Writer's Block

I want to write a rhyme about what a witch this wily bout of writer's block has been. Writing worthless pages, wistful thoughts. Writing daily, weekly but nothing worthwhile. Why? Why can't I write? Why will I not write?

Square Watermelons

I need to move to Japan. Do I speak Japanese? No. Do I have any interest in Japanese culture? No. Am I Japanese? NO! That's just the way my eyes look!

I need to move to Japan because that's where they sell these:

"What is it?" you may ask. That, my friends, is a watermelon. A square watermelon. 

Japanese farmers are all about efficiency. They also seem to possess some engineering skills which makes me question their career choices as a farmer. Using a plexiglas box, the watermelons grown within the confined space, taking on the boxes shape. I suppose that you can't go wrong with growing a fruit that is every bit as delicious as its round shape but much more stackable. I mean, can there really be anything wrong with taking a good thing and wanting to make it fit into your refrigerator a little more efficiently?

The Japanese totally get me. I've been growing things in boxes for years. I have been growing my plexiglas imprisoned God for just about as long as I've been a Christian. In my inability & disinterest to ACTUALLY know God, I have guilt a box with what I know, what I can see and shoved my God inside. This way, my farm-grown God can't mess with my life plans or transform my heart from His box- that's why I've built it so small. His power will always be stunted. He's easily packed away, totally stackable. I can pile as much stuff on top of Him as I need to because He's square and yet still pretty tasty.

I guess that in my understanding, the round shape is what defines a melon. Isn't robbing it of its form taking away from the fruit that it's always been? 

Is God even a shape? I'm sure that He wouldn't be a square. If He were, He'd be a circle. Eternal. Efficient. Self sustaining. Are we robbing ourselves of knowing the true God by robbing Him of His real power, strength, and shape in our own lives?

God doesn't fit in a box. He's never even been in mine. I couldn't even squeeze God's pinky toe in there if I tried. Just my ideas about who He is, who He loves, crammed into a stuffy box. Melons should be round and God should be free.

 If the universe can't contain Him, how could our little box, on our little planet, in this little galaxy? 

This Message Will Self Destruct...

I post things here that I'm trying to hide from the rest of the world:

I just finished my application to serve with Operation Mobilization.

Now...we wait.

News Flash!!

I'm breaking the news:



I'm making my move towards missions.

I've been trying to deny my call by  pursuing more & more education, putting all of my eggs in one basket, so to speak. The truth is that all you need to serve God is a willing heart. I have that. I may not be a nurse or a doctor or a teacher. I may not be fluent in 4 languages or be a worship leader or a preacher but I have a willing heart.

It's slightly sooner than I thought that it would be but here it is. Here I am.

Here I am Lord. Send me. Wherever. Whenever. I will go.

A New Year

It's the second day of the new year and because I am a slacker, I am just now beginning to think about  my "resolutions" for the 2011. To be honest, I think that New Year's resolutions are stupid. I don't think that I've ever kept a single New Year's resolution that I've ever made. That's depressing. Well, I guess unless I resolved to stay alive for another year. Than I've managed to keep that one...23 times.

I made a list of things that I'd like to do this year. I wish that they were all foolish, intangible things so that at the dawn of 2012 (the beginning of the end?!) I can look back and feel like I've accomplished something over the last 365 days. I wish that my resolution list looked like this:

This year I want to:
Bake a new dessert
Cry over something stupid
Read no other book than the Bible
Cut my hair
Be moody
Complain about my life

Man, I'd have this New Year's Resolution thing in the bag! I've already achieved most of those things and it's only January 2. Although I'm not aiming incredibly high this year, they're not all easily attainable.

Without further ado, here's my list for 2011:

This year I want to:
Blog more
Eat less
Exercise more
Judge less
Love freely
Get a hobby
Seek direction in my life from the Lord & not men (or myself)
Fall in love (Don't judge me! Though I suppose it is a bit much...)
Do missions

Yes, blog more. I am resolving to do that. Blog more, write more. I really should. Janet asked me to do a little write uppity-do-wop for the Ladies' Retreat and I sat there staring at a blank Text Edit document for 15 minutes. I haven't written anything worth reading in months. That's like the ONE thing that I do well and I haven't done it in months. Usually things just flow out of me and into my journal every night...but not recently. Sigh. All well.

Complacency- The Silent, Suburban Killer

I don't know why but I've been searching for this post in one of my old journals for quite a while now. I found it 4 journals back from the one that I'm in now. The post is dated May 26, 2008. A bit mellow dramatic but I was young...er. Wow, this was 2 1/2 years ago.
___________________________________________________________

God, I need a cure. A cure for a disease more threatening than cancer, more infectious than AIDS. Lord, I need a cure for death, of the soul. What some might call complacency.

