"Filthy Language"

But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. (Colossians 3:8 NIV)

I came across this verse while working on an assignment for NT a few days ago. That last part has really been stuck in my mind, and tonight it's really been bothering me.

Most people who know me know that I despise "bad words." It really bothers me when people use them. Because of this, many people make a conscious effort to not use them when I'm around. For this I am very grateful.

I know that a sin is a sin and no sin is worse than another. Because I am human, though, I rate sin on a scale anyway, and this goes towards the top of the list. The problem with placing bad words near the top of the list of "which sins are the worst," is that most people put this at the bottom, where I put not cleaning my room when my mom asks me to. Because others place it towards the bottom of their lists, they use bad words freely and don't see anything wrong with it.

So, why is this bothering me now? Why RIGHT now, at 1am when I have a paper to write that's due in 7 hours? I wish I knew. This is a very inconvenient time to have to blog. But I have to. I have to get this out, and a tweet won't translate what I have to say. I don't even know if a rambling blog post can say it, but I'm going to try.

Recently, I was around some people who truly love Jesus. They really do live their lives for Him. They are good people, and I love them dearly. The problem arose when they started throwing out bad words in their conversation. I didn't comment on it at the time.

Tonight, I've been thinking about it, and I've found myself to have a dilemma so burdensome that I simply had to blog about it. I was thinking about this verse, the recent events, and what I should do about it. Then I got to thinking about if I should do anything about it at all. It was with that thought that I came to a humbling realization.

When I am placed in a situation where I see someone doing something that directly contradicts the instructions of the Bible, I am hesitant to correct them. Most of the time, I never get around to mentioning it. Why is that? I know what they are doing is wrong. If the person is someone who claims to follow Jesus, shouldn't I go to them in love and confront them on it? Maybe, but I don't. Here's why.

I know that I sin, too. I fall short of where I should be. Where I'm called to be. I do things that I know contradict the very clear instructions of the Bible. My sin may not be the use of bad words, but it's equally as bad. The worst part is, I KNOW it's bad. I know that I shouldn't be doing these things. I know that there are reasons why God tells us not to do things. God doesn't keep us from things the flesh enjoys to be mean or to keep us from having fun. He does it because they aren't good for us. Sins, more often than not, have earthly consequences. 

The reason why I am so often hesitant to confront people about their sin is because I don't want my sin to come to light. I don't want to be told that I'm being a hypocrite. I don't want to be that person trying to remove a speck of dust from my brother's (or sister's) eye, when there is clearly a huge plank sticking out of my eye.

So, what is the right answer? Honestly, I don't know. One the one hand, there's the aforementioned hypocrite and speck/plank argument. But on the other hand, there's the point that if we all wait until we are perfect to start correcting each other, it will never happen. We will never be perfect. No one will ever reach that place. 

The conclusion that I have come to for now is this: it's time for me to remove that plank. While I'm at it, I can remove the plank from my other eye as well. There are sins in my life that I have recently allowed to creep back in. Things that I know I should keep away. Things that I know affect me. 

Now I leave you with this verse to think about. I don't know the reference. Something in Psalms.

"Now let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer."

When it's 4am and I can't think of a title...

I can't decide if my problem is impatience or a need for control.

God has a good and pefect plan for my life, but sometimes I get in the way of that. Everything in my life is taken care of, and things will happen in God's timing, but sometimes I think I need to help. I'll just pick up some area of my life that I feel like God's not working on at the moment, and start trying to take care of it myself. In reality, of course, He's already taken care if it, and when I come in, I just mess it all up.

God has given us free will and the ability to make our own choices. He's laid out the choices that He wants us to make, because they lead to good things, but the wrong choices are still there. There have been several times that I have made the wrong choice, and often I make to same or similar wrong choices.

Recently, I decided to just pick up an area of my life and try to handle it on my own. This area is one that I've tried to handle a few times before. It doesn't ever end well. Looking back, I feel like God was probably watching me saying, "No. Child. I've got this under control. Remember what happened last time? I don't want you to go through that again. It's going to hurt you. I have something better for you. Just wait."

