I want to watch this movie. I’ve never heard of it before. Beyonce is the bomb.
I don’t think I will sleep early tonight. I had coffee at 5:45 p.m. (on an empty stomach… not good) and being sensitive to caffeine, I’m shaking uncontrollably! Still am. I can feel it in my fingers.
I think “At Last” is my favorite love song (the above is not that song, quite the opposite…but I like that song too). I feel so relieved for Etta James when she sings the first two words. At last! Her lonely days are over! I hope one day I can sing the same. And then I can sing it like her. Attttt laaaaaaAAAASSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.
Our small group has been planning Bingo Night for a while, since October. The idea came about when one of our small group members brought up a Thanksgiving tradition of a bingo night with her family, so we thought it was a great idea to host a night to support the Jubilee Women’s Center here in Capitol Hill.
During our planning period, we were afraid nobody would show up. It honestly felt it would turn out that way.
We had thirty people play bingo, tonight. We ended the night raising about $750 worth of donations. That’s a lot of bingo.
I love it when the Spirit shows me Who’s in charge. I can’t believe it turned out this way. Once again, God exposed my heart and showed me how litte faith I had.
I’m so thankful, I’m at peace, and my heart is full. What more can I ask for? Thank you, Jesus.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the past months after I’ve moved to Seattle. It’s been a roller coster full of emotions, back pain, heartache, and cheese. Like, lots of cheese. At one point I wanted to quit work, buy a one-way ticket back to Michigan, pretend like I could live the rest of my life cooped up in my bed, wishing that that kind of life is actually sustainable and doable. But it’s not.
I’ve decided to stay in Seattle. Who knows? I might end up here forever, or something else may call somewhere else…but I’m just going to let go and let it happen when it happens. Lots of opportunities here in Seattle, especially creative ones, so I think I want to be here for now. If school is a possibility in the future, there’s a potential school I could attend ten minutes away. I think I can make this work. And I’ve never been so active until I moved here.
Sometimes I can’t believe I’m in Seattle. I can’t believe I moved here with just two suitcases, settling into an apartment I found on Craigslist without actually seeing it, found a church I actually really love, maintaining friendships back at home while slowly fostering new ones here, committing to work every day (some days bad than good), budgeting my own finances, living alone, taking care of myself. I can’t believe I’m doing all this stuff. One thing I’m not proud of and am in the process of repenting is being disobedient to God. I’ve whined, complained, yelled at Him many times. I’ve intentionally ignored Him, protesting, rejecting His encouragements. I demanded control and change that only I wanted. I only prayed “God, if you do this, then I’ll do that” and believed I deserved it. I’ve even tried taking God out of the picture to see if that would help. But it just made everything worse. Life meant nothing to me anymore. Finally, I think all this selfishness and greed has finally digested and I’m ready to grow up.
I need to grow up. Life is precious. I want to live purposefully now, even when I don’t get what I want. I’m tired of desperately clinging on to what God might potentially wants me to let go of. Let it happen, Your way and only Your way!
Perhaps we would be better off to focus our energies on working out the muscle of the mind, before our thighs, abs and arms. Body image certainly has physical implications, but it is a mental concept first. When we correct our injured understanding of our bodies, this healed perspective will overflow into our embodied lives.
Learning to live at peace with your body is a process, as it must be in a culture ever at war with the gods and monsters we create out of skin. But we can progress in this process—by being intentional about what we allow to shape our perception of beauty and body image, identifying our weak points, and putting healthy boundaries into place. And through all of this, we can find hope in the shape of a different body—in the Incarnation, which teaches us to identify with the brokenness of Jesus’ body, in the way that our own bodies feel broken, damaged, and defeated. And we can take heart in knowing as we identify with His death, we might also experience His resurrection, “so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body” (2 Cor. 4:11).