I am not asking for a miracle pill or some vaccine for infants that falls in line somewhere between measles & mumps. I need something much more. I need Your touch. I need You to move me.

I realize that right now I'm feeling a little on the heavy side because, well, I haven't been to the gym in a while and I have a lot of junk clinging to m y heart, like a massive magnet attracting all of the negatives around it. But You carried a cross made completely of dead tree so I think, no- I know, that You can handle me.

A girl, no, a woman? I can't even tell who's hands these are anymore. Where I have gone, what have I done? Where am I?

I am stuck in a rut, in a hole, in a... I don't even know what to call it. Death row? I feel like I am awaiting spiritual destruction. I feel like a slight sneeze might send me tumbling---gone. I am hidden inside the shell that I put in my closet last summer although I know You told me to throw it out.

Look where that got me! Here. Crying. [Illegible]. Complacent.

Thank the Lord that He can move mountains.

5|26|08

Grace

I take grace for granted.
I take grace for luck.
I take grace where I go

In case I get stuck.

I say that I need it
& I gobble it up.
I sin all I want
Because grace is enough.
Isn't that true?
Why is it so wrong
To give into sin when the temptation's so strong?
I'd never say it aloud
But deep down, I think it true.
I take grace for granted
So more wrong I can do.

It should not be this way--
You are free, you are free!
Reckon yourselves dead
& dead you shall be.

He has died, I am dead.
He's alive, now I live
Free from sin, free from chains, free from the law but not grace.
I am free from the law under Your under-appreciated, un-understood, unbelievable, unfathomable, unwavering, unending, how could you possibly love me?! grace.

Taste Testing: Officiating a Wedding

My aunt and her long time boyfriend/fiance, Rich, tied the knot on 10/9/10. They asked me to officiate the wedding back in June and of course I agreed. Apparently in Massachusetts you can apply for a one day marriage officiating license. We did it and they approved it. They give those things out to anyone!


Anywho, I took the stuff that my aunt gave to me, added a spiel of my own, tweeked the vows, & this is how it ended up.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dearly Beloved, we are gathered together today in the presence of God – and in the face of family and friends – to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony.  

Marriage is the union of heart, body and, mind.  It is intended for mutual joy and for the help and comfort given to another in both times of prosperity and adversity.  Love endures all things.

Through marriage, Richard Wendell Riley and Vicki Ann Bell will make a commitment together to face their disappointments, embrace their dreams, realize their hopes, and accept each other’s failures and shortcomings.  Rich and Vicki will promise one another to aspire to these ideals throughout their life together, through mutual understanding, openness, and sensitivity to each other.

I wish that I had even a year of marriage experience under my belt so that I could share some profound words of wisdom with you and yet I do not. And, seeing as this is my first (and probably my last) time officiating a wedding, I do not have any poetic words to share or funny stories to tell. In fact, I do not even know much about what it is like to be in love but what I do know of love, I wish to share with you today. For that, I will turn to the Bible, God's Holy Word, to 1 Corinthians chapter 13, known by many and to most as "The Love Chapter" for it's thorough definition of love. It is all-encompassing and, quite frankly, just perfect.

"Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head, Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always 'me first,'  Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end. For right now we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love."

It would be foolish for me to stand up here today and say that love is easy, because it is not, so I will not. Love is difficult. That it is why it surpasses both hope and faith. We walk by faith and not by sight, we hope in things not seen, but we love by that which we do see and by that which we feel. People often say that love is blind but someone once said that love is not blind- it sees more not less but because it sees more it is willing to see less. Love covers a multitude of sins, a multitude of hardships, a multitude of sorrows. Love will prevail in the face of all these things. So, I will dare you, exhort you, challenge you to love one another extravagantly, to hold nothing of yourselves back. Today is a day to celebrate the union of two people, two lives converging into one.

As we gather together to celebrate this union, we bring with us all the wishes of happiness and our fondest hopes for Rich and Vicki and we assure them that our hearts are in tune with theirs.  These moments are so meaningful to all of us, for what greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined together, to strengthen each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow, to share with each other in all gladness.

This relationship stands for love, loyalty, honesty and trust -  but most of all for friendship.  It was from this seed of friendship that brought them together..  Do not think that you can direct the course of love – for love, if it finds you worthy, shall direct you.

Marriage is an act of faith, a personal commitment, as well as a moral, and physical union between two people.  Marriage has been described as the best and most important relationship that can exist between two people.  It is the construction of their love and trust into a single growing energy of spiritual life.  It is a commitment that requires and deserves daily attention.  