But I didn't listen. I went with what I thought was best. I tried things my way. In the end, it did hurt. Luckily, God caught my attention before I messed things up too bad. He stopped me before I was in too deep and the pain could hurt me like it has before.

Even though I tried to mess up the perfect plan God has for me, when I came back to God and let go of that area of my life, He welcomed me with open arms. God doesn't want to see us hurt. He wants to see us happy. He wants us to trust Him. He wants us to rest in His goodness.

There are times when part of God's plan requires that we take action, but we have to listen very carefully to know when these times are, and what areas they are. We need to follow God's instruction on what we should do.

Maybe I'm not the only person who has ever done this. If you're currently trying to "help God out" by taking control of something that God has already taken care of, then I hope this post has somehow helped you. If not, maybe you've done this before and you can understand. If you've never done this before, then I hope this helps you to never make this mistake. Trusting God completely means letting go of your life.

Hope you enjoyed my random middle-of-the-night-thought. Now I'm going back to sleep.

What is the Meaning of Life?

Have you ever stopped to think about the big picture of what life is? Why are we here? What is important? Where are we going? What are we doing?

I often hear that we should "live in the moment." Being a senior in high school makes it very difficult to do this. I'm thinking about the future in every thing that I do, and everything that I don't do. Most of the time, thinking about the future only succeeds in making me freak out and become stressed. This generally happens when I think about the upcoming months, such as graduating high school and starting college. When I think about things that are much farther in the future, it actually calms me down and helps me realize that what I freak out about right now will become very insignificant as my life goes on.

Tonight I took a moment to map out what the typical American life looks like, and this is what I came up with. Please note that these numbers are approximate for the typical American. They will differ by a few months or a few years in some cases.

Childhood
-5 years of "freedom," where we have no responsibility whatsoever. During this time in our life, we are free to do whatever we desire, but we aren't old enough to realize it.
-13 years of school. We have to spend the majority of our time learning for 13 years. We get a little bit of time off, but even during our time off, there is normally still some school to do.

Adulthood
-This is where we get our first choice. 4 or more years of college, or straight into working.
-About 45 years of working. (If you're lucky. Most people work longer.)
-10-20 years of retirement, depending on how long you live. This is our only real freedom on Earth.
-Eternity in Heaven or Hell. You have your whole life to make this choice.

Somehow, for me, looking at life this way makes things such as passing a test seem way less significant. In reality, our life should revolve around the last part:eternity. Where am I going to spend eternity? Where are you going to spend eternity? What about your mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, grandma, grandpa, son, daughter, niece, nephew, best friend, neighbor, worst enemy, teacher, etc. etc. etc.?

I don't know why God decided to make people, and why this is the way life is. There are definitely times when I would rather just spend time in heaven with Jesus and not have to worry about worldly things anymore. So, while I don't know why there is a such thing as life, I do know that God created it, and it must have been for a reason. I do know that God intended for all people to spend eternity in heaven with Him. I don't know how to end this post. So bye.

Baptized? Again?

Let me just start out by saying wow, it's been a while since I blogged. The only good reason for my absence is that I've been busy. I haven't given up on my blog, though. In the future I really believe I will blog more.

Obviously, a lot has happened since my last post. It's been 6 months. I don't have time to tell you everything, because I am leaving for Mexico in a few hours (whoo!) and I have stuff to do before I leave, such as take a shower, clean my room, mani/pedi, etc. So, lets get right into the point of this post.

Yesterday, (Sunday, July 14th, 2013) I got baptized. For the third time. I never thought I would be baptized so many times, but each time was special in it's own way. I'll try and quickly run through each baptism in order.

