Just kidding

So when I told you I woulndt have the internet for a while...that was a lie. It was a test to see if my true friends would actually miss me and beg me to find internet somehow. Alyssa, you are my only true friend, despite the fact that youre mexican. I still love you...cant promise if grandma will. Kidding.
Anyways, I'm not up to anything fancy. Its been a day of weird cravings for me. I was sitting in the union at my school studying when this guy comes and starts changing the candy dispensers and taking the money out. I seriously stared at the guy the whole time he was doing it...a good 45 minutes. It had to be the most boring job but I found it interesting and very entertaining. I sat there and thought to myself, "I wonder how you go about aspiring to be a candy dispenser person...thingy. How do you spend your whole life doing such a job? I wonder if hes married? I wonder what he does outside of work...bowl. I wonder if he's got a fling going on with the lady that runs the lunch line." Question after question popped into my head for 45 minutes. Then all of a sudden watching him change the dispensers gave me the sudden urge to rob a vending machine. I sat there thinking, "I like quarters. If i rob a vending machine i could get so many quarters and do everything i ever wanted...endless video games at the bowling alley, countless games of pool at a game room, sticky hands and bouncy balls from store quarter dispensers...or maybe ill just buy innumerous of candy from the candy dispensers and give this guy a run for his money." Man, i should have robbed a vending machine. I get excited just thinking about all the possibilities.
I had another craving at work, it was more like an obsession...actually it was more like terets. I heard this girl at work say "Hold please" on the phone...and i felt the need to keep repeating it all night long. "Hey Stacey can you---"....."Hold please." I even said it to one of the tables i was serving. They asked me for something while i was talking to another table and i replied "Hold please"...needless to say i only got a $1 tip off them.
Now i sit here and i am living in my own personal hell...the cravings have become too much to bear...i need chocolate really bad. I need cake. I need a brownie. I need a snickers. Brownie...mmmmm...brownie. If i only robbed that vending machine i could have broken in and gotten so many brownies and so many snickers bars...and quarters, lots of quarters....HOLD PLEASE!

Youll Miss Me

So, Ive got some sad news folks. My computer is completely shot with some sort of virus and is not working at all...I blame my boyfriend, just cause he was the one in the room with the computer when it happened. Anyways, you know what this means. I wont have access to a reliable computer which means i'll probably be out of the blog scene for a while. Rejoice! Enjoy it while you can cause I'll be back at some point in time. By the way, if anybody is selling or wants to get rid of a computer, I'll give you a couple hundred bucks for it. It would really help because it makes it difficult to keep up with your online classes when you have no online source. Anyways, I will talk to you all later. Hope you all had good turkey-days. Mine was spent enjoying the company of my boyfriend, my family, my grandma, and 3 mexicans...awkward. I know what youre thinking..."Hot damn! Grandma and mexicans!!! Theres gotta be stories to that!" Too bad my internet isnt working or you might get to hear them....haha.

She's Here

The delivery of Heather Nunn...in a non-birth way...right. Anyways, heres her site...have fun. http://heathernunn.blogspot.com. She wants EVERYONE to post...seriously. And she'll raise hell if you dont...please people, dont make me suffer.

The Post for BaHuman

Bahuman:
I dedicated a post to you, because the comment was just becoming ridiculously long and so is this post. sorry.
There seem to be a lot of assumptions going on here that are leading to confusion and misunderstanding. Not abnormal, it happens a lot. So let's clarify.
First of all, i do care that you react to my posts, i enjoy it. as much as you may not agree with me or like what i say and as much as some of it may frustrate me, i like to hear and i like to be challenged. Im not quite sure what you meant when you said "its not necessarily helping you." if youre referring to first comment you made and my post after that id say it didnt help me. first of all, i didnt post to seek for help. i posted to put out what was on my heart. I sought the Bible for help, not random people who read my blogs. And my reaction to your comment was that i didnt understand what you were trying to say. to say that i "sounded" like a christian sent me in a little confusion. i took it as you jumping into conclusions about who i am and attacking me, which im still not too sure if thats your intention. anyways, lets tackle things

-my (apparent) position of Peter. My only reply to this is that you said it best yourself, "So I think what the scene about Peter's denial is telling us that even the strongest rock can falter... and be forgiven, and trusted, and loved, etc. etc." This was my underlying point. No follower of Christ is ever perfect or is ever going to be perfect. We often place the men in the Bible on a pedestal and say "They were so great." My point was to take a story of one these great men and show "They were men, just like us. And just like the rest of us, they falter." You quoted Matthew 16:18, about Peter being the rock on which to build the church. Read on into matthew 16:21-23. Jesus is predicting His death and Peter says "No Christ! This wont happen to you." He is saying he will not let that happen. Christ turns to Peter and says "Get behind me Satan. You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." Peter wanted to prevent Christ from dying on the cross, not knowing that the pain of the cross would bring salvation to the whole world. But Christ knew and was telling them this was God's will. My point is this--Peter didnt look at the big picture...he reacted off of emotion. He was a believer, but his faith was still that of a child's, there was many trials Peter had to face and many more things he had to go through to build up his faith and make it strong. He first of all, had to take on the perspective of God's will and not his own.

