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
Friday, December 14, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
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.
"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.
Monday, December 3, 2012
What is wrong with humans?
Have you ever been surprised when God is faithful and answers your prayers, even though He's done it a thousand times before? Maybe I'm the only one.
I KNOW God never leaves me, and hears my every prayer. I know He answers my prayers. But somehow I'm surprised when He does anyway.
When He answers my prayers, it sometimes take me a little while to process that He did. Lately, I've had a LOT of things to cry out to God for. Trust, school, sickness, fear, sleep, etc. etc.
One big thing is that I have been feeling like a failure, and believing that no one like me. In Gods way, He has slowly shown me over the past couple days that I'm completely wrong. On Wednesday I was talking to a friend who was having a bad day. I was just trying to encourage her, but she ended up encouraging me more than she realizes. Yesterday, several people took the time to talk to me and see how I was doing. People that I wouldn't have expected. I got a hug from someone. A lot of people don't realize how much a simple hug can help. I got a text message from a friend I haven't talked to in a while. We had a nice long conversation. Today, I got a phone call from someone I didn't know. This lady got my number from the parent of someone I babysit. She's looking for a babysitter for her 1-year old daughter.
Does all this sound like things that would happen to someone who was hated by everyone, and who failed at everything? I don't think so. If I was such a failure at babysitting, people wouldn't be recommending me. If people didn't like me, they wouldn't be talking to me.
I still have a lot of prayers that haven't been answered yet, but I know that God is working things out in His own perfect timing. He has a perfect plan and a perfect order.
My title for this post probably doesn't make sense. Normally I do a lot of thinking on what the prefect title should be, but I don't have much time right now. The title is talking about how we forget that God is faithful. My post is only sort of talking about that. Oh well :)
I hope this can somehow encourage someone. God really does care, and He listens when we pray to Him. Just try it out. See what happens.
I KNOW God never leaves me, and hears my every prayer. I know He answers my prayers. But somehow I'm surprised when He does anyway.
When He answers my prayers, it sometimes take me a little while to process that He did. Lately, I've had a LOT of things to cry out to God for. Trust, school, sickness, fear, sleep, etc. etc.
One big thing is that I have been feeling like a failure, and believing that no one like me. In Gods way, He has slowly shown me over the past couple days that I'm completely wrong. On Wednesday I was talking to a friend who was having a bad day. I was just trying to encourage her, but she ended up encouraging me more than she realizes. Yesterday, several people took the time to talk to me and see how I was doing. People that I wouldn't have expected. I got a hug from someone. A lot of people don't realize how much a simple hug can help. I got a text message from a friend I haven't talked to in a while. We had a nice long conversation. Today, I got a phone call from someone I didn't know. This lady got my number from the parent of someone I babysit. She's looking for a babysitter for her 1-year old daughter.
Does all this sound like things that would happen to someone who was hated by everyone, and who failed at everything? I don't think so. If I was such a failure at babysitting, people wouldn't be recommending me. If people didn't like me, they wouldn't be talking to me.
I still have a lot of prayers that haven't been answered yet, but I know that God is working things out in His own perfect timing. He has a perfect plan and a perfect order.
My title for this post probably doesn't make sense. Normally I do a lot of thinking on what the prefect title should be, but I don't have much time right now. The title is talking about how we forget that God is faithful. My post is only sort of talking about that. Oh well :)
I hope this can somehow encourage someone. God really does care, and He listens when we pray to Him. Just try it out. See what happens.
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