I have finally come to understand the gift of life, and the purpose to living. I've come to understand why God chooses some people to suffer daily, and others to live in comfort. I've come to the conclusion that he had an idea in mind when he fashioned me in my mother's womb, had a plan for me before the world began.
These are truths that I wish everyone who is considering suicide as an option could accept. I wish I'd gotten it a long time ago, and I regret regretting that I was ever conceived. I regret nearly robbing my family and friends of a girl they love, and the world of the gifts I have to offer. I know that God has blessed me with a multitude of talents that I can't even begin to unravel, and I understand the term, "To he much has been given, much will be expected." I get that, and I'm trying my hardest to multiply my blessings so they overfill into the lives of other people. I'd also like to spread the word of who I've been, and my back-story, but I don't know how, and I am afraid.
This week has given me a lot to think about, and To Write Love On Her Arms is an emotional 24 hours for me. Every year I try and convey how God has spoken to me and kept me breathing the 365 days. This year's sleeve told the following:
A star for that night when God told me of my calling, a remembrance of hope, fears, and dreams.
"TWLOHA" for the organization which has posed as a beacon and a symbol of my recovery.
A bird, fed by the hand of God, which brings me back to my freshman year, when God showed me Matthew 6:26 one night I questioned my worth.
The word "value", for the derriving from the NLT version of the verse which says, "...and aren't you far more valuable to Him than [the birds] are?"
A ship for the Shawn McDonald song which says, "I will not fear when the storms of life appear / 'Cause You're holding me, holding me tight / Keeping me alive when the storms of life arrive / And You're helping me, helping me fight through the night" (Storms.)
Lastly, the anchor reminds me of two songs on the album Satellite Kite by Beautiful Eulogy. The anchor stems from the song "Anchor", which says that God remains good while we're dealing with troubles. And the other song, "Beautiful Eulogy", which reminds me of the perfect body I will receive in Heaven, unblemished with mental illness, and the day all of my tears will be wiped away, every wrong made right.
This isn't much of a post, but I thought it was worth sharing. Keep the suicidal in prayer this week, and beg that at least one would decide to live tonight. I thank those who have prayed for me.
In the world, people live their lives with the belief that the universe originated out of complete and total chaos, a random explosion that brought the galaxies, stars, and planets into being. These same individuals donate to charities, help old ladies across the street, and bring money home so they can provide for their families, to make sure their kids have the life they never did. This is where they find their purpose, and yet they believe in no God. This makes no sense. Something cannot have no purpose, but still have purpose. It violates the law of non-contradiction. If the universe was an accident, it follows that life as humans know it is utterly and absolutely redundant, and man subsequently has no value whatsoever.
In proportion to eternity, without a God, not one life on this earth can have any significance. Anything a Godless person does for the “good” of things accomplishes essentially nothing, for he himself has no more worth than those he serves. Whether one murders or loves does not matter, for without God, there is no moral wrong one can inflict upon another, for neither party has any value. Likewise, one cannot say something is right, or something is wrong. For without any living creature on the earth having value, wrong cannot be committed, and neither can good, because it does not matter one way or another, for it affects nothing.
A common argument against purpose in a Godless world argues that one can have meaning without God. The purpose from an evolutionary standpoint explains that everything is simply survival of the fittest, and therefore, man’s purpose is to thrive. Not so! Hitler saw it fit for the Germans to simply exterminate the Jewish race and forcibly sterilize many others in order for his people to thrive, and so using an evolutionist’s code of beliefs, his actions could be rationalized and justified.
I took Ashley's senior photos last weekend, and here is one of the results. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out, and surprised they looked as good as they did!
Hey! So today was my first day back in school...officially. I wasn't too happy about it, but after being able to see all of my friends and hang out, laughing and giggling, I decided I didn't care so much. It's nice to be busy doing things other than, like, watching a two-year-old and bringing people menus at the restaurant. Business is good for me. Anyway, this landshark was created in accounting - last class of the day.
This was from Apologetics class, learning to defend our faith from those would seek to lead us astray or change our views. Because all truth is God's truth.
