My Joshua Stone...Continued

I shall now be able to write about what I was intending to the last entry.

Over the weekend, my youth pastor talked a lot about living radically, about knowing who you are in Christ, and not being afraid to stand up. I'm throughly sick of myself, of how I define who I am by my fears and my striking lack of self confidence. I'm a child of God...Who cares!? I've got so many more important things to do with my life, with this, my senior year, than just shuffle along never impacting anything. And this past weekend allowed me to realize that. I'm going to live my faith radically this year, to not care what people have to say, to proclaim Christ boldly and totally. I've only got one life to live. Why not live it up for Christ?

Reckless, Emily

My Joshua Stone...

Well, I returned yesterday from my youth group's fall kick-off. It was amazing. Dare I say it, it's not so terrible being a senior in the group...It might actually be o.k. *Gasp!* I like having the little kids look up to me- not that I'm anything to look up to. I told goofy stories to the girls at night, and enjoyed hearing them laugh at the stories. The boys heard about the stories which lead one of them to loudly proclaim "I wish I was a girl so I could hear Emily's stories!" The male leaders shooshed him in a hurry. I laughed.
It seems like the leaders treat me more like an equal..less like a youth to be bossed around. It's a very odd feeling. These people who I have looked up to for the last 2 years now seem to see me on thier level. And it's not such a bad thing. Maybe the best years aren't gone...maybe they are just beginning. Hmmm

More about this weekend to come- Emily

Disillusioned with Love..

This is really sad. I'm quite disillusioned with the "love", romance, dating scene...and I've never even been on a date. Whoa, that is a soo pathetic. It's so shallow, all of it. It's just a bunch of hormone-driven guys, and looks-obsessed girls proclaiming their love to eachother only to break up a week later and go after the next hott person. Maybe I've just seen too many crappy dating relationships to be very excited about entering the dating scene. But it seems like even those really godly couples, those people who do it right and honor God with their relationship still get burned. It seems so unfair. You can do and say and live all the right things in your dating relationship and it can still not work out. Love is appearing a bit too risky for my tastes at the moment.

I'm Not Single- I'm Liberated, Emily

Changing Colors...

As much as I dispise the activities that come along with the fall season (school, college people leaving) I do adore the fall season. The leaves changing, the smell of apple cider, hayrides, chilling evenings. Ahhh, fall is most definately my favorite season. I adore the the look and feel of it. For some odd reason the changing of summer to fall always make me feel very meloncaly and nostalgic. I wonder what the coming year will hold. And glance back at what I've done over the past year. It's a bit like taking a personal inventory. And I can't help but wonder what the coming year will hold.
I read a devotional last night that begged the question "Can you believe in God your whole life, but not believe Him?" The answer was, of course, yes. And how many times this summer have I done that? I've believe in Him, but not believed Him. I haven't trusted him as much as I know I should have. But can a human being really not, at times, doubt the exsistense of a God who they have no aboslute proof of? I mean we can say "God did this or God brought this together." But we can't really know can we? As humans who can only be postive of what we know through our five senses..how can we relate to the invisible God?

More thoughts on this later, Emily

To be young again...

My big brother moved out today. It sucks. I haven't spent much time with him the last few years...and now that time is gone. It's so wierd, where did the time go? The future snuck up on me and I was too busy to notice.
My friends Eric and Anneliesse left for college this week, Tyler, Ryan, Leah, and Amanda all depart in the coming weeks.
It's not fair! I want more time!! I want to be 13 again and live it all over again!
It's just not fair! Why!? Why didn't anyone warn me that I was gonna want to live it over again!? Why didn't somebody tell me that these years were going to be the best!?
*sigh* I don't want things to change. I don't wanna say goodbye anymore. No more, I want life to stay as it was...forever.
I know this sounds lame, but I don't want this to be my last year of youth group at my church. It's been such a huge part of my life...and now..it's going to be gone. The few friends that I do have who are younger, their lives are gonna go on. Without me. I feel like I'm gonna be missing out. We are all gonna be adults and starting our lives...without eachother. No best friends by our sides, no support. I suddenly feel very alone.

Emily

This one is for the girls

The title of this blog is a line of from my most favorite song. "Beautiful"- Bethany Dillion. That song finally put into words how I have felt from the day I turned 13. I shall now type the lyrics..and then write something thought-provoking about them.

