AHHH....AHHHH....AHHHH....

CHOOOOO!!! So here's my random story of the day:

I head into to the store tonight to pick up a few items. So as I walk into the store I stumble upon the card section and I says to myself I says "self...you need to buy some cards to send to people". So I am perusing through the card section and I'm standing there looking at cards when.....BAM!!! a sneeze comes outta me from no where! ACHOO! One that I didn't even feel coming on, it just shot outta me like a bolt of lightening, no time to cover my mouth and what happens....my gum shoots out of my mouth like a bullet from a gun. It proceeded to stick the card in front of me and then ploop...it fell to the floor.

I mean one could hope I looked as cute as this when I sneezed:


















but I'm sure I looked more like this:


Yah, that's a whole lot of not pretty. But I was laughing outloud to myself as I picked my gum up off the floor and took it to a trash can under a cash register.

If I could have seen the sneeze coming that would have been fantastic, but it offered me a good laugh.


-love the least

sometimes I think i'm funny...

ok there's probably a lot of times I think I'm funny.

I was sorting through some older photos in iPhoto trying to pick ones that I'm going to print off to hangout on the walls of my house and I came across this one:



You see we were having a gathering to watch one of the presidential debates and we were supposed to make a snack that made us think of politicians...My immediately thought "asses!!!" so I made butt cookies. Here's a close up:




It just gave me a laugh to see these. I had forgotten about it. So i thought I'd share them. I hope they gave you a good laugh too.


-Love the least

Community is good...its GOOOOOOD....

I have gone through 2 extremes regarding my community involvement in life. I have been both a community junkie and an anti-community junkie. I have to say that as of late I'm somewhat of a lack of community-aholic...a regular junkie of non community and that...is not a great thing.

I spent 5 years of my life during college being completely engulfed in community, being around people, being involved in community, taking on leadership roles, being involved in other people's lives.

Then suddenly I found myself in the fall of 2005 null and void of community. I picked up my life and headed to down to Greenville South Carolina for over 3 months from August to December to do an internship. I then moved back to Michigan for almost 5 months and then onto Colorado Springs, CO during which over the course of a year I worked at a group home. From July 2005 until December of 2007 I spent over 2 years almost null and void of community and those two years had a dramatic affect on my ability to be a part of community.

I am an individual that has always thrived on others, on being involved in the lives of other people, to have them be a part of mine; of taking part in leadership and found my energy in being around others I care about.

However over those 2 years I found it easier and easier to withdraw within myself, to become a recluse, and shut the world out to keep me in. It became very quickly a way of living to depend on myself rather than open myself to others because the few times I had....I got burned. And there is only so many times that you allow your heart to play with fire before you don't want to allow it to become wounded anymore. So closing myself in was my defense mechanism. I became a noncommunity junkie, I began to feel as though I thrived more being on my own than I did being around others.

This type of thought process is unhealthy, unbiblical, and self-destructive. we all need our moments of silence, of being alone...but we as human being, as creations modeled after our Creator, we are not meant to be alone.

Our souls, who we are as human beings is nurtured, thrives, and grows when planted in the earth of community. The community of others in which we are held accountability, where we laugh, we cry, where are vulnerable, challenged, stretched, where we are raw, real, and at times reckless - knowing that we are amongst friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, those we can trust.

It is for that very reason that community and feeling as though you can trust the community you belong to to be safe for your aches, your hurts, your pains, your past, your present, your future is so vital to the life of a community of people.

so I may be a recovering anti-community junkie, but I don't hope to be a community-aholic either.

I hope to be just me, Rachel, a woman of Christ seeking to be genuine with those I love and care about in hopes that they will do the same. Opening myself back up to others is good, it's hard, and at times really hurts...it tugs at the seams of my comfort in solitude and begins to tear and that growing process is uncomfortable and feels so unsafe at times, but in time. But growth almost always hurts, and growth is always worth it.

....I'm friggin' crazy

soooooooo I.... I think I'm a friggin' loon.

I decided that my life isn't busy and crazy enough....I should add this to it:



Yep, I am officially a dog owner. Her name is Molly. What I should call her is "Are you freaking kidding me?!" or "Seriously!!!" or "not again!"

I mean this puppy won't stop going to the bathroom in her crate...I have asked everyone I know with a dog and they all say "really? Dogs hate being near their own urine and poop...." welp... NOT MINE. Not that she rolls in it, but good night nurse, she is willing to pee in there and just wait....ugh

Anyways, she's been a lot of work, which you always think you've prepared yourself for something like that, but OH NO! I'm learning. She's a great teaching tool for me. I just wish her teaching wouldn't be at the expense of my sleep.

Anyways, welcome to my world Molly, you'll be around for a while.

Spring forth

The heart is a fascinating thing . . .

Not the physical heart (although its workings are incredible), but I'm talking about your soul, the thing that enmeshes your thoughts, feelings, emotions, everything logical and illogical within you.

Its not a physical, tangible thing, and yet ...its capable of so much.

Capable of actually breaking. causing an ache so indescribable that you wish someone would snatch it right out from chest to keep from enduring anymore pain. The ache of emptiness, brokenness, desolation, isolation, fear.

I've had moments in my life I have wondered if my heart were so broken that it would actually stop beating, that the essence of my being would keep my physical being from existing. That my rhythm would cease....