This was from Government class...which was pretty boring, needless to say. I call this a bricken! I'll try and post more drawings when I can - one of my homework projects is from art class, and we're supposed to draw stuff...as homework. How cool is that?
Yellowstone is absolutely of of the coolest places I've ever been to in my life. Everything there declares the existence of God, and I can't help but thinking that he puts places like this here so that we can be reminded of his presence. My senior year of high school starts tomorrow, so goodbye summer, and goodbye freedom! Hopefully everything will go smoothly and I won't, like, get any panic attacks or anything during class. This year I will be taking not only art, but Apologetics, so I'm pretty excited about it! But I'm also taking Government and Accounting...so expect drawings pronto. Later!
There's a boy in my life that never fails to make me feel happy, and to make me feel like I am unconditionally loved.
He's two years old, and is like my tiny BFF. I didn't know that I'd love my job as much as I do when I first started watching him almost exactly a year ago, and now I can't imagine life without it. He's part of what makes my weeks go a little bit faster, and helps me hang on a little longer when things get hard. He's constantly hugging my leg when I don't expect it to tell me, "I luh dou, Sephy!"
It's amazing how much he's changed in this small amount of time as well. When I first started, the only word he knew how to say was "banana", and now he's at the point where he can tell me, "I feel happy!!" and it's about the cutest thing in the world.
I think all of us need a child like this in our lives to remind us how we are to love God. He says we need to come to him like a child, and I can see this in the way that Brody follows me around and trusts me to catch him when he's literally about to fall down the stairs. It's just something to think about.
There's really nothing that beats sitting on the couch with the windows open while it's raining with a bowl of Blue Bell ice cream. It's a relief to know that God is sending precipitation to ease Colorado's drought and quench the fires! You all should have seen us on the 4th of July. It smelled like smoke everywhere, and the air was all hazy. It was nasty. However, today and yesterday, the skies finally opened up and have been spilling torrential downpours periodically without warning.
This is a picture of the word "Rain."
Ashley and I both had to work yesterday when it was raining like I haven't seen it rain in over a year. You'd all have a laughed watching us try and run out to our cars without getting our bags wet! I'd so brilliantly left my sketchbook, camera, Sour Patch Kids, peach rings, and Harry Potter book in my canvas backpack after I'd spent the morning at her house, and that plan sort of backfired onto me. The Deathly Hallows are now slightly wrinkled. Like a sixty-year-old man.
Um, so anyway, I'd like to thank all the people out there that prayed for the rain to put out our wildfires. We all greatly appreciate it! Although, I'd encourage everyone to still pray for those who have lost their homes.
I'd also ask you to pray for the son of my co-worker, Chuy, who has been the bartender ever since I first started working at the restaurant two years ago. His son's name is Matteo and he had a brain tumor which was cancerous, and he was recently released from the hospital the other day, but is going back in for more surgery soon. Chuy is the sweetest guy I've ever met, and I've sort of seen him as a big brother figure at work, so it tears me apart to see him so sad and tired all the time. Please pray!
This is a picture of OCD.
In other news, I've spent the entire day registering for the ACT test and filling out online applications for different colleges, cowering the internet for good psychology programs at decently-priced schools.
It was funny, when I was filling out the interest inventory on the ACT website this morning, my mom caught me giggling about the things they put down. You were supposed to check one of three boxes for each choice: Like, indifferent, or dislike, and they had things like, "Draw a cartoon", or "help someone make an important decision."
At first, I thought this was kind of okay and normal, until I came to one that said, "Put things in boxes."
I laughed.
"What?" my mom asked, across from me on the other couch with a book about Nazis.
I explained to her what I was doing, and said, "I just...I just like to pack things into...boxes!"
She laughed.
I put both hands out in front of me and shook them like I couldn't resist picking things up. "What's this? The tissue box is empty? Pack it. PACK THE BOX."
Kristen appeared on the balcony and gave us a weird look, which was probably deserved, because we were just sitting in the family room dying of laughter, I myself making retarded-seal hand gestures.
"What are you guys doing?"
