More Trouble than its Worth

I totally feel like a underpaid Taiwanese child in a bamboo blind factory...

... let me explain...

My bedroom window in my house faces the street, and while our house is a generous ways back from the street, my windows are completely unprotected. In the rain, I get to hear every splitter-splatter of drops that hit my window, and in the summer, the scorching sun burns straight through whatever window covers are in place and turns my bedroom into a veritable oven. This much being said... I have had some window covering issues. Yes, yes... I know I have blogged about window coverings in the past. (and thank you, the new curtain rod is doing quite nicely) However, these particular venetian blinds were already in a sad state when I first laid claim on the room more than a year ago... and have since only proceeded to get worse. You know how when you break one of the blinds in a venetian blind, you might as well throw it away, because there is pretty much no salvaging it after that? Yeah, that would pretty much be the case here. I had lived with them for over a year though before my conscience and pocketbook and better judgement and frustration all agreed that I should replace them.
And I did.
What I wanted... (and you know that always starts a complicated story)... was wooden blinds. A beautiful dark red wood to go with my dark tones in my room and accent the burgundy curtains. Yeah, come to find out those are kinda expensive. Well, my conscience and pocketbook and better judgement and frustration would not agree to them, so I ended up with some bamboo blinds. Half the cost, same color, more "safari", and possibly the same amount of fun!
Wrong again.
I failed to realize that the bamboo was not tied close enough together to keep out much light, or keep in much sight... oops!! (remember my room faces the street)
Soooo yeeeeaaaah...
My mom graciously gave me some burlap fabric. Its heavy duty, and it'll get the job done. Now all that's left to do is painstakingly sew the burlap onto the back of the blinds. I have almost 1/2 of one blind done. And I feel sooooooo sorry for child laborers that have to do this kind of thing. I want to pull my hair out a little bit at the moment. But allow me to finish. Maybe I can have something on my windows by tonight.
Maybe, just maybe... in about 3 weeks, when I've forgot how hard this was to do... I'll think it was worth it. We'll see. At the moment, I am highly doubting.

My Heroes

So I finally watched "Braveheart"...

Its kinda nice, I finally understand all the hype of Wallace and biblical analogies that pastors and one of my favorite authors are terribly fond of using.

... but I'm sorry, Aragorn still trumps Wallace any day of the week.

Quotes of the Day 1.1

Religion-- who needs it? A list of endless, dead rules. As ancient as the people that invented them. Give me a vibrant, real relationship with a God who loves me regardless of how unworthy I am when I come to Him, and how bad I continue to mess up in my life. Give me the freedom of choice, let me live a crazy all out life that looks silly to starched collars... yeah, that's my type of religion. Not to say that I am against organized religion... just those who think that going to church on Sunday is enough. If you don't have a real relationship with God, it aint worth squat!

Faith -- My Jesus is my everything! Seriously, He's what gets me up in the morning and why I can sleep at night. He's my lover and my best friend. I've tried life without Him, and let me tell you it wasn't worth it! Faith is what makes me smile in the hard times, cause I know He is still faithful. Faith is that fire that drives me to go do crazy things, to love completely, live openly, and share unconditionally.

