Deliverance Bible Church

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUlWs7gHzfw
This is the link to *THE* video that convinced me I was meant to be a youth minister. I knew that I had a calling from God, but I felt really concerned when I couldn't find a local-ish seminary that was okay with my tattoos and piercings. I posted on http://www.christianforums.com in the youth ministry section asking people what they thought of the whole youth ministry to the alternative community. Some comments were negative, others were...even more negative. But there were a few lights in the fog that told me that they liked the idea and then there was one...the one who kept me positive about things...

I don't know what his username on there is now because I know he changed it, but it was Jester back then. He was a disabled youth minister and he posted a link to the above video. My life was changed.

Watch it. Take it in. Pass it on.

New Years Resolutions

New Years is always an interesting time.

People reflect on the past year and make resolutions to improve in the new one. I'm happy to say I have always kept my resolutions, but part of that is that I always make ones that I'm extremely confident that I can keep. I also make ones that are specific, because it's easier to keep track of ones like that compared to ones that are broad and somewhat open-ended. I have to say that most people I know don't keep their resolutions. Everyone goes into the year with good intentions, but there's always a reason that they don't pan out. Part of that is that you have be realistic and learn to forgive yourself. I feel like being realistic with yourself and your resolutions is key to keeping them.

Be realistic.
Are you actually going to the gym enough times every week/month of the year to justify that gym membership you're going to paying for?
Are you actually going to give up 100% of sweets? You're not going to sneak a peanut butter cup even ONCE?
Are you actually going to read the Bible every single day? EVERY.SINGLE.DAY?

Probably not.
But that doesn't mean that the moment you mess up that you should give up your resolution completely. That's right, I'm calling people out here. Most people I know who give up on resolutions do so because they messed up one time...
"I missed going to the gym the past two days, I should just stay home today too."
"Well, I ate a piece of candy...might as well go buy a whole bag and pig out."
"I haven't read my Bible in like two weeks...screw it."

If you want to keep resolutions, you can't beat yourself when you mess up. The point of a resolution isn't to obtain perfection. The point of a resolution is to make a conscious effort to better yourself about something you feel you need to work on. Here's something you have to just accept: At some point you are probably going to do something you made a resolution you wouldn't do.

Remember how I said I always keep my resolutions? That doesn't mean that every second of every day I lived up to them. It means that at the end of the year I felt that I accomplished my goal of doing better with "x" and that I felt I created good habits that I can keep in the long term. "Keeping" a resolution is a personal thing. Maybe you didn't go to the gym like you wanted...but you lost 15 pounds and gained some muscle definition. Sure you didn't "keep" your resolution to about going to the gym, but you achieved your goal for going to the gym. You kept your resolution. If you made a goal to go to the gym and eat better you were more than likely trying to lose weight or gain muscle/muscle definition. Maybe that's not what you wrote down, but it was your real objective.

I don't know, I guess my point is to not be too hard on yourself this upcoming year.

That's my personal resolution, not to be too hard on myself. Sometimes I won't keep up with my devotionals the way I want to. Sometimes I'm not going to eat the healthiest or exercise. Sometimes I'm not going to have the clearest complexion. Sometimes I'm going to make an absolute fool of myself in public. And sometimes I'm going to want to be so self-critical that in the past I would have ended the day in tears.

But that was in the past.
This year, I resolve to not be so hard on myself!
What's your resolution?

Comment to this...

Just earlier I mentioned that I have had more and more people checking out my blog, and I'm happy (and taken back) to say that since that post this blog has exceeded 200 hits! You guys are amazing.

To mark this milestone, I want to pose a question to anyone who reads this...
What is it that draws you in to read this?

I'm wanting some honest input and feedback on this. Even if you're reading because of a potentially negative reason, I want to hear about it. I have changed it so that people seeing this may comment anonymously...so feel free to say whatever is on your mind. Also, if you would like me to continue to leave anonymous commenting on so that you can leave comments on future posts, let me know that :). I'm completely comfortable with that as long as no one abuses that and is downright mean on here.

Thanks everyone!!


