This is the life!

Ahhh, I'm at a friend's grad party, just chillin on his hammock. I positively love hammocks. They are so comfy. Also, some of my friends are jamming some jazz music next to me. :) I am living the life! I love summer and this is what summer is all about. Hanging with friends, playing grad party volleyball (even though I don't play, I watch), and listening to a band. Music is my life, so if you play music, I'll be there. I'm just typing this because I wanted to document this awesome moment in my life. I'm going off to college in the fall, and my life will be changing drastically. Things will never be the same as they are right now. I have to enjoy the moment. Lately, I've been enjoying the idea of YOLO. I will only live once, so I have to enjoy the moment and take each day as it comes. I know it's good to have a plan, but it's also good to just take life one day at a time. So here's my lesson for today: Live life and enjoy where you are right now because nothing will ever be the same again. The people, the place, the environment, will all change, so take it all in while you can!

Prom

I went to prom last night, and it was so much fun! There's something about getting all dressed up and dancing and taking pictures that makes prom so much fun! I'm feeling the after effects of prom today because I have no voice from singing while dancing and my calfs hurt from wearing 5 inch stiletto heels. I think prom can be a metaphor for some situations in life. Relationships are a lot like this because they are fun while you're in them, but they have some sort of consequences after they are done.  Either you have good consequences, like marriage, or you have bad consequences, like breaking up. Most relationships have good and bad consequences because you have good memories, but it still hurts. Prom has all the memories, but you're usually tired afterwards and sore. No matter what it is, prom or relationships, every decision we make and every thing we decide to do has positive or negative consequences, so we have to choose which things to take the risk with.

Leaving

When I was in my freshmen and sophomore years of my high school career, all I wanted was to leave and go far away for college. I wanted to be completely independent and be on my own in a state for away. I started looking at college across the country, wanting to get away from the town I've grown up in. Once I got to my junior and senior years, I started realizing how much I didn't want to leave. I started to realize that the people around me were way to important to leave. I loved them all and leaving seemed crazy. Nowadays, since I'm so close to graduation, it changes with the day. Some days I can't wait to leave, and other days I don't want to leave. Today was one of those days when all I wanted to do was leave. When people get annoying and everything around you becomes bland, all you want is a fresh start. I realized that maybe it's not a fresh start I need, it's a new, fresh perspective. I'm leaving soon, so I need to enjoy the time I have here and cherish the people and places I get to be in because they'll be gone really soon. People will complain and places will get bland no matter where I go.

Temporary Love?

Most people have a skewed view of love. They think you can fall in and out of love. I understand that if you think that love is temporary, but I believe that love is forever. You may not be in love the same way, but you'll always be in love. There is a song that's lyrics says, "Love is a house you choose to enter, and never leave." If you really love someone, you're love will never end. You may part ways, and you may never see each other again, but if someone were to ask you, you'd say that you still loved that person. Love is something that is forever and deep. If you read 1 Corinthians 13, love is more than just the physical attachment to someone. Love has many requirements, and is more complex than just liking someone. If you genuinely care for someone, then you aren't ashamed of them at any time. They may mess up and you may be disappointed of their actions, but you'd never be ashamed to love them. Love is patient through any time or circumstance. You can love someone and not be in love with them. If you're in love with them, it's deeper and more romantic. You may fall out of love with them, but you'll never stop loving them. It's complicated, but love is a choice. If you decide to love someone, it never ends.

Hard work...

Hard work is sort of becoming a myth. People don't understand what it truly means. Hard work means you put others above yourself and forget your troubles and help others in whatever way possible. The most common excuse for not working hard is "I'm tired." Everyone uses that excuse. The world thinks that that excuse will cover for them. I believe that it doesn't. Being tired is partially sub conscience, especially nowadays. If you constantly think, "I'm tired", your brain will believe you and make you tired. If you think more positively, you're brain will think you aren't tired and overcome what tiredness you do have. Our society thinks that hard work means you get something out of it. If someone thinks of something better to do, volunteering or helping falls on their priority list. People who are truly humble work for others and get no response or payment back. You'll never know how beneficial helping others can be to you until you help others. I worked this past weekend for my school's senior citizen event and it felt so rewarding, not because I got lots of thanks and reward out of it, but because I saw the smiles and heard the laughter of people having fun, and that was payment enough. I knew that God was happy with what I was doing. I'm not trying to be prideful, I'm just trying to say that I got more fulfillment out of helping for no payment rather than getting a reward. Life is all about what really matters, and money or fame don't matter. People glorifying God and enjoying life is what matters, so no matter what you do, strive to do it for the right reasons.