We explained, and she said slowly, "...I like to pack things into boxes."
Needless to say, mother and I could not contain ourselves. People with OCD, how we love them.
"Do you want to make birdhouses, too, Kristen??"
This is a picture of Boulder, Colorado.
But anyway, I've been sort of unsuccessful at finding a college out of state that isn't going to cost me a hand and a foot to attend, but I've learned that Colorado State University, where my sister goes, does not, in fact, have a better Psychology program than CU Boulder. Boulder is a party school. And they have a city-wide marijuana day. Does this sound safe to you? No, not really. I could end up with dreads and a drug rug and a recorder and play unimpressive music on the sidewalk next to some Gypsy selling jewelry he made out of tin cans.
There's always Moody Bible Institute. But you have to be impressive there.
Oh, also, this kid at my youth group, JT, and I led worship together with his guitar and my cello, and it was sick. My youth pastor's last day was Thursday, and for now, our senior pastor, Harlan, will be filling in until we get a new one. It makes me really sad, but I'm really excited for him and his family! They get to go back home to New Hampshire so that he can go back to college on a full ride scholarship. Awesome? Awesome.
In the mean time, maybe we'll do something fun at youth group. Like play the Hunger Games, bwahaha.
I've had an interesting last few weeks. I can't quite remember when I last updated, because I have a terrible memory, but I thought I'd try and keep up with my blogging so I have a record of things that I did this summer so I can convince myself I've actually done something.
It's amazing how much one appreciates being busy when they suddenly have nothing to do with themselves. I've started to experience since I've gotten back from Summit, and I'm actually starting to crave the brain-stimulating structure of school. Which is sort of sad and anti-teenager, I think. I have literally watched two seasons of Scrubs, one season of Grey's Anatomy, one season of I Shouldn't Be Alive, a season of Sherlock, and half a season of Doctor Who all on Netflix since the beginning of last month. I have also written 15,000+ words on the story I'm writing, sketched several pictures, ridden my horse...once, led worship at youth group several times, worked 24+ hour weeks for the last five weeks, lost my phone, learned to finger-pick on the guitar, ate a gallon of Blue Bell ice cream, and sliced a three-and-a-half inch gash into my thigh with a TV.
So, maybe I have been sort of productive.I feel like half of what I've done doesn't matter at all, and the other has made me a better rounded person. I still need to register for my ACT because I'm now on drugs (^-^), and for whatever reason, I've been putting it off forever because I'm sort of in denial that I'm actually going to be going to college in a year. How crazy is that? A year from now, I'll be getting ready to move into a dorm and find out who my room mate is, picking a major, and making a new life for myself.
My godsisters came out to see us last week!
Dear God, I'm getting old.
Concerning the future, I actually had something really awesome happen to me the other week. It was one-o-clock in the morning, and since I tend to put off going to bed for as long as I can, I decided to go lay outside on our concrete porch and look at the stars. I live out in the country, so it's easier to see them, and it feels like they're even brighter. I thought it might be good to pray. I was laying underneath the vast stretch of just a small part of God's glorious creation, and it occurred to me how small I really am. It had been on my mind to try to decide for sure what I want to do when I get to college, and what I want to pursue as a career in my life, so I thought I could maybe...ask God. In the Bible, I have seen that sometimes the prophets would ask the Lord for a sign so he could reveal to them the future, or to tell them how to make a decision.
We're attractive.
My eyes were trained on the glittery sky, and I thought of something. In the quietness of my mind, I asked him, God, I know you can communicate if you want, and I believe you can deliver miraculous signs. I can't decide for myself if You want me to be a missionary, or a counselor. I feel an equal calling on my heart for both, and I can't choose. If you want me to be a counselor, send a shooting star to the left. If you want me to be a missionary, send one to the right. I'll listen.
I waited for a few minutes before something caught my eye. To my left, I saw a light shoot a small distance and then disappear. I thought, Are you sure?
A few seconds later, there was another to my left.
I know what He wants. It feels right to me.
