What's better than writing a book report?

I have to write a report for This book. It's a good book. I would just rather do so many more things. (It really is a good book, about women in Greco-Roman history.)

But per the title of this post, what is more fun?


LOL Cats. They are always more fun.

I can haz your cheetos?

It's Lent time again. Last year, some may recall, I gave up Perez Hilton and celebrity gossip. It worked marvelously and by Easter, I was so over it!

This year, I've given up sweets. It's hell. I am hungry for snacks and there is nothing in our house except for a can of tuna and ginger snaps. Dennis bought a box of ginger snaps to celebrate the fact that I'm not eating sweets. This is clearly going to be way harder than giving up celebrity gossip. I have already started reminding myself that sweets are nothing compared to the cross.

(It was either sweets or facebook. I love facebook more than I love chocolate.)


(How much do I love facebook? As much as Dana-->


Have I been just as guilty as her? yes, absolutely.)

Milestones...

I belong to a forum for diabetics who are women and who are mothers or who want to be mothers. I'm not planning anything right now but it has been motivational for getting my health under control. Anyway, when your diabetes is under control, you tell everyone in the forum and they give you a dancing frog (so under 7.0 A1C). My A1C two weeks ago was a 7.8, which is the best I've ever had. It's a milestone and the forum members awarded me with a tadpole. I've been keeping it on my computer harddrive but I haven't been really keeping up with trying to do better. But posting it here might help me to stay focused (I've caved twice in the past week and had some french fries and I've decided to give up candy and cake, except for Mar.11 bday cake, for lent). I just feel like I have so many goals and things I have to do this year, and I think I've been putting the goal of being healthy on the backburner.

I got this email when I was wasting time on facebook (which very well might steal my soul). I'm going back to Japan so I've been raising money. I've reached my half way point, but I don't know how because I can think of 10 people that I know I need to talk to but that I have put off writing letters too. It's another goal.

I'm also taking Japanese, kind of. I'm sitting in on a class but I'm not really auditing it because I'm not paying for it, because the professor and his department have been really ridiculously graceful and generous. But tomorrow morning, there is an exam. I haven't studied and now I feel like I should talk to the professor and just ask him if I can not worry about this exam? I feel really bad, like I'm already wasting his time and like him grading my exam would be just worse. I feel like a flake.

Which brings me to my 10am midterm tomorrow morning. It's something else I haven't satisfactorily studied for. But I'm paying for this class, and I think I might be smarter if I studied and did well for it. But this is like the story of who I am as a student right now- I'm flaking on my studies and putting things off and hoping that I can just get by. It's not how I want to do things, and I'm probably being too hard on myself. I'm just really tired and stressed out.

Which brings me to my whole life right now. I finish school finally in December. My husband doesn't have a job and the US economy is not providing him with anything. We are talking about moving back to Chile or to another country, in general. Which freaks me out. The thought of moving to another country and changing my life so dramatically all by myself (with Dennis), so freaks me out that I feel like I'm almost paralyzed. It's like I'm sabotaging myself physically, spiritually, and scholastically because I'm terrified of the real world, of moving away, of the very very unknown. It's not that I don't have faith in God or in Dennis or in myself. It's that I'm just so anxious about this that I can't even concentrate properly. Me, who has to two hours early for a flight when they say be one hour early. Me, who has to show up 15-30min. early for a movie just because I want to pick the best seats possible. I turn into Godzilla if we miss one preview. Not knowing, not having a clue, not having any control.

I realize, as I type this, that this is what I'm doing. I'm so freaking out that I'm sabotaging myself. Which is absurd because I, of all people, know how amazing God is and how much things can change in one year. In less!

'Tis the Season...

'Tis the season for stressing out about papers. I have two papers that I have procrastinated on and one is due tomorrow evening. I have faith in myself, but I can't sleep because my papers are one thing that is going through my mind right now despite the sleep aids. This is what happened last night. I started freaking out about my term papers, especially the one due before Thanksgiving, and I spent the night working on it instead of sleeping.

