Confessions of a SmileyFreak :)

According to the Abilene Reporter-News, several juveniles are being questioned regarding the bomb threat phone call received yesterday, which was deemed to be a hoax.

Today was an interesting day at the office. There was a bomb threat for the Abilene Regional Airport called in to the Reporter-News this morning, which resulted in delayed flights and the evacuation of the airport.

After listening to the audio, I am of the opinion that it was some dumb kid put up to a crank call by his friends. Listen to the audio, and let me know if you disagree.

Either way, it’s retarded.

Sometimes I really think that I have a hard time understanding, or maybe that I can’t understand, the love of my heavenly Father.

I grew up from the age of eight essentially without my father in my life. He could have easily been a part of my life, but for whatever reason, he chose not to be. Because of this, I think that the whole idea of a Father’s love can be hard for me to grasp. I haven’t experienced that here on earth, and that makes it hard to relate to, and at times I find myself intellectualizing God’s love for me and not really feeling it, and not really being open to feeling it.

That’s not to say that I’ve never felt God’s love—I have—it’s just been a while. And perhaps that is of my own doing.

Sometimes I have to sit down and be brutally honest with myself, and the brutal honest truth is that I suck at being a Christian. I consistently act selfish and prideful and greedy, and I fail miserably at being the perfectly good Christian woman that somehow some people seem to think I am. I am a complete and utter failure at this whole thing of “acting the part” of being a Jesus Freak. And it is completely my fault, because I get prideful and think I know what’s up, and forget that I’m not supposed to be in control.

It’s time to stop, reflect, study, pray, and let God make his amendments in my life. Instead of feeling guilt and shame for not living up to supposed expectations, and trying to control my behavior and my life to fit a mold, I need to let God be in control.

Yet that is so very hard to do.

Initially, I liked Sanjaya Malakar. I think he has a decent voice.

However, that being said, he’s 17, and that shows in his performances. He doesn’t have life experience (or performance experience) to draw from to help him sell a song. He does do daring and…uhm…interesting…things with his hair. But that’s about all he has going for him in my opinion.

So I was a bit flabbergasted that he wasn’t even in the bottom three on last week’s Idol.

The combination of Sanjaya being the first Indian-American on Idol, and therefor getting votes of the Indian-American community, his appeal with 10-13 year old girls, and Vote for the Worst is proving killer, and could be a credibility nightmare for Idol if he wins the whole deal.

Perhaps if he had waited until he was, say, 20, to audition for the show, his performance abilities wouldn’t be such an issue for him. I actually feel sorry for him in this regard, because he’s always going to have this hanging over his head, and he’s going to have to work harder to prove himself. But then again, maybe that will help him become a better performer, and it won’t be such a painfully boring experience watching him sing a song.

A picture, just so you can be scarred for life…or something…

(Photo via AmericanIdol.com photo galleries.)

The last several weeks have been a three ring circus in the world of Hollyweird.

But the question is, why are we so insanely obsessed with Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears? Why do we care so much about the drama? Why do we feed it?

Why is there such an intense yearning of teens and twenty-somethings in Hollywood to take the partying and everything else they do to such an extreme? I just don’t understand it.

But perhaps, since I’ve not lived the life of one who is famous and rich, and I’ve not had things handed to me on a silver platter, and I’ve come of age in a fairly normal fashion, I can’t understand.

And it makes me thankful that I have had a normal life, with normal struggles, and normal boundaries. I can’t say I’d have turned out differently had I been in their shoes.

A little messiness can be a good thing, say experts behind a book entitled A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder.

I guess this means that I’ve been doing it right all along. (If you could see my bedroom right now…)

On Time Magazine online.

It’s been a while since I’ve written a decent blog entry worth publishing. Not that many people read it, (if you do, show me some love and comment. ) but not that it matters. Writing is an outlet for me, and I feel better and more at peace for doing it, regardless if it is read by the masses or not.

I’ve been doing some thinking about the direction I want to take this blog in. So far I’ve written six posts about faith in my life, revelations I’ve had of a spiritual nature. (And I know those of you reading this on Facebook are going, “What the??” I have this blog feeding into Facebook via RSS, which is really cool.)

Being a designer, and one who reads design blogs, I know that it is best to keep a blog on one topic, but I’m starting to think that perhaps I should expand to other things that interest me. After all, this blog is titled Confessions of a SmileyFreak, so why can’t it be about several things I like or enjoy? I mean, Mark Lee writes about anything and everything he’s interested in on his blog, so why can’t I?

So I have decided, in the interest of possibly posting more entries, and in the interest of showing more than just one part of myself, that I’m going to expand my blog to cover current events as I see them, design, music, or anything else that I feel the need to write about. And now that Blogger lets you label posts, I can categorize, which makes multiple topics easier.

So look forward to more from me in the future.

I used to be a girl who bought into all of the worldly stuff, thinking that I should just do whatever was trend. I thought that I should be like other girls, and dress the way they did. I thought I should have boyfriends like they did, and when I didn’t, I thought there was something wrong with me. But there was a bigger purpose to that, and even though I wasn’t paying enough attention to realize it, God’s hand was all over that.