This has kind of been sitting on my mind for a really long time, and I feel like I just need to tell someone about it. I hate telling my testimony. It's not that I hate what God has done in my life, because frankly, I'm really happy about the way things have turned out, but I hate that people treat me differently because of my past. It's like I'm suddenly fragile as soon as they learn that I used to be suicidal, and I've self-harmed on multiple occasions. Because, really, if they took the time to know me, they'd understand that I'm very alright in the head and I'm a very rational person. I'm not mindless, and I'm not impulsive. I'm on depression/anxiety medication. I'm okay. Those were the darkest days of my life, and they're behind me now.
I'd like people to see that.
I bring this up because I've sort of had it with people making jokes about suicide and people cutting themselves.They think that the idea of hurting oneself is, in some way, sort of comical. People who commit suicide are selfish, and those who cut are trying to get attention.
That's not the way it is for everyone, though, is my point. For me, it was literally either hurt myself, or kill myself. I'd ask you which one was more rational for me at the time? If I had to do something out of despair to feel something other than self-hatred and overwhelming temptation to end it all, would it not better to harm myself in a way that can be mended? I am not advocating self-harm for all people, but I'd like people to understand that neither of these topics are anything to joke about.
To those of you of whom I know outside of the net, please watch the "s" word around me, because there is no word that makes me feel more ashamed. No word that makes me feel more alienated, like I'm some sort of creature from a whole other universe. No word that makes me feel dirtier that everyone else. I am so embarrassed that I was even ready to do that to my family, and to my friends. To the person who found me. To the schools I've attended, and the people who know they've hurt me in some way and would blame themselves for the rest of their lives. I cannot explain the feeling I get in my gut when someone jokes about it. I'd encourage everyone to please watch what they say, because I know that I'm not the only one out there.
(what I look like when I forget to take my pills)
I'd also like to say now how my life has changed dramatically now that I'm on drugs, because I really can't wrap my mind around why people don't take them if they so obviously help with the quality of life. Depression runs in my family, and I know that my mom struggled with it for forty years before finally finding Zoloft, what I'm currently on. My dad, also, said that he went through a period in his life where he felt like he wanted to die as well. I know that for most people who are depressed, it is because of genetic dispositions. And so if help is out there to mend problems like depression by simply popping two little blue pills a day, why don't people take them?
I used to get very depressed after having to leave the room because someone was eating something I couldn't stand or getting a panic attack somewhere. But now that I've been on medication, when I do need to leave, the corrosive sadness does not engulf me anymore. I can shrug it off and tell myself that we'll try again next time, and it's going to be okay. It's truly amazing! My quality of life in regards to my 4S symptoms has gotten much better as well. I'm not freaking out because the lady at the vet's was chewing gum annoyingly. I still notice that I should be pulling my hair out with anxiety, but all I feel is annoyance - like if someone was poking me over an over with a stick, as opposed to someone branding me over and over with a hot iron. These are the dramatic differences I feel now, and I couldn't be happier with the results.
While I do have those small things that still make my skin crawl, like my parents eating cucumber and broccoli at dinner tonight, I figure I can live with what remains. And if not, I can always get my dosage increased to three pills.
Life is manageable once again, and I have a future. Thank you little blue pills.
I have this friend who's been there for me through thick and thin. Her seventeenth birthday was the other day, and that's partially why I'm thinking about it now at 11:40 at night. I think she should be acknowledged.
She asked me the other night why in the world I even liked her as much as I do, and why I still want to be friends even though she can get a little rough with words from time to time. I had actually never thought about it. Why would she, out of all my friends, be the one that stands out?
The answer was quite simple. She is the only one who gives back what I give to her. I sort of have this thing where if I really, truly love someone, I'll pour everything I have into them to let them know how I feel. It's sort of a bad habit, I think, because I've been hurt by so many people because of this. I've had a lot of people use and abuse this attribute, and I've got some pretty serious emotional scars to prove it.
