so you had a bad day...

I don’t know about you but when I have a bad day I become really ticked off. You know what I mean? The whole day is ruined. And I don’t get the joy of going through the whole day having a chip on my shoulder. No. The little catalyst that sets off my bad day doesn’t come until around the middle of the day or later. I know that you know exactly what I mean. I’m a walking whoopie cushion that’s just waiting to be sat on and all the “whoopie” let out the rubber opening leaving me flatter than a two-year-old bottle of grape Fanta. Let me ‘splain.

You wake up just like any other happy morning (which between the ages of twelve and whenever you mature and grow up and act like an adult—which for some is never—is usually an oxy-moron, only on rare occasions is it vice versa). The sunbeams caress your face and that lovely mechanical device that sings sweet melodies in your ear—a radio for those who aren’t following my alliterations—soon becomes handicapped as a result of the nearest hard object being hurled at a velocity that can create a sonic boom; amazing the power one possesses in the morning under the right conditions.  The birds and squirrels that were waiting to sing a cute and charming little song with you flee for their lives as they quickly realize that Cinderella is the only one that enjoys a wake up call from things with feathers and fur.

After you have been conscious for about five minutes you decide to do the roll over. “Oh no, not the roll over,” you say. Yes my friends it’s that time of morning; it’s roll over time. It is really ashamed that the rest of your body cannot wake up in congruence with your eyes, it would save a whole lot of problems and maybe even some “choice” words blurted from your mouth. So as you are rolling over the lower half of your body--meaning the neck down--is still asleep and the mercy of the pillowy cushion beneath it; it doesn't know that that it's not awake until it's too late. Because your body is still asleep there is a zero reaction time once you have realized that you were not a safe distance from the edge of the bed. Not only do you continue to roll, but you roll right off the bed onto the cold, hard, uncomfortable, bruising, abrubt floor; an immediate unwanted body/floor contact has been made. Right from the start your day has been miserable and will continue to do so because you have lost all faith in your own ability to get through the rest of that day positively. In fact you skipped your yoga class because you didn't feel like channelling all that negative energy into a warrior pose. No. You wanted to put on your angry eyes and let the rest of the world know that you are fed up with this (whatever this is)! We are so bitter and angry at the world the rest of the day when it's really no one's fault that you are having an aweful day but yours because you are letting it get to you instead of turning it over to God.

There was a man who had the epitomy of a bad day. The guy had seven sons and three daughters, 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 donkies, and a gigantic number of servants. This man loved his children and took great care of all these things that God had given him and in one day it was yanked from him. A messenger came to this mand and said that this man's oxen and donkies had been taken/stolen and all the servants tending them were killed. Before that messenger was finished telling the man all that stuff another messenger came to the man and interrupted the first messenger and told him that his sheep and servants had been burned and killed by "fire of God." Guess what happened next. That's right before the second messenger had finished telling the man all this a third one came to the guy and told him that all his camels were carried off (you'd have to be super buff to carry one of those let alone 3000) and all the servants tending them had been killed off. It didn't even stop there. A fourth messenger came to this man before the third one had finished his story and let the man know that the house collapsed on all his children and the rest of his servants. 

This man lost everything in a matter of minutes. He lost ten offspring, 7000 heads of cotton, a rent-a-camel service, 5oo oxen and 500 donkies, and all his hired staff. I know if that happened to me I would definately go off and pout. Well I would probably do more than just pout to be perfectly honest but this guy didn't do that. No. As soon as this man heard about all this stuff that just had happened to him he fell on his face and worshiped the creator! "The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away, may the name of the LORD be praised." Do you look at your bad day as something to worship God for and look to him for the strength that's needed? Or do you start condemning the name of the Lord, and try to take it upon yourself to do things? It's a hard choice and I struggle with it everyday but I want to be able to be in those situations and say, "the Lord gives and takes away." I want to worship him in those situations no matter when they come. How bout you?

If you want to be strengthened and humbled all at the same time here's somthing for you to read. Job chapter one.

