I'm growing, but I'm not done yet.

I want to yell at myself and tell me to stop eating my chocolate covered raisins just because they are there.  The difference between me and someone of a healthy weight is that they listen to their bodies and stop after a few peices.

I also want to yell at myself for the desire to spend  money like it's burning a hole in my pocket.  The difference between me and someone who is more well off is that they don't feel the need to spend money just because they have it.

And don't get me started on wasting time. I want to yell at myself for wasting so much time. The difference between me and a person who doesn't waste time is that a person who doesn't waste time realizes that we all get the same amount of time everyday and makes the most of every moment.

It's a matter of how I think about the things that I have.

Food is for nourishment to my body to keep me alive and sustain me day by day.  I eat because my body needs it to survive.  I don't eat because it's an enjoyable activity. 

And money is to use for God's glory. I use it for my needs, I use it to bless others, and occasionally I use it for something nice for myself, But nothing I have is truly my own. It all belongs to God and I'm given the opportunity to invest it wisely. What I do with it will either glorify God, or feed my selfishness.

And time does not discriminate. We all have 24 hours in a day, and 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. And even then we are a mere vapor in the wind. If we waste the time we have now, we will never get it back.

Just remember that.

A Revelation that started in an odd way...

I had a revelation of sorts. I've been lying in my bed trying to rest and pray about how to respond to my one of my roommates who had a bad reaction to an issue I brought up. I was thinking about how her response was malicious and intended to be hurtful, and how my desires were at war within me. Part of me.... most of me, actually... wanted so much to rip into her and do as much as I possibly could to tear her down and hurt her and destroy her with my words. But a part of me, as small as it might have been, did not want to destroy her because i knew it would destroy my witness with both her and her bpyfriend, and I desperately want both of them to know the power and love of Jesus.

So as my desires warred within me, I texted my roommate and told her I wanted to talk to her face to face. I have not spoken with her yet since she hasn't come home yet, but I have been praying and I gradually started to plan ways to talk to her that addressed each issue in the note she left, in a way that wasn't lashing out at her, but still gave me the sense that I would be receiving justice. But then, I thought about that and how selfish that was that I demand justice and I began to pray that God would release the desire for justice from my heart and teach me to respond with love and compassion.

I was silent for a little while and still desiring justice for myself, when I started thanking God for that little part of me that didn't want to destroy my roommate because I knew that meant that God was working on me and that the Holy Spirit was present in my life. And in the midst of thanking God for all this, the desire for justice left me completely and was replaced with a desire to show Jamie grace and forgiveness. And he filled me with such amazing compassion for her I wanted to weep. The event where Jesus entered a town and wept over it because the people were "harrassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." Ran through my mind.
Even though I have not spoken with her yet, I have full confidence that God has won this battle and I will not destroy my witness with her tonight and that tonight she will know what it is to be loved by God.

With all that said, that was not even the revelation I had, that was only a side event in what has been a very long day for me.

So anyway, as I laid in bed and thought about this and prayed and tried to rest, my mind started relaxing and drifting. I started thinking about marraige (I suppose because one of the thing I kept thinking in my anger was that what I had judged to be in my roommates heart was why relationships come to and end and marriages fall apart.)

So I was thinking about how this is probably going to be what marriage is, learning to love selflessly, and how I imagine that there would be issues and how my beloved and I would need to learn how to live together. I thought about a Guy friend of mine, one that, though I'm not particularly attracted to him right now, I am attracted to his spirit and I would count him a worthy husband. I imagined if the two of us fought and how sick it made me feel to think that I would act unlovingly towards him, but I believe realistically, any man I marry is not going to be perfect and neither will I be and that there will be disagreements and things we have to work at. But I marveled at that idea and the thought popped into my head that the man I marry should be blessed by marrying me and not burdened. If I'm going into a marriage and I'm carrying bad boxes and attitudes, and if I bring strife to the marriage, or excessive uncontrolled debt, or if I'm not willing to be a "help meet", or to do my part to clean, raise children, cook, balance a checkbook, encourage him, support his ministry or whatever.... what it comes down to is that if I'm living selfishly, I become a burden to my husband, and I have no business entering into a covenant relationship with him or anyone else because marriage should honor God.