Then again I've also had moments that I feel as though my heart is going to burst right out of my chest from sheer joy, or from the anticipation of excitement. Those moments that words cannot express. Where you feel like "you're happy and you know it, and your face will surely show it". That sense that you want to wrap your very being around everything and everyone that you love, but you just can't hold them all in. It overwhelms, over fills, overflows. The moments that your cup overfloweth with everything that's pure in the world and for even a brief moment....all the world is right. the sense is overwhelming, it take you by surprise, catches you off guard, sometimes in moments you least expect it. Then you turn a corner in time and there it is, fast a fleeting, yet so real. And for that moment you feel so alive that perhaps this what heaven will always feel like, and its a feeling that will never grow old. Moments where two worlds come together, heaven and earth collide. the raw reality of real life is interrupted, overtaken, by the purest elements of all that is right, good. You feel, whole, complete...so complete that you feel like you're going to burst right out of your skin, like you can't hold yourself in this tissue paper thin casing of flesh and bone. I've had moments I wish I could physically burst my joy out of my body, like a sneeze, or like when liquid or food has actually burst forth from my mouth from laughing (or when I choke). Yeah...I wish it would actually physically expell itself from my body in a way that actually takes myself and those around me by surprise. it'd be a signal, that i just experienced a little bit of heaven here and now, during this fragile, feeble, fleeting time here on earth.

so thats what I'm praying for. I may not get an actually bursting, but I sure hope that the more I become aware of heaven here on earth and that I'm experiencing it, that it will spring forth from my very being.....taking everyone....including myself, by surprise

Thrown under the Bus

I am actually not going to use this entire post to talk about how an individual in the same work circle threw me under the bus this past week, but she did, and to be honest, it did a number of things in the following order:

1) It totally blindsided me
2) It made me doubt myself, my abilities, my talents, my judgement, and my ethics
3) It infuriated me because it was an injustice against myself, simply for their personal agenda and gain, and it was done with malice and not rooted in truth
4) Made me realize I can do nothing but continue forward knowing that I had done nothing wrong, and that I needed to leave it in God's hands. Because (i know I should start a sentence with because, but because I don't care...am)....BECAUSE regardless of the outcome, I know that if I stick to Truth and my morals and ethics....God will take care of me one way or another.

Will that mean I won't continue to try and be bulldozed by people, or that bad things won't happen...nope. However, I have an assurance that because I choose to conduct myself with a good work ethic and high moral standards in a way that God asks me too, I can sleep at night, knowing I did right; I did right by that kiddo I served, by me, by the agency I work for. So that is that.

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It's amazing how one individual can shake your work isn't it? The can shake it up in a positive or negative way.

Who has shaken your world up?

What was the experience? Was it a positive or negative experience?

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My world was recently shaken up for some time the past few months. I have been on pins and needles pending the results of the parole hearing for the man, Donald Mason, who murdered my Aunt Ruthie. I was only 4, but I have been deeply affected by this very self and demented man.

So I wrote a victim impact statement and sent it to the Parole Board, as did a few others in my family. Truly though I have been preparing myself since I was a teenager that upon his first parole hearing....he would be walking the streets again, with the freedom and ability to not only hurt my family but perhaps someone elses as well.

I had been waiting, waiting, and waiting to find out, even though I had come to terms with the worst outcome.....and so I waited and prayed, I cried, I prayed, I cried with family, I cried with friends as myself and my family relived the experience of her death all over again, and....I prayed.

Then, I receive a text from my oldest brother......"Rachel, he was denied parole for another 2 years!!!"

As I stood there in Wal-Mart in the toy aisle, surrounded by Dolls and race cars, my eyes welled up in tears, of all places I could be....but I couldn't help it. It seemed like a dream....an absolute surreal moment.

Here, now, in a place in time in which so many people with evil in their hearts are allowed over and over and over again to hurt society due to our failed reactive (rather than proactive) justice system, there I stood praising Jesus, crying, in WalMart.....God did a miracle, I know, because there is no reason our judicial system would really keep him there considering the massive amounts of individuals they release simply because they do not have funding or the room. He did a miracle, I know it.... I know. And for those in my family that actually made the effort to relive this experience and write their letters and experience this gut wrenching heartache....I know that God took our efforts and created a miracle and I am so grateful.

So two years from now I will be doing the same, praying for a miracle, and I know that God can do it.....

Donald Mason shook my world, he shook my family's world, but God is bigger than the evil inside of his heart....and tonight I will rest....


-love the least

Heavy

....I suppose this is the best word I could use to describe how my soul feels....heavy.

I have spent my time, energy, and thoughts these past few months in regards to a Victim Impact Statement that I have needed and wanted to write to the State of New York Parole Board.

Over 21 years ago, my aunt Ruthie was brutally murdered by her husband. Coming up in November that man will face the parole board to see if he may be released early on parole. His sentence was 21 years - life......he has served his minimum 21 years

I have been trying for to months to compose my victim impact statement, I just finished it tonight. I feel like it is crap, like I am not doing my Aunt Ruthie any justice, and yet I am trying so hard to do right by her and my grams.

A couple of weekends ago I sat with my grams, brother, sister in law, and my mama to video tape my grams' victim impact statement....it was heart wrenching. I was able to take part in some very candid, very raw conversations.....I feel closer to my family because of it....I truly am blessed to have the parents, the brothers, and sister in laws that I do.



Me not wanting him to be released from prison is not a matter of forgiveness, it's about justice. I read in a book recently that to forgive someone is "to let go of their throat". And I sat and cried over that statement for a long time, because at times, i wonder...if I ever saw him, the man who murdered my aunt, the man I called my uncle; if I ever saw him face to face, would I be able to let go of his throat??

At times I can answer confidently that I would, other times, actually many times, I am not so sure that I could.

Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting, and I am justified in being angry, if my anger is rooted in seeking justice and fighting against what is unjust. God calls us to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with Him. I don't do that very well, but I sure am trying. So am I capable of having a righteous anger towards an unjust act, while still having mercy towards the man that took something so precious?

I am trying, I truly am trying. But it is really really hard.


......love the least