KEEP THE SON IN YOUR EYES!

bowties and tucked in sweaters.

i was laughing and thinking to myself today while i was in my car going to work at what sunday mornings used to consist of. you know. the kind that you thought baby Jesus had abandoned you in your time of need because your parent's made you wear that blue bowtie, the red suspenders, blue oxford short sleeve shirt, and osh kosh kahkis (made in taiwan) and then those little church shoes. 

i will say however that i did beg to wear those bowties and i even tucked in my sweater's and would wail like no one's business when fasha or madre would make me untuck the tucked. that's right, you heard me. i had to untuck the tucked sweater.

but not to get off topic to much, those times when you had to dress up to go to sunday school and eat those saltines (or in my case, rice cakes, cause i was allergic to every single solitary thing...even my bowties) and "take a nap" on those little pint sized muslim prayer rugs were nothing compared to drive to church.

everything is going swell that morning, your parents finally chase you down to comb your hair so you don't look like calvin (which by the way was mostly done in vain because by the time you would get to church that little...ginormous cow lick would make it's presence known like a woopie cushion in a library), they finally buckle you in the seat after spanking you for deliberately kicking your shoe across the yard to see if it would fly, and you are off to go talk about God. 

now the problems start. you walk your fingers across the seat to where your sister is sitting, singing/practicing her sunday school song for the old sunday school teacher. sister sees the fingers. purposely bumps her arm into your hand and yells at the top of her lungs, "HE HIT ME!!!!" now as you can see i was not in any way at fault but that's not what mom/dad bought. no. i was the problem child for that 30 minute drive to church. the happy little family is now playing tag with open fists which really just add to the madness. the father is using his periferals to drive and the rear view mirror as an aiming tool. mother is advising in a rather elivated voice to watch the road while fishing for sister's flailing arms. sister is flailing the arms claiming she's been attacked by an army of one. poor defenseless me is cowering in the seat with my bowtie and combover occaisonally swinging my arms in "defense" and trying to push myself as far back in the seat as i could so as not to be reached by father's arm of correction. and the two younger siblings are sitting in the backwards seat of the red station wagon taking bets and choosing sides. what a lovely picture of a typical family on sunday morning.

haha you know it's the truth. and then there's the, "don't make me pull over!" and yelling through clinched teeth (if that's possible) "we are going to go to church to learn about jesus!" and as soon as those front tires hit the asphalt of the parking lot we are that picture perfect family walking into church that you see on all the gospel tracks and christian literature.

it is sooo funny to look back and think about what the routine family does on a sunday morning when little children are involved. and only on sunday does the devil himself possess the child during the carride to put his finger on the sister's side of the car. only on sunday. 

thank God for giving me a sense of humor! and while some parents might be mortified for these things to be shared. deep down they know it's so true and they know how funny it is to sit back and remember all those things. and i know this didn't just happen with my family cause i spent the night at friends houses before and rode to church with them and the routine is the same. so after all that this is the point i'm trying to make. sisters just need to not be so petty about what part of the car is their side hahahaha! naw i'm just kidding...but really. 

hahahahaha i LOVE family bonding moments like those!

*there will be a break from 10 things for this posting.

p.s. love ya mar!

turtle's playing twister

why can't it make up it's mind. don't you hate it when your mind can't make up itself? it's like a turtle that play's twister--it doesn't matter what colored circle it decides to put itself on it's going to take fooooooooorrrrreeeeeeeeevvvvvvvveeeeeeerrrrrrrr for it to get there. thank God for people with pretty decision making skills. it's right up there with the best--like bow-hunting skills and numchuck skills and shading the upper lip. i guess that's why God gave us smart people, and stupid people. smart people need a stupid person like me otherwise they don't look smart, they look average-and we all know what that means, "if everybody is special, then NO on is special." 

did you hear that? it sounded like a whole bunch of people wailing and gnashing their teeth. everyone wants to be special, but no one wants anyone else to be special. admit it. deep down inside our human nature tells us to think about numero uno (me, myself, and i). that's why there are smart people and stupid people, smart people couldn't be smart without stupid people running their mouths like they know something, and stupid people couldn't look stupid without the help of smart people pointing out their immature behavior and saying, "you don't even know." haha and we all know every single person on this planet have said that at least once in their life, you don't even know. hahaha i said it again. it's kind of catchy. 

