**Lovin' livin' with the bro, even though I miss my room-age. Things are so different living with a boy!
(I know, I know- "duh!")**

Me: What does one wear to a wedding when one's date is wearing a mint green suit, and the the bride is anti-flowy, silky chiffon frou-frou?

Girl roomie: Hmm... well all you really own is flowy...

Me: I know! But I want to branch out and blend in. Besides it's outside and all dresses I own only look good with heels.

Girl roomie: You're right. Your three inch black stilettos.

Me: Exactly.

Girl roomie: That's a toughie. Maybe you should look around a bit. See what's out there?

Me: Ooooh! Good idea- shopping?

Girl roomie: I'm free Thursday and Friday morning. We can get Starbucks.

Me: Let's go Friday. Gosh, I hope I figure something out. If not... well, you know-

Girl roomie: Right- it's all about the bride anyway.

Me: That's what I was thinking. Now... what do you think about...

(conversation continues for 20 minutes.)

*********

Me: What does one wear to a wedding when one's date is wearing a mint green suit, and the bride is anti-flowy, silky chiffon frou-frou?

Al: A simply cotton dress with basic sandals. Put something in your hair and just don't care.

Me: Wow. You're good. And fast.

Al: Besides, everyone will be looking at your date anyway... Have you ordered the pizza?

Me: You're amazing.

Feeling guilty about the goodness...

I've made some mistakes. This is true.

But how totally, completely, unbelievable is it that after I've made those mistakes, after I've gone running back to God, He doesn't wait a while (so I can prove my merit) to lavish goodness on me. He just showers it. In abundance. Without any requirements on my side.

I, treadmill mentality of grace firmly in hand, think, "Wow. This isn't good. I haven't done anything. God's being good to me, after I had ignored him for so long. Shouldn't I have a period of mourning? A period of suffering? Why on earth is He being so very kind to me?"

And I feel guilty because everything is so inexpressibly good. I feel that I shouldn't be this happy. That I shouldn't be this content. That everything shouldn't be so wonderful.

But I am happy. Things are good. GOD is good.

How amazing. And sobering...

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.

(Hebrews 6:4-6)

I think I wasn't informed...

So.

I'm starting graduate school today. Yup.

I'm cool. I'm calm. I'm collected.

**I just lied...

I still don't have a finalized class schedule, I just sent out an e-mail that should have been sent out at least 24 hours ago, I've never even met the professor that I'm T.A.ing for, and apparently somewhere along the way someone forgot to tell me that I needed to have 25 hours of clinical observation recorded.

**trusting God. trusting God.

And, one more thing- in addition to not telling me my schedule, my professor, etc.- NO ONE TOLD ME THERE WAS A PHYSICAL REQUIREMENT TO THIS MAJOR!!!

There is.

You should see my classmates. They're all drop-dead gorgeous.

I think I'm going to flunk graduate school...

Would you like fries with that?

You're wishing you were a Blake, aren't you?

It's a Blake family tradition... and although it may lay dormant through a large percentage of the year, it usually erupts like an out-of-control rash when we have birthdays and/or Christmas.

We like to wear hats.

"Aww! How fun, and cute!"

Nope. Not really.

Because not only do we like to wear hats, we prefer to wear hats of our own creation. Hats that no one else would ever think to wear. And hats that should never be hats in the first place...

Dad started it. For as long as I can remember he's worn packaging, wrapping, even the present itself. And clearly he never learned the "don't put bags on your head" rule...

I'm a follower. What can I say? Besides, it was pink. (You can also see I'm quite excited about my knife set. Who wouldn't be?)

Erika likes to create hats with a more rackish feel to them. Way to experiment with wrapping paper, sis.

Originally Julie just copied my original design, but she's smart. **refraining from Asian generalization... refraining from Asian generalization...**

So she created her own hat. What can I say? She's brilliant and unafraid of new things. Bravo, Bops, bravo!

Yeah... so some families do crafts, canoeing, board games and normalcy. My family? We do hats with a strong dose of crazy.

Eating now... Humble Pie.

I will be quite horribly, bluntly honest:

I am a proud person.

You're probably rolling your eyes going, "Well, yeah!" but for me this is a startling revelation. (Well, not entirely, but the grossness of my pride, its very largeness is unbelievable!)

I don't like to be wrong. I don't like to make mistakes. I don't like to have to justify myself and my decisions to others. I hate, hate, HATE it.

I would like for everyone to just blindly accept that I'm amazing, that I make amazing decisions, that what I do is amazing, and that all-round amazingness just exudes from my persona (kinda like a bad cologne).

