the night before...the end...

sad tonight - it's been a great couple of days (that i didn't expect - great blessing to end on a good note)...tomorrow i leave for home...no way around it. it's really happening-can't deny it anymore. there's a bunch i should do tonight...but i can't make myself...don't know how i'm going to do it tomorrow either. i cried about leaving a lot last week...and this week i just feel numb. i guess it's sort of good to feel that way or else i probably would have never gotten anything done...but tonight i feel stuck and torn and confused and all that stupid stuff...maybe things will be better tomorrow...
gnite...
jc

random...

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." James 5:16

-being "priests" to one another...my mom did it for me once when i was about 5 - sometimes i forget about the things she's done for me...-re-assurance - maybe the reason i couldn't sleep back then when i was 5 is the same reason i don't sleep well now...hmmm...what do i do if that's true...something i'm going to have to take more time to think about....(i know that was a whole bunch of words that didn't really say anything in the end - guess i didn't tell the story of the pic...but maybe you've already heard it ...if not ask...just weird to write out...at least tonight it is...moving on...

-things are changing - i'm at a place of "where do i go from here"...stupid questions like: what am i going to do when this happens? who am i going to ask about these kind of things? where am i going to look for these kind of people? who am i going to be to people? what are others going to be to me? how do i make this kind of decision? how do i start over? where do i start starting over - - i'm sure you get the drift...

all my thoughts for tonight...a lot of nothing i guess...

yaconelli - say it - it'll make you feel better.... :)

wow - check this out - two posts in one day. is this like extra credit??

so, today i really wasn't sure what i was going to do with myself all day. i had sort of assumed that there would be people getting together some time today...but i asked around and some people are going out of town and others said, "i'll call ya if i hear anything..."...so really, nothing to count on.

at first it really bummed me out. talking to people about hanging out before i leave - everyone wants to try for tuesday (too bad the couldn't spread it out ...but it's nice to be liked i guess :) anyways - since this discovery of pretty much no more financial ties to g'ville (except the school loan stuff)...it was totally ok for me to dream about putting a little gas in my car and driving to fairview to spend the day in borders, surrounding myself with books and perhaps buying a cheap one. then i remembered it was Memorial Day and they'd probably be closed...so i called...and to my pleasant surprise - they're open!! woohoo - it's totally on (on like Donkey Kong - as Lappe would say)

so, i spent a LONG time in borders...a couple of hours (which i guess isn't really long for some people...but that's a long time for me to consider doing anything by myself) well, i had a GREAT time - though i'm sure the borders staff (that kept doing circles around me - much like some sort of stalking animal, waiting for it's prey to make a wrong move). i thought it was probably fairly shady to actually sit in a book store and read a whole book and then put it back and leave the store without buying it - but i made an attempt...haha - the task was too great for me. so, after finding out that borders has that stupid tmobile not-free internet crap...i made my way to st.louis bread co and i'm enjoying just relaxin with FREE wireless and remembering the great stuff i read all day...i'll share...

i was looking for Mike Yaconelli's book "Dangerous Wonder" because i had to give it back to the friend i borrowed it from before i finished it...but while i was looking for it i came across another Yaconelli book (ps - it's a fun thing to say - Yaconelli - try it...it'll make you feel good:) "Messy Spirituality" - the title caught my attention immediately - and then this from the back roped me in "God’s Annoying Love for Imperfect People - this book is for those who are caught in spiritual perfectionism - think they don't read enough, pray enough, know enough - and forget about God's affinity for the imperfect" here are some excerpts that caught my attention (sort of random - but they're good) :

"Messy Spirituality unveils the myth of flawlessness and calls Christians everywhere to come out of hiding and stop pretending. Messy spirituality has the audacity to suggest that messiness is the workshop of authentic spirituality, the greenhouse of faith, the place where the real Jesus meets the real us.

“When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn’t go off and leave us – he enters into our trouble and saves us.” Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Incompetence – Messy spirituality describes our godly incompetence. No one does holy living very well. Spirituality is the humiliating recognition that I don’t know how to pray well. I don’t understand God’s Word or know how to navigate it properly, and I don’t know how to competently live out my commitment to Christ. Messy spirituality affirms our spiritual clumsiness.

I grew up in a church where dancing was frowned upon. As a result, four decades later, I still can’t dance. Even worship dancing causes my heart to race because I am desperately afraid of anyone seeing my stiff, awkward attempts to make my body move. Because I am a lousy dancer, I avoid any experience in which dancing is a possibility.