Baptism #1
I believe I had just started 6th grade, but I may have been a little bit younger than that. I was currently attending a United Methodist Church. At this church, when you turned a certain age, it was common to go through several weeks of "confirmation class." During this class, you learn all about what it means to become a Christian. It was actually really informative. At the end of the classes, they ask everyone if they want to be baptized. I really did want to be baptized, and I was so excited. At the time, I really didn't like water, (I still don't love it) so I opted for a "sprinkling" rather than full immersion. I was baptized, and that was that.

Baptism #2
My second baptism was a few months after going back to a church that I went to when I was little. I think my baptism was on July 29th, 2009. My reason for this baptism was because I felt like I needed to be baptized with full immersion. My mom baptized me. In between my first baptism and my second baptism, I grew a lot in my walk with Jesus. The first time, I was a "church goer" and someone who loved God, but that was it. The second time, I knew a lot more about serving God, and I was serving God. I "thought" that I knew all about what it meant to be a Christian, but I was wrong.

Baptism #3
I've been going to my current church for 3 years. I have learned SOOOO much about God since going to this church. My third and most recent baptism was yesterday. Thursday night-Saturday night I was at a youth conference with my youth group. It was absolutely mind-blowing. On Saturday morning there was a really powerful message about baptism. It touched almost everyone in my youth group, and we all wanted to be baptized. So, that's exactly what we did. Yesterday morning, 14 youth got baptized at my church. Almost all of us had been baptized before. For me, this baptism symbolized the new relationship I have with God. It's a completely different relationship than what I had the last time I was baptized. It also symbolized me burying my past. You won't see many more posts about depression, because that was drowned. I won't get angry at everything, because I left anger in the water. I am made new!

I would like to end this post by saying that I realize some people don't believe in being baptized more than once. If that's your opinion, good for you. Please keep your opinion to yourself. I'm very happy with each of my decisions to get baptized. I also understand that a lot of people don't believe that sprinkling is real baptism. At this time in my life, I don't believe it is either, BUT, I still count that as a baptism because it was real to me at the time, and it means something to me still.

Also, I am leaving for Mexico in the morning, so expect a blog to come soon about my trip there. I am SO pumped for this trip. Adios, America!

Happy 2013

I have sooooo many things that I really want to blog about. To make sure I remember them all, I have made a list. It's quite long. I wasn't sure what I wanted to blog about right now, so I decided to "start from the beginning." I didn't know where the "beginning" was, so I went with the beginning of the year. To start off this post I would just like to list a few things, to get them out of the way. These are things that I want to say but don't want to make a whole post about.

1. I FINALLY got a new laptop. I've been waiting two years, but the wait was worth it. I hope.
2. Christmas wasn't all that exciting this year, but that's okay. I would make a post about it, but I've complained enough. I'm trying to move on from that.
3. Since my last post, I've come to realize that, due to events of 2012, holidays now mean pretty much nothing to me. They're just days like all the rest.
4. I hope to be writing more blogs now that I have a reliable computer to type on. I normally just write them on my phone, but I much prefer using a laptop.
5. My laptop has a keyboard that is a lot different than what I'm used to, so I apologize if my next several posts are full of typos. I hope it doesn't take too long for me to start navigating my computer like a pro. ;)

Moving on to the point of this post. I will split it into two parts. 2012 and...you guessed it...2013. I won't bore you with the details of me cleaning my room on New Years Eve and cleaning the house on New Years Day.

2012

For me, 2012 was split into two very different times. I will classify them as "before Mexico" and "after Mexico," since that was a real turning point in my life. It also conveniently came around the middle of the year.

Before Mexico, I was generally happy. I had lots of friends, (or so I thought) and life was pretty good. Sure, I had my few off days, but it wasn't too bad. Before Mexico, I was a junior in high school. When I smiled, I really was happy.

I'm not sure if it really was Mexico that changed me, or if it was more the things that happened soon after I got back. Probably both.

