Going to the beach tomorrow!

Yay! I'm going to the beach tomorrow morning while Joy's at work. I have to work in the evening but it's gonna be SO much more glorious after some hours soaking up the sun. I'm gonna miss the sand and waves way too much when I'm in Minnesota.

Yesterday at the aquarium I closed Guest Services for the first time. Of course, it also happened to be the busiest, most packed, crazy day the aquarium has had ALL summer. I think we had something like 9,500 people that entire day, and almost a thousand people in the place at one point. Um.

I was doing alright beforehand, trying to prep myself. Cause I mean, this is kinda a big deal. Guest services is the center of the aquarium mecca, you have to know this and that, where to go and what to do whenever there's a problem... and then my boss walks up to me all solemn and is kind enough to remind me of my bad rap with cash drawers, even though since they put me back on drawers a couple weeks ago, I've either been perfect on my drawer or short/over just a few cents. But she's the one who put me on the schedule to close guest services by myself... just last week! For serious? That totally ruined whatever calm I'd created and I felt like everyone was waiting for me to make mistakes left and right. Because there's A LOT more to do at guest services than outside selling tickets. She let me know she had little faith in me to do well on my first day. After the past couple weeks of working on being perfect on my drawer, she had to pull me aside and let that loose. Not the best way to start work.

Anyway... I learned a lot, most of it the hard way, no breaks, eight hours straight of grumpy people, sassy guests, flustered kids. But I made it through and all is ok. I get to close it again on Saturday which usually aren't as busy, so this time I'll be more prepared. Still, it had to be the most overwhelming day of my life. I've never juggled so much responsibility, but oddly, it was refreshing at the end of the day. To know I'd accomplished something pretty big, for me at least, was a good feeling.

Have I mentioned it's been two months since I talked to God? I am ridiculously distant - that's an understatement. The good news is that there's no guilt anymore. I feel like a weight's been lifted, like some horrible, eternal responsibility has left me. It feels like - freedom? How ironic is that? When the central message of the Bible is freedom in Christ? I'm finding happiness and joy in the little things. I'm learning more in these few summer months than I learned in four years at a closeted, private university. Peace, understanding, being myself around people rather than putting up a front, like most of the past four, delicate years in college.

That's gotta be a step in the right direction.

And I've never been more ready to get into a volunteer position that works towards eradicating social injustice. I want to help the poor. I want to really experience the Gospel in a real, living way, instead of experiencing stale Christians and wayward religious tradition. All of this and I still want to find some way back to God. But... I can't. There's just too much to swallow and I physically can't do it right now.

Yikes. But I am learning about myself, and I'm sure God will reveal Himself in time.

On my days off, my diet consists of lots of twittering, locally grown peaches & Folgers breakfast blend. All were particularly delish today.

Can we choose who we forgive?

Jesus says to his followers to forgive. That's it. Forgive. There's no small print there, no secondary clauses that might have us pause... no adverb to support his command besides, perhaps, "freely".

So what makes us think we can choose who we forgive? My family is notorious for holding grudges. Except for maybe my dad, who lets everything roll off like water off a duck's back. But everyone else holds grudges like you wouldn't believe. "I just can't forgive her for doing that to me. I still feel betrayed." I've heard this a lot from my sis since moving in with her this summer. She is starting to loathe her job and especially her relationship with her coworkers. She's let some potentially hurtful situations rule her perspective and of course, she feels like the victim in every case. I've asked her why her coworkers seem to be "out to get her" as she puts it, and always her response is an "I dunno. I don't understand why!" And of course she is %100 certain that all her rude coworkers are hurtful to her on purpose. She's still holding grudges for happenings from months ago...

She won't forget the things that turned her against them and neither will she forgive them, unless they come to her and apologize or do something else utterly redemptive. The point is that they don't deserve forgiveness. They don't do anything that would merit your forgiveness. It's freely letting go of your right to judge them. It doesn't make sense, right? But the world would definitely be a better place with it.

I think free forgiveness - no catches, no glitches, no ultimatums - should be upheld even outside of Jesus' remarks. And I know I'm not the first person to remark on this issue of forgiveness but this is at least the dozenth rant I've heard from my sis about her job and this needed to get out somehow...

So there's a God. A creator...

...now what?

This question has been on my heart a thousand times this past month. I'm experiencing the driest spiritual period of my life, and part of me doesn't care, or doesn't know how to go about fixing it even if more than half of me did. I believe that the universe was created but... where to go from here? When I don't feel the Spirit or experience Him in my life anymore, when I don't have Christian community, when I'm not inspired by the Word, it's like I'm starting all over from scratch. What is my faith without all of the above? All I seem to have left is my logic, and so that's how I approached my problem, going back to the beginning, trying to figure out if the universe, this world, my family, could have been created by Something. I can't ignore the facts that support a Creator's existence, but that's all I can say now. While this could be considered a giant leap closer to Jesus and Christianity, I don't quite feel that way. It's not that easy for me to just jump into this religion again.