When it comes to the spiritual life, I am amazed how many of us don’t know how to dance, we stand before God, the music starts playing, and we are embarrassed by our incompetence. The church has communicated that competence is one of the fruits of the spirit and that, therefore, spiritual people are supposed to live faith competently. So many people are afraid of embracing the spiritual life because of the possibility they might say or do the incompetent thing."

oh, and one more thing - this story he tells (really he's quoting a story Anne Lamott tells in her book Traveling Mercies...) it's kinda a new way to think about God. she's pretty liberal and i don't nessesarily agree with everything she writes...but it was a neat pic in my head about God's pursuit of us- i don't know - i just liked the story - here it is:

Jesus is not repelled by us, no matter how messy we are, regardless of how incomplete we are. When we recofnize that Jesus is not discouraged by our humanity, is not turned off by our messiness, and simply doggedly pursues us in the face of it all, what else can we do but give in to his outrageous, indiscriminate love?

Anne Lamott, a fellow messy Christian, describes perfectly what happens when Jesus pursues us. In her book Traveling Mercies, Anne recounts her conversion to Jesus. Things were not going well in her life: addicted to cocaine and alcohol, involved in an affair that produced a child whom she aborted, helplessly watching her best friend die of cancer. During this time, Anne visited a small church periodically. She would sit in the back to listen to the singing and then leave before the sermon. During the week of her abortion, she spiraled downward. Disgusted with herself, she drowned her sorrows in alcohol and drugs. She had been bleeding for many hours from the abortion and finally fell into bed, shaky and sad, smoked a cigarette and turned off the light.

She writes: “After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of something there with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone. The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there and of course, there wasn’t. But after a while, in the dark again I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.

And I was appalled…I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”
I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with.

Finally I fell asleep, and in the morning he was gone. This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood. But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever…

And one week later, when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling—and it washed over me. I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said,…”I quit” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “all right, you can come in.”

So this was my beautiful moment of conversion.

so, i think i'm gonna need a little more time to process all this...but something to chew on for a while...i'll get back to you on this one...

whelp, guess i should probably get going. i'd like to believe that i'm going to be productive and do the final cleaning stuff in my apt - but i probably won't til late tuesday/wed morning...o well...off to find good war movies or read my new book (which by the way is about the life of Corrie Ten Boom - she's amazing - i heard a talk she gave and it was great (besides the fact that she's dutch and sounds/looks like i imagine my great-grandma was) so i'm excited to learn more about her life)

- yes, today i revelled in being sort of nerdy :)
jenn

happy memorial day...

Happy Memorial Day!

usually, i hate to admit it, but i don't really like Memorial Day (except that it seems the only "acceptable" time to spend a whole day laying on the couch watching old black/white war movies and not be labled some sort of freak (at least not to your face) :) - i love them!!). but with the day there's a lot that has to do with death and stuff - so i tend to steer clear of remembering anything having to do with the day. but, maybe i feel a little bolder this time around...or maybe i'm just bored...either way - here - i've got a soldier i can remember today...photo tribute to someone who was, at one time, my best friend...
(hmmm - that makes it sound like weren't not friends anymore because we had some sort of fight or something - that wasn't it - cancer's a punk)...

who can resist a man in uniform?? not my Grandma Briggs that's for sure :) what an army stud!

:)

ok - so mel and i are lookin kinda goofy here - really - we all are (but this was in the stage where mel refused to take a "nice" smiling pic...so we all decided to act goofy like her)

grandma and grandpa were in a group called the "chorus-ters" (singing and dancing stuff)- - lookin good ;)

great news!!

So, great news!! Well, great news for me : ) So, anyone who’s been around me the past month or knows I’ve really been stressing out about money. Pretty much, I thought that I had a month’s rent and a gas/elec bill due before leaving Greenville. So, that’s a fair sum of money…I’ve been watching my money like crazy (pretty obsessively). Anyways, I’ve been working at VBS this week and ran into my landlord tonight. He wanted to let me know about the final gas/elec bill – I had forgotten about the security deposit I paid last July…they’re going to use that money to pay the bill and then send me whatever is left-over (now this is AWESOME…but it gets even better). I told him that sounded great and then, to confirm the deal with the rent, said “I still owe a month’s rent, right?” To which he replied, “why would you?” - - apparently, I’ve been paying forward…paying for the coming month and not the one that had passed! So, I owe NOTHING…which means, all this money I’ve been trying to save up for the end…it’s mine : )

