a new season.

This is best read while listening to the song "Comptine d'un autre été, l'après-midi" by Yann Tiersen and can be found on the soundtrack of Amélie. Please qeue appropriately and then continue on. :) So, my blog is going in a new direction. There is so much to write about that I don't even know where to start. First of all I guess I should address my title. A new season of my life has begun. A time where I'm going to attempt to strip from myself of all the things that I worship in unhealthy ways...my image. Things I let come between me and God. Sins I have rooted myself in that have allowed me to grow crookedly and allow me to see my life in a skewed way. Over the past couple weeks and 8 more to come I've been participating on the general track in Redemption Groups at Mars Hill Church. During these sessions I've been broken down and forced to evaluate and expose all of my sins and the sins that have been committed against me...to other people. In this case, since the actual groups were too full (I'm joining an official one in the Fall), I'm on the general track which means I attend the sessions where the leader speaks and instead of breaking off after the talk into group, my best friend Rachael and I break off and do the group together. The actual groups have leaders who are trained and are counselors. But this time with Rachael has been so great. We've been able to remove that "image" we put up to protect ourselves and have been truly and vulnerably real with each other. Our first task was to tell your group (in our case just Rach and I) your story. They talk about your story as being a series of dots. Your story is basically you going all the way back to when you were first sinned against or sinned and sharing those things and how God has redeemed you or how you are working on it with God right now. But you have to be real, brutally honest, and so in my story there were so many dots I'm just now discovering. I haven't even begun to connect them. I knew the big ones but as I evaluate them, new ones are popping up all over the place....eventually leading me to where i am now. I'm going to share that story at the end of my 8 weeks and hopefully be able to give a cohesive account of God's work in my life so far. I share the raw unconnected version with Rachael and cried almost my whole way through it. I am praying for strength the whole way through this time in my life and I truly feel like He's given me a new heart. It's so hard to explain right now. I've recently had to re-write my testimony for church membership and wanted to share what I wrote. "Just setting up the story, I grew up in a home that was both non-religious (my dad a non-practicing Catholic and my mom a non-practicing protestant) and a very unstable environment. My father was and remains an alcoholic and my mother really went (and still does) through emotionally unstable times all throughout my childhood and suffered from random bouts of depression. To top it off, my parents were always on the verge of a maybe divorce. While my parents loved me and my brother and thought they were doing the best for us, I grew up with a lot of pain, insecurities, and the inability to express my feelings. We were never encouraged to say what we thought or think for ourselves so it's been something I've had to learn recently. As a result, I didn't have any concept of God or had really even thought about it. I filled my free time with sports and a friend on my team invited me to church when I was in the sixth grade. I attended and learned all about who God was, the character of Jesus and how He had saved me. It was a lot to take in. While I thought I had become what I consider now to be a Christian, I was really just beginning to understand what it meant. At the time I was a surface "Christian" and got baptized, joined my church, and all through middle school and high school did the social/super involved/super Christian thing. Never really developing my personal relationship with God. I just didn't understand. Then when I graduated from high school I attended a youth evangelism conference called "DCLA" and it was there I learned that what I was, wasn't a true Christian. My life got turned upside down during my realization. I went to college away from family and friends in CA and it was there that I experienced the lowest low in my whole life. God broke me. He broke everything I knew to be true about myself and about Him. I spiraled into a deep depression as I pulled away from Him in anger and frustration and was completely lost and sad. I had thoughts of suicide, not so far as to plan anything out or things like that, but it was enough. During those darkest moments, I was able to turn to God and I cried out many times for Him to be there with me...and He was. 1 Peter 2:9-10 were the verses that I turned to and was able to relate to the most. The idea that I am God's people and He chose ME. He loved me so much that he called me out of my darkness and into HIS wonderful light. He saved me again. It was here that I started from scratch. I graduated, moved home and settled into life with new perspective and a new love for God. It was more real than I have ever experienced in my previous 10 years as a "christian." I started attending Mars Hill shortly after and began to grow deeper in my knowledge of God and learning the bible and it has been here over the past 3 years that I've been rebuilding my relationship with God and I've been learning SO much here. God has been SO merciful and so gracious to me and loves me SO much. And throughout my journey I know that I STILL have so much to learn and have a lot more growing to do." Friends & anonymous readers, I ask for your prayers! :)

love.

love yourself. love your enemies. love deeply. love compassionately. love unselfishly. love one another. love them from the center of who you are and let your love be genuine. this is what we are to be doing and you really can't go wrong when you love others. God is love.

Gap's Color Concept

If you’re looking to beat the winter blues in New York City this season, check out the Gap & Pantone T-Shop, located at Gap’s rotating concept store on 54th Street and 5th Avenue, adjacent to it’s flagship. The location will feature a cheerful palate of tees from Gap’s upcoming spring collection in true Pantone colors, including a limited-edition shirt in Mimosa (Pantone’s color of the year for 2009), which will be available exclusively at the shop. “Mixing Pantone’s vibrant colors with Gap’s signature T-shirts gives everyone an opportunity to find the perfect tee they can mix and match for their own personal style,” said Patrick Robinson, the executive vice president of design for Gap. The shop will be open today through February 8th and will carry both men’s crewneck T-shirts for $18 as well as women’s V-neck T-shirts for $18.50 http://fashion.elle.com/blog/2009/01/gaps-color-concept.html

tattered sofa chair.

