feliz cumpleanos

My birthday was earlier this month and I am officially legal! whoohoo! You know how when you have a birthday EVERYONE asks you if you feel older? I have never felt older, usually most people this young don't. But this year I do! I feel pretty stinkin old. 18 is a big year, or so I'm told. I was talking to Scott via facebook chat the other day and we were evaluating the pros and cons of an 18th birthday. There really aren't too many pros as we discovered. You get to vote, and you can sign yourself out of school any time you want. The cons list however seems to be much more numerous. You can go to real, legit, martha stewart jail now, you are responsible for a lot more things now, like once you turn 18 you don't need a parent to sign anything for you leaving the responsibility of wise decisions up to me. But still, nothing too exciting comes with being 18, however I can get a tatoo on my own now! AND buy lottery tickets...whooo! I've heard the pick 3 is the way to go. I also have been planning with a dear friend to set up a library background in her living room, dress in oversized flannel vests and a pair of trousers, fake accents, and smoke a pipe for the first time. However, those plans seem to be falling through...hec hum.

I have always LOVED birthdays. And selfishly, especially my own. But suprisingly this year of all years I wasn't really too intense about it. No roller rink party this year! My birthday overall was fantastic though. I only go to school until lunchtime so that was excellent, and a friend of mine MADE me cookies!! ...not bought, MADE them! i know right? But thanks to facebook everyone can keep track of birthdays now, so all of my "happy birthday!" salutations at school was really nice too. Speaking of facebook, why is it a highlight of birthdays to see how many notifications you can get of a bunch of people saying the same thing? Because it's a self centered world, and we love to see how many people appreciate and love us. Mm hm. Maybe thats why it hurts so much when that one person mentions NOTHING about your birthday, because we feel like they're saying we have no value to them and that we aren't important enough for him to remember one day.

So my best friend threw me and Tom a surprise party last night!! I loooooooove love love love love surprises. Apparently there was a whole big plot that we were deceieived into with a mutual friend of ours tagging along for the ride to inform the party when we were coming. We were told it was a "halloween party" and it was, just with a surprise party mixed in! nice, right? check! I also feel that my awesome friend Sophie and I had the best costume of the century. We were homeschoolers. We wore these unfitted, shoulder padded, shin-length, up to the neck, little house on the prairie dresses, slicked our hair back tight with some nice bows, wore the ugliest shoes [that were strangely comfortable, go figure] and ruffled socks with our dress shoes. oh we were a sight. and we also were tied for most original/best costume! which was nice because we didn't get all frumpy for nothing! We continued to not only dress like homeschoolers but try to act like them at the party, we carried Bibles around and were going to stand off in the corner awkwardly at the beginning of the party. Not that I don't like homeschoolers, we both were actually homeschooled for a large majority of time. But we know the stereotype all too well and felt the need to convey and contrast it for everyone. I'm pretty sure we were the only ones who truly appreciated it. Eh, such is life.

It Is Well.

I am satisfied with what the world brings
I have made my mind to make my bed inside peace
I am satisfied with all this sky can bring
I have made my mind to live my life inside of peace

[Friends & Romans -- Move]

There is something peaceful about the sound of "tranquility" Peace is such an overused word, its reduced to a slogan, something known but not fully experienced. But since we have not overused the word tranquility, it sounds so appealing, so... peaceful.

God promises us "perfect peace," that is tranquility. But its important to note that perfect peace isn't a product that He offers, but a result. It is the result of a steadfast mind, a mind that COMPLETELY trusts God.

The better we focus our mind on God, the better we trust, the more we will experience the perfect peace that comes from God alone. This peace, or tranquility, passes all understanding. I don't think perfect peace is the result of God just removing all the chaos in our lives. Instead, it is the result of a mind that is focused solely on Him.

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
1 peter 4:6-7

Cam the Man

I've heard some people say that the you should never favor one child over the others. And I agree, but Cameron is still my favorite. Just to clarify Cam is not my child, he's my brother, but people don't really say statistical stuff about siblings. Don't get me wrong, I love all of my siblings, but Cam is hilarious. Let me tell you why he is my favorite.

Last night I'm sitting at the computer probably on Stalkbook, around 11:38 when Cam comes out of his room, stands in the middle of the hallway and stares at me for a few seconds before going back into his room. Not 2 minutes later he comes back out, does the same thing and this time goes down the hallway to do who knows what, then goes back into his room. He continues to go in and out of his room for the next 10 minutes or so when finally I say, "CAMERON! go to bed!!" Here is his reaction. He abrubtly stops in front of the computer desk looks at me oh so solemnly and plainly says, "Please don't tell me how to live my life" and goes on his way down the hall. I'm pretty positive this was one of those you had to be there moments, so you might not find it funny, but his face was stinkin hilarious. This boy had no emotion and basically told me to get out of his face! I died laughing.