We are here today, before God,  because marriage is the oldest and most sacred union between two people. God Himself declared that a marriage was the joining of two beings into one flesh. This occasion marks the celebration of love and commitment with which Rich and Vicki will begin their new life together.  And now, through me,  He joins you together in one of the holiest bonds.

Vicki and Rich have chosen to have their mothers by their sides as they make this commitment to one another today. I'd like to invite Virginia and Martha to come and stand with us.

And now, for the exchanging of the vows...

Rich, you will take the plunge first. Repeat after me…

I, Richard Wendell Riley, | take you Vicki Ann Bell to be my wife.|

In the presence of God, our family and our friends| I give you my solemn vow to be your faithful husband. |  in sickness and in health | in good times and in bad | in joy, as well as sorrow | I promise to love you | to support you |  to honor and respect you | to laugh with you and cry with you | and to cherish you as long as we both shall live.

I, Vicki Ann Bell,| take you Richard Wendell Riley to be my husband.|

In the presence of God, our family and our friends |  I give you my solemn vow to be your faithful wife. |  in sickness and in health | in good times and in bad | in joy, as well as sorrow |  I promise to love you | to support you |  to honor and respect you | to laugh with you and cry with you | and to cherish you as long as we both shall live.

May I have the presentation of the rings please.

May these rings be blessed as the symbol of their unity.  These two lives are now joined in one unbroken circle.  Wherever they go, may they always return to one another.  May they grow in understanding and in compassion.  May the home they establish together be such a place that others will find a friend.  May these rings on their fingers symbolize the presence of God and the spirit of love in their hearts for each other.

Rich, in placing this ring on Vicki’s finger, repeat after me:

Vicki Ann Bell | you are now my wife |  I give you this ring as a pledge of my love | and as the symbol of our unity |  and with this ring, I thee wed.

Vicki, in placing this ring on Vicki’s finger, repeat after me:

Richard Wendell Riley | you are now my husband | I give you this ring as a pledge of my love | and as the symbol of our unity | and with this ring, I thee wed.

May you always share with each other the gifts of love. Be one in heart and in mind. May you always create a home together that puts in your hearts love, generosity, and kindness.

In as much as Rich and Vicki have consented together in marriage before us and our Heavenly Father, having pledged their faith to one another, and declared their unity by giving and receiving these rings, they are now joined.

What, therefore, God has joined together,  let no man separate..

And so, by the power vested in me by the State of Massachusetts and Almighty God, I now pronounce you husband and wife.

Now, the moment that we've all been waiting for... You may now seal this union with a kiss.

The Gospel for EVERY Day

I make mistakes.
I fail myself, I fail others, I fail God.
I am not perfect.
I am a sinner.
Regardless of how hard I try, I do bad things.
All of my charitable deeds & good works gain me nothing, get me no where.
I am not a good person.
I need a Savior.
Jesus obeyed what I did not and sacrificed what I could not in order to reconcile me to God in a way that all of my good deeds, church going, & Bible reading could not.
His forgiveness is free for me today.
His mercies are new today.
He is all that I need today, will need tomorrow.
This is my Gospel for every day.

I'm an Idealist- What are you?

This is part of my personality assessment that I am now obsessed with. It's dangerously accurate for the most part.

Do you think that this is me? I stinkin' do.

I am an Idealist Teacher- what are you?   Check it out:  http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

INFP (Introverted Feelings with Extroverted Perception)

As an INFP, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you deal with things according to how you feel about them, or how they fit into your personal value system. Your secondary mode is external, where you take things in primarily via your intuition.

INFPs, more than other iNtuitive Feeling types, are focused on making the world a better place for people. Their primary goal is to find out their meaning in life. What is their purpose? How can they best serve humanity in their lives? They are idealists and perfectionists, who drive themselves hard in their quest for achieving the goals they have identified for themselves

INFPs are highly intuitive about people. They rely heavily on their intuitions to guide them, and use their discoveries to constantly search for value in life. They are on a continuous mission to find the truth and meaning underlying things. Every encounter and every piece of knowledge gained gets sifted through the INFP's value system, and is evaluated to see if it has any potential to help the INFP define or refine their own path in life. The goal at the end of the path is always the same - the INFP is driven to help people and make the world a better place.

Generally thoughtful and considerate, INFPs are good listeners and put people at ease. Although they may be reserved in expressing emotion, they have a very deep well of caring and are genuinely interested in understanding people. This sincerity is sensed by others, making the INFP a valued friend and confidante. An INFP can be quite warm with people he or she knows well.

INFPs do not like conflict, and go to great lengths to avoid it. If they must face it, they will always approach it from the perspective of their feelings. In conflict situations, INFPs place little importance on who is right and who is wrong. They focus on the way that the conflict makes them feel, and indeed don't really care whether or not they're right. They don't want to feel badly. This trait sometimes makes them appear irrational and illogical in conflict situations. On the other hand, INFPs make very good mediators, and are typically good at solving other people's conflicts, because they intuitively understand people's perspectives and feelings, and genuinely want to help them.

