God be praised!

February is finally coming to a close.

I don't think I've ever been so happy to see a month end.

Fare thee well, February
Month full of fright and frustration
Fingering every frayed nerve.
I have learned much in your frigid winds
But I do not fear this farewell.
I am full of gratitude to God
For my friends and family
who have encouraged me through your four weeks.

Here comes March.
It steps in like a lamb
gentle and new.
Promise of healing.
And if in the end
it struts out like a lion,
may the boldness be in us all
to walk through whatever may come
knowing full well we have faced a frigid February
and not failed but lived.

New life comes even in the darkest night.

(written in 10 minutes - unedited)

Priorities

Does God come first in my life?

Do Paul, my friends, my family, my small group, random people on the street come next?

Do I come very last?

You hold everything together
You hold everything together

Oh, Christ, be the center of our lives,
be the place we fix our eyes,
be the center of our lives!

("Center" Charlie Hall/Matt Redman)

Oops

I missed a homework assignment deadline. Thought of it Thursday. Didn't do it. Due last night. Didn't do it. Oops. I know how to do it. I meant to do it. Maybe I can still do it??

What a nightmare

I woke up this morning stressed.

I'd had a nightmare.

Winter Retreat. Chaos.

I stood in my backyard this morning and made a decision: I'm ready for spring.

I stood there and found myself wishing I was in a movie or a Jane Austen novel. A pretty music cue, a nice paragraph describing the passage of time and suddenly...the trees are in full bloom, my clothes have changed, and my mom pops her head out of the backdoor: "Come on, Carey, you need to finish packing! We need to get to the Springs!" and poof it's May 8th, the day before my brother's wedding. Everything that's happened in March and April are filled in during exposition.

I'm busy. My brain is so full it hurts. Nice week to have 2 tests and a quiz. I have emails to write and I can't find the time (emails are personal, they take more time than a blog), people to sit and talk with but I can't focus my thoughts; my room is a disaster area; I'm getting ready to declare a state of emergency in my bathroom; I keep running out of clothes; I'd rather be sleeping. This is not normal, people!

Well, my mini-"I don't want to shoot my computer, so I'm going to stop doing what I was doing and take a break" break is over. Best get back to work.

I could use some prayer.

Warning: what follows is not for the faint of heart

Today is February 12, 2009. Charles Darwin would have been 200 years old today had not the "Survival of the Fittest" come to bite him in the butt. You see freakishly old people aren't good for the gene pool and therefore must die. Happy birthday, Mr. Darwin. (I really don't think he was all that surprised, the man was a theologian after all.)

There is a lot going on on campus today in honor of this man and his achievements. I am tempted to be sitting in on them to be perfectly honest, to try to understand. Because I don't understand. I get survival of the fittest. You are stronger than that guy and you have to fight him for food. "That guy" loses and you get to eat. Congratulations to you. But that is where my understanding runs out.

In class on Tuesday my professor mentioned a man who believes we have eradicated "survival of the fittest" in this day and age because of medication, proper nutrition, mass production of food. Of course the second you begin arguing this case you discover different members of the "fittest" class - so long as you have money, live in the right country, have skills for the right job, etc., etc. But then apparently I'm going to die from a common form of melanoma and not contribute my freakishly pale skin to the gene pool. Of course that thought ticks me off because pale people can be smart and take precautions and stay alive a little longer than some may predict. Just like women can have babies that are over 7 pounds without a C-section (my mom had 5 such babies). So apparently I'm a double miracle: I was a big baby and I've lived to be sunburned more than once. Look out, Darwin, I might just have the firepower to prove you wrong.

I don't remember if I blogged on my realization that the advancement of the intelligence of man has created an environment where a small, very small, portion of our population is BRILLIANT which allows the majority to be morons with little to no morals and absolutely no self-control. Not saying that we are all members of the moronic class, of course, but the brilliantly minded individuals are allowing for that to occur, if you will. You see if survival of the fittest were truly working we wouldn't create cars that won't start if your blood alcohol level is too high, drunk people wouldn't survive crashes while the mom and her kid in the other car bleed to death on the side of the road. So perhaps survival of the fittest still exists but is flawed due to our advancement of technology. The rich get to survive, the drunk get to survive, liars and thieves...but if you're a brown moth in a forest of aspens, look out!

That is merely one example born of my prof telling us about those cars. I've already mentioned my sheep theory in an earlier post. Ever wonder about survival of the fittest and Noah? Hm...