This is also the same kid that at our Christmas Eve dinner 3 years ago, when my grandma went around the table asking what everyone wanted for Christmas, 7 year old Cam said facial hair. He also pretended to pass out after I took him and his twin sister to Sonic for root beer floats. He laid out across the back seat and I said, "Cam whats up with you!" and he responds " i had wayyyy too much root beer, I'M WASTED!" And lets not forget the time my fellow babysitting comrade, Sophie & I took my 3 siblings to dinner. After dinner we decided to surpise them by going to baskin robbins for ice cream and as soon as we pull in the parking lot Cam SCREAMS from the back seat, "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME WE WERE GOING TO BASKIN ROBBINS? I HAVE COUPONS!"

Did I mention that at 11 years old he already knows what college he wants to go to, and what he will be majoring in? He wants to go to Winthrop and major in teaching. Why winthrop? Right, well I asked him and he says, "The boy to girl ration is 1 to 20!! Which means Lindsey, I'll be a babe magnet!!"

This kid is out of control!

Psalm 86:5

So my teacher has started his own SSR time twice a week. For those who are confused, SSR stands for Sustained Silent Reading. Last year we were forced to take out 10 minutes of our lunch time to sit and read at the end of 4th period. For the most part SSR = naptime. So needless to say the program no longer exists and our classes are now 10 minutes longer instead. But anyways my english teacher does his own SSR twice a week for 20 minutes instead. I am a big fan. My view on SSR last year was, it's a waste! in 10 minutes you could get in about 3 or 4 pages of a book. yipee? no no, not worth it at all. However 20 minutes is awesome.

So during SSR I came across some interesting stuff. Greg Spencer gave a lecture once about the power of metaphors. Consider what metaphors people use when considering the topic of cancer. We fight cancer, we battle cancer, etc. Spencer pointed out that most metaphors listed were related to war. Spencer believes that due to the word choices that people who are diagnosed with cancer feel more burdened than they should.

"Science has shown that the way people think about cancer affects
their ability to deal with the disease, thus affecting their
overall health. Because of war metaphors, we are more likely to
fear cancer when, actually, most people survive the disease."

Interesting stuff right? so i started thinking a lot about metaphors for the remaining 16 minutes of SSR. when talking about relationships we tend to use economic metaphors. We value people, we invest time into them relationships are priceless. Hm. So basically, we tend to think of love as a commodity. When someone does something that is beneficial to us, we like them and feel they have value to us. Think about it, if someone has an opposing opinion to yours and they are so convinced that they are right, your wrong...usually your not their #1 fan. However, we tend to finance the ones who do agree and support us. We use love like money, but love shouldn't work like money. It isn't a commodity.

Happy Birthday Ashley

ASHLEY NICOLE DENT

9.13.1990 - 8.16.2006

"When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight." --- Kahlil Gibran

It's the end of the world as we know it...

First of all, I went browsing through other random blogs just now and I laughed. Why? Because i find it VERY humorous when people put pictures of celebrities or models as their picture. Like they really expect me to believe they look like Brittney Spears? not.

In other news, we will all be sucked into a huge black hole come next month. Not really, well it depends on your take on The Cern is. I bet you have no idea what i'm talking about. It's actually the reason for the way Google looks today. check it [ www.google.com ]


So basically over 8,000 physicists from over 85 countries put together the world's largest and highest energy particle accelerator that is supposed to collide opposing proton beams. What this collision is supposed to do is create the supposed Higgs boson, which is supposedly the missing particle from the "big bang". Now as a Christian, I think this is a load of bologna because by trying to discover how matter came to be, your trying to find God. So please, carry on. But anyways, i guess at 4.5 billion pounds, not dollars, pounds. They are going to find something right? Maybe we'll figure out how to teleport. And when they start conducting all of these experiments [in October.. hopefully after the 13th so i can enjoy my birthday] watch out for that black hole.

thought i would share a piece of one of my favorite songs at the moment.

Arrested by your truth and righteousness
your grace has overwhelmed my brokenness.
convicted by your spirit, led by your word
your love will never fail
your love will never fail
‘Cause I know you gave, the world your only son for us to
know your name, to live within the Saviours love and he took MY PLACE,
knowing he’d be crucified and you loved, you loved, a people undeserving.

a lot of times i forget stuff, for instance my blog password. but how awesome is it that God gave up his ONLY SON to die for my baggage!! how rad is that! and i am FOREVER forgetting how undeserving i am. i deserve death. i always think about this sermon dustin did when he talked about Philippians 2 and how we are to do EVERYTHING without complaining or arguing. anyways, he said, are you complaining? do you even UNDERSTAND the gospel? cause if you did, we would find no reason to complain.
so, just chew on that for a bit.