But this is not the case. And I'm finding that the pride coupled with my intense desire to please people can make my life incredibly miserable at times. So I have a new mantra:

"Am I pleasing God? Am I pleasing God? Lord, help me see, give me wisdom. Am I pleasing you?"

Based on the answer to that question, I then move forward in one direction or another. If I am pleasing God, it doesn't matter what else is going on. It doesn't matter what others think- as much as I may love and desire to please them. And it doesn't matter one, stinkin' iota if I'm not giving off "amazingness cologne." (Who wants to be compared to bad cologne anyway?)

So I'm just going to have to swallow my pride. Admit that I have a tendency to be a total, well, ahem... donkey. And get busy changing and growing in Christ-likeness. I really wish I wasn't quite so flawed... **sigh**

Plastic Fruit and a Perfect God

**I'm quite happy. Quite content...**

God is the perfect God. How gracious of Him to extend to us not only mercy, but also grace. To not only withhold the terrors and troubles, but also to shower the love in tangible, touchable, real ways. How gracious of Him to not be just, and just alone, but also love. Either one without the other would be a thing of terror, we would not want a just God without love, nor a loving God without justice, but the entirety of both, expressed in one being- this is how great our God is.

Jeremiah, chapter one, states that Israel was "worshipping what their hands have made." Derisive criticism and laughter at such blatant stupidity is often how we greet this centuries-old idolatry. Until we remember the things that we ourselves have created and subsequently worshipped- money, possessions, careers, families, relationships... the list continues. We ourselves have made gods with our hands. And we worship them, almost without knowing, subconsciously. They worm into the fiber of our lives, insidiously affecting the way we think, talk, and live. We worship "what our hands have made."

And we've never dreamed, created, or made a god who could be both eternally just and eternally loving. We worship things that are weaker than we are. Of what value is that? It's as though we are a child is content with the "lunch" he or she has made- with plastic fruits on little play plates, while over in the kitchen sits a delicious feast (with goldfish crackers!) created by a parent. No child would argue that their lunch is more fulfilling. No child would argue that their lunch would make them feel full while tasting superior to the parent's offering. No, the simple value found in those plastic replicas is that they, the child, made that meal in and of themselves. Such it is with our false worship of our "gods" and the ignoring, or minimizing of The God. The God perfect in justice and love. The God who can alone fulfill and bring true joy. The God who is so vested in us that before He "formed you in the womb" he knew you. Yet, despite such knowledge, we continue, content "in worshipping what our hands have made."

How very, very sad for us, and our plastic fruit.

Ah... Friendship...

The Lord Restores Joy...

You turned my wailing into dancing;

you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,

that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.

O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever.

(Psalm 30:11-12)

**unashamedly, unabashedly happy**

Living Vicariously... through my Bunny

I have a sneaking suspicion that in another life I was an elementary school teacher. However, an uncanny affinity for language, anatomy, and hospitals led me more to the speech pathology field. But, that's not to say that I haven't, at sundry moments along the way, wished that I was a El. Ed. major. Last night I got the chance to live vicariously through Bunny, who will be a 6th grade teacher at FCS this fall. Bunny needed help with her bulletin boards, and one of my many suppressed El. Ed. tendencies is in my passion for bulletin boards...


This would be the bulletin board crew. (Ammy, Bunny, Worms) We're kinda like Charlie's Angels, only with construction paper and staples...

Look at the nice little touch! "Ammy" is holding in place the swing that I so thoughtfully placed on our magnificent tree. Bulletin Boards 101: Details make a bulletin board- mark it down. Bulletin Boards 202: Sacrifice all for the board. I stapled my hand for that branch it's hanging on.

This would be the finished product! The clothes pins up the side are students names- this will serve as a kind of job chart. The motto is "Branching Out In The Right Direction" (I know- it's totally cheesy! I came up with it!) and all the grass, leaves, and tree trunk are 3D. So much fun! (Aside from the two stapled fingers, Bunny wailing "It looks nasty" when the first paper was put up, and nearly nailing my chin on the frame when I fell off my chair three times.)

Before we miraculously intervened. I hope someone thought this was beautiful...


Thank you, Jesus for friends who have fun jobs I can mooch off of.

Question:

I've been considering getting (don't keel over) a nose ring. Not a literal hoop- but one of these dainty sparkles:

Thoughts...?

:)

Do you remember?

**dedicated to those who have been friends for such a long time that they remember...**

Do you remember when Aaron Prelock was the hippopatomus in the church play and wore a glittery mask?

Do you remember serving cake in 13 weddings between 2004 and 2008? And do you remember the infamous wedding of 2007 when the punch ran wild?

Do you remember getting lost 17 times your first week on Purdue's campus?

