I Have a Tendency to Make Myself Laugh

Six Down

• Val, the narrator and protagonist. Freshman girl with few ambitions, and many secrets.
• Jaime (James), best friend and antagonist. Neighbor of Val. Driven, but cruel without realizing it.
• Andy, Val's brother. Senior. Close with James, Yohan, Jeremy, Nick, and Ash.
• Corbin, Val's love-interest and antagonist. Junior, and appears frequently at awkward times. Secret love isn't so secret anymore.
  

• Yohan, friend of Val and Andy. Lives at their house usually. Quiet. Hidden love for Val is still in question. Mildly depressed.

• Michael (Mike), friend of Val, James and Yohan. Not seen around the house or at school much, but mentioned frequently in the past tense.
• Jeremy, friend of Andy. Dating one of Val's best friends, Ash.
  
• Ash, lived in neighborhood, recently moved. Close friend of Val's, one of the only "gal-pals".
• Carl, Val and Andy's step-father. Full time parental unit.
• Aunt Kim, Val and Andy's maternal aunt. Kids in the neighborhood refer to her as Aunt Kim as well.
• John, Val and Andy's father. Always refered to as 'John', and in the negative.
• Allyson, Val and Andy's older sister. Lives in Eugene, in the bohemian life-style. Confidante and very close. Visits frequently.
• Lisa, close gal-pal of Val's. James's ex-girlfriend, and fellow blogger. Val's go-to girl for random advice.
• Nat, another close friend of Val's. Val had past animosity towards her, which sometimes still rears it's head, but rarely.
• Shay, close off/on friend of Val's. Mostly on these days, since Val and Shay have less to argue about.

Formal Day

The Start of Something New

Deep and Wide...

What a day...

Last night, I had a great talk with my friend Richard, and after some homework time I nodded off to bed around 12... a reasonable hour for me lately. However, I couldn't completely sleep. You know how those nights go, where you are kind of asleep, but not really asleep, and so you close your eyes to induce the sleep, but instead you're like, fake sleeping... yeah, so last night was one of those nights. I didn't know how restless I really was, until my roommate said to me this afternoon that she could tell I was tossing and turning.

Like a complete dork, I forgot my 1st class today started at 8:30, not 8, so I rushed over there, to find that I didn't need to rush at all. I found a way to burn the 1/2 hour, and when class started, I knew it was gonna be one of those days... what I have come to know as 'a thinking day'. All throughout the day, I had moment after moment, topic after topic, thought after thought, until I felt so overloaded, I decided to just get in my pajamas and come here to the library (my obvious place of comfort) and try to pour some of it out.

There is an instructor here at Simpson whom I greatly admire, and I have the pleasure of having 2 classes this semester with her. She is actually one of the major reasons I chose Simpson -- I sat in on 2 of her classes while at Genesis Visitation Weekend last year. Today, in my first class with her, which is History of the Muslim-Christian Encounter, we basically talked about the state of Christian beliefs, viewpoints, doctrine and the early church at the time when the Islamic faith formed. I won't bore you with all of the specifics, but lets just say that I probably wouldn't be too impressed by Christianity either, had I been there. Also, its made me come to the conclusion that we should never combine church and state -- I am convinced that it will not make things easier, more peaceful, or draw more people to God; it would rather do the opposite.

Then after myfrist class...there was the painful experience. I don't really want to go into it, but I will say that it was the actions of a group of people that actually brought me to tears... in public... the kind of tears that are really lonely. I was gonna blog about it, but decided to wait until its something more productive then just hurt.  

Anyways, In my 2nd class with Dr. Cindi Strong, I was acquainted with the formulation and the reality of world religions, on a grand scale; which makes sense, because thats my 'Religions of The World' class. There are quite a few epiphanies I had in this class, but I won't go into every one of them here.

There is one thing conjoining these two classes that I want to mention, because its impacted me since the beginning of the semester. Dr. Strong has a term she uses when speaking about a Christian's relationship with God that just hits me: organic relationship. Just think about your relationship with God, and with Jesus as something organic for a moment. I won't go into it, the definition of the word, the reasoning she's given for that terminology -- maybe another time -- but I want to pass this on for others to think about it, because it's changed the way I look at relationship with Him.

The other big point of my day was of course, my Spiritual Formation class. Today, we had someone give a very moving testimony.Usually, and I don't know why (my heart is stone?) people's testimonies don't move me very much. However, Diana Larkin's testimony just hit me in a lot of places, and her own brokenness in sharing probably impacted me the most. I mean, a lot of times, people think their testimonies have to be tied up in nice little packages with a 'and then Jesus saved me, The End' kind of mentality... that ultimately everything smoothed out because God is good, God is faithful, yada yada yada... maybe thats why testimonies dont move me -- the format is a format, the tone is 'woe is me--until God...' and somehow magically all the problems are resolved or happily on their way there... it's like watching a TV drama, where they always seem to catch the criminal or stop world destruction in 1 hour or less. I don't go for that... tell me something real, be human, don't act like the story is over. Your testimony doesn't end until you're dead -- and even then, it's unlikely you've really had everything figured out before it happens.

