Updates
Man, I’ve been really sad at blogging this year. I’ve had lots of things going on including the much awaited visit by my parents in February. My mom and dad finally made it out to see sunny California and I showed them everything I could from Monterey to San Francisco. It was so good to spend time with them.
On newer news, I chopped my hair off again this week, so I look more like the Freshman year of college/wedding day/move to California Stephanie. I just realized that I had been putting my hair in a stupid ponytail every single day and was frustrated that it took a half hour just to blow dry my hair, let alone style it (hence the ponytail). So, I decided to go short but fabulous & am loving it.
I had some interesting spiritual realizations a week ago. Josh was gone at Neal & Jess’s wedding, so I had lots of time to myself to think. I got to thinking and praying about what keeps us from fully experiencing God in this life. I listened to a sermon on lust, only this pastor defined lust not purely as a sexual thing. He said it was a demand thing, as in “I want it and I want it now.” When people want something so bad that they’ll go around all the proper routes in order to get it sooner. I realized that this translated to many things in life – lust for money, lust for power, lust for acceptance, lust for sex, lust for material items, etc. And what pushes us toward these things? I think it’s fear. Fear that we won’t be loved, fear that people won’t like us if we don’t have the right things, fear that we’ll get defeated, fear that we’ll end up poor and on the streets, fear that we won’t be respected… you get the idea. So, I’ve been praying for God to reveal my fears to me and to defeat them. It’s amazing how He answers this prayer and I had my deepest fears revealed to me very soon after that prayer. I’m not going to get into what they are here, but I will say that understanding your deepest fears is a huge step to understanding who you are and why you make the decisions you do. I also learned that it’s at the root of many addictions as well. Anyway, just some thoughts and praise to God for being so faithful as my Teacher.
Josh and I went to a Beck concert on Tuesday night. That was pretty sweet. You gotta love Beck. Especially when he has puppets. Puppets and teddy bears.
Oh, and I got food poisoning on Thursday night. Today (Saturday) I was finally able to keep some solid food down around dinnertime, so you can guess what a rough couple of days it’s been. Bright side is that I was able to fit into my skinny jeans today. I’d rather wear the fat jeans and not have food poisoning, but I’m just trying to find the positive side to food poisoning to make it seem less depressing.
Peace!