Which has led me to believe and come to terms with the fact that I'm 26 and not 20 and that all-nighters are no longer feasible for me. I've also been thinking about how my undergraduate classmates stress so much about their grades. And I'm reminded that I really could care less about grades I received years ago so it doesn't really matter. The problem that I face is that in recognizing that my grades don't determine my self-worth, I find myself sometimes sliding into an apathetic and unmotivated academic attitude. If it doesn't really matter, why should I stress myself out. Unfortunately, stressing myself out at the last minute for things like papers is the key to my academic success. I always seem to triumph or at least slide by if I work up to the 11th hour.

My apathy towards school is really a symptom of a larger picture. Quite frankly, I have bigger issues in my life. Dennis isn't working, my hormones are freaking out, I'm worried about my dad, etc. And I am starting to think about life after school, where they really don't care what grade you got on a certain paper. I just don't want my apathy to turn into laziness and apathy in other aspects of my life.

So, I've been stressing myself out and thus I feel like garbage. Trying to pull an all-nighter didn't work and made me feel sick. So I was lying in bed listening to the rain outside, thinking instead about all the things that worry me. I'm worried about school. I'm worried about our future after I graduate. I'm worried about my diabetes. We want to have children, eventually, and I want to be healthy when we do that. In realizing that we will be moving a year from now, I am also realizing that "right around graduation" was when we keep telling people we will start trying to pop out kids. Which means I can no longer procrastinate and not take things like my blood sugars seriously. I have to care. So I find myself caring more about things like my diabetes than I do about my Old Testament Pentateuch class.

I can't sleep so much that I am actually trying to think of things to make for Thanksgiving. Typically, we get invited to a local family's house for the meal. Not family but church friends. This year we don't have invites and I'm actually a little relieved because in our early married years, we went to Denny's for Thanksgiving. A part of me (the part of me that is pushing towards being a real grown up), wants to make something on Thanksgiving. Not a turkey (we wouldn't eat it) but maybe some comfort foods (I'm thinking about deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, stuffing and a small small ham of sorts.) I'm debating on whether or not desert should be included as I am the only one who really eats sweets and Dennis isn't a big pumpkin fan. I'll figure it out but this is what is keeping me up at night.

Or my mind wanders to the stuff our church is doing for the poor people in the area and when they travel to Mexico. They have asked for blankets and I think I am going to give a bunch of blankets away. I came from a family that never ever through away blankets. I don't know why but blankets were just always valuable, even second-hand ugly and outdated ones. We have a few that we never use and don't need. I'm trying to downsize everything we own whenever I get the opportunity because as I've hinted earlier, we are probably moving.

According to Dennis, we will ideally stay in Southern California. It's the easiest way to move. He is looking at jobs in Florida and in Texas. If he cannot find any jobs, we are considering moving back to Chile. In Chile, Dennis can work as an online professor for a school in the states and get a job in Chile. Chile, as in every other place in the world, is economically freaking out. Someone needs to give my husband a job. We need health care and he needs to feel like he is providing again.

This list of things going on in my mind could go on forever. One of the things that I've been hearing again and again and trying to process is this idea of "God's timing". God waited until Sarah was 90 something before letting her have a baby. He waited YEARS before he got his people out of the desert to the actual Promised Land. And even after they arrived, they still had to fight for YEARS more to actually get the land. Things that happen in one or two verses in the Bible actually take a lot longer in real life. And so I'm told to be patient. God is all powerful and all knowing and has control and I just need to wait and have faith. It's just easier said than done. I can see, looking back on my life, times that I have felt God acting slowly and now those times seem to have gone by so fast. A week or even a year flies by and the person I was a year ago and the place we are in our life is just so different. But just every once in a while, it would be so nice to know for sure what is going to happen. More than what grades I'm going to get- where are we going to live? What will we be doing professionally? When will be start a family? I wish I could see God's plan instead of passively waiting on Him to act. It's frustrating and challenging and ever so easy to ask out loud "God, where are you? What are you doing? What is the point of this??"

Okay. I need to try to go back to sleep. I have to wake up early tomorrow to write this stupid paper.

On God's Wisdom...