-My (apparent) position of myself. I fear that you read my posts and my studies and assume that I am some depressed individual that sits around in her dark apartment and wallows in all her woes. That all I can do is sit and shout out "WOE IS ME!!!" This is not the case. I am much too busy to sit for long periods of time and think about how i screw up and am a failure. Id like to make a reference to one thing you said--that "chasing your tail does not get you any further." I dont accept this because I dont like to think that i am chasing my tail. Im in fact, doing the opposite, i am chasing after something else. I am chasing to go deeper in my relationship with Christ and chasing to know Him better. Chasing my tail is what i would have been like last year. Some background info about me is that i spent the better part of a year being the person you think I am and doing nothing but cursing myself until one day, about 3 months ago, i woke up and said "im an idiot!" im not going to get anywhere if all i do is beat myself up and focus on myself and all the ways im failure...life doesnt work like that, Christ doesnt work like that. But this is not the person I am now. I have a life. I work 25 hours a week, go to school for about 30, study for about 15 and the rest of my time is spent either hanging out with friends or driving to see my boyfriend. I dont have time or cant afford to cut off communications...id be....depressed and alone...and I CANNOT handle to be like that, i cant stand it. so its funny if you think this is the person i am because im probably the opposite. Ill give you credit, though, i can see where you would think i just sit and chastise myself and think of how a failure i am simply by reading that. But if youre a person who listens to sermons often or reads the Bible often then you would understand that taking such a perspective is healthy. The purpose of the reading the Bible is to apply it to your life. I think it would give you more cause to attack me if i said, "peter was a screw up...man im not like that at all." no, i posted what i said because i identify with peter, i applied his story to my life. I, personally, go into reading the Bible with the perspective that I have nothing figured out and that it is there for me to learn from and to relate to...and thats what i did. And you know what? It encouraged me because now i can look at that...like you said...and say "peter screwed up, even the greatest can screw up and falter and still be forgiven and loved and still be the rock of the church. i guess im not as much of a failure as i feel sometimes." its encouraging to know the founders of the Church were human and not perfect.
--ill have to check into that book you were talking about...sounds interesting.
--from your last point, it sounds to me like you are not a follower of Christ, which makes it difficult because thats probably the cause of all this confusion and misunderstanding. So I hope im shedding light to things. To answer your question/comment about faith, faith to me is not rituals or gathering in a community, or what i do alone in my room (im not attacking you personally). Faith, to me, is freedom in Christ. Its having a relationship with God, the Creator of the world...i dont know about you, but before i knew Him, that was something that blew my mind
Anyways, this is terribly long. Sorry for that. And other people dont know what were talking about, but it was worth a post for me. I just wanted to get everything out in the open and hopefully put a rest to this confusion. If you have any questions or further comments I, of course, want to hear them.

P.S.- The "talking waffles" is kind of an inside joke between my boyfriend and i. We say it when we dont understand what the other person is saying.

Ultimatum

I enjoyed this poem...speaks truth at times (especially the title--"Ultimatum"):

Open my heart, see how it beats for You.
So long forgotten, You'd think this was all new.
I closed You off, left You there.
I couldn't come back, so much to bear.
So much to confess, left on the side.
Drifted so far apart, there was too much pride.
I'll come to you, if you tell me why...
I have no passion, nothing stirs inside.
Don't mean to sound conditional, but I can't take anymore.
The emptiness and pain, trying to shove open brick doors.
I left You there, didn't come back.
The pain of distance, due to too much slack.
The muted beat, a heart gone numb.
The fire died out, I force myself to return.
No more emptiness, I'm dry as a well.
Send your Living Water, relieve this spell.
I'll open my heart, if you provide words.
My time is devoted, now give me Yours.

The Joys of Serving..literally serving

I know what all you people are thinking, "Why the hell did we invite her into the blog world! She posts once a week. She writes the longest posts ever. She should not have a blog." Let's face it, I just dont fit in. Anyways, I'll keep it simple from now on...probably not.

So a lot has been going on in the past few weeks. The funnest part is that I finally got moved up to server at work and it's just comedy. Luckily I havent spilled any drinks on anybody yet, but i did throw a little dish of ranch on a guy. It was so embarassing. It dropped on the floor while I was carrying it and then splattered all over him. So I go and get the guy a towel and he makes me clean him off cause its all over his back and got in his hair and then it got on his lap and we both just kind of looked down and i was like "Whoa, buddy! My service ends here, thats all you." Kind of an awkward moment.

