY bothered about something? About something important, something real?”
~Fahrenheit 451

Well? What would your answer be? I’ll be honest, I don’t know what I would answer off the top of my head. But is that right? I mean, there are so many things that are important and real, and I just shrug them off like they don’t matter. For example, today we drove past a homeless person. We didn’t slow down. I didn’t even look the person in the eye. I mean, I felt bad and wished I could do something about it, but I didn’t really think about it. It didn’t really bother me. Why doesn’t it bother me? Am I that cold of a person that I don’t care? No. I’m not. But I’ve trained myself to shut things out. To not let myself think about things that matter if I don’t feel like I can change them. And I’m guessing I’m not the only one! But I don’t think that’s right.

God wants us to be like Him. And He cares for everyone. And sin breaks His heart. So therefore, we should care for everyone, and sin should break our hearts. If I know people who are suffering, I should want to help them, and I should do whatever I can to do that. I want to genuinely care for people, and be bothered when something’s not right with them. And part of caring for people is not letting sin go on without saying something about it. For example, I have some friends that aren’t making very good decisions with their relationships right now, and I’ve been ignoring it. Because it wasn’t my problem and it’s easier to just say that they’ll figure it out. But that’s not right. I need to speak up when I see things that I don’t think are right and try to help them as much as possible.

So why don’t things bother us? Why do we choose to ignore things? Because we live in a culture that loves things to be quick and easy. And something that genuinely bothers us won’t be like that. It’ll force us to ask uncomfortable questions, and do hard things. The only way to change our hearts so that we are bothered by things is to ask God to help us be more like Him. The more our hearts become like His, the more we care about people and are burdened by sin. I’m not saying it’ll be easy. In fact, I can almost guarantee that it’ll be hard. But if you are bothered by world hunger, human trafficking or something like that, do something about it. Raise money, talk to organizations, something. If you are worried about what people you know are doing, do something about it. Talk to them, or maybe talk to someone in authority over them. And this one might be the hardest. If you’re bothered by something that you’re doing, do something about it. Don’t just let yourself do whatever it is, talk to someone, pray, get help.

Life isn’t about just existing. We were made to make a difference. So let’s do it. Can you imagine what could happen if all of God’s people were bothered by poverty and the hurting and the lonely and the hungry and the abused and the broken and the thirsty and the prostitutes and the drunks and the homeless and the depressed and the victims and the traumatized and the sick and the cold and the tired and the soldiers and our cities and our towns and our countries and sin and everyone that we interact with? It could be something big. So, when was the last time YOU were bothered?