Rarely, I actually read something required for class that makes me feel really good about God.
This is from my Systematic Theology Professor's book:

"Viewing the other attributes from the perspective of God's wisdom enriches them, and wisdom in turn is enriched by them. For a "love" without wisdom would be no more than sentiment without effect. And wisdom without love would be reduced to craftiness without morality. Grace without understanding would be but whimsical indulgence, and understanding without grace rises only to the level of cold calculation. An unwise mercy does more harm than good by its clumsy kindness, whereas wisdom without mercy surveys suffering heartlessly. Patience without wisdom inspires no confidence of success. But wisdom without patience inspires terror. While in his righteousness God always does right, in his wisdom he always does the best. And for the loving God, the right thing and the best thing are always the same. In his holiness, God maintains his unique being in all his acts, and in his wisdom he acts in ways that will accomplish his will in all things. God is always wise in his holy acts, and always holy in his wise deeds.

God is infinitely wise in all he does because he is wisdom itself. For in his triune life, God is God in the most perfect way. God is not God automatically and unconsciously, but freely. God is not on a journey of self-discovery in which he comes gradually to understand his nature and learns how to act as God more effectively. God knows hot to be God. God knows the why, the how, and the wherefore of his deity. He knows, therefore, how to be God in relationship to his creation. He is "the only wise God" (Rom.16:27), and he deserves glory and wisdom and power forever and ever."

From page 220.

They are available for weddings...

Add This:

Plus This:

And you, delightfully, get this:



The website doesn't work, BTW but I think this is a real church choir. If it isn't, it is at least cheap Thursday entertainment. Could at least SOME of what they sing work and not conflict with the idea of worship? (I mean, you can't sing Nelly in church, obvs, but maybe you could work with the Eminem song??)

The end of an era.

I had a really good night. We watched the elections, which ended a lot faster than I expected, and had hot dogs with good friends. It is the first time, since I've been old enough to vote, that I've enjoyed presidential election night. Now youth who voted for McCain know exactly how I felt for the past 2 elections. (Facebook status updates show a forecast of high depression and anxiety for our young Republicans.) I hope that what Obama said is true, and that we really do find change. One can only hope that it really is the end of an era and not just a bunch of hot air.

At the end of the day, it is the same circus with a different clown. Obama is not my messiah and I know that the only hope I have for certain is my hope and faith in Christ.

Redemption Song...

Taken from Exodus 15. Cause we all need some salvation and deliverance.

update! update!

ugh. I know. I've been a lazy blogger. Not very good at posting anything. In a nutshell, I got distracted and then I got stressed and I've been very lazy.

I started school on Monday and I fear based on first impressions that this will be one of those semesters of Graduate work that I've got really paid for. Sometimes, because a lot of my classes are with undergrads, I feel like I can kind of skate through things. I'm pretty good at procrastinating and such and I've polished my skills at writing thing last minute or pretending I've read the text.

Also, when the Professor is asking you to read the first five chapters of the Gospel of John, and you've read those devotionally at random different times in different chunks and/or you've heard at least one sermon on them, you feel (or I feel, atleast) like I can just kind of figure out what I'm supposed to know.

This semester I'm taking a class on God and Providence and we are going to be reading ancient scholars and German scholars. It is a lot of words and I'm not really a reader and there are big theological words and concepts. It's an important class- the first of three that I need to take for my degree- and I am happy to know that I will be smarter for them. But these are daunting books and not only do I need to read them but I need to talk about them in class and write substantially on them.

I'm also taking a class on the first five books of the Bible, which shouldn't be as bad per se, but I do need to respond in writing to the required reading and there will be a paper and (ahem...)work.

What I am counting on, as fun, will be the Japanese class that I'm auditing. I'm enjoying it but I'm not paying for it, except in time and in the cost of the text books. I think it will be like yoga for my brain.

Dennis is teaching online for Kaiser College in Florida (I know not alot of this school so google it.) And he is looking for work, everywhere (like every place on earth that is hiring. But I refuse to move to Dubai, for example.)

So at the moment, I don't have an opinion on much outside of the little bubble of myself and Dennis and school. I don't even care about the whole president thing anymore.

