Ice Storm 2010 - Update

1. Taking down the Christmas tree (I KNOW RIGHT?!?!?!?!) - DONE
2. Watching 8 hours worth of classes and 2 hours worth of presentations on OT 2 and the Poetry books of the OT. - SIGH
3. Reading Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and their corresponding chapters in said OT textbooks (somewhere close to 300 pages NOT counting the Bible itself) - I've made a GOOD clip at this and expect to be done tonight!
4. Writing a discussion board post on something... I think I should look that assignment up.  - OH - I need to look this up!
5. Pacing out my schedule to not get behind again. - NOPE
6. Figuring out my meals for next week so I don't try to fly by the seat of my pants (again to hopefully not get so behind. - NOPE
7. Praying a lot that I can keep my sanity while I figure out how to fit everything in. - YEP
8. Missing Al - cause Ice Storm 2010 keeps us both safely tucked into our apartments - YEP
9. Watching the snow fall... so my eyeballs don't explode from the stress - YEP
10. I don't think I have a 10... Wait yes... laundry and dishes. - YEP

Also - 7B - Nap... Success

And 11.. Which wasn't on there but should have been... Spend  an hour cleaning the snow off the car - CHECK!

Oh and 12 - injure myself mysteriously by slicing open my hand - check

Back to work!

Ice Storm 2010

Well the bad weather is here. I had already taken tomorrow off to try and play catch up.
I've made some changes in my life in the last two weeks that have been good but time consuming and I have not been able to get my school schedule to cooperate.
So tomorrow through Sunday, while I'm all iced in and hopefully with power, I will be:
1. Taking down the Christmas tree (I KNOW RIGHT?!?!?!?!)
2. Watching 8 hours worth of classes and 2 hours worth of presentations on OT 2 and the Poetry books of the OT.
3. Reading Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and their corresponding chapters in said OT textbooks (somewhere close to 300 pages NOT counting the Bible itself)
4. Writing a discussion board post on something... I think I should look that assignment up.
5. Pacing out my schedule to not get behind again.
6. Figuring out my meals for next week so I don't try to fly by the seat of my pants (again to hopefully not get so behind.
7. Praying a lot that I can keep my sanity while I figure out how to fit everything in.
8. Missing Al - cause Ice Storm 2010 keeps us both safely tucked into our apartments
9. Watching the snow fall... so my eyeballs don't explode from the stress
10. I don't think I have a 10... Wait yes... laundry and dishes.

Man - I think I need some naps in there too.  We'll call that 7B.  :O)


I am determined to make the new healthy lifestyle work... but I need to find some balance as #'s 1-5 will attest. Here's hoping that this weekend will afford that and not include a scrubbing of my plans for disaster relief at the church!

Nighty-Night!

Gina

It's Not Over... Till It's Over

So yes it is a week later and I am just now getting around to blogging. That is a combination of - 3 migraines, school starting, life drama, and general lazyness.  :O)  I keep trying to do better and maybe I will!

I was thinking about what it takes to keep going at something. I'm making some pretty major life-style changes (aimed at getting me feeling better) that are good things but challenging.

Change - I'm kinda not a fan. I think I've mentioned that before.

But fresh starts - that I do like.

So I am going to look at 2010 and the months it affords me as fresh starts - EVERY DAY.
Alarm clock goes off - New day - fresh start - WOOHOO!  :O)
No re-do's on this life. There are no chances to live yesterday and fix what happened.
But today is a fresh start and I for one am going to take each one for every thing that it is worth.
Life is far too short to do anything else.
Live it people!
-G

Why Yes - I am Procrastinating - Thanks for asking

I won't stay long.
Just thought I would pop by and let you know what I started today.
1. Old Testament II - OT the sequal. I love the OT so I am ready to get into it.
2. Introduction to the Poetical books - of the OLD TESTAMENT... silly girl - what was I thinking... never, ever take two OT classes together... I never do that. I think I was punch drunk when I registered and got my B term and D term mixed up!

Oh well - it's too late now - and I'll be very poetical before it's over with I am sure.

3. Going slowly crazy... no seriously... I've decided it's my only option at this point.

In reality though I am going to try to be a bit more bloggy. I used to write a daily devotional which I wrote 5/7 days so it shouldn't be too hard to get into at least an every couple of days mode.  Let's see how I do - especially when my papers are due 8 weeks from now.

Ok - I'm of to read me some Isaiah.  WOO!