Its pure entertainment, the customers you get. Yesterday Ma and Pa Clampett came in to eat and didn't leave me a tip...damn hillbillies. Then some Russian guy came in on a date with this girl, and the guy was a Nazi. He didn't let the girl talk once throughout the whole meal; he ordered for her, he told her what she wanted, he told her when she was done. The girl didn't touch a thing on her plate. It was horrible. Not to mention he didn't leave me a tip either...damn Russians.

So i've only been a server for two weeks now and I've already been evangelized to (still not saved guys, keep praying), hit on, cursed at, and tripped (that one wasnt fun). But its all worth it...i make $200 in tips for 3 days of work. Nice!

And the Rooster Crows

So I was reading the story about Peter's denial today from John 18: 15-18, 25-27. It has to be one of the most common passages of the Bible. It's always being taught in sunday school and preached in sermons. It's where Christianity gets its hypocrisy. Where a man of God claims to love Christ and then turns his back on him to save his own reputation. Personally, I hate this passage. Not because Peter denied Christ or lost faith. Not because it makes Christ followers look bad. I hate this passage because I identify with it so well. I hate this passage because I see so much of myself in it. I hate this passage because I am so much like Peter...

There is no doubt in my mind that Peter loved God, was a man of God, and desired to follow God with all his heart. But Peter held back. He tells Christ that he loves Him so much he would lay down his life for Him (13: 37) Christ's simple reply to that was, "Will you really lay down your life for me?" Really Peter? Are you ready to make that kind of commitment...where is your heart when you are saying that? Because as much as Peter professed to love Christ, he was a fake. And as much as I profess the same, I lie.

I claim to love God. I claim to have faith--to seek His will, to glorify Him in all I do. So often I pray, "Oh, I will trust in you, Lord. I will follow you through thick and thin...when the going gets tough, the tough get going." These were empty words, merely lip service to God because I (for some reason) thought that this was what He wanted to hear. Because I think that by saying/praying these "beautiful" things, I am somehow earning "Jesus points." When in reality, my words say one thing and my heart and my actions say another...much like Peter.

Peter he flaunted his love for Christ. He flaunted his humility. He was always trying to prove himself fully devoted. He must have been good at it, because I think he even started to fool himself. But there was one person he could not fool...Christ. Christ saw right through Peter. Because he knew the second that things got tough, Peter was going to experience brokenness. And he did. The second that it became dangerous to follow Christ, Peter denies. The second that his faith and his devotion is put to the test, Peter denies...he lags behind. Sure, he follows Christ to the courthouse, but he follows from a "safe" distance so that no one will figure out that he's a disciple.

He's sitting outside the courthouse, waiting. A maid approaches him, "Hey, weren't you a follower of this Christ fellow?" Peter replies, "No...no, I dont know what you're talking about."

He's standing with a group of men by a fire, warming up. Again he is asked, "Weren't you one of those disciples?" Peter replies, "Me? Nah..no." Another insists, "Yeah, I saw you hanging with this Christ guy in the olive grove." Again, Peter denies, "Nah, you're mistaken. You must have me confused with some other guy. I just got one of those faces."...A rooster crows.

Peter claimed he loved God, "I'll follow you anywhere, Lord...I'll lay down my life for you, Lord...I love you, Lord." But the second that he is put to the test, he fails. The second he is put into question, he denies. Because he'd much rather keep his reputation. He'd much rather stay in the warmth of the fire. He'd much rather follow from a "safe" distance than face persecution or be on the front line. Because the second it becomes inconvenient to follow Christ, all his words he said before mean nothing. Sounds familiar....

I profess I love Christ. I shout it from the rooftops when it is convenient for me. When I want something from God. When I want to impress or try to prove that I am Christ-like. But the second it becomes an inconvenience to me, I deny Him. I dont want to accept Christ at an inconvenience because I dont want to face the sacrifices. Like Peter, I want to stay by the warm fire, surrounded by the security of my friends. I dont want to booted out to be left cold and alone. And the second somebody asks, "Are you a christian?"...panic. What will they think of me? Will I lose my reputation? Will I be "uncool" for professing Christ now....A rooster crows, and my heart sinks, and I know I've done it again, and Peter knew it too.

He'd like to believe he was as strong as he fooled everybody to think, but he knew his words were lies...lip service. Just like I know my heart does not match what I claim to believe. I only love God when it is convenient for me. I keep Him in his little "God box" and take Him out when I need Him. And when I'm done with Him, I put Him back in his box and I go about my life. Because, for some reason, I think the world revolves around me. Because, for some reason, I think my relationship with Christ revolves around my wants and desires. Because, for some reason, I cant get past my selfishness. Because I, like Peter, have a problem with walking the talk.