Fireworks stand shot

Summertime

Its just about here and here is what I want to do:

Swim and run to be ready for cross country in the fall.

Learn Arabic.

Prepare to go with my mom to Red Square for her birthday.

Go to Skid Row on a children’s crusade.

Read much of the early Christian writings.

Study evolution.

Watch a lot of movies and stay up late.

Sneak into the pool at midnight.

Jump off cliff at quarry.

Make a bomb. Set it off.

Drum and guitar lessons.

Camp in Huntingdon for a week.

Take a few summer classes.

Breakdance? haha.

 

I am focusing this point in my life on sifting the truth from the lies in this world. I am now old enough to think rationally and its about time to start finding solid facts to build on.

It really sucks that there are so many liars, and I now fully appreciate the commandment of not lying. That is one law that is ignored so often and brushed aside as a ‘little sin’ and it has completely destroyed us. Even moral people will lie to make a point if they are convinced it is for a greater good. Instead of trusting God to make Himself known to people, Christians have often taken the easy way out and bent the truth to fit their expectations of God. If we don’t  know something, we don’t know it. Bluffing and making things up is not the way to lead people to our God of truth.

There is a lot in Christian culture that I am just so SICK of. I am sick of people teaching their little children little, easily arguable ‘facts’ about evolution and creation. I am not against teaching kid scripture of course, but don’t just brush off questions they eventually have with easily confused claims. Do the research yourself. Own the knowledge, and don’t just assume that the creation Or evolution scientists are right.

 

I’m really just talking to myself. What you do is your business. Although you could hear this as a suggestion.

Cognition

I just like the word.

To change the subject, I also like The Word!

I have been challenged this week. Stretched. Motivated.

Spiritually. Logically. Academically. Physically.

I haven’t been strained, or tested. I’ve been challenged. Am I strong enough to take the challenges, or will I choose sleep and waste? They are tempting from the perspective of not trying yet. Its been so long since I’ve chased victory that I’ve almost forgotten how much better it is.

 

No one I know even knows I have a blog. This is just a home base for me going to other blogs. YOU are the only one reading this.

Completely bored

and cynical. How can I not be?

I’m in what I would like to call an…Ecclesiastical mood. Nothing is fulfilling. How depressing. How pathetic. Friends, family, work, play, sleep, I fosake it all and walk away to walk into purpose. I need a battle to fight, a cause to win, a hopeless to restore or I lose any and all reason for living.

Where is my need? I have everything and nothing. Even love is fleeting if it means nothing in the end. If God were God for only a lifetime He would not be God! If love is the only good thing in this life, and it ends in death why is it precious? Why is it good? It isn’t! If love is binded by our time on this horrid, broken Earth…then it is nothing beyond illogical lust and instinct.

Sacrifice is expected of us. To give what I have. All. I am the rich man Jesus spoke to. I am also the woman at the well.

Take hold of hope, and drink from the well that will quench your eternal thirst.

Cinco de Mayo

This day has brought about a change in me, about eight seconds ago. Upon perusing other creative and well pondered blogs for a time, I want to start taking mine in a new direction. 

The current is too…snappy, too ..unfocused. It looks a lot like my life, actually.

But today I’m going to start over. Cinco de Mayo. My own little new year’s.

For anyone who takes time to stop by, I am a girl, regardless of the now obviously misleading username. Call me Becc. I am a junior in cyber school. I live in Pennsylvania. I spend most of my time working at a retirement home, watching tv with my family, working on my classes, or running around with my very troubled yet best friend Katy.

The most fun and intriguing section of my life at this point is the youth ministry where Katy and I spend lots of time. But before I can tell that story, I feel I should tell this one:

I once lived with my parents and  brothers together in a country town. We all went to a good baptist church. My parents got divorced, my mom moved into a trailer a few hours away, and my Dad has not had a stable living arrangement since.

Every year I go to a church camp with that church that I started with. I started when I was four, and here I am 12 years later, looking forward to this summer’s camp as much as ever. That camp was one of my only connections that I had with people who listened to God for eight years.

My dad and mom raised me well. My mom, a potential psychologist who took up a mail route to support four kids alone, has consistently taught me how to think for myself and see the value of self discipline. My father was a rule enforcer, which made for a less than fun childhood sometimes, but eventually I realized that I wouldn’t know what I know or believe what I believe if not for all of the lectures I’ve heard time and time again.

I went to a few dozen churches over the course of eight years. I watched quite a few tv preachers. Usually it was just too much for my mom to take us to church every Sunday when she worked almost every day all day. Understandable.

But throughout all of this, I know I have scars I don’t even see myself from divorce, custody fights, arguments, moving, whatnot. But I always wanted to know more about God. Of all the kids that slip through the cracks, that little sunday school lessons don’t have much of a lasting effect on them, that childhood gets passed over for what they feel is expected of them, somehow I didn’t. God preserved me.

And then I met Katy. When I was a easily punked, worried little chiclet in middle school. I also me Ali. Ali hated Katy. Ali was SUPER COOL. So I hated Katy. Only God loved Katy, so I just had to be nice to her until the time came for me to choose cool over right, and I did.

Eventually, Katy and I became friends. Ali is long gone. And Katy led me to a ministry for kids around town. A hang out. I fell in love with the first congregation I had ever seen express any without reservation. And I’ve been there since.

God pulled me back into His world. And I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I met many focused, devoted people who have an eight year or so head start on me in the walk with God, not that it is necessarily a race.