"Beautiful"
I was so unique
Now I feel skin deep
I count on the make-up to cover it all
Crying myself to sleep cause I cannot keep their attention
I thought I could be strong
But it's killing me

Does someone hear my cry?
I'm dying for new life

[Chorus]
I want to be beautiful
Make you stand in awe
Look inside my heart, and be amazed
I want to hear you say
Who I am is quite enough
Just want to be worthy of love
And beautiful

Sometimes I wish I was someone other than me
Fighting to make the mirror happy
Trying to find whatever is missing
Won't you help me back to glory

[Chorus]
You make me beautiful
You make me stand in awe
You step inside my heart, and I am amazed
I love to hear You say Who I am is quite enough
You make me worthy of love
and beautiful

*Tear* I'm quite sure all you girls out there are sniffling and dabbing your eyes with a kleenex. It's never easy being a girl, I can say with 100% certainty that every girl I have ever known has struggled with some sort of self-image issue. And at times I wonder "How can a girl not?" With perfect models in the magazines, singers with abs so tight you could bounce a quarter off 'em, and guys who seem to see nothing but the way you look, how can it not hurt? Nobody looks perfect, and I know, I know, it is air-brushed but, it's so hard at times. To feel less than beautiful...at times to feel downright...ugly. What a girl wants most is to know she is worthy of love. She is somebody. That she is beautiful. So, if there are any guys reading this..please, let us know that.

How does a girl go on in the face of a standard of perfection she can never reach? Well, I have yet to discover the perfect formula. I still struggle, I still have those days when I wake up and think "I'm not eating anything", where I put on so much make-up that you need paint stripper to get it all off. But as the last set of lyrics says, Jesus is a big part of winning this battle. He is the guy who tells us we are worthy, and beautiful. *Sigh* My Prince Charming...Jesus.
Guess what I'm saying is..it's not worth it to starve ourselves, to blow all our cash on cosmetics, and to hurt inside over it. I doubt anyonewill ever read this but...for what it's worth, Jesus thinks you're beautiful.

Not too Preachy, Emily

Boring day, too much time to think.

My life has been so uneventful this past week that's it is beginning to take a great toll on my mental state. When I have all this time to myself it forces me to look at my life as it is. To think about people..friends now turned enemies. To think about the people who promised to be your best friend forever and ever when you were 14, and now won't even speak to you. Ha, life has a way of showing you cruel irony. Reality is a cruel master. Not that I'm bitter about how my life has come to be, but I can't help but, in these moments of silence, wonder how my life would be now if I was still close with these people. If time hadn't passed, if I had just done what I was expected to do, if I had acted differently. I regret so many times in the last few years. Why didn't just...oh, there is no point in wondering. You can't go back.
And I fear I'm the only one who feels this way. I attemped to explain this odd emotion to a friend today, and they offered me a rather condesceding "Oh, well, life goes on" type of response. Like I was some foolish little kid, and was immature for thinking such a thing. I wanted to shout at them, but of course I didn't. If I said half the things I think at times out loud, I probably wouldn't still exsist. Ha. I had a friend once who always said what she thought whenever she thought it. It got her in trouble the vast majority of the time, but it also got her some very true friends. Not one shallow person would talk to her, her honesty drew a different breed of people to her. Alas, I lack the courage to be like her. I want people to like me too much. I feel very discouraged at this moment.

-Emily

Oh, how the years go by...

I have come to a startling conclusion. College is nothing more than a conspiracy to take away my closet friends. Curse you higher education!!

Today my friends Eric and Anneliesse both departed for college. Packing up the past 18 years of thier lives into cardboard boxes to be able to pursue their dreams.

It doesn't seem real, we are all still 13 years old, all still in the middle of orthadoncia, all still doing puppet ministry, all still one big happy family, with years of highschool ahead. Now dreams and hopes have been transformed into a vision and plans. Our once similar dreams are now a diverse as the people we have grown into. Shawn is off to the army, Tyler to be a youth pastor, Eric an english lit. major, Anneliesse is entering the business world. Funny how the day you thought would never come, and the life you thought would never end...has ended. And here I am, still puttering around in highschool. My future looming in the horizon. Unsure of where my future will take me, but convinced the journey to get there will be nothing short a astounding. Their departing makes me more aware that the life I have known so clearly for the last 5 years is never to be the same again, new people are coming into it, and the old departing, It's like a painful amputation, and the slow and difficult process of having a fake limb attached and learning how to work with it. You will be able to do all the same thing as before, just not in the same way. I will live my life as always..but with a new way of living.