Blogging

I have officially decided that I am not a blogger.
I am a wanna-be.
See real bloggers have causes, or are well read, or keep up on current events, or have deep thoughts.
I don't aggressively have any celebrity type causes that I support openly.
I am not currently well read. Though this may have been true at one point in time, esp in relation to my age and status, it is currently deplorably inaccurate. I wish it were true, but I cannot lie. I have not been well-read in many years.
I do not keep up on current events. Well, not entirely. It is true that I often catch a little of what is going on in the news while I am working and the TV is on. I also do sometimes read the random yahoo articles on my homepage, and yes, I do every week or so look a Ugandan newspaper up online and read the articles... but in general I care very little that the capital is under 5 feet of snow and freaking out like little girls, or that Obama is dropping percentage points in approval poles by the day, or what-have-you.
I do sometimes have deep thoughts it is true. But my memory these days I am afraid is closer to that of some of my 90 year old residents. By the time that I get home at night I have completely forgotten any and every good decent deep thought I had that day. Instead my mind will likely be consumed with whether or not it is acceptable to eat a cereal entitled "Blueberry Morning" anytime besides the morning...
So you see I am not a real blogger. My uncle is a real blogger. Though I very seldom agree with his opinions on things, he is very passionate about his causes, well read on current events, and thinks things through deeply. And he can write a story that will leave you in stitches.
I am merely a wanna-be.
But I guess that is okay. I don't mind. And I very highly doubt that the 3 people that read my blog care very much either.
I write because I LIKE to write. And until that changes, I will remain, very respectfully yours... Jo-wanna-be-blogger!

Chucky Cheese's and Lessons Learned

I keep seeing analogies recently. I don't know what that means about me... just that I keep seeing them. They keep popping up like those annoying games at chucky cheese's where you have to constantly hit them until no more pop up. (I'm thoroughly convinced that a parent invented that game based on the easy amusement of kids. What completely worthless, but utterly time consuming activity can we get kids to pay to play!!)

1. I put my dog in her kennel last night after yelling at her for some miscreant behavior. I however did not lock the kennel. She was free to come and go, but it took her a record 10min to figure this out and actually test the door to see if she could open it. I think that is similar to how we approach God sometimes. We sit looking out the door the we think He has locked, and we never once go push on it to see if perchance He's left it without lock and key. Obviously there are times you wouldn't want to push on doors that God has closed, so the analogy breaks down. But when you know its in an area of freedom in your life in Christ, or direction that you know He wants you to go eventually... why not at least nudge it a little with your nose and see if God has opened the way for you to be free?

2. I was cleaning dishes last night. Don't ask why, but I felt like doing dishes, which is entirely uncharacteristic for me, and so I thought I would take advantage of it! Anywho... I was going to drain the sink so I could clean it. (yeah, again, don't ask. I have no idea what got into me) However like any good unmaintained sink the draining on this sink was sluggish. And by sluggish I mean, like go scrub the entire bathtub and the toilet and then come back, it might be drained. I am sometimes however a resourceful person, and was able to pull from my extensive dish-washing knowledge (thank you, growing up in a large family!) and ascertain that it was not actually the sink inself that was deficient in its duties. See in our sink, (one of those old models) there is not an "in-sink-erator" (in other words, a garbage disposal). In fact, in our sink the garbage disposal consists of two things: a small seive that fits over the drain spout, and.... wait for it... YOU! I heard a quote once that I particularly liked. It was something to the effect of: what really seperates the boys from the men is the ability to bare-handedly clean out the stopper on the sink without holding it at arms length away from your body. Anyway, it was indeed the sink stopper that was the issue. Have you ever reached down through dirty soapy, now greasy, after-dishes-water that is slightly cooling, add in some floating spaghetti for snake-like effect, and a few other ambiguous chunks of disgarded food and MMMMMMmmmm! (don't you just feel like eating now??) only to pull up a seive that wow... should have been cleaned a log time ago. Pretty sure there are more gross things in life... but I haven't seen many of them! (and I'm a nurse and I've been to Africa!) Now the way a seive is supposed to work is that things are supposed to be filtered through the little hole and not allowed to go down the drain and clog it at some undisclosed juncture or bend in the pipe. However, water has these amazing corosive effects on almost any food substance and over time, what should have been caught in the seive and cleaned out had been permanently caked into the holes not allowing any of the water to flow down the drain as it should. While scrubbing out these nice little food cakes, I couldn't help but think of those things in life that we need filtered out of our lives. I think the seive is like our conscience, or to some extent like the Holy Spirit interceding in our lives. There are times in our lives when we allow the seive to be taken from its place, and we end up with clogged drains. However, when there is stuff that goes down in our lives and we merely catch it in our seive we can also impede the blessings that God would have for our lives. I know this was a really hard lesson for me. I felt like I had to stay in some sort of mourning period for a certain amount of time. Repentance for me seemed to convey that you not only rejected the old idea and wanted to move on and turn from it, but also that clung a little to that sin as a way of remembering what not to do next time. Pretty soon all those little leftover peices of sin are clumped together so thick and tight, that I can't see my way to Jesus' side anymore. My relationship with God becomes clogged. At some point we need to clean all the junk out of our lives. Really take it all before God and surrender it. Its then that He is free to pour out blessings on our lives, and we are open to receive them. Now obviously I am not comparing the blessings of God to dirty, greasy dishes water... but you get the general idea.