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EDIT:
Thank you for the messages I got on Facebook. No one commented here, but I got a couple of public comments and a couple of PMs on FB :)

Details Details Details

I want to take a moment out at the beginning of this post to say Thank You to those of you who are reading this. I have no idea who most of you are, but I know that I went from hitting one hundred views after having this almost a month to having almost another one hundred in just the past week or so. Viewing is growing exponentially and that's thanks to YOU. I'm sure some of you are friends, and I love you all so much!!!

Now onto the promised details of my wedding :).

PJ and I have discussed it and we will be having a ceremony on September 13th of this upcoming year. The assistant pastor at my church, who I lovingly refer to as Miss Tracey, has already told us that she can head over that ceremony. I'm really hoping that our church that is being built will be up and running before then (it's supposed to be up around August) so that we can have our ceremony at the church. We don't know many details yet, but at least we already have a date set so we know how long we have to plan. I don't think either of us want anything super extravagant, just something small and geeky will do great for us haha. That's right, geeky! We really want to be able to put that element of ourselves into the wedding. We have a few ideas up our sleeves, but nothing on that is final since we're obviously in the very early stages of planning. We may still end up having the wedding in Jacksonville, but we really do adore Boone and this is where our home church is...so we'll see how this all ends up panning out lol. Look forward in the upcoming months for us setting up a wedding website on http://www.ewedding.com to keep everyone up to date with our plans. September seems so close, but at the same time seems so far in the distance. I'm so excited!!! I love him so much, and I'm happy we're taking this step in our relationship to have a ceremony our friends and family can share with us to celebrate that love. It's going to be epic haha.

In other news in my life, I wanted to bring up that I found my dad! For anyone who is unfamiliar with the situation...

My dad and I have been kind of off and on over the course of my life. I've lived with him a couple of times, but we always end up somehow losing contact. One time it was because I chose to not speak to him, for personal reasons I'd rather not discuss here, and then this most recent time was because he moved and I lost the only phone number I had for him. By "lost" I mean that I broke my cell phone and the number was in it. I missed him, my brother, and my step-mother dearly (technically my ex-step-mom, but I love her just the same as if they had never divorced) and I had searched for my brother on facebook multiple times. Well, somehow in that I managed to miss seeing his profile. He's had it since August, but I never saw it! I swear I looked up his name at least once every other week and just didn't find the profile. The good news is though, that I found him! In fact, I found him on Christmas Day (the day before his 18th birthday)...What an amazing Christmas I had!!! Now we're texting every day and staying in close contact. I can't wait to see him again and also to meet his lovely girlfriend. I haven't heard all that much about her, but he has been with her almost two years and they're very in love from what I can tell. I'm so happy for him :).

Whew, so I'm going to go and watch PJ play some video games and just relax. I hope you all have a great day!!!

Getting Married/Getting Back on Track/Silence

First things first:
Guess who's getting MARRIED?! *jumps up and down* ME ME ME! PJ proposed to me on Christmas!! More to come on that subject, but I have something on my heart I want to share...

Things have been kind of here and there for the past few weeks. I haven't been doing my devotionals, and because of either snow or being out of town I also haven't been at church. The first thing that made me realize I need to get my behind back on track was a couple of weeks or so ago when PJ and I were eating lunch. I don't know what sparked it, but out of nowhere he looked at me and asked, "Have you been doing your devotionals?" I did a kind of timid looking face and admitted that no, I hadn't. "Well...you need to get on that." Since he doesn't do devotionals I wasn't sure why it seemed like such a big deal until I asked why. "Doing them made you happy, and I want you to be happy." He was right, as he almost always is. So that's what I'm starting with as soon as we can get back to the house (we were having electrical issues so we stayed at a friend's house tonight). Back to devotionals and *thank God* back to church. I've missed church, I haven't been skipping it because of wanting to. I've been skipping it because I've not been anywhere I could go. For two Sundays we were snowed into our house, and then we were with his family in Jacksonville and I was just so engrossed in being with family that I didn't go. Plus I found out some unsettling things about the church we attended the last time we were there...but that's not something I need to go into right now.