This entry made no sense- Emily

Emily's Reasons Not To Date...continued.

After searching the far regions of my mind I have come up with a few more reasons not to date

* It's too expensive. I mean I'd like to think that my guy would be a gentleman and pay for most things. (Sorry guys, but it is the proper thing to do) But in this modern age of finacial independence s tend to shell out some cash for dates, gifts and such. Does cashless Emily really need to another thing to pay for? I think not.

* It's way too time consuming. Dates, phone calls, hanging out...it all takes time. This is not to say that one can't have a relationship where you give a lot of your time and energy to other things but, most of the relationships I have seen people tend to get wrapped up in their signifigant other. Why waste precious time on that type of thing? You could be reading your bible, participating in a service project, or discovering how to make a clean burning fuel from llame spit!

Anywho, those are my current reasons. I'm sure I will think of more and when I do I shall post them here.

Bananas, Emily

Thoughts and Musings

Greetings my loyal readers, ok, there aren't any loyal readers but I thought it sounded good. This is my first blog since the car accident incident, and I'm getting over it. My finger is no longer swollen, although it still hurts, and the bump on my head has been reduced to a small scab. And the best part? My mind no longer replays the accident over and over in my mind, I can close my eyes and not see my car in the ditch. A very welcomed prospect.

Nothing else exciting has happened, at least not blog-worthy.

So I was reading my friend Tyler's blog tonight, and he posted his now famous "reasons not to date." I had never read them before, although everyone I come in contact with seems to have. Ty is a very insightful guy, or as my sister put it "Tyler is the e-ching" He, as always, made a lot of sense. I know I think a lot about having a boyfriend, or lack thereof. It would be lovely to have a beau, but I am, in some ways, happy that I don't have one. And so in light of Tyler's wisdom I have decided to publish "Emily's reasons not to date" Mine are less insightful, and probably a lot more frivilous and girly but none the less they are reasons.

Emily's Reasons Not To Date

* Too much pressure. Pressure from everyone. Pressure to please your boyfriend, be an example of a Godly relationship, maintain friendships, be friends with his friends, be cute looking all the time, and be everything to everyone.

* Too easy to get physical. I mean, If I had a boyfriend and cared for him a lot I would want to hug and kiss him, I would think. And with every kiss you give part of your heart away. Sorry to break it you folks but that kinda thing is meant to be for a husband and wife, and due to the fact that I am 17 marriage is not in the near future. So why risk that kind of temption?

* Too easy to push God out of the picture. Now as much as I love my Jesus, and will never love anyone more than Him, I can't say I always put Him first. Unfortunatly, translating what you know and believe into how you live your life isn't as easy as it sounds. Getting caught up in your guy is a very real possibilty, and why risk that?

* Breaking up is hard to do. As much as I would try to date a guy who has a real future with me in marriage, sometimes things just don't work out. God isn't calling us to get married or it just isn't the right time. Stuff like that happens. And breaking up will suck...a lot. I've seen people get suicidal about break-ups. And that is scary. Why do that to your selfesteem???

I'm sure there are more, and I will post as they come to mind.

Blessed am I, Emily

Scared and shaken..

Last night was one of the scariest of my entire life. I was driving home from Warroad and trying to turn left, the guy behind me didn't see my signal he said, and he broadsided me on my side of the car. I remember hearing a metalic thud, screaming, looking at my friend Anna, who was with me, and then being in a ditch. My parents car is crunched...the towing people said basically totaled. They said, when my mother called there this morning, that they thought "Whoever was in there must have been quite hurt", and upon finding out of my injuries they pronounced me "very lucky". I fractured my right middle finger, have a large bump on the back of my head, as well as a cut on my leg and sore jaw. I think I broke my side window with my head, at least the bump on the back of my head leads me to think so. I found glass pelets in my ear. A few moments of the aren't clear..I may have blacked out, I'm not totally sure. We were both wearing our seatbelts, thankfully, otherwise we both probably would've gone flying out the front window. I'm still shaky, of course crying for a lot of last night. I'd like to say I kept my calm and handled things very maturely, but I didn't. My big brother came to the rescue and his friend with a pair of sandals, mine are in a flooded ditch someplace. I have plans of never driving again...ever.

Where did my life go?

Goodbye to everything that I know. My life has flew past me, and I was too busy to notice. Mercy.