But Ashley's different. Here's an example: Once I threw a good friend a birthday party, and she spent the entirety of it hanging off of her boyfriend, and hardly said a word to me. For my birthday this year, Ashley threw me a surprise birthday party with my entire youth group because I had mentioned once that nobody had ever done that for me before. She's the only one I have super-serious discussions concerning topics like the meaning of life, the significance of prayer, and why anarchy is bad. She's the only one that I would end up spending the night with after helping her family keep the basement from flooding. She's the only one who shares the same affinity and love for music, as well as much of the same tastes. She's different from all the friends that I have ever known in my life. She's real with me, and I like that.
Ashley has helped me get through some of the more rough patches of my history, and I firmly believe that without her, I might not be alive today. So this is just a short post to show how much I love and appreciate her. Because, really, Ash, you're the only friend who I think has ever cared for me to the extent that you have.
I love you, and thank you.
As goes with pretty much every summer, I'd say that most people have a very long list of things that they wish to accomplish in the few short months of freedom they have. I am no exception to this idea. I have so many things that I'm trying to do that I don't even know where to begin.
First on this list is figuring out how to take my ACT while I'm still suffering from 4S. I didn't have the chance to write about my previous attempt at conquering the test, but I'll have you know that it was pretty pathetic. There was a girl with a very bad cold, and I got a panic attack. I wasn't able to focus on the questions in front of me or even process what the concepts were about, and ended up just having to leave because it was so terrible. However, I'm hoping that this next time will be easier since I'm on anxiety drugs. My mom said I could probably overdose and be completely cool as a cucumber, and that would be okay. Zoloft is amazing.
Next, I'm hoping that I'll be able to read my Bible more this year. I'm doing one of those One Year Bibles and trying to read through the whole thing this year since I lost track of it last year and didn't quite get all the way. So far, I'm a month behind, which kind of sucks because I have to read a ton every day. This next month, I plan to catch up.
I'm also in the middle of writing a story, which I'm posting here. So far, I have about seventy pages in Microsoft Word not double-spaced. I've been stuck on this one chapter for a couple of weeks and haven't been able to update because I've been too busy, but I'm planning on writing a whole lot more in the future. I tend to start projects and not finish them, but I'm looking to change that. Especially with writing.
I would like to check out some colleges as well. Ideally, I'd like to attend either Colorado State University, Moody Bible Institute, or Colombus College of Art and Design. I need to also look at other colleges and maybe try to pick a major. I'm still unsure of what God wants me to do with my life, so if I could get into Moody, that would probably help me a lot. Plus, Moody has no tuition provided one gets accepted. But in order to apply for colleges, I'm going to need my ACT score. So, these next few months could be really interesting.
I would like to go to the pool.
I would like to go to the Denver Zoo.
I would like to start working out, because I'm nothing if not a flab-monster.
I would like to start a portfolio in case I decide to go to art school. They won't accept you unless you have work to show them, so, yeah.
I would like to start posting more videos on my YoutTube channel. I like to sing and play guitar, which sounds sort of silly, but I kind of want to post it somewhere.
I want to blog more!
I'd like to save more money in case I do missions work next year.
So, you see, I have a lot of things, and even more, that I would like to accomplish this summer, and I really hope that I can see all of these things through.
On another note, my friend and I went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science yesterday because we had nothing to do. Seemingly, everyone else had something better they could be doing and ain't nobody got time for that, so we just went together. We saw snakes and lizards. And Darwinists. We actually debated with this atheist dude for an hour about different things. We orginally asked him why they say that the earth is millions of years old, and we got him to admit that nothing in science is exactly "fact". He said they don't know all of these things for sure. So we asked him why they would teach children things like that man evolved from primates if they didn't know it for sure. Also, I learned that most of the skeletons of things that they have are fabricated in some way. All of them are, he said. And of the skeleton they had of Lucy, they had a diagram showing her feet, but you could see that the only bone they found of her feet was small and seemingly insignificant. I asked him if the tools they displayed next to the partial skeleton were found by Lucy and he said, "Um...well, let me check...no. They're just examples of what she probably made." I'm so sure.
We also got him to admit that mutations, as we have observed today, are never helpful. I asked him if he could think of an example of a mutation that would be helpful, and he directed us towards another fossil where he explained how dinosaurs turned into birds. This was not an example of modern day mutations, and he could not think of an example that people have observed where a mutation has helped a creature survive.