Our culture places so much emphasis on romantic relationships, and has skewed what love is and has ignored what God would have for us in relationships.

I wanted for so long to hurry up and find “the one” who I would marry. All my friends and acquaintances were getting married. So why didn’t I even have a boyfriend? I thought there was something wrong with me. People told me to start looking hard, or I might be a spinster. People advised that I should live with whomever, that I should date a lot, and “experience” (whatever that means) a lot of guys before I settled down.

A couple of years ago, I decided that it was time for me to give up on me trying to find Mr. Right, and just let God handle it. As soon as I did that, I suddenly had this peace about it, and it felt like God was saying to me, “When I’m ready, I’ll put you together with the man you are supposed to spend your life with. In the mean time…”

The mean time has been a time of growth for me, and I honestly think that if I was married two or three years ago, that I would be getting divorced at this moment. I didn’t have much to offer in a relationship. I was too guarded with my emotions, and I had some things I hadn’t dealt with yet. And I still do. It’s a daily process, which, with time and the grace of God, heals my brokenness and prepares me to be the wife that He would have me to be.

That doesn’t mean that the desire for a relationship isn’t there, it just means that I know God knows my heart, He knows most of all what I need, and when I need it. And when the time comes, everything will happen in the most brilliantly perfect way because it will be the love story that God has written, and not the fairy tale that I wished for through my youth.

Through my struggles I have discovered that true freedom comes through the surrender of our will, and our genuine obedience to God. If we give our lives fully to Him, then, and only then, can we truly have the ultimate freedom–the freedom from our sin, that was bought by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who took upon Himself our sins, and died for us. He took the blame for us, and got the punishment that we each deserve for all of the stuff we’ve done.

I know I don’t deserve His grace and love, but He gives it to me even though I’m a fully flawed human being. And that is what is truly awe-inspiring about our Father.

And He loves you too. More than you could ever imagine.

Sometimes I can forget that though I am a human who does stupid stuff, and generally makes a mess of things when left to my own devices, that I’m still washed by His grace. I forget that grace is enough. I don’t have to be perfect, I just have to trust in His Word. I have to believe that forgiveness comes through my humble request of it, not through my constant striving for moral perfection.

According to the book of Ephesians, when we believe, we receive the inheritance of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is our guide. When we read the Word, the Spirit is there, guiding us, helping us understand what it is we are supposed to learn. The Spirit is there when we lift our voices in praise to our God. And he’s there every day of our life, in us. He’s that voice that says, “Are you sure you want to do that?” or “You should help that person over there. They need someone to talk to.”

This inheritance is a glorious thing; yet at the same time, we are trusted with one overall responsibility when we become disciples of Christ—that of going into the world and introducing people to Christ through the way in which we live our lives. We become Jesus through serving, not being served; loving, when people are unlovable; forgiving the unforgivable.

Do people see Jesus in you? Are you striving to live a life that is less about “me” and more about your Creator? Are you listening to what the Spirit is trying to tell you in your everyday life?

I ask myself these questions. I wonder what people see when they look at me. I wonder if I am a reflection of God’s unfailing love.

Something to think about.

Last week was VBS, and I was the director.

Did I see God last week? You betcha. I saw Him in the faces of those kids as they sang songs. I saw Him in the actions of those who helped with the various activities. I saw Him in the faces of the two little girls who got baptized this morning. He was very much present in every part of it.

To be totally honest, for the last several months, I’ve felt like my head hasn’t been screwed on right. Not only because I have had a lot to do, but because I’ve maybe been over-thinking my life’s direction a bit. I’ve been feeling really inadequate and mediocre.

Sometimes I have feelings about things, and I can’t explain why they are there, or why I feel them. Lately, as in the past few months, I’ve just had this extreme feeling of frustration with myself. I’ve had no drive. I’ve been questioning myself on all fronts. My priorities, my attitude, and my dedication have all been put under the microscope in my own mind. And it seems like all I’m left with is the why, how, what, when and where, and unseen answers that I know exist somewhere, but I can’t seem to find.

So what did I learn this week at VBS, aside from the fact that I can fit 30 large pizzas in the back seat of my Volkswagen Beetle?

I learned that I need to learn to lean on the people around me, and that I can’t do everything on my own. I learned that if I give up control to God, and not worry about certain things, that He’ll make magnificent creations from broken pieces. I’ve learned that things I thought I’d taken care of and dealt with, are still there, being used to make me stumble, and that I’m going to have to fight hard to keep from being defeated by them. I’ve learned there is a good kind of tired. I’ve learned that I’m weaker, yet stronger, than I thought I was. God taught me this week that He will make a way. When volunteers are scarce, He’ll multiply their effectiveness, like He did on a hill one day, multiplying the bread and fishes to feed a multitude.

Now, I feel like I’m getting somewhere. And I’m more confident than I have been in a long while about the awesomeness of the place I’m going.