My new laptop background photo.

I just received this photo from one of my readers in Japan, Mitsuko. She took Dennis and I to a Shinto Shrine on the last Saturday. It was a meaningful trip because she let us see a part of Japanese culture that we wouldn't normally see (unless we were as tourists only). She took great care to explain as best as she could the meanings of the paper and ponds and statues and water, and we tried to be as respectful as we could, as we were obviously kind of tourists and we were there on a Christian mission trip and not necessarily to ask for blessings.
I don't know if visiting the worship sites of other religions is necessarily a negative thing or not, but I thought it was important for us to go and I thought that the Shrine was beautiful and ancient and spiritual, even if I am do not theologically understand/agree with the hows and why. And when I prayed, I prayed to my God. Maybe that means something?
At any rate, it was about 15 minutes of my trip that helped me to understand the culture I was in better, and I think it helped my friendship with Mitsuko. I think she was happy and proud to show us something that we don't see in Western cultures. And maybe Mitsuko will know that Western Christians aren't all close-minded and uninterested.

Is Indian Jones a Scientology movie?

I don't think so, for the record. But you can see (so that I'm not giving too much away if you don't see the movie until it is on Netflix), that the eyes of the skull in the background are like alien eyes.

I assume that Steven Spielberg is a happy Jew, and I don't really know that Harrison Ford has that much creative power. I could be wrong. Which leaves George Lucas.

I don't know that I think George Lucas is a scientologist (unless he has already said he is...) but I do know that he has created millions of dollars and super-nerd fans across the world who believe in light sabers and aliens and darth vader. I've met these fans. So I think maybe he is just interested in aliens. Oh, and Spielberg did make E.T.

I guess it all comes from the Xenu debate. Did aliens come to earth billions of years ago to teach humans how to live? Was the big fish in the book of Jonah some kind of advanced alien ship/fish??

Or is this just a movie where Harrison Ford and Karen Allen look really old?

For the record, I don't think it has scientology ties. I do think it was a good movie, as a final movie in the series. Much better than National Treasure.

Conclusions on Ruth...

Sigh. Ruth. Translating Ruth from Jonah.

It was better, in the beginning, because it was a story about girls. Basically, Ruth demands to go back with Naomi, to Naomi's home town, after their husbands die. Ruth, wanting to care for her mother-in-law, goes to a field and picks up the leftover grain- the scraps of grain after the grain picked for the owners by the help. She is noticed by Boaz, who happens to be related to Naomi through her husband. He kind of summons her or something and she asks just for the scraps and then he's like "no, please take my grain and eat and hang out with my female servants." So he's kind of taking care of her, because she's hot, and he's keeping her honor because he makes sure she only hangs out with the women so that no one hassles her.
Then Ruth, flattered and impressed but still all meek and mild, goes home to Naomi to tell her about what happened. And Naomi is all excited. She says, "Go get dressed up and perfumed, and then go, in secrecy, to where he is working. He's kind of related to us, by the way." (But not in an incestual way.)
And Ruth (kind of a pushover), goes to Boaz who is indeed working hard. He falls asleep after drinking and working. I think he is basically almost passed out. So Ruth goes to his "feet". Meaning his feet? You decide.
So she uncovers his "feet" and he wakes up and finds her and is like "who are you?" And she says "I'm your female servant". I don't have my notes and translations in front of me but he basically says "I know about how you were loyal to your mother-in-law after all the men in your family died. Let me give you some grain, go before anyone sees you. Don't tell anyone about this- I'm not only guy related to Naomi who could buy you and your land."
And Ruth leaves, discretely, to tell Naomi exactly what she was told to not say!
The next day, Boaz finds this other guy who could buy Ruth (yeah, I guess you bought the land and the wife...) and says "Hey there is this land and some women, and you are entitled to it because you are related. But if you don't want to buy it, let me know." So the guy thinks about it and says "I'm not going to buy it. I don't want to ruin my reputation". And So Boaz buys Naomi's land and basically Ruth, who will be his wife.
So Ruth and Boaz are married, and Ruth has a baby who is given immediately to Naomi. And Naomi is listed as basically the wetnurse of this baby. Which is kind of freaky and gross. And the baby is blessed and Naomi is blessed and this is setting the stage for a few generations in the future for being related to King David, who is HUGE in Judiasm and in Christianity.