Do you remember water balloon fights in the desert of Peru?

Do you remember the turtle costume? My dress was bright yellow...

Do you remember rain and soggy sleeping bags every Alpha and Omega?

Do you remember when I always used to say "doy!" at the end of every sentence?

Do you remember when Starbucks was a new thing... and that one conversation-outside-cold-awkwardness- funny man?

Do you remember when we wanted eight boys? Now we only want 5...

Do you remember fireworks every fourth... and that one time after watching Spiderman?

Do you remember the picnics in ATM drive-thrus, graveyards, parking lots, movie theatres?

Do you remember how I turned down the clarinet player while hiking?

Do you remember why?

Do you remember ice skating... especially winter break freshman year?

Do you remember when we were still barely friends?

Do you remember when my blog posts were original and entertaining?

I wonder what I shall remember about the next ten years...

College Stupidity, #1 Memory Lane, West Lafayette

I'm a safe, sane, tame individual. This much is true.

I (as a general rule) obey all traffic laws. I pay my bills. I don't buy the expensive, fun shoes, because others are more practical. I rarely invest in any form of fun jewelry. I go to bed on time. I don't drink coffee more than three times a week. I eat fast food about once a week max. I go to church. I don't swear (unless under great duress). I don't do extreme sports. And I usually confine my reading to the classics.

All that to say, I'm a "safe" person.

But I have pockets of craziness...

The other night, I'm driving. I drive a stick-shift, and as much fun as that is, I often get bored- even with the radio on. I can't imagine what people with automatics do... But I digress.

I was driving down 52 for probably the three thousandth and eighty-first time in my entire life, and I started wondering what I could do to make this trip a little more eventful. Bunny is in the car with me, and we've just picked up Taco Bell. I turn to her,

"Pass me my burrito." Bunny the responsibly responds, "You're driving. Stick shift." I grin,

"I know. Pass it."

She complies, and I'm now eating a burrito and driving. My phone rings. Without setting my burrito down, still driving, I reach over and answer the phone, at the same time, I hear the radio (turned way down low) start to play my and Bunny's theme song. So, on the phone, eating a burrito, driving and stick shift, I reach over and turn up the volume- whoo-hoo!!!
Then (phone, burrito, volume, stick shift) I turn to Bunny and say, "Take a picture!"
That's when this was taken...

Today I drove off with a coffee cup on top of my car, and I thought, "Courtney, how irresponsible and careless!"

Then I remembered. Ah... how much can change in two years...

Bear Wisdom

Well, Courtney, it comes in handy- matureness does.

I don't care what you think... and I say that in love.

I'm sick, tired, totally and completely over, and never going back to the way I was before.

I must be honest. You all know me. (I'm assuming this... if not, "Hi! Nice to meet you!") I am a horrible, shameless people-pleaser. If you've read any of my past blogs, you know that this is true. You know that this is my pitfall, and you know that it's what I've been wrestling with for the past month. (And what I should have been wrestling with for the past 10 years...) But here's the deal...

I'm done with:

Waking up in turmoil because of possible problems or angry, bitter confrontations.
Watching every movement of a person's face for disapproval while I'm talking.
Trying to organize and control others' reactions to me.
Doing things that I hate simply because I want to be loved.
Making myself physically ill because of arguments and disagreements.

And I'm ready to:

Passionately serve God with every breath in my body.
Love others self-lessly, but AFTER I love my heavenly Father.
Hand over my controlling tendencies and realize that how I want people to respond may not be how God wants people to respond.
Realize that as long as I act according to what my Father desires, I don't need to worry about others' reactions.
Rest entirely in Him as the only one to give me true peace.
Make Him the center, the focal-point, the drive, the over-seer, of everything I do, think, say, or aim for.

I know, these are **duh!** statements, but they are ones that I have grossly and horribly neglected to the detriment of my service to God, and my growth in Christ-likeness.

Only by aligning my focus entirely with Christ, only by making pleasing him my one desire, only by stripping away all the scaffolding of human approbation and support that I have built so ceaselessly around my life and my way of thinking- only then can I truly love others. The problem is, I re-ordered the first and second commandments: I put loving people before loving God. Consumed with other's and making them happy, I ignored my God, and failed to please him. Now I realize, only when loving God comes first, can I truly love other people.

So I will pray for wisdom, I will find my truth in His Word, I will seek godly council, I will wrestle with the Holy Spirit, I will develop a finely-honed, tender conscience, so that I may be sure that my decisions and life are first and fore-most pleasing to God and (if necessary) to God alone. After that, I need not care how others respond.

And then I think I can biblically say,

"I don't care what you think!"

And say it in love.

I love my Starbucks... :)