Red Suede Curtains

So about a year ago, I bought some red suede curtains for the front window in our living room. I like them, they match the red wall in the kitchen, and they are fairly maintenance free.
However... when I bought them i purchased some that would go on the current fixtures. Okay, that would have been fine except... the current fixtures include three light wood curtain rod holders and a curtain rod that is missing its ball-stopper-thingy on one end.
This in and of itself would be okay, but this curtain rod should more accurately called curtain rod"s"... See, for some odd reason it is not one rod but two... The only way that it stays up is if you very delicately balance the two ends of the rods next to each other atop the one middle rod holder and pray that a strong wind doesn't blow... or none of the dogs run behind the couch!
I was messing with them however today (very delicately of course) because when the curtains are closed, it really decreases the light in our front room. As I was gingerly pulling them back to expose the shades and glass on the other side I couldn't help but notice that a lot of things in my life are exactly like those curtains.
For as long as I can remember I have built, constructed, written, embroidered, cooked, and loved things that are delicate. My siblings used to make fun of me, because although I could make some pretty stellar Lego creations... they were always flimsy. You had to play with them VERY delicately or they would fall to millions of pieces in your hands. Awesome 4 story castle with dungeon, secret passageway, and fully functioning drawbridge + play with it a little too roughly = pile of multicolored bricks. My clothing construction projects were not much better. I can make a mean shirt, skirt, jacket, or even duffle-bag. However, as my mother (and extremely patient home-ec teacher) can attest to: my facings are rarely tacked down, my seams on the inside are sloppy, and I don't reinforce my stitching, or top-stitch like I should. Cooking... well, don't even start on that... I can't even begin to describe how many cakes were stuck together with frosting... how many loves of bread fell in the oven because my yeast making skills were not quite up to par, or I was sloppy on how long I mixed the ingredients.
As I was contemplating all this that has been kind of my life story, I realized that the problem goes a whole lot deeper than that. The same things happen in my relationships too... I build them on flimsy things and when those get tested, I end up with a pile of Lego pieces where a beautiful monument to friendship was built. I do that with God things sometimes to. I try so hard to reach for some concept, grow in some area that I keep building up when God is still trying to get me to build out. He knows I need a firm foundation instead of a tottering but beautiful tower. In His divine wisdom He knows that I can't stand the pressures of life that way.
In a way its exactly like the man who built his house on the sand in the parable. If I didn't have a firm foundation to begin with, its absolutely useless to keep building. Its temporary.
I think that I have seen God take a lot of my "sand-houses" (if you will) down to ruins recently. Some of the materials are salvageable, some are not. Either way, this time we are starting over, and together, gonna build this house upon unshifting Rock.
And to think... I got all that from opening my curtains to let in the afternoon sun. I think I might go get a new rod...

Quote of the Day

"twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do that by the ones that you did do. so throw off the bowlines. sail away from the safe harbor. catch the trade winds in your sails. explore. dream. hope." -- mark twain

This was the quote of the day on my calendar. I don't know if I like it or not. At first when I read it I did, and then I didn't, and then I did again, and now... I don't think I agree with all of it.

I won't tell you completely why because I think you should make your own decision. What do you think of this quote? I'm interested in all responses...