Don't get me started on the conveniently missing "missing link" or the fact that fish evolved to have gills but whales still need air? Why did they get jipped? The really scary thing is that I'm not intelligent enough or schooled enough to back up my rantings. I want to learn, I want to be able to sit down with someone and have a logical conversation about all of this, but I don't think they listen to themselves. It doesn't make any sense! The man presenting his paper this morning that I heard during my class said something about gills evolving and whales "adapting" themselves for an aquatic environment where we did not. Why did they stop where they did? Why didn't they develop gills too? And he was talking about random selection and common ancestors, clades and grades and biological evolutionists trying to be heard by the common man. Apparently theists that are also evolutionists are losing their footing on both grounds - people aren't taking God seriously and they aren't taking evolution seriously.

The first time I've ever heard the words "who's Darwin" was yesterday from the mouth of a 14 year old. So apparently they don't have the hold on the future that I thought they did. I don't want to discount people simply because they tell me we evolved from apes, feeling fully confident in their claims because of Lucy, the skeleton they found (well they found 40% of her anyway) that proves we started walking upright before our brains got so big. I want to enter into intelligent conversation with them. Problem is neither of us will listen to each other. Thing is though, that like I said earlier, they don't listen to themselves! Neanderthal infants had brains the size of modern infants. So they got dumber as they got older? What?

My professor believes in God on Saturday and Sunday. He says that science eventually runs out of ways to explain what we see in the world and we need the supernatural. Fact of the matter is my God has nothing to fear from science. Why does science believe it has so much to fear from a God that set all this wonderfulness in motion? Why is he just an afterthought for some and non-existant for others? I think the majority of the population isn't sure what they believe about evolution. They learn it in school and they move on. Sad thing is the same can be said of people and their belief in God (only they don't get to learn it in school). So maybe I have more in common with an evolutionist than I thought - neither of us can get people to listen to what we believe to be absolute truth and believe it.

Thankfully for me God does the majority of the work. I just need to be faithful and keep learning and professing. I need to keep learning about Him, and I need to keep learning about where the world is at. If I'm not informed how can I expect other people to be? I can't afford to "check my brain at the door" no matter how much faith I have (and praise be to God my "I just don't get it" bug doesn't affect my belief in Him). Thanks, Leah, for helping me re-realize that; I'm praying for you. God gave me faith and He gave me intelligence. I need to make sure I exercise both.

So happy birthday, Mr. Darwin. Thanks for the challenge.

I REALLY need to vent

• I'm sitting in a library on campus and I'm freezing.
• I'm hungry but only for the things in the blessed world that are bad for me.
• I can't seem to get my ring to stop twirling around on my cold skinny finger.
• I didn't take a shower this morning and my hair is doing strange things.
• I really want to be reading but I keep thinking of everything I've forgotten to do for the retreat that's coming up in less than 2 weeks.
• I want to take a nap because for some reason, though I've gotten more than 8 hours of sleep the past TWO nights, I'm really, really tired.
• I can't stop coughing and it's starting to tick me off.
• I'm just ticked off.
• I'm sitting here at 12:20 fully aware of the fact that I have 2 hours until I have class - a really, really annoying class that I don't understand the point of - and then I have to go back to work.
• I can't get comfortable.
• Have I mentioned I'm cold?
• I really want some gluten or some sugar or some cheese or something.
• I can't seem to get a hold of the churches I need to get a hold of and I'm sitting in a library on the "talk on your cell and die" floor.
• Did you know Myriad Pro Black costs over $30? (that's a font)
• I tried making the title of this blog "i REALLY need to vent" but had to go back and capitalize the "I"
• I just want to cry and run until I collapse to the ground, out of strength and motivation, sobbing and praying for mercy.
• The first time I went to college I didn't see the point. I still don't. Only now I'm nearly 10 years older.
• I want my life to have purpose and meaning and all that good stuff.
• I know my life does have purpose and meaning but I'm going through a time here (they usually last a few days) when I can't seem to convince myself that it's true.
• I took the light rail to class today, that means I'll be late to work probably.
• I'm wasting time.
• I hate wasting time.
• I really want to scream, but I'm sitting in a library.
• Not that I'd scream anyway.
• Maybe I'll just cry. I can do that quietly, right?
• I need a hug.
• Crap I'm starting to get a headache.
• I need prayer.
• I don't logically understand evolution and I don't get it that I'm supposed to.
• Survival of the fittest makes sense until they start talking about monkeys.
• Well, technically it's not monkeys, it's apes.
• Today I learned that people in cold climates are stockier (at least it's a theory due to volume and surface area ratios). I shouldn't live here. I'm cold.
• I have a feeling some of the people in my life will read this and not understand that I'm just venting.
• I'm just venting.
• I love my life.
• I'm having a crappy day.
• There's another word for crappy that I should just use.
• I'm having a shitty day but only in my head.
• There's no reason, really, they just come.
• Thankfully they go, too.
• I'm running out of steam.
• I just want to love people and be loved and feel like I have something to offer this world.