And so here I am. You probably stumbled upon this blog from someone else’s. You are my audience alone. This isn’t something I do and share with my friends. It is a blog to reflect on my thoughts and hopefully get some answers from the hoard of intellectuals surfing the web at three a.m. I shouldn’t even assume that more than one person will ever read this.

Except me. I’m neurotic enough to check what I wrote to see if I’ve matured.

I’m tired of writing. This was way too long a post.

My place in the kingdom

This post is aimed mostly at other Christians. Anyone is welcome, but not all will know what I mean.

 

As a woman. A princess. A daughter of the King. Part of the church. One of the Bride of Christ. Loved. Valued. Jesus died for me as well.

But totally at a loss in this world today.

I spoke in front of my church last year. Some of my girl friends still do. But in the last few months, I have been so frustrated. With Scripture verses. Society. My place. Authority.

1 Corinthians 13:something says that women should not speak in the church. Yet, what about Paul mentioning women accompanying him in his ministry? 

I asked at my church about the verse, but I didn’t get any scripture based answers that really answered what I was asking.  I don’t want to be misled to protect some modern worldview. I want to follow God whether that means my dreams for the future are what He wants or not. I’ll gladly change them. God has been too good to me for anything less.

I know God has no blame, but that doesn’t mean I understand.

If anyone has any thought to add, or knows of any writers that really go deep into this subject, write on.

Just some of the things that have added to the confusion:

Esther, Ruth, Deborah, Eve, Old Testament vs. New Testament, Judges, and on and on.

I’m not really on the verge of a breakdown here. I mean, if what God expects from me is to keep quiet, live a Godly life, and spend my time focusing on other women and children, that is a pretty tall order in itself. I’m not complaining about what He has for me. I’m more groaning about the possibility that I’ve been misled thus far, and that all of my current way of living is off course.

 

Compassion-if I can do it, you can do it.

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Aftermath

I went to my Poppy’s funeral yesterday morning. It wasn’t really sad. I mean, I understood that I was losing a relative for a time, but I also knew that I was meeting many relatives for the first time, and I was nervous and excited too. Odd feelings for a funeral.

They are amazing. My uncles all have this fantastic sense of humor. My cousins are so nice. The two girls are like older sisters/moms. They have children of their own, the sweetest and most gorgeous children I have ever seen. The boy is…so unlike my brothers. Mellow and kindhearted. He looks so much like his dad.

I have to see them again.

 

Then I went to the rally. I met up with Steph and Trav, and we danced hardcore all night long. It was terrific. Who knew screamo would get in my heart if I let it? I bruised my foot really badly, but I have no idea how or when it happened. I watched my friend get a Monroe piercing(Marylin’s mole as a stud) and reaffirmed my choice to never get a tattoo or piercing. I am not sure about where God stands on that issue, so I don’t know enough to argue with anyone, but I just won’t go there.

I got two shirts. The theme of the night was charity, and I ended up buying a malaria-fighting mosquito net for a family. So needed, and so inexpensive for us.

Poppy is dead

So tomorrow I am going to a funeral in the morning and a rock concert at night. That sounds pretty horrible, but I can’t help but feel neutral about my Poppy’s death. Honestly, I am not mourning. Not like when Grampa died.

Either Poppy accepted Christ or he didn’t. I think he did. He didn’t spend his life on Christ. He accepted the gift. What does that imply? What does it mean? Will be last in the Kingdom? Will he be there at all?

Either way, God is good. God will be good even if no one accepted His offer.

So, the concert. Amazing bands will play. Compassion and Rock for Life will be speaking. The theme is reaching out as the family of God. Anyone who reads this, please pray for the kids that will be coming tomorrow night.

Let us all be changed. Strip us of all the bs, and just have us acknowledge how absolutely we need You. Let no heart leave unchanged.

Please, everyone, pray for me. I am speaking in front of a large audience for the first time. Pray for the speakers who will be with me. For the audience. For the bands. Let we who call ourselves Christians truly show it tommorrow night, and definitely always.

I am Yours, Jesus. You are good, and just knowing I am in Your arms is all I need.

Poppy is dying

The man I haven’t seen in five years. I always felt a little dissapointed in my dad when the topic of his family came up. There was a whole family of blood related people living two hours away that I had never met. I’ve asked to go see Poppy countless times over the last five years, but it seemed that Dad had resigned himself to waiting Poppy out until his death to bother to search.

So last week, April Fool’s day, 4am, we get a message from our cousin. Poppy is dying. We go to see him. He is near tears when he recalls that five years ago, Dad’s last words were “see you in two weeks.” I get mad. I’m not the only one. Mad at my dad for being a coward. A compassionless jerk.

Mad for five days, until today we went to visit again. My uncle Tom showed up. Dad and Tom recall their past. Tom married my dad’s sister, and after a lifetime of knowing her, he can easily recall what she remembers about her childhood. Most of it involves my dad being repeatedly abused by Poppy. His whole childhood because he was the oldest. And of mistreating his wife and his other children. Stories that show me why my dad acts the way he does sometimes. Why he tries so hard to be a certain way. Because he is just trying hard to not be someone. He is just afraid that he might accidentally treat us like Poppy treated him.

I’m not mad anymore. At least, I’m not mad at Dad. I guess that means I’m not mad at all. I can’t be too mad at Poppy. I don’t know him well enough to be shocked by such stories. All I have is a new understanding and humility from judging my dad so harshly before. I have to say that I can’t feel too much sadness to see him go, though. He is a man I hardly know, and I trust God, who holds him in His hands.

The rally is coming.