Funny Thing Happened Last Night

This weekend was a crazy one. Matt turned 25 on Saturday, so I was down with his family spending some QT with my love and enjoying a weekend off after some intense class and such. I particularly loved Sunday afternoon when we just sat on the front driveway and talked about everything from theology to star trek. God, I love him.

The really difficult part was that I had a BUNCH of friends get married this weekend. I mean, wedding season is hard, but pairing that with his 25th and the fact that we're nowhere near getting married anytime soon is just flat out hard. And we want to get married so badly, the thing is that we can't afford it right now. Still waiting on that job to work out on his end.

So I left yesterday evening with that all too familiar feeling...wondering when it will ever be my turn. Wishing and praying and wondering if all those little voices along the way telling me that I should consider calling it quits were right. And then God spoke to me through Joel Osteen.

Now, the thing to realize is that I'm not really the world's biggest Joel Osteen fan. Don't get me wrong, I think he's a good guy and all, but I don't exactly sit up late waiting for his sermons to play at 2 am on the Christian channel. And I'm not first in line for his latest book release. Thing is, I was actually watching "My Name is Earl" simply because my real favourite show doesn't come on at that time on Sunday nights. And when I got bored with Earl, I started channel surfing and came across Mr. Osteen's show. I'm not really sure why I decided to stop there last night except for the fact that I love how he never looks at his notes when he preaches. That's the one thing I've tried really hard to steal in my own preaching style.

But anyway, Joel was going on about something or other when this little word of truth stuck out to me like a sore thumb: maybe things are going to work out, just not right now. Perhaps part of this all being worth it is that I need to sit and trust that God is going to fulfill the promise that he has made to me. God isn't exactly the type that goes back on promises.

So I realized that what I really need to do is just cool my jets and stop getting mad every time someone besides me gets married. God's gonna work all this stuff out, and I need to trust him. He loves me enough to have a bigger picture in mind when I want to limit myself to only what I see right now.

Learning to take everything in stride

I think the one thing I've learned over the last week is just how much easier life is when you start looking at the positive, and let the negative just roll off your back.

I guess it takes coming to the end of what you think you have inside of you and then ... jumping off some kind of proverbial pier. This has been such a wonderful week of learning. Yes, there has been a fair share of crap. There has been the usual bickering and arguing. There has been situation after situation that makes me want to run away screaming. There has been cat pee in a puddle under the bed. .

But there has come a beautiful moment when everything seems to not even matter anymore. It doesn't matter if people know who I am or what I do. It doesn't matter if this place is thankless and if I have no future here. The thing is that I am learning. And learning a LOT thank you. There is something marvelous about leadership classes in that they tend to give this strange sense of optimism. That no matter how crappy things may seem, there is always a way to make it better. There is somehow, somewhere, a way to get a group of people to start forming a team. A way for two people to stop hurting each other and start loving each other.

Instead of all of the bad moments, learn to focus on the good. Look for that sliver of gold nestled in among the rocks and the dirt. Learn to find one good thing in someone and tell them about it. Learn to say "I'm Sorry" and "I was wrong". Learn that personal agendas are nowhere near as important as the team objective.

And most of all, I've learned that to start working together we need to understand each other and to understand each other we need to love each other. May God's grace be the glue that binds us together. May we learn to love like Christ loved.

Coming to an end...maybe not

Remember when you were just a kid...you know, those good old days when it started getting hot outside and you started getting excited because you knew that summer break was right around the corner? Man, I miss that.

I'm coming to the end of my second semester of grad school. I've got 9 classes under my belt, and I'm looking forward to finishing the final 2 before starting work on my thesis. Looking forward as in, as soon as these are done, I'll be able to go to the pool after work again. Man, that would be nice.

For now, this is the equivalent of finals week. One paper is due tomorrow (almost done) and another one is due in a few weeks. (I'm still not sure how that works out). And somehow I have to get a powerpoint done on 4 chapters by Saturday morning -- seriously who schedules class for 8 am on a Saturday. This is just rediculous!

Alas, I'm so tired. And stressed. My boyfriend deserves bonus points because he's been managing to put up with all of it. I feel really bad, and at the same time, I don't even know how to not be stressed. I think that's the part that bothers him the most. Just that I'm not quite as smiley or talkative as I normally am. The good thing is that once this is over, I'm done for a long long time. While I keep saying that I don't want to do work on a doctorate, I don't really see that happening anytime in the near future. I say give it some time and if the right program comes along, I'll roll into it -- but definitely not full time at all.

Oh, also, I found a cat. Itty bitty baby kitty. aka Gracie. Aka meowmix. aka kittybaby. Some weirdos were trying to keep her in their dorm room, and the cleaning lady found her. A co-worker intervened and was going to take her to the pound when I saw her on my way home and decided that she needed to come home with me.

So now I find myself bottle feeding a kitten a bunch of times a day. Who knew they needed to be burped? Because I sure didn't. It's kindof awkward burping a cat. Or feeding it from a bottle. But that's another story. At least I've got her trained to pee in a litterbox...