when you have nothing left in your fridge

Most of the time I can't seem to ever eat what I'm craving.

Like today...I really wanted a hamburger but all I got was a bowl of clam chowder. And it wasn't even that good.

Then there are those other days when NOTHING looks good...but you're just hungry. And you want something to eat. So you go into your pantry and look and look and there's nothing and you want to punch it in the face. Often I've had the impulse to throw all the food in my house away. But I never do.

I have no idea what that was for...but I'm thinking that maybe it just goes to show that I am at a loss.

i blog when i can't blog no more.

does that make me shallow?

....dangit.

we got the right stuff, baby

Coming back from L.A. was literally transitioning back into an entire different world. I came from a place of poverty, abandonment, depravity.....back to my hometown, buzzing with a middle class demographic of mostly white people. They drive nice enough cars, they shop at nice places, they eat at restaurants....

Los Angeles is a place of blatant starvation - a place hungrily reaching for a savior. Someone to hand them a bag of groceries.

Olympia is crying out as well...but I have to lean in closer to hear. I'm anxious to see the difference our church community will have on this city, if we're hoping to spare some time. My prayer is that the tears that were shed on the missions trip, watching men, women, and children being impacted by Christ's love through us, will not be in vain. If we continue to ignore the hopelessness surrounding us we have accomplished nothing.

Compassion leads to action.

So lets go people.

then i tried to write a song about it, but i couldn't think of anything that rhymed with "uuuuuuuuhhhhhhaaaaaahhhGGGAAAAHH"

So I'm sitting here in a quiet office (with the exception of Packer growling for no apparent reason) after watching the 80^th annual Academy Awards. Alone.

I'm in my sweatpants with a certain SMU baseball sweatshirt thrown on and I'm trying to think of a way to start unraveling the thoughts that have been going on in this head of mine for the past week. To try and start things off, I'll do my best to condense them into a nutshell.

Everything has changed.

My work schedule, my homework regimen, my texting bill, my social calendar.

My prayer life, my worship, the time I spend reading my Bible.

The time I go to sleep at night, the people I talk to, the things I think about, the amount of TV I watch, the time I spend on the computer, the effort I put into making myself look presentable in the morning.

My appetite, my relationships with my parents and my brothers, the clothes I wear when I go to bed, the frequency of my trips to the mailbox, where I spend my money, the number of times I call Dena in a day.

The way I connect with students on a Wednesday night. The people who are and who aren't on youth staff. Even though that doesn't have much to do with me.

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It's amazing the time and emotion you invest in something that may never have been your business to invest in. Or maybe it is for a season, and you're left to wonder if you ever had a right to place your thoughts and feelings there in the first place. I pray that God would have mercy on me if I have gone against His plan in any way, or if I screwed something up due to my devastating tendency to be human.

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Over the past couple days I have realized the reason I put off God's plans for my life so much is simply because I don't think I can have a part of them. I underestimate myself too often. Listening to someone preach or pray or prophesy or lead worship I think to myself, "I could never amount to that. I'm just not good enough." I wonder if those people up there, on the platforms or stages or pulpits, ever imagined themselves doing what they do.

Countless times I've asked myself if my dad ever pictured himself having the respect and influence and incredible wisdom that he has today. Does he understand that people listen to what he says? And what a huge deal that is? I'm being honest with you when I say he is one of the best preachers I've ever listened to.

There are few people in my life who I compare myself to. For the most part I don't size myself up next to someone who may appear to be "better" than I am. But there are those who just frustrate me because it seems that they can do no wrong. I envy them because they don't belittle themselves, whether out of naiveté or arrogance I'm not really sure. It's obvious they're confident in themselves and don't really care what other people think.

I ask myself why I feel so ill-equipped to do what I feel God has called me to do. Or why I'm so ill-equipped, period. I've always fancied the notion that I'm mature for my age. But in so many ways I feel younger than I already am (Like I NEED more reminders as to how NOT OLD I am! Ugh).

And now I feel God slowly taking away my safety nets. The new satellite campus will soon occupy my closest friend's time, making it harder for her to attend Olympia as often as she does now. And the other friend…well, that's a whole other entry in itself :/

I'm not sure where these recent occurrences are going to lead me, but I pray it will show me deeper levels of relationships with other people, but most of all with God. Maybe I need to learn some things on my own, without having friends to occupy my time constantly. This is difficult to say, but maybe the time has come for me to start paving my own way, instead of walking next to others on theirs.

This is truly one of the most significant transitional points in my life. I just hope I'm not lame enough to make a mess out of everything. More than anything I want a peek at God's blueprints. A co-worker and I were having a similar conversation, saying that if we just knew what was going to happen, it would be so much easier to go through the hard times. But then, what would faith be good for?