I'm not 100% sure if I really was a lot different after Mexico, but it seems like I am. I don't think that I'm the kind of "changed" that people expect after a mission trip. I've felt more alone than I ever have. I've been depressed. (That's no secret...to anyone who reads my blog. Everyone else is completely oblivious.) I get mad a lot easier. I've lost most of my friends. I'm even more closed up than I used to be. Of course, since Mexico, I've started my senior year of high school. That alone has cause a lot of changes. Mostly good ones.

Now, this may sound like Mexico was a bad thing. It absolutely was not. I love Mexico with all of my heart, and I have been working really hard and saving up to go back this year. I feel like there is going to be a huge change that will happen inside of me when I go back.

2013

I'm pretty sure 2013 will be split into 3 very different parts. I'm excited for each part and I can't wait to see what happens. Since nothing has happened yet, and there's not much to say about it, I'm just going to list the 3 parts.

1. January-May. My final semester of high school. Oh. My. Gosh. I have so much school work to do during this time. I'm pretty sure it will kill me.
2. May-August. The summer after high school/before college. So much to do in such a short period of time! I'm hoping to make this the best time of my life.
3. August-December. My first semester of COLLEGE. Speaking of college...I think that will be my next post. It dawned on me the other day that the last thing I posted on my blog about college was that I had no clue what I was going to do if I didn't get that perfect ACT score. Well, I can tell you this much. I didn't get the score I wanted, but God makes anything that's in His will work out. I promise :)

Until next time, remember to smile, even if it's fake. If anything, it's a good workout for your face.

A New Plan for My Blog

Tonight, God was revealing to me a very long list of things that I need to blog about. I'm not going to do it all right now, but I have a lot of things planned to say.

As I was writing down this list of topics so I wouldn't forget, a thought came to mind. "What do I want my blog to accomplish? What do I want it to say? Who do I want it to reach?" So I added that as a topic. I put it down as "my hope for my blog."

Basically, I want it to serve 2 simple purposes. To help me, and to help others.

It helps me because writing calms me down, and it puts things into perspective. I'm a thinker, and my thoughts often get all jumbled up. When I write things down, it clears my mind because I know that it's written down so I don't have to try so hard to remember it.

I'm hoping that it will somehow help others. I'm one of those people that has a lot to say, but I'm not very good at talking. My thoughts get jumbled and my words don't come out right, and when I talk I speak really fast so it's hard for people to understand me. I also don't really like the sound of my voice. The newest addition to my list of excuses for not saying things is my braces. Talking for long periods of time can be really uncomfortable for my mouth. Writing is my way to share things that I hope can help people. I've often considered writing a book at some point in my life. I hated writing as a child, but I love it now, as an adult ;)

I know that not a lot of my previous posts are going to be very helpful to people. They don't all have a lot of good advice in them. There actually is a reason for that. The original purpose for my blog was to be like a journal for me to vent. But now I think I want it to change course.

I considered just starting a new blog that would just be all advice, and keeping this one more personal. I also considered just deleting all the posts that weren't helpful. In the end, I've decided to just keep it as it is. I'm going to be writing a lot more helpful things, but I'm still going to write personal things as well. It's going to be a mixture of both.

I hope this helps to inform people of the new direction that my blog will go. I'm excited about it. I hope to be writing posts a lot more often in the near future.

Have a happy day, and be blessed <3

The Truth About Becoming An "Adult"

Lets start this post with a question.

"What should I expect when turning 18?"

And now I'll answer it.

Nothing. Seriously. Don't expect anything. You'll only be disappointed if you do. I'm not saying that you shouldn't expect some type of feeling inside of you that makes you realize you are now a legal adult. I'm not saying that you shouldn't expect to suddenly feel older. Obviously, you've had enough birthdays by now to know that's not how it works.

What I AM saying, is don't expect your big day to be perfect. Don't expect people to care, or to remember. Don't expect anyone to tell you happy birthday. Don't expect anyone to give you present. Don't wait up for your phone to blow up at midnight, with all of your "friends" calling, texting, writing in your wall, tweeting, etc. in attempt to be the first to say "Happy Birthday."