Gina

Hephzibah

I'm pretty sure that somewhere along the line I missed a memo.
It was the one that outlined some of the finer "how-to" points of womanhood... I don't know when it was handed out - maybe I was supposed to get it when we watched those "boys in that room, girls in the other" movies in grade school.
But I'm sure I missed a memo.
My friend Jill wrote a great post the other day that shocked me. See somehow I had decided that I just hadn't gotten my "I'm a grownup" badge because I wasn't married and mommy. I figured that still living solo in my solo apartment was what was keeping me feeling like a perpetual college student.
OH CRUD... maybe it's the fact that I AM a perpetual college student that has me feeling that way??!!??
Regardless when I read her post yesterday I realized again that no one feels as together as they look. When I used to teach one of my favorite reminders to people was that we compare other people's shiny outside persona to our deep intimate knowledge of ourselves.
Let's face it - no one, knowing their deep dark secretey (sorry spellcheck I don't care if it ain't a word...) places, can ever match up to someone else's shiny outside show.
Maybe that is why I so often fight to be who I am inside and out. Mind you I'm not going to spill every fault I've got. But I always want to be the kind of person that SHOUTS God's grace because, let's face it, this gal as been given a whole lotta grace.
You know who shouts grace to me when I think about them?

David - man after God's own heart... but also a calculated murderer, liar, cheater, schemer and adulterer.

Moses - led God's people from captivity... murderer - chicken - who even after seeing God in a burning bush still wasn't convinced that God could use him. "Hey God... how about Aaron.. he likes talking to people... I'll still go... but wouldn't you rather have him do your talking?"

Saul/Paul - leader of the early church - writer of much of the encouragement in the New Testament... multiple murder - torturer of Christians

Rahab - used to bring the Israelites into the promised land and in the genealogy of Jesus... prostitute

You seeing my pattern? God never used the person who was "most likely to succeed." God was and is all about taking messed up, frail humans who are no-one and using them to shine His glory and grace.

It gives me hope that I cannot express. Why?
Because the grace that Moses, David, Paul, Rahab and countless others received is just as fresh today.
Though we may feel completely unworthy, when our useless and frail lives are placed in His hands they can shout His glory.

There is nothing that you have done that can knock you out of that running. He loves you.

I'm thinking tonight that it doesn't matter how I feel. Yesterday's mistakes are past.
Tomorrow is a day waiting for me to wake up and be renewed by His life and grace.
It's more than I can take in honestly... because I am a woman who is sorely in need of some grace and renewal.
So tomorrow I am going to press on to the prize that is set before me. I'm going to keep running the race until it is finished. I am going to work on being Hephzibah (God's delight is in her) instead of Mara (bitter).
Regardless of anything else that I do, or do not accomplish in this life I desperately want to make sure that the end  it can be said:

Gina - Hephzibah - though her faults and failures were beyond listing, His grace was sufficient

2010... Broken

Some things for the record...
I intend to write here a whole lot more often than I actually do.
Believe it or not - what you do here is the censored version of my thoughts. My mom implies often that I overshare a bit... but I figure I am what I am (gug, gug, gug, gug - ala Popeye) and there isn't any use hiding it.

I have some thoughts rolling through my brain tonight due to my, for lack of a better term for it, broken feeling lately. Now for those of you who are my PARENTS reading this... I don't want anyone hitting a panic button that somehow things are desperately not ok. No one can rush in and fix me but the One who always desires and works to fix me.


Broken.
I just feel broken.
I posted on twitter the other day that I was feeling that way and I was desperate, running... broken.
I just keep coming back to that.
Broken.
In my mind I think the broken comes out in a lot of ways. I'm broken over a lot of things in my life (sorry you 4... but details are for the journal, not the blog) but I will say habits... words... just me being a faulty human and coming face to face with it.
But in another sense -
Broken
Because life isn't where it was supposed to be here in 2010. If you would have asked me in my early twenties I was certain where I was headed. By now I should have graduated, be counseling for a living, be married, have kids, have written a book or two... it's a much longer list of the "shoulda beens."

I had this picture in my mind tonight of a huge pane of glass in front of me. I imagined I had taken a picture of that life I knew I would have and painted it on that glass. I could see myself on that beautiful glass wall painting with her MA in Counseling and MDiv. She has the perfect figure and beautiful house behind her with the perfect family... perfect life.
Then somehow that picture got smashed into hundreds of tiny bits laying all around me.
Broken
The life I knew I wanted... knew God promised... shattered.

Oh but wait - something else is happening here.
One by one the pieces of the broken life are being picked up and put into another frame. It's one that started a long time ago. It's got lots of broken pieces as markers. But the picture being put together is so much more that what I could have imagined. Each broken piece fits back together into a beautiful stained glass window, a picture that only a Master Artisan could have imagined.
Though it wasn't what I thought I wanted, the broken pieces will form the abundant life, the one I knew He promised all along.
So I am ok... with being.
Broken.