At any rate, this reflection of Diana's life testimony sort of revolved around her son's suicide a little over a year ago. Most likely, we have all heard people talk about surviving someone they love that's commited suicide, but Diana's story was just.... different. There was hope, but it wasn't like she tried to conjure it up for the sake of her audience; nor was she disillusioned about where she is in the grieving process. She didn't attempt to sensationalize God's role in everything, nor did she play Him down -- it was just the account of her story, with every joyful, painful, and comforting twist. Yes, it did make me cry a little bit.

Thats my last class, so I headed back to my room, changed into my pajamas, and started a relaxing time reading and blogging in the library... There are still SO many things in my head... but until next time! KT

Oatmeal and Coffee

I probably should be doing homework... but here I am, not doing homework, so oh well.

I got up late this morning, because I got to bed late the night before. I probably went to bed at around 1:30-2:00am, partly because of homework, and partly because of having an interesting roommate. By the way, that reminds me, our bathroom has a new addition -- the Quote of the Day board. This is where I or Tonya write down the funniest thing that was said that day... and usually there is no shortage of these quotes between the two of us. Yesterday at around midnight I made some instant oatmeal. I came back upstairs, and I was sharing with Tonya the lovely 'did you know' facts that are on the little oatmeal packets. I was under the impression before this moment that everyone in urban america knew about oatmeal 'did you know's, but as I read the 3rd or 4th one, she turned to me with a bewildered look and said 'where are you getting all this random crap?' and started busting out laughing. I started laughing and explained the oatmeal packet phenomenon, after which time she birthed our first quote board saying: 'why get a college degree when you can have oatmeal?'

Today has been a pretty good day so far. Someone special to me has done me the honor of writing me into a novel they are working on (how extremely cool is that), and it's brightened my day... probably my next few days, if not week. Namely, my starbucks drink 'rasperry white chocolate mocha' is making an appearance... just because I drink it... :)

Oh, another new thing I'm excited about... for my ministry practicum (2 hrs a wk of mandatory ministry in order to graduate from Simpson) I am going to doing the Chico street ministry. This means that I get to do the kind of ministry I have been doing before... and that puts me in a little bit of a comfortable enviornment. Basically, I'd be on the team witnessing to the people on the streets of Chico every Saturday night. It's going to be really fun -- I'm excited.

I have more to say, but haven't the words to say it yet... thanks for listening friends.

Where Do I Begin... A long first Blog....

So after months of reading my friend Lindsey's blog here, I saw just how much I wanted to blog... even if no one ever reads it.

This week has been one of the strangest, most stressful, but most spiritually fulfilling weeks I've had in a long time. There hasn't been any real big event or life change to cause this to happen -- its one of those things that just happens on its own, and I am happier for it.

For those who don't know me, I'll fill you in on a few things... I'm from Seattle, I'm a college student in in NCali, and this week was the first week back at school after an unnerving vacation to Washington over winter break. I say unnerving probably because it wasn't anything like I thought it would be, and probably less than what I had hoped. This is the beginning of my second semester here at school, and I realized in going back home last month, that here at school has become more 'home' than Seattle is; I can't explain how both relieving and heartbreaking that realization has been.

Onto my week... I flew home Monday. I sat in the airport alone, then I sat on the plane alone (there were at least 3 empty aisles between each passenger on the plane) and then I got picked up by a friend from school that I'm not so close to, and so that felt like a long car ride home alone.

Tuesday through Friday is where things sped up, and became a messy blur of events... classes started, throwing away money on books took up a grievious afternoon, I began reading incessantly for my classes because thats what you do to not fail here at Simpson -- you read until you go blind. I've always liked reading, but I think I've read more this week than all of last semester.

The two most pivitol moments of my life this week were a fight and a class session. The class session was the latest in my Spiritual Formation class, on Friday. From what I gather, the idea of this class is to teach you how to consistently keep your own spiritual formation alive (or for some of us, get it started again), with spiritual disciplines. Yes, we all need a class in this I think, me most of all. It's not taught as if to condemn us, but rather remind every student of God's grace, and the humanity that's involved with being a Christian -- ya know, all those things that we deny we need to deal with, because we're too holy. It's a good class... the only class I want to really take right now.

The fight was with Richard. Many of you who think you know me best have yet to even know who he is... and that's fine. I will say that he is a good friend of mine, and this fight was definitely effecting me throughout the week. It was in fact a mini-series of arguments, seemingly over the same thing, but onspurred by little different situations. However, all of this is not really why it was important to my week.. fights happen, and people get over them, but the pivitol point was that I realized something about myself.

I'm a very unforgiving person.

What happened, is that after one particular argument, I saw a scary pattern -- he was trying to make ammends, and I was shoving his apology in his face, to make him feel worse. It was a devastating awakening for me. As I looked back on my track record with other friends, I saw the same thing happening. I called my friend Annetta and asked her to confirm my fear, and she said 'basically yeah... I've wanted to strangle you at times, and so have other people, but we all love you now...'

So that brought me to the weekend, where in between book-reading for classes and dorm dramas (uggh...), I've been contemplating the issues of grace and forgiveness. I don't have too much to say on those two, other than 'The Ragamuffin Gospel' is the best book about grace I've ever read... and it is no coincidence that its required reading for my Spiritual Formation class.  

Next time it won't be that long... for all of you who made it, kudos.. I know how hard it is to read something so long about someone else that has nothing to do with you -- you're a trooper.