I'm so old, my childhood is gone and I can't get it back. The little girl who played my baby Jesus in the church Christmas program is now 7 years old. The guys I have attend youth group with since I was 12 are going off to college in less than a month. My first crush ever is now entering his sophmore year in college. My big brother, who I shared a room with when I was has his own apartment. Suddenly, I stand at the door of the future and I have no choice but to walk through. My life is never going to be the same again. Maybe I'll be good at this whole adult thing. Maybe I will never wish these years back....then again, maybe I will.

From now on, I intend to live my life with no regrets. Because, as it has become so painfully clear, you can never go back.

- Emily

P.S. Sorry this entry is so depressing :P

What happened to my summer?!

This just in: My summer has disapeared...and I am unable to get it back. That sucks. It somehow, without my knowledge or consent, has gone away. And I am now a Senior in highschool. Several of my closest and dearest are departing for college in less that 2 weeks for some. That sucks. My future lies in front of me and it's dismal. Very dismal. I will have to get a full time job and my own place and exsist and be. Ahhhh!!! I'm not mature enough for this!!!!

What if I suck at life?? Really, it's an honest question. What if I have a tough time being an adult? What if I'm no good at adulthood? I have one year of high school left. Wha!? When did that happen? What happened to the last 12 years of my education!?

Into the bleak beyond, Emily

One and Lonely...calm down people, it's a song.

I'm not in a manic depressive mood, nobody freak out.

I've been in a bit of funk the last couple days, the giddy, bubbly mood I have been in the past couple weeks seems to be fading. *sigh* Summer draws to a close, and my working woes are multiplying. Everyday that I am scheduled to work there seems to be something that I want to go do or do with friends happening. Fudge. I hate that. I feel guilty asking for the time off, but I also hate working. Not that it's a such a tough job or my co-workers are evil but, it's so monotonous. But of course I need cash, my college fund is dwindling. I have had to dip into in quite often in order to afford all the summer activities. (camp,mission trip etc.) I think I have a little less than a thousand dollars in there...not enough to even make a dent in the forthcoming bill. Eeep.

And I have come to the conclusion that nothing romantic ever happens to me. Ever. All my friends seem to have something romantic going on. This guy likes them, or so-and-so sent her letter, or guess what you-know-who said to me. Yadda, yadda, blah,blah,blah. Down with love!!! I know a guy can't make me happy, and I should enjoy life as is but there are times when I can't help but.... Enough of this wishful thinking.

I need to eat some chocolate.

*sigh*- Emily

Lazy Summer...

My summer, alas, is drawing to a close. I know that there is a month left yet, but I know how fast that is going to fly by. And my Senior year looms dark and forboding in the near future. Ugh. I'm trying to feel excited about it, but I can't help think that nothing lovely or exciting shall happen in this final year of higher education. Although, I suppose as soon as I say that God goes "HA!" and then zaps me with some crazy event in my life. Maybe something crazy romantic will happen to me! I'll fall madly in love with my Prince Charming! And a whirlwind romance will insue!...or not. Haha.

So, I'm heading to a theater conference down in the Cities next week, with a couple of Drama buddies and our school's drama coach. It promises to be great fun. We shall be watching the the dress rehearsal of "Death of a Salesman." Not my favorite play, but seeing anything theaterical done professionally is quite wonderful to my culture starved mind. And I get to se some of the great people that I met in Arkansas, who reside in that area.

So hopefully this Senior year will filled with excitement and promise.
-Emily

Rickshaw Rally- Racing to the Son

It's Vacation Bible School week at my church this week. Which means I get to spend 3 hours a n night with 25+ plus or so squirmy 8 years olds. And I get to wear a a gold colored T-shirt with the world's ugliest logo emblazened on my chest. Joy.

Of course that last paragraph was pure sarcasm. I love VBS week! I get to serve Jesus in the coolest way possible: little kids!!! I'm, once again, helping with the 1st. grade class. I love those kids, I get all the cute ones this year. :) Their natural curiosity and infectious zeal for everything they do is contagious. Very contagious. By the end of the week I always find myself playing all the games, throwing myself into singing the cheesy songs (with actions I might add), and colapsing into giggles with the little girls. I adore it.

And this is one of the few times I see my entire church body united for a common goal. As with any diverse group of people, there is always disagreement. But not with VBS, everyone throws themselves headlong into it. From the little 8th graders helping with the nursrey babies, to the old grannies baking treats and mixing Kool-aid. It's really wonderful to see. The church has become like a 2nd family to me. And I heart family.

VBS ahoy!- Emily