It's not like none of that will happen. Some of it will. Chances are, at least one person will remember your birthday without being reminded. Wait, I take that back. I'm pretty sure no one "remembered" my birthday. But maybe you'll be luckier than me. Moving on, you will probably receive at least one present. It just might not be what you wanted. ESPECIALLY if your birthday is in December. I almost always have to wait until Christmas to get my real present. Someone will tell you "Happy Birthday." If you're a seriously hated person, then just tell yourself. The midnight part? Yeah. This is the first time in like a decade that no one has told me happy birthday right at midnight. I'm not kidding. It took until about 1, and that was just because someone noticed I told myself happy birthday on Instagram. Oh, and your day will definitely not be perfect.

(Warning-the next few paragraphs are really long and kinda boring.)

Moving on from the depressing truth, lets talk about my "big day." For starters, it just happened to be on 12/12/12. I THOUGHT that would make it more exciting. It didn't. It just made me more depressed. More "friends" posted or talked about the date than my birthday. I know from experience with past birthdays that I pretty much have the worst birthday luck ever. My birthdays always suck. But hey, that's just part of a December birthday. So I definitely wasn't "expecting" a good day, but I was hoping for one. There's all the background. Now for the breakdown of my day.

-I already talked about how no one was rushing to tell me happy birthday. I was at least expecting that, but only because its been normal for me for the past 10 years.
-I woke up with a sore throat. That wasn't surprising, because I've had this annoying cold for 2 weeks. It really needs to go on somewhere. But I had some oolong tea (my current favorite tea) and it felt a little better.
-I had an important meeting with a lady about a babysitting job that I really didn't want to be late for. My car was having problems the day before, so I first tried the extra car. It was making weird noises and doing weird things, so I didn't want to risk it. I now know that it's like an idle problem or something. Drivable, but it needs to be fixed. Next, I tried my car. It immediately started pouring a ton of smoke out of the back, and continued to do so for a few minutes until I turned the car off. No way I was going anywhere with that problem. My dad checked it out, and he's not exactly sure what's wrong, but it's definitely NOT drivable until its fixed. Both of my parents had their cars and were at work, my brother had his car because he was at an "end-of-the-world" party/sleepover. I couldn't take my sisters car because she had to start her first job an hour after I left. Our other extra car is currently not registered because we thought we were gonna sell it, but we just decided a few days ago that we don't want to. I also didn't have a key to it. If I covered it all, and you kept track, that's SEVEN CARS. SEVEN cars, and I don't have transportation. But thank God my grandparents live next door, and they never go anywhere. I was able to borrow their car.
-I had my meeting, and it went well. I was only a couple minutes late.
-After my meeting, which took forever, I paid two loans for my mom, and got a Green Tea Frappuccino Blended Creme. I love green tea, but it really wasn't all that good. The best way I can think to describe it is too much green, not enough tea. It doesn't make sense, but it's what it tasted like. For some reason, my Starbucks card was being mean and didn't use my free birthday drink. Oh well. I had enough money on my gift card to pay for it, and I think the free birthday drink will work next time I go.
-After all this excitement of a morning, I got home around noon. I was home by myself for about 2 hours or so until my brother came home. I spent that time doing what I love. I did my hair and make-up.
-When my sister got home, about a half hour after my brother, I talked to my crazy grandma on the phone, we watched TV together for a little bit, and I decided to finally eat something. I had a hot dog with some cheese. Bread is difficult with braces. Speaking of braces, now would be a good time to mention that I got braces about 3 weeks before my birthday.
-Around 4:30 my sister got a call from a friend. There was an emergency and she had to go babysit. I also got the mail at this time, which contained a birthday card from my Aunt.
-A few minutes later my mom came home with birthday presents. Yea! The fun part of birthdays! I got nail polish, which I was super excited about, and a BUNCH of clothes. I also got 2 pairs of earrings and a new flower for my hair :)
-After looking at all my presents and trying the clothes on, me and my mom went to Walmart to buy paper plates and plastic forks.
-We came home and I brushed my teeth and got ready for church. I changed clothes 4 times before deciding on the perfect outfit.
-My dad got home from work at 6:15, with more presents. Yea! I got an external hard drive. It doesn't sound exciting, but it's one of the things I asked for. I have a REALLY old laptop that is seriously going to die completely any day now. I haven't used it in months because I'm scared it will die and wipe out my memory before I can transfer all of my pictures. I'll be really happy when I can get them all safely to an external hard drive. My moms really old laptop erased all of our pictures from like the last 4 years of our life a few weeks ago. There are duplicates of some of those pictures on my laptop.
-I went to church to get everything ready for my cake right after quickly opening my present and saying thanks. I also got to see my best friend, who I haven't seen in a few weeks. Or maybe it's a few months. I don't remember. Anyway, I was happy to see her. Since she used to go to my church, everyone else was happy to see her too. Several people were happier to see her than they were to see me.
-After worship, all the youth spent about 10 minutes taking pictures of my amazing cake, and I'm pretty sure I was asked 5,000 times who made it. People seriously need to listen better. That reminds me of something else. I thought people would be excited about my cake AND my birthday, but no. EVERYONE was SUPER excited about my cake. Like I said, they spent 10 minutes taking pictures of it and asking questions about it. Only a few people bothered to say happy birthday. To those who did, and who said it because they really meant it and they actually care about ME, thank you. You know who you are, and I know who you are.
-After cake, we prayed for a college intern who is graduating college and leaving us in a few days to move back home. Meanie. :( now everyone is sad. But seriously, we are really sad that he's leaving.
-When church was over, I took a friend home. S/O to this friend, because I'm pretty sure she's the only one who ever reads my blog. I love you, beautiful.
-To end this extremely uneventful day, I went to a Super Team meeting, where we watched Elf and did Mad Libs, which we quit pretty quickly, because it got really awkward...rarely does something become so awkward that it becomes a problem at a Super Team meeting. Oh well. That was probably the highlight of my day.
-I then came home and opened a few presents from my friends, and spammed Instagram with pictures of the presents. I loved them all <3
-I got ready for bed, and now I've been writing this post for about the past hour.