I am thankful for this time I have now as a single woman. though I haven't enjoyed many of the trials and learning experiences, I am so thankful that he who began a good work in me is continually working to bring it to completion, for my future spouse, if God chooses to bless me that way, and for the love of God he is teaching me to love all people with his heart and what that means. I am truly blessed.

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God, I feel lost. I still desire to finish school, but my hope is dying. Help me!

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Yep

Oh Roughly 8 years ago, I wrote a paper for my philosophy class freshman year of college about the death penalty and why we shouldnt have the death penalty.

Sometime I would like to revisit that and re-write my arguments, and offer alternative ideas and such....like rehabilitation, the philosophy behind not having prisons and only rehabilitation centers and the like. Add some psycology and sociology to the mix, modern day society... and what we can do now to prevent the need for prisons and rehabilitation center for criminals.

I wish I had time to sit down and think about this more thoroughly.

and I want to solve the oil crises, and get rid political greed and power trips, bridge the gap between the social classes, eliminate racism(happy black history month!) and sexism, prevent teen pregnancy and suicides....and a whole bunch of other stuff... but I don't have time to be a hero...or to try to play God.

yep.

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Can a person be a Christian and be Bi-polar?

I spoke with my aunt on the phone this evening after talking to my mom and saying some things that scared her. She thinks I should be evaluated for a Bipolar disorder because it runs in the family and my mood swings have been both sudden and extreme. 

I told my aunt that yesterday was a really good day. The sun was shining, I was in a good mood, I felt poetic, I felt good, I started doing stuff, and I started cleaning, and I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned.  There was probably nothing that could have brought me down yesterday. And then this morning I woke up, didn't feel either good or bad, but my back hurt (probably from sleeping in a weird position), so I stayed in bed for another two hours and finally got up, dressed and went to church. 

At church I started feeling extremely irritated. There was a person sitting behind me who was doing the anxiety thing where they fidget, and he was shaking his leg really fast. I could feel it making everything around me shake and I got so irritated that I got up and left the room and went and sat in a different room all by myself.  Then the day went on, I still didn't feel either good or bad, just normal. And I was talking with my cousin Brandy and I was thinking about the tax predictor thing and how it predicted I would owe $1200 and I started feeling incredibly anxious.

I started feeling so anxious that I literally could not see hope for the future. My future felt so bleak and miserable and I felt so trapped in this hoplessness that I told my mom I didnt want to live and that if I ended up owing the government $1200 (like the tax estimator thing predicted) that I might as well jump off a bridge because I would never get it paid off.

My mom started to tell me that she didn't want to hear me talk like that and I hung up on her and then cried because I felt so alone and because I just wanted someone to tell me things will get better. And then I went and checked the mail and I got my insurance statement in the mail and I cried because my monthly payments went up about $5 a month. (Now that I look back on it, it feels pretty rediculous, but just a few hours ago all of these things felt like the end of the world, and tried to feel better, I tried to pray).

So when I did calm down, I called my mom back and let her know I was feeling better (she had called back to check on me, but I didn't hear my phone), we talked about it, and I realized that this has happened to me several times over the past few months... maybe even over the past year. I used to be so happy-go-lucky and simply go with the flow of things, now I have bouts of utter hopelessness so bad that I don't want to live during those moments.  What happened?

And now... I don't feel horribly depressed. I feel mellow and tired.

So after we spoke, my mom suggested I talk to my aunt (who is bipolar), so I called her told her all about it and she laughed at me and suggested I get checked because I sound just like she did before she was diagnosed.

I don't know what I'm going to do.  I think jumping to believing I have a bipolar disorder is a little extreme. It could be a hormone imbalance. Elevated estrogen levels can mess a person up.

 But I also don't want be looking for excuses either.  Maybe there is another explanation that doesn't involve drugging myself to get better. Try harder to give my worries to God?  I don't know.