The world is so anti-Christianity that it's hard to not take their side, you know? First there's the media. I never see anything on television, or on the radio, or in the movies, that portray Jesus in a supportive light. Except of course, K-Love, or TBN, or that Kirk Cameron movie that came out this spring... But that doesn't count, since those programs and movies are ENTIRELY shaped for a Christian audience, I don't care what they say about their ministry objectives. No athiest or struggling believer is going to sit there and willingly submit to "Praise the Lord" on TBN and join in their worship. Any semi-famous person that quotes Scripture is ridiculed by everyone. When I think of how many people see Christians as ridiculous fairies - surely the majority of the world feels this way - how can I not be discouraged from it? If millions upon millions hate Christians or think of this religion as storybook stupidity, how does that support my chances of feeling exactly the opposite? Not to mention how terrible people have been at the aquarium I'm working at. I see thousands of guests a day to sell tickets to them, hear about their complaints and try to make them happy, and you know the worst of them are the ones with gold crosses hanging around their necks. They're the people wearing "Jesus is my homeboy" t-shirts, or the groups from nearby Christian academies. Every completely rude person that I see wearing a cross places one more tick on the side against Christianity. I think - if I see all these people claim to be Christian and yet are complete jerks to me, how is Christianity supposed to work for me? It obviously isn't working out for them, for as C.S. Lewis says, "Growth for Christians means getting nicer" in his book Mere Christianity, more or less. Of course to Lewis there is more than that for growth but generally he says that people walking with the Lord should become nicer people over time. Outside of the time alotted every Sunday church service for greeting the people around you, the Christians I've known this summer are jerks, insensitive, uncaring & selfish people. Now aren't I the same? How do those people see me?

All this brings me to the attractiveness of just Jesus. Not Christianity, not Christians, not the religion or traditions or ceremonies. Just Jesus. He's the only thing fleetingly getting through my uncaring staleness. But is it possible follow Jesus Christ and not be associated with Christianity or crappy organized religion or all the other things out there horribly representing Him?

I'm going to kill Joy's dog before the summer's over.

That is all.

Oh & happy Indedpendence Day! I'll be working all day. These late days at the aquarium this week are wearing me out. Hoping they play the "Star Spangled Banner" on repeat all day instead of the usual "Canon in D". So tired of listening to it play all day...

I'm so sick of hypocritical Christians! For serious!

That's part of my paranoia with getting back into Jesus. There's so much potential for me to end up being a hypocrite about it all. I'm ridiculously sick sick sick of logging onto Facebook, and seeing old friends who had no moral compass when I knew them, starting up groups raising support for their African missions trip. There are so many people who are cloaking themselves in the Christian banner but aren't letting Jesus be more than just that, a cover. So it's really weird for me to log onto Facebook and see people who I never would have thought followed Christ from knowing them suddenly proclaiming their heart for Africa or their desire to be youth ministers. It's astounding to me how persistent people are about making sure everyone else knows about their beliefs on the social front. But behind closed doors, their character says otherwise in a major way.

I'm afraid to call myself Christian and be public about it because I know that I am no different. I'm such a hypocrite it isn't even funny. I've got to be the most judgemental person on the planet, yet doesn't the Bible plainly say God is the only Judge? So really all this talk against others should be spat out at me.

Fresh basil. My friend from work gave me a bag of fresh basil last night and even though I'm sure I won't use it for anything, I probably spend the next few nights just smelling it. Smelling basil leaves always makes me want to get on my hands and knees in the dirt and create a huge, flourishing garden.

And then there's probably the best smell in the world - fresh, ground coffee. There's nothing like it! One of the best parts of my morning is opening up the Maxwell House container and just inhaling. This is probably why I could never work in a coffee shop; I'd be too distracted.

Then there's nutmeg. Cloves. Probably the most Christmas-y scent out there.

I adore the smell of new shoes. It's hard to resist popping into Shoe Carnival or Payless when I'm walking by. What else? I definitely don't like the smell of cut grass. It always reminds me of the HPU maitenance crew mowing the hill outside my dorm in ungodly hours of the morning for the past few years. It triggers unpleasant memories...

If I still have a sense of smell in the afterlife, I hope that it's super-enhanced, so that I can smell all of my favorite things at the same time with stronger intensity. This morning, after smelling all of these and triggering happy memories, that is my ideal view of heaven.

Makin' friends, plans...

I got an email from a couple friends of mine the other day. They're actually a couple and they both led my Saturday morning small group this last semester. It was sweet and kind and heartfelt, and I gushed over being loved and appreciated. An affirmation of our friendship. I felt warm and pleasant and all I'd been looking for for the past few months...

Today I finalized plans to visit my far away friend, Amy. She's a wonderful friend and we've been close ever since we shared a room and a housekeeping job together in Daytona Beach a couple years back. She's one of those fabulous relationships that is mostly over the phone, so there's not a lot being held back with her. Well, almost nothing. I spoke with her tonight for the first time since getting my cell phone stolen and I didn't tell her about how I've been getting - no, bolting - further away from God by the minute, and getting more complacent about the whole thing. A particular soft part of me feels as if I should be open about this to my friends. But embarassment and reserve keep me from saying anything to anyone. How long can I keep this under wraps? How long until this distance becomes ridiculously obvious and starts impacting every facet of my life? Probably not long. I won't be able to get through a whole weekend with Amy without her thinking something is weird or amiss. Like the fact that I won't be praying, or avoiding the subject of God in general. We met on a missions trip so God will no doubt be on subject. And then I'm getting coffee with a Crusade staff member the following week that was on that project too.

It's as if God were trying to get to me... if only I could throw off this complacency.