Doing things like this makes me feel a whole lot smarter. I don't get good grades at school, but knowing that I can have a philosophical argument with a man who has a doctorate while being only a teenager makes me feel accomplished.
"Don't let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity" (1 Timothy 4:12).
The last two weeks, I had the opportunity to attend classes at Summit Ministries with my little junior class after school got out. At first, I wasn't quite sure that I'd like it at all, and I was actually really worried. This was mostly due to the fact I have 4S, but I was put on anti-anxiety medication before going, so it actually ran quite smoothly. Nice for a change, right?
The basic goal of Summit is to equip young Christians with the ability to think clearly and defend their faith in a way which the world can see as, well, intelligent. So often, kids my age get into discussions and they realize that they actually have no idea why they believe what they believe, so this ministry puts kids in classrooms for nine hours a day for two weeks so they can learn about how the world works and what we can make of it. We were put boy/girl/boy/girl according to age in several rows of desks and were given a honking huge binder to fill with notes on what we were learning. There were one hundred and seventy pages.
First and foremost, we were taught about worldviews. We learned that culture is the result of what people express. Culture is what turns around and influences us in our daily lives, not the other way around. And the American culture, we learned, is what is going to eventually lead us to destruction. "I want it now, therefore, I get it" is sort of our thinking, and so debt and family demographics suffer. Darwinism has dehumanized man, and people are so wrapped up in working to make excess money that they sacrifice having children and creating families. We're not having enough babies, basically. The six worldviews that influence us today are secular humanism (the happy human), cosmic humanism (new age spirituality), postmodernism, Christianity, Marxism (communism), and Islam. Worldviews are the frameworks of basic beliefs that we have that shape our view of and for the world. They are assumptions about origin, identity, meaning, morality, and destiny. Everyone has a worldview, but most do not think worldviewishly. Every cultural expression communicates worldview ideas, and we need to be intentional to think at the level of worldviews. In other words, always have your brain turned on! Ideas have consequences.
Now, we were taught more in depths about each and every one of these, which I'm not about to get into because they are so complicated and would take too long, but I might get into some of these as the summer progresses and I run out of things to do with myself.
A big portion of our classes revolved around the pro-life view. (Mostly taught by Scott Klusendorf and Dr. Mark Adams.) Making a case for life, and how do defend your pro-life views in five minutes or less. I'm now going to mostly quote the text in my notes, written by Klusendorf. The first idea is to clarify the issue. The abortion argument can actually be simplified to one moral question: Is the unborn a member of the human family? If it is, killing that life for the benefit of others is a serious moral wrong. It treats a living human being as merely a disposable instrument.
Second, scientifically, we know that from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. Dr. Alan Guttmacher, the former Planned Parenthood president said, "This all seems so simple and evident that it is difficult to picture a time when it wasn't part of the common knowledge."
We can say from a philosophical viewpoint that embryos are less developed than newborns (and, for that matter, toddlers as well), but this difference is not morally significant in the way abortion advocates need it to be in order to justify the killing of them. And so we must consider this next question: Why is some development needed? If human being are valuable as they are developed into, say, a toddler or a child, why would an embryo be any different? If one could justify killing one of them, they are also saying it is justifiable to kill a toddler because he is simply more developed. If a pro-abortion advocate does not also advocate killing a toddler for the same reasons as an embryo, he is assuming the unborn are not human.
Lastly, one can use the acronym of SLED: Size: Embryos are smaller than newborns and adults, but how is that relevant? Are we going to say large people are more valuable than small people? Men are generally larger than women, but that doesn't mean they deserve rights more than women do. Level of development: Embryos are less developed than you and I. But again, why is this relevant? Four-year-old girls are less developed than fourteen-year-old girls. Should older children have more rights than their younger siblings? Some will also say that self-awareness makes one human, but if that is true, newborn infants do not qualify as valuable human beings. Infants cannot perform human mental functions, but neither can the comatose or mentally disabled. Environment: Where you are has no bearing on who you are. Does your value change suddenly when you cross the street or roll over in bed? If not, how can one justify a journey of eight inches down the birth canal changes the nature of the unborn from non-human to suddenly human? If the unborn are not already human, merely changing their location can't make them valuable. Degree of Dependency: If viability makes us human, then all those who depend on insulin or kidney medication are not valuable and we may kill them. Conjoined twins who share blood type and bodily systems also have no right to life.