(now i promise this is going somewhere, i'm just not quite sure where yet. cause i'm definately not going to stop and ask for directions, that would be against the man code.)

as a disclaimer i do have to say that i was exaggerating about the whole smart/stupid people but it is a logical and very valid alliteration for God and his people and the depravity of man. if it were not for God man would not know that they are in bondage that they are stupid and that they need to be saved. but because we have a God he shows us our stupidity and then we see who the smart one really is. no it's not dr. phill, it's not oprah, it's not joel osteen, it's not david letterman, or martin short (although i find the last one to be hilarious most of the time) it's God and God alone. i think it's soo cool to see how God planned everything that has ever happened. just think about it all. even the really bad stuff. and why he did it. SO HE WOULD BE GLORIFIED!!! THAT BLOWS MY MIND!!! i can't even keep track of  a pen long enough to use all the ink out of it and yet God planned all of..everything to bring himself glory. i'm in awe.

now just cause, there is another category that i would like to classify myself under and it is the category of DORK. a dork know's they're stupid so they decide to play the part and act stupid just because. it's not a bad thing but sometimes you need to be sure not to cross the line. i would like to know how many people are stupid and how many people are just bein dorks. i think the statistics would be very intriguing. 

*well i'm not sure how much this little blog thing helped yall but i felt like i needed to share it so i did. 

**we're kicking it into gear and gonna try to post daily for a week. haha we'll see how it goes.

KEEP THE SON IN YOUR EYES!

10 PUNCH LINES

1) can i have that cheese?

2) those aren't my buttons!

3) to get to the other side, duh.

4) got any gwapes?

5) thumb like it hot, thumb like it cold!

*THESE ARE JUST KILLING ME! ...seriously i can feel my organs failing..*

6) very funny scotty, now beam me up my clothes.

7) the cow jumped over the moon, and racked itself.

8) the big yellow one is the sun!

9) scuba team, 3511

10) i want your hair...extentions!

thank you for your willingness to read all the way through number 10. bless you. your crown in heaven will be ginormous for enduring all that.

stalkers unite!

mk this just came to me and i'm not sure how i feel about it.

you know on facebook how there are advertisements on the sides (some inappropriate..well actually most i would say are inappropriate) so when you are scrolling you get  your week's worth of spam email that's not even email flashing in front of your eye balls? well there was this one that came up and i'm not sure how i feel about it. it's the "Do You Know John Mayer?" one. now that's not what disturbs me. what disturbs me is how many people i hear talking about those advertisements and then discussing their scores. here is the sale's pitch, "Take this fun quis and test your knowledge about John Mayer now!" haha i laugh at that. what was meant to be an "in-depth study/questionaire" of the person is really just a place for stalkers to see who's the better stalker. it's like they are starting a club- STALKERS UNITE! they make it sound like it's some sort of game.  i am being a tad bit facetious but seriously. how do people have time for those kinda things! i'm on facebook 23 hours and 55 minutes of the day and i don't even have time for that! i think it's funny how facebook can consume so much of your life and you don't even know it (i should prolly just insert the word I and my for the "you's" in this sentence cause idk about you) actually it's not that funny but it is. it's kind of like those awkward moment's with people where it's really quiet then everyone gives the awkward laugh and then the sigh and it get's quiet again ALL AT THE SAME TIME! and then they do that short little laugh again. YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!! haha i know that all 5 of the people that read this have done it cause i've done it with every single one of you! HAHA! don't feel bad about it, embrace it!

no but in all seriousness, how much time do we invest in things such as facebook, myspace, youtube, blogs, vlogs, world of warcraft, final fantasy and such. now i know everyone of you LOVES the last two things i mentioned so i won't say how i feel about those but i'm sure you could fill in the blanks about those, most utterly boring, gag me with a rusted spoon, time consuming things. but back to the topic at hand. how many of those things do we invest our time and attention and sometimes even our passion into compared to investing our time in growing spiritually. to better know the creator of the universe. i will be the first to tell you that I AM SOOOOOOOOOO GUILTY OF THAT!!!!! all the resources and opportunities that we are given to get to know our Lord and Savior and we don't jump on those. even those people that may not know Christ, or have a relationship with Him, how will they see that they can be free and the relief and love and comfort they can have if they see us using all our time to be on things such as those listed above (the list is really endless)? i want them to experience and feel that peace that passes all understanding! 

i think we should all put down our WoW for a while and stop being stalkers of celebrities and maybe regroup/refocus on what we should be. just a thought. you know where you stand.

keep the SON in your eyes!

1) ABC 123 - jackson five! listen now.

2) tell everyone you know about my blog.

3) Isaiah 59:1

4) turkey day is officially next week! 

5) after you listen to ABC 123 listen to Jitterbug

6) tis the season for Barry Manilow

7) burt's bees

8) brit lit has officially gotten on my last nerve

9) can't wait to see all his buddies during turkey/christmas break and then in january!!!!

10) Rocket Man the movie. that is all that is needed to be said.