Anyways so tomorrow it's back to devotionals. I've also been praying about the silence I'm feeling I need in my life. So far my plan is that January 3rd through January 8th I will be taking my silent time. That is from a Monday until a Saturday. Here will be the exceptions to the silence:

1 - I can speak while out job hunting, because I really need to find work.

2 - I can speak with my fiancée for one hour during the morning, and one hour at night, this has a condition of if something is extremely important that needs to be discussed.

3 - I will not be using the internet *or* answering the phone/text messages. The exception is if the number that is calling is one I don't recognize and therefore may be something related to getting a job. I haven't decided yet, but I may allow myself to check voicemails once at night...I'm still praying over that one.

4 - I may or may not also be choosing to not watch any TV/movies, and instead opt to read. I'm leaning towards doing this (no TV), another one I'm praying about.

I think that's about it. I'm still praying about it and will be up until the time it begins. I can't believe I'm doing this, and I've had two people say so far that basically they don't think I'm going to be able to do it. But that's half of the point, doing something that's hard and working my way through it. The other half is learning to enjoy the silence (not always feel a need to fill it), learning to enjoy time without technology, and having time with God.

Whew.

So next post, hopefully tomorrow...if I'm around a computer, will be some more details about my very recent engagement (^_^).

Later folks!!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Looking at yourself is the hard part.

Looking at yourself in the eyes of someone else can be a hard task. Today I learned that it may be easier to just ask those people their honest opinion of you, and if you believe that they can...for them to hold you accountable. Earlier today I was talking to PJ's mom and long story short, something about it being hypocritical to go to church and then curse outside of there got brought up by her. I admit that I sometimes have a sailor mouth, but I've always tried to only talk that way in front of what I considered "appropriate adult company." When she said this I, at first, felt hurt. I felt that I was being called a hypocrite and I got extremely upset. However, it was the moments I had by myself after the conversation that got me the most upset. I was laying in the bed, almost in tears, and then it hit me...I'm being hypocritical. There, I said it and it gets easier to say each time. I think that everyone has their faults, everyone has their sin that they choose to justify in some way or another. Sadly, that's human nature. That doesn't mean that we should just let it go though, we should always be striving to be the best people that we can be. I'm not saying that everyone who curses is a bad person. I'm not saying everyone who does this thing or that one is a bad person, because I believe that deep down everyone is GOOD. However, I don't want to be a hypocrite. Here I am, trying to live the best life that I can and trying to work on being more Christ-like (since that's the definition of being a Christian), I'm trying to become a youth minister. Yet I couldn't even see my own fault, it took someone else bringing it up.

I want to live a life that makes others see the renewel of myself and my spirit that I've found through following God. Today I realized that there is yet another thing that I could be doing better with in my life, and that means that it's yet another thing I'm going to strive to change. I can do all things through Christ, right? This is just another one of those things. I especially feel bad about this one though since I'm (still) reading the book UnChristian which goes over this very same situation...being a hypocrite. I need to finish this book already (>_<)

I'd also like to bring up something that has been on my heart the past two or three days. Something I read in UnChristian is that one of the first things that should be transformed in a life following Christ is our thoughts. Thoughts encourage actions, so bad thoughts encourage bad actions. I had never really...well...thought about that until I read it. My thought process is very different than it was before I recommitted my life to God, but I know some things that I could change with that. I think that part of what makes it hard is that most people, myself included, don't spend enough time with just their thoughts on a daily basis. Not just not talking, but just...having quiet. No computers, no cell phones, no...anything.

With this I am feeling more and more compelled to take a temporary vow of silence so that I can spend that time with my thoughts. It may sound extreme, and it's definitely nothing I can honestly say I want to do, but it's something that I think I may need to do. When I say temporary I mean for maybe 3 days or so. I'm thinking it may be better to go for a week, but I'm going to pray about it and see what God speaks to my heart. I need to work on getting another job while my other one reopens (we're changing locations) so I can't do anything too long term because I can't let it effect my job search. Right now I'm really being led to three days. Three days with no talking, no computer, no cell phones. I may have an hour or so everyday that I let myself have "off" so that I can spend time talking with PJ about anything and everything...like how much I love him...but that's about it :).

We'll see I guess...
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!
You all have a blessed day tomorrow :)