Pollution

I went to the movies this weekend and, as it is with all movies, there were previews. I like to watch the previews because they're interesting and show the new movies coming out soon. I was watching the previews, and one of them started that shocked me. All the preview was was a bunch of killing, drugs, drinking, and girls. The preview was for a video game centered around these things. The preview had no plot or intriguing scene, just a bunch of gunfire, scantily dressed girls, and people either drinking or doing drugs. Seeing this opened my eyes to how desensitized our world has become. Not that long ago, those things were seen as crazy and not something you would buy in the form of a video game to play. Killing has become so normal. The world has so many killing video games nowadays that we've become desensitized to the sacredness of life. Drugs and alcohol have become so normal that we don't even think of them as extremely bad anymore. Provocative ideas have become so normal that porn is now everywhere, not just on dirty sites online. Our world pushes these things on us instead of trying to protect us from them. The preview I saw made all these things seem glamourous. I wish the video game makers would talk to a soldier who has killed people and see how much pain that soldier has to deal with over taking someone's life. I wish the video game makers would talk to someone who's entire life has been ruined by drugs. I wish the video game makers would talk to a high school girl who got pregnant and now has to work to pay for food for her and her child instead of going to college. Video game makers know that they can make money off selling these games, and it's not all their fault. Society as a whole demands such games to be entertained. Entertainment, and life in general, are dependent on what society needs, and in this day and age, all our society wants is to have a good time. If the world stepped back and saw the pollution that is infiltrating the minds of people today, people would realize how dreadfully downhill our world has gone and see why so many people, especially teens and children, are turning out the way they are.

Ugh Drama

I must admit, I haven't had a lot of stress in my life when it comes to drama. I avoid drama as much as I can because I realize what a waste of time it is. Most people don't bring their drama to me, and I don't create any, so I've had a pretty drama filled life, but just this past week, two drama situations that involve me, have come to my attention. I have to act on them and confront the people involved, but I'm terrible about confrontation. I'm a middle child, so I hate having issues and having to tell people that they are wrong. I always give people the benefit of the doubt, and I don't care what people think of me. The problem is, both situations I'm dealing with now involve me and someone else, so I can't just wave them off like I normally do. Another issue is that people in both situations want everything to be a secret, so I have two secrets that I have to keep and they're both drama related and ugh! They were both brought to me on the same night, so I'm wondering if God is testing me, getting me ready for possible drama in college. Sometimes in life, you can't avoid problems. Facing problems is something that middle children like me don't like to do. We like peace and we want everyone to get along. This isn't how real life is, so I guess the sooner I learn how to face problems and confront people the better. Why can't the world just get along? Posh on sin!

Lessons from fourth graders

It's funny how people in the world try to get credit for stuff that they don't deserve. I'm a teacher's aid for a class, and today we have 4th grade recorders. They are young, but they are already trying to get credit when they didn't practice. They have an entire week to practice one short song, but when they get to class, they either think of excuses or try to get full credit when they aren't fully ready. In life in general, people do this all the time. Excuses don't do anything. They give a reason, but they shouldn't get you out of what you deserve. If you didn't do what you're supposed to do, then you should get the punishment you're supposed to get or not get the reward you could have gotten. Life is all about working for what you get. If you try to get off by only doing part of the work, you're not going to get anywhere. Hard work and determination get you farther than excuses and only partial work.

Wow it's been a while

Wow, it's been forever since I've been on this blog. I'm guessing no one's going to read this post because I've been inactive for so long that people stopped coming on my blog. I'm a senior in high school now, and my future is almost before me. I only have a month left of school, and I can't believe that I'm almost done with 12 years of school. Life is busy, which is expected, but I'm handling the stress better since I'm a senior and I'm almost done. I'm trying to enjoy what time I have left in high school. College will be a new fun adventure, and I know I'll have fun and make lots of memories. I will miss high school, but I think I'm ready to move on to a new chapter in my life. Moving away to college will be a boost for my self esteem and help me meet new people and have new experiences. I'm looking forward to the future and I know God has great plans for me!

Love

Currently, I am in the process of memorizing 1 Corinthians 13. So far I have only gotten down 7 verses, but I intend to finish. I've learned so much just from reading this chapter ovver and over again. Love is so essential in a Christian's life. Even if you have everything else that a Christian is supposed to have but you don't have love, your life is nothing. It says that right out. Even if you give everything away that you own and even surrender your life to the flame, but don't have love, you are pointless. Love is essential and it is sometimes fake. You think you have love, but you really don't. In this chapter it lists many different things about love. Love is so much more than a petty liking. It's deep, true, and everlasting. Our society has a horrible view of love and we are all being taught that love is temporary and short lived. Love is not that way at all because, like the Bible says, love is true, real, and never ending. All of us need to analyze our relationships. We need to bring all of our relationships to God and have him help us analyze them too.