One of the other arguments you can use is "Trot Out Your Toddler".
"Abortion-advocate: But what about a woman who's been raped? Every time she looks at that kid, she's going to remember what happened to her. If that's not hardship, what is?
Pro-lifer: I agree that we should provide compassionate care for the victim and it should be the best care possible. That's not at issue here. It's your proposed solution I'm struggling to understand. Tell me, how should a civil society treat innocent human being that remind us of a painful event? Is it okay to kill them so we feel better? Can we, for example, kill a toddler who reminds her mother of a rape?"
Abortion-advocate: No, I wouldn't do that.
Pro-lifer: I wouldn't either. But again, in't that because you and I both agree that it's wrong to kill innocent human beings, even if they do remind us of a painful event? ...I don't understand her feelings. How could I? How could anybody? I'm just asking if hardship justifies homicide. Can we, for instance, kill toddlers who remind us of painful events? Again, my claim here is really quite modest. If the unborn are members of the human family, like toddlers, we should not kill them to make someone else feel better. It's better to suffer evil rather than inflict it...In the end, sometimes the right thing to do is not the easy thing to do. And what's right depends on the question: What is the unborn? We can't get around it."
This is just a taste of the endless lectures we listened to which, as a whole, I found immensely fascinating. I'm so glad I went. In addition to these lectures, we were also either given three hours of free time a day, or a few hours of sports time at the park. And we didn't even have to play sports, we could sit around and play guitar or read if we wanted, which I did in all circumstances. We, my friends and I, met several kids because of playing music all the time. There was Evan from New York, Josh from Connecticut, Austin from Michigan, and several others that just wanted to spend time listening to us jam out to Christian worship songs. We even went busking on several occasions, and made some pretty good money just playing music out on the street.
The food there was a little questionable at times, and I actually lost six pounds because I voluntarily had to fill myself with endless meals of salad because the quality of the meat was beyond my picky taste. We had a staff auction where the people working there sold services in order to raise money to send to Sudan. A different kid named Evan gave $200 along with my class to purchase a round of $400 smoothies and scones! What a way to send Bibles, right?
I also was able to make friends with a few kids from Life Action Ministries. One in particular was Austin Loveing, who's link is here, and I ended up befriending towards the end of the second week. Evan from the smoothies and another girl named Jess were also part of this organization. Let me tell you, they were completely hilarious. I played Hand and Foot with Jess and Austin on the last sports day, and literally couldn't stop laughing. But more importantly, with the increasing intensity of the lectures and meeting this group of friends sort of made me feel like I should be part of something bigger. Like, maybe I wasn't meant to be a counselor, or even an artist. What if God wants me to be part of a ministry like this? What if he wants me to go to the ends of the earth? I have no idea, but the prospect of this seems exciting, and I can't seem to get it out of my mind. When I think about doing to the work of spreading the Gospel, I feel something I haven't felt before. If you all could pray for me this year as I finish up high school and decide where to go next, I'd be very thankful.
By the end of the week, I was really sad I had to go and leave all of the great people I had met as we went our separate ways. I suddenly wished I lived in Michigan, Missouri, New York, and North Dakota...all at once. I'm going to miss everyone so much, but I wish them well as they go off to serve the Lord on their different paths to please the King.
This week has given me a lot to think about, and To Write Love On Her Arms is an emotional 24 hours for me. Every year I try and convey how God has spoken to me and kept me breathing the 365 days. This year's sleeve told the following:
A ship for the Shawn McDonald song which says, "I will not fear when the storms of life appear / 'Cause You're holding me, holding me tight / Keeping me alive when the storms of life arrive / And You're helping me, helping me fight through the night" (Storms.)