I can’t believe how stupid I feel. I mean, I’ve been saying things like, “hey God, I don’t know how you’re gonna provide here…I don’t know how I’m going to get the money without asking my parents for help….etc….”…and here…God had already worked things out way back in July – I was stressing and holding out looking for a provision that had already been made…I just didn’t know about it yet. Un-necessary stressing…that’s stupid… well, I guess feeling dumb is better than feeling desperate…so yeah, this is GREAT! No more money stress…huge weight off…can’t believe it could have been off a long time ago…guess I’ll do better next time...
jenn : )

Ruthie's 3rd Birthday - The "Pink and Yellow" Party...

everybody likes presents...

cake's more fun when you're allowed to get it all over your face!! :)

eli, peyton, ethan...

it's good to be with friends :)

ruthie, isabel, and sophie...trying very hard to make a beautiful cupcake and not get too sticky...

each present is new, exciting and loved dearly...

a new baby...this is number 4 or 5...no name yet, but she's have one by the end of the day. each one is special (and this one came with all the baby-sized extras...VERY exciting...

big-girl dress up stuff. the princess is ready for the beach...and she's going in style. hmm, she has a purse/bag...and she's only 3...i have some girly catching up to do...

my kiddos!! :) man they're getting SO big...the little princess and her knight!

stalling...

Pardon my posting this morning as I whine a little…..

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I’m stalling…I don’t know what to write…but I know that if I don’t start coming up with something I will have to leave and return to my apartment…coming face to face with the fact that it’s Thursday afternoon, and my parents are coming Saturday, expecting my apartment to be totally packed up. And really, I want to be packed up when they get there – so they don’t have deal with my stuff and so tensions don’t run so high. Usually I’m too busy or too stressed (about the whole moving home process ) to actually pack up anything until they come to “help” me. Inevitably, the day or days they come are horrible for everyone involved…everyone gets cranky and fights with each other (I don’t blame them…packing someone else’s stuff (because they didn’t do it themselves – verses being helpful) is probably sucky. Anyways – I don’t want to be that person again…I want things to be different…prove that I can be an adult and take care of things by myself.

Really, I think that’s I’m always trying to do. I act like I have something to prove. It used to show its self in angry/hard hearted sort of ways. But I think back then I was just trying to prove that I was strong – unknowable and thus harshly consistent emotionally – the thought – “there’s no way you can get to me…I just won’t let you…nothing you can do can hurt me or affect me”…and now it’s this push…this anxiety – that I’m not doing enough, don’t know enough, am not enough. All this striving, it’s stupid, I’m pretty sure that it won’t get me anywhere…but I want to have control over what my parents think about me. I want to be able to figure them out – have some consistency in our relationship. Even though my head knows that there’s a real good chance things aren’t going to change any time soon (as far as how my parents and I interact )…I let myself have too high of expectations and then am upset when they can’t meet them.

It’s hard to change. It’s hard to just let things be as they are. I see other people and how they get along with their family and I get real jealous (which is wrong) and I get angry that we’re not “like that.” I get tired of looking for the ‘good moments’ and struggling to hang on to them as some hope that God could/would change us. I don’t know what to think today. I know home’s not going to be easy and I shouldn’t expect it to be. I know that other people have it a lot worse at home than I do and I should be thankful that my family is allowing me to live with them again. It’s gonna take some work. Don’t get me wrong…I love my family…but we’re not exactly ‘close’…I don’t know how to love them ‘right’ and don’t know how to accept the ways they try to show me love.

When I’m around them I become this person I hate. The one who’s cold and short with people, gets frustrated easily, shuts down in conflict…all that crappy stuff. I become this person who is pretty sure that everyone’s looking down on them, has expectations I’m either not or can’t meet, or that I owe them. I spend all this time and energy on worthless things…things that don’t matter…over possibilities and not facts. I don’t want to be that person again.

Ok – enough for now…more to come…just can’t think about it any more right now. Maybe things will look different later on…it’s time for a birthday party :) Ruthie Pierson turned 3 years old on Tuesday and I’ve been invited to her “Pink and Yellow” party (her two favorite colors) – I love her and her brother a ton!! - - she’s growing up way too fast….pictures to come I’m sure :)

jenn

ok - so one day a bunch of us were looking for something to do...we popped in a movie and amber brought over a ton of art stuff - these are my attempts at being artsy...they're not "good"..but they're something...(the first three are probably sideways - i forgot to edit the pic)...i think this one might be my favorite - probably because there's a lot of color and i can't really explain it....

oops - it's sideways - the purplish part should be a the top...anyways - question - do you think the stuff is falling down or being drawn up?? hard to tell huh?

well, this one wasn't exactly my favorite - it was my first attempt - but i'll claim it i guess....

"the collection" - who knows what i'm gonna do with this stuff....