Different

I'm sitting here in my sister's dorm and her dorm is covered in little dots that say things on them. One of the dots has a quote from Francis Chan that got me thinking. The quote says, "Something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers." That quote is so true, but a little hard to handle. If our lives make any sense at all to unbelievers, that's not good. Christianity is completely separate from the world, so we should show that. I know that this quote is a little controversial because some of the things we do will have to make sense because then no one would get saved, but I think it's talking about our everyday lives and the things we choose to do in life. If anything we decide to do can be rationalized by the world, then it isn't probably the right thing to do. We need to stand out and be different. We need to have a totally different life focus than the world. No matter what we decide to do with our lives, our overall goal should be to disciple people and win the world for Christ. Unbelievers have a different mind set, and once we start thinking that mind set might work too, we're going in the wrong direction. We need to constantly strive to be different. The speaker at my high school's retreat, Doug Routledge, said "Great leaders always stand out." I agree with that, but I take it a step further. I say, "Great Christians always stand out." Dare to stand out.

Life is an ocean

There is a song called The Voyage and some of the lyrics say "Life is an ocean, love is a boat. In troubled waters, it keeps us afloat." I like to change that to "Life is an ocean, God is a boat. In troubled waters, HE keeps us afloat." Imagine with me that sin is the water of the ocean. Once you decide to trust Jesus with your life, God gives you a boat. Everyone else who hasn't accepted Him are sinking in their sin, but once you do trust God, the boat keeps you alive. Without the boat, you may be able to tread water for a while, but if the waters get to rough, it's hard to stay alive. With God's boat, water may get in, like when Christians sin, but you are still afloat and no matter what happens, that boat is still yours. You may jump out once in a while because you decide you can do it on your own, but the boat is still there and it's always waiting to help save you. If you trust God, that boat will keep you afloat.

PRESS RELEASE NEWS!

Author Anna McTaggart has plans to release her first work ever in the near future.  After years of planning to write a book, McTaggart says her plans are now in the works and will be revealed later this year.  “I hope my book inspires people, because even if they’ve read some books that are similar in style before, I hope they understand the message of the book and take away some important life lessons,” says McTaggart to reporters.  The book, title so far set as “The Swiss Siren” has wowed editors and proofreaders, and McTaggart hopes it will do the same for all who will read the completed book.  Book release date still undecided, but it will be told to the public as soon as the information is available.       

                                                                                                                                                               Written by: Chasity Wood on July 16, 2010

ABC

     I have a new thing that ABC stand for.  It stands for Always Be Cheerful.  I know that you normally think that means always being happy, but cheerful according to the dictionary, means cheer giving or giving cheer to others.  Proverbs 15:30 says " A cheerful look brings joy to the heart,  and good news gives health to the bones."  This means that when you give cheer out to other people, it helps them feel better.
     Now, how do we give out cheer to others?  Well, you can start by not whining.  Our culture today seems to make you think it's ok to constantly whine about how you are tired, or how your stressed, or how you get to much homework, etc etc etc.  A way to give out cheer to the people around you is to not whine and if you feel the urge to, just think ABC.  Always Be Cheerful.  If you start to whine, it's not bringing good news to others like the verse says.  Everyone around you just gets annoyed because all you do all day is complain about how you wish you were somewhere else or how you wish your life was different. 
     That brings me to another way you can spread cheer.  BE CONTENT!  If you are content with what you have, you won't always be wanting other things and complaining to others how you can't get that item.  Another way to spread cheer is to think about the people that you are surrounded by and think of things you could say or do that would make them feel better.  Anything from saying they look nice to complimenting what they are doing.  Be creative and think of a way to brighten their day. 
     If you do the three things above, you will start to spread more cheer in your life.  If you start to get down and don't know what to do, just think.... ABC!!!

Alone

Friends and Family are God's greatest gifts to us.  They are always there when you need someone, and if they are really true, they'll love you through all the rough times in your life.  However, God also gave us another gift.  That gift is silence.  Sometimes the thing we need the most is just time to sit by ourselves and relax.  Even if someone is an extrovert, they still need some time away from the hustle and bustle of being around other people.  Alone time is whne you can listen and hear what God is trying to tell you.  Alone time can even be when you jamming to your favorite music in your room or when you are reading a good book.  Alone time is essential to keep up your relationship with God and keeping you sane. :)