So there you have it. The very detailed 24 hours that make up my 18th birthday. I knew before it came that I shouldn't expect anything. The problem with expecting, is when things don't meet your high expectations, you're disappointed. While I really did try to not have expectations about anything, I did have a few things that I was hoping for. Not many, but a few.

1. I have been asking for a surprise party for over 2 years. I knew a surprise party on a Wednesday in December would be difficult, but I was really hoping for it.
2. Like I mentioned earlier, my laptop seriously needs to go to the laptop graveyard. This means that I REALLY need a new laptop, especially since I'm starting college in about a year. I feel bad for always having to borrow my brothers laptop when I go somewhere. It's bad enough that I have his desktop set up in my room to use. I've been asking for a laptop for a year. I was hoping that more than anything I would get one.
3. I definitely wasn't EXPECTING it, but I was HOPING for a lot more people to wish me a happy birthday.

I have seriously been thinking about just removing all the people who didn't tell me Happy Birthday from my friends list. But, I know that's a little extreme. Not everyone can be as good with remembering birthdays as me.

I've noticed that I've started to develop a serious anger issue lately. But the scary thing is that I've become pretty good at hiding it. I can hide anger, depression, and fear all behind a smile. That's just a little side note for you.

On a scale of 1-10, 10 being perfect, i would rate my birthday at about a 4.5. In the interest of my trying to learn to trust people, I'm going to be honest here. I feel like I could cry right now, simply out of the selfishness of me not being happy with the way my birthday turned out.

I know this whole post sounds extremely dramatic and makes me seem selfish and ungrateful. I'm really not that ungrateful. I know God has greatly blessed me in many ways, and I'm so thankful for it. But...

...it's my birthday and I'll complain if I want to.