But it's kind of freaky- the "feet" aka unmentionables, the fact that Ruth does everything that everyone around her tells her to do- she doesn't even name her baby, and the baby being nursed by his grandma.

So where does God fit in? Well, Ruth isn't a believer in God until she follows Naomi. And her choice to do that probably has something to do with her being cared for by Boaz. If she didn't take that leap of faith, God wouldn't have saved her. So is it a challenge for people to take the leap of faith to follow God? (Pushy mother-in-law aside...) I still prefer this book to Jonah, but I still also wish that my Hebrew professor would try to go into theology even a little instead of being only interested in grammar.

I love my gay friends.

I don't know where I cross the line and throw my faith out of the window, and I don't want to ruffle feathers, but I love my gay friends. I thought I might make this statement today, as today California made it legal (for now) for gay couples to get married.

I'm not entirely sure where I am on that decision, because I know gay/lesbian couples who are in forever-long term monogamous relationships and actually do good things for their community. I think gay people can be loved by God, can love God, and can do good things. I know that I am against people who hate gay people or who think that they are not deserving of prayers or love or respect because of the choices that they make.

At any rate, I wanted to officially say that no matter what I think or decide about gay marriage and whether or not it should in some form be legal, I do love my gay and lesbian friends dearly. And I really appreciate that they are in committed and loving relationships, and that they are happy.

On the scale of things we should be freaking out about, I rate homosexuality as low in comparison to things like "bombing for peace" or "killing civilians as collateral damage". I'm not sure I am ready for the US to turn into Amsterdam, but actually we are quite a ways a way, morally, and quite different culturally.

I don't understand Jonah.

I don't understand the point of the book of Jonah. (Note: this is the first of official blog posts that I should have labeled a long time ago as more than school related, but like "Theological Randomness" so that you don't have to read through if you choose not to. Although, I suppose you would do that anyway....)

Back to the point. I am frustrated because I have spent the past week and today translating from Hebrew into English the book of Jonah, from the Old Testament. And I don't understand the "moral of the story".

Chapter 1: God tells Jonah to go to tell the city of Ninevah that they are doomed, etc. Jonah flees to a ship (I'd like to think of this as a pirate ship), going in the opposite direction. And then God makes a storm. So the sailors/pirates tell God that they are going to throw Jonah over the ship. So they say "Don't blame us because we are throwing this guy who worships you over our ship. Just stop the storm!" And they toss him over the ship, and the storm stops.

Chapter 2:
So the Lord "allots" a big fish (doesn't say whale- I asked how we know for sure that it was a whale, My prof said "what other big fish is there?") to swallow Jonah. Anyway, Jonah prays inside the belly of the fish and says "I'm sorry blah blah. You hear my prayers, blah blah. I will make vows to you if you save me, blah blah, salvation belongs to the Lord." The Lord tells the fish to vomit Jonah out.
Chapter 3.
Jonah takes a long journey to the city of Ninevah. He gets there and tells everyone they are screwed. The king listens and makes everyone repent and put on sackcloth and sit in ashes. The king asks God to be merciful and God is merciful and doesn't destroy the city.
Chapter 4.
Jonah is angry. What? Why? I can't figure it out. He went to the city, the city was saved, and now he's all like "God, that wasn't what I wanted when I tried to flee from you! Please kill me because I'm better alive than dead."
God answers "Why are you angry?" And then Jonah builds a hut outside the city. God gives him a "castor oil tree" (vine?) to give him shade, and it seems like Jonah and God are cool with each other.

And then God sends a worm to eat the plant giving shade and sends the sun to burn Jonah, and Jonah says "Really, God, please kill me, because it is better to be dead than alive!"

And God says "Why the hell are you angry? I gave you shade! You didn't have to do anything to make that tree grow! AND I saved Ninevah! Ninevah! Which is like 50 times worse than Vegas as far as