So…catch 22 J

dentist.

The time lolled by and I sat still, very still where I was sitting in the musty upholstered chair. You would have thought time was turning into this muckity muck, gingerly gushing out the end of a long PVC pipe down a drain of nonsense. I swallowed once. Twice. And then turned my head towards the clock. It was five minutes past my appointment, and no one had called my name yet.

My knee bobbed up and down as it tried to control the excited reverberations of my heart. Who gets a tooth pulled on a Saturday? Idiots.

Laying in the chair turned out to be worse. The sharp lights squinted at me in mocking fashion, and I had no choice but to squint back through the glassy shades I was given. They were no help. But I wore them anyway. Doctors in general are notorious for taking more than a “few minutes” to come in and examine you. Dentists especially, in my personal opinion.

Back and forth, back and forth. My gums are jolly with Novocain but the pressure is a beast. Somehow through my emotionless jaw the tooth screamed at me, raking its roots along the insides, fighting to stay put. My eyelids closed shut and I tried to think of other things. Sunsets. Cute Shoes. Food. Matthew McConaughey Jake Gamble. Anything other than toothpaste, really.

Holes are no fun. Holes in your mouth can make you suicidal. The way I see it, holes must be better than giant molars taking over your mouth, scribbling their names on the insides of your cheeks, making it impossible to bite down without eating your own face. That’s the way I see it, anyway.

christmas?

This season has gone by at an alarming rate. For some reason, I feel like I haven't gotten a chance to stop and enjoy it like I have in previous years.

Thinking this over, even as I type these words, it could be that I have a job, and December is our most busiest time of the year, and I'm hardly home on weekends anymore.

Maybe because I'm seventeen and I'm not as freaked out over getting presents as I once was...


Whatever the reason, this time I am now more nostalgic than anything. Wisconsin snow what probably one of the best things in the world, and here all we get is rain rain rain. Where is the humanity? I don't understand...aren't we all dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones we used to know?

I'm praying that tonight it will start snowing right as we're opening presents. Then maybe I'll be able to cherish this year a bit more.

Looking in retrospect, it's so fascinating to compare my various Christmas experiences. In different places, with different people, different Christmas sermons. More and more I just want to be there, with Jesus, in the stable, with Mary and Joseph and the multitude of angels. IT's so great to hear about it, don't get me wrong, but I just want to BE THERE.

What if I can be there? Right here, right now.

Picture this - here I am, sitting here with tossled hair and no makeup, and I'm witnessing the birth of Christ. AS I'M TYPING.

And what if, in the midst of this, I can know him, and I'm just there, and I can hear him crying, and I smell the stank of all of the animals, and I cringe cause it's kind of gross and that's the first thing this baby Jesus gets to smell as He enters the world for the very first time, as a human?

I think that's what He wanted, above all things, for us to be there.

I hope that as each Christmas comes, I can be there more and more. Just like He wanted.


Sigh...this is a nonsensical blog.

i tripped...don't judge me.

FACT: I have a short attention span.


It's hard for me to be consistent with certain things, because my mind just likes going everywhere at once.

For instance, I'll go to my room to fetch a book/CD/writing utensil/my big blankie and end up finding that my room is messy, clean it up, then head back downstairs without any of the aforementioned items.

Side note: being a lazy person, it is difficult for me to put the effort into making a second trip up our long, winding staircase. I mean...look at me. I get flushed after tieing my shoes. Or peeling an orange. Or, maybe, making a sandwich. Even writing this blog makes me want to stop for a breath.

Which leads me to my next point - please do not expect me to write in this thing daily. Or even weekly.

Because I'm just not good at it.

FACT: I have not written in my journal since September 27th, only because a very important thing happened on that day, and the entry is only two words anyway.

Imagine this - a long, narrow road. EVERYbody is walking, or jogging (soft "j"), or even sprinting. This is the sphere of internet blogging. And where am I, you might ask, in all of this chaos?

I tripped and fell a couple of feet back, and I'm too lazy to get up.

If you would care to read the first portion of this entry, you'll see why.


SO...moving on with life, as dull as it may seem at the moment - SCHOOL IS OUT FOR CHRISTMAS! Yay :) For about a week or so now I've had college students left and right massacring me with in-your-face comments, boasting about their homework free lives.

Well suck on this, all you fancy pants - I'm out now, and all I've got to do is read and write annotated notes on the play Antigone, and write an essay on The Awakening.

Uggghccckkkk.

Also, my grandparents (John and Bonnie "Bonita" Wilkerson), are in town. For three weeks.

Three WEEKS.

I love my grandparents. But three weeks?

C'mon.