INFPs are flexible and laid-back, until one of their values is violated. In the face of their value system being threatened, INFPs can become aggressive defenders, fighting passionately for their cause. When an INFP has adopted a project or job which they're interested in, it usually becomes a "cause" for them. Although they are not detail-oriented individuals, they will cover every possible detail with determination and vigor when working for their "cause".

When it comes to the mundane details of life maintenance, INFPs are typically completely unaware of such things. They might go for long periods without noticing a stain on the carpet, but carefully and meticulously brush a speck of dust off of their project booklet.

INFPs do not like to deal with hard facts and logic. Their focus on their feelings and the Human Condition makes it difficult for them to deal with impersonal judgment. They don't understand or believe in the validity of impersonal judgment, which makes them naturally rather ineffective at using it. Most INFPs will avoid impersonal analysis, although some have developed this ability and are able to be quite logical. Under stress, it's not uncommon for INFPs to mis-use hard logic in the heat of anger, throwing out fact after (often inaccurate) fact in an emotional outburst.

INFPs have very high standards and are perfectionists. Consequently, they are usually hard on themselves, and don't give themselves enough credit. INFPs may have problems working on a project in a group, because their standards are likely to be higher than other members' of the group. In group situations, they may have a "control" problem. The INFP needs to work on balancing their high ideals with the requirements of every day living. Without resolving this conflict, they will never be happy with themselves, and they may become confused and paralyzed about what to do with their lives.

INFPs are usually talented writers. They may be awkard and uncomfortable with expressing themselves verbally, but have a wonderful ability to define and express what they're feeling on paper. INFPs also appear frequently in social service professions, such as counselling or teaching. They are at their best in situations where they're working towards the public good, and in which they don't need to use hard logic.

INFPs who function in their well-developed sides can accomplish great and wonderful things, which they will rarely give themselves credit for. Some of the great, humanistic catalysts in the world have been INFPs.

Even more than the other Idealists, Teachers have a natural talent for leading students or trainees toward learning, or as Idealists like to think of it, they are capable of calling forth each learner's potentials. Teachers (around two percent of the population) are able - effortlessly, it seems, and almost endlessly-to dream up fascinating learning activities for their students to engage in. In some Teachers, this ability to fire the imagination can amount to a kind of genius which other types find hard to emulate. But perhaps their greatest strength lies in their belief in their students. Teachers look for the best in their students, and communicate clearly that each one has untold potential, and this confidence can inspire their students to grow and develop more than they ever thought possible.

In whatever field they choose, Teachers consider people their highest priority, and they instinctively communicate personal concern and a willingness to become involved. Warmly outgoing, and perhaps the most expressive of all the types, Teachers are remarkably good with language, especially when communicating in speech, face to face. And they do not hesitate to speak out and let their feelings be known. Bubbling with enthusiasm, Teachers will voice their passions with dramatic flourish, and can, with practice, become charismatic public speakers. This verbal ability gives Teachers a good deal of influence in groups, and they are often asked to take a leadership role.

Teachers like things settled and organized, and will schedule their work hours and social engagements well ahead of time-and they are absolutely trustworthy in honoring these commitments. Valuing as they do interpersonal cooperation and harmonious relations, Teachers are extraordinarily tolerant of others, are easy to get along with, and are usually popular wherever they are.

Teachers are highly sensitive to others, which is to say their intuition tends to be well developed. Certainly their insight into themselves and others is unparalleled. Without a doubt, they know what is going on inside themselves, and they can read other people with uncanny accuracy. Teachers also identify with others quite easily, and will actually find themselves picking up the characteristics, emotions, and beliefs of those around them. Because they slip almost unconsciously into other people's skin in this way, Teachers feel closely connected with those around them, and thus show a sincere interest in the joys and problems of their employees, colleagues, students, clients, and loved ones.

Mikhail Gorbachev, Oprah Winfrey, Pope John Paul II, Ralph Nader, John Wooden, and Margaret Mead are examples of Teacher Idealists.

Things that will make me happy:

A new job
A boyfriend
Being thinner
Being prettier
Being funnier
Being wiser
Appearing smarter
Appearing more spiritual
Being a friend to all
My family
My friends
Returning to Peru
Writing more
Serving more
Trying harder
Gaining someone's respect
Proving myself
Overcoming the status quo
Creating something beautiful
A bigger paycheck
Cooler clothes
Clearer skin
Exploring the world
Running away
Trying new things
Playing by the rules
Pleasing others
Figuring out what to do with my life
Jesus