Sometimes I want to crawl into my hoodie and not come out. It’s so comfortable in here and I am protected, at least in my head, from all uncomfortable situations and judgements that this world brings me. I keep taking breaks from writing this to place my hands around my deep blue ceramic coffee cup, soaking in the warmth from the freshly brewed coffee. It travels like electricity from my fingertips up along my arms and with it, raising my hair follicles. Not quite, but almost like watching dominoes falling in reverse. I am here at this coffee shop to work on a t-shirt design for threadless.com. I am not sure what I am going to do conceptually, so while I figure that out, I thought I would release a little energy by writing. I’m listening to Iron and Wine because their music moves the creative parts of me that have crawled deep into the caverns of my soul. I feel alive when i listen to them and full of new ideas and perspectives. With music I see life differently. It’s kind of like looking at an old sofa chair and seeing dust and germs and ickyness, but if I looked at that same sofa chair while listening to music that inspires me, I see a worn out seat where numerous people of all ages have sat and shared pieces of their heart to someone else, or the deep richness of the colors and patterns that make up the facade of the chair, or even the fuzzy and complex texture that give the material it’s worth. If I could always view the world in this way, why take out my earbuds?

love, love, love, love, love....love.

Today was the first time I’ve been to church in about three Sundays. I’ve come to realize that is three Sundays too long. I’ve also let myself go as far as eating healthy and exercising. I had a pretty good routine going while living at my other apartment. But i know it’s been the holidays and schedules and routines have been altered and while that’s really no excuse, it’s the truth. I should be able to keep a routine in eating and exercising no matter what’s going on in my life. So, my goal is to get my health and spiritual life back on track. I haven’t been talking to God lately and after going to church today, I’ve realized how much I need Him. When I leave church I always feel so vulnerable and happy about it. I feel like I want to be a better person, improve on the things that I have been lacking in, wanting to discover and develop the things I don’t have a lot of strength in or confidence to find. I want to be able to put myself out there in the world and be something. I know that what I’m doing right now, i’m important, but all of what I’ve acquired has almost been handed to me on a plate in terms of jobs. I mean I might be shorting myself a little credit because I’ve excelled at those jobs and kept them but I guess I just don’t understand the situation that i’ve put myself into. It’s not a bad one, just not how I envisioned I guess. In church today, we talked about spiritual gifts and more specifically service. Pastor Chris was talking about some people in our church who have that gift and who serve unselfishly and give up their time without a second thought. They serve because serving means love. And loving is the most important thing we are to be doing. More recently I’ve been having an itch and burning desire to get the word “love” tattooed on my body...my temple...that God has blessed me with. I think that it has become so apparent to me that I need to love, love, love...no matter how difficult it is at the time. I’ve been trying to be more aware lately. The way I interact with people. Searching for ways to improve. Soon, it will be a new year and with that year, new things are coming. I will be hoping for a lot of growing and new opportunities. I will also be praying that God will guide me in everything I do. Or maybe I should be praying for the strength to LET God guide me. Who do I think I am anyways? lol. :) Cheers and happy new year!

unknown.

So, I hate when I get too frustrated that I can't focus on anything but what's bothering me. I hate that I get this way and how I sometimes can't control my feelings. The only way to remove myself from the current situation and pray that God takes my anger away. Or, I guess this is my way of venting when those people are in the same room with me??! It's so hard for me to share when I'm upset sometimes because it's usually not something that the person did necessarily but how i'm handling the information and responding. Usually I'm able to realize right away that it's not them, it's me and I don't get too upset...only at myself, but in this case I'm not feeling it was my problem, it was really them. Except after i've been typing this I feel incredibly calmer and not as angry. I love how this works. I'm glad I don't get angry too often.

In other news, Kai just told me what she's getting me for Christmas and it's tickets for us to go to the Rosie Thomas and Damien Jurado concert that's here in Seattle this Sunday! It's the same day as our Housewarming/Open House party. The party ends at 5pm and the concert starts at 830 so it's going to be a close call but we're going to make it happen, that's for sure. 

Also in addition to the list of events, my new apartment is pretty cool. I really enjoy living here and I always can't wait to come home and just be. Which it wasn't like that at my last apartment. I definately don't think I was cut out to live alone. I mean, I was technically rarely alone there but not living with at least some other person was kind of lame.

We're catching up on 24 season 6. Getting ready for the start of season 7 that starts sometime in January. I heard that it's a four hour season opener, split between two nights in a row. I can't wait. It's going to be an exciting season...per usual. Rachael and I got kind of burnt out from 24 for a while. We went through seasons 1-6.5 in about a month. I don't know how we stopped in the middle of a season. Kind of weird. We were trying to figure that out...but all that matters is that we're getting season 6 watched. As long as we're talking about tv shows, I'm 3/4 of the way through Arrested Development and man that's a funny show. I've always heard wonderful things about it and it always won so many awards when it was airing so I've been excited to watch it. The characters are SO weird and quirky but SO funny. Haha. I'm kind of bummed that it only lasted 3 seasons. The next shows I'd like to watch are Entourage, It's always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Gossip Girl. I don't know if everyone has heard of this but the website www.hulu.com has all the shows you'd ever want to watch and it's actually legal. The site is supported by all major networks so that's nice. I've heard that it's super up and coming and they are predicting that it's going to someday surpass YouTube. Yikes!

Ok well I think that's enough ranting for now. Until later I guess... 

Secrets

“I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition- that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are- even if we tell it only to ourselves- because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being a human is all about. Finally, I suspect that it is by entering that deep place inside us where are secrets are kept that we come perhaps closer than we do anywhere else to the One who, whether we realize it or not, is all of our secrets the most telling and the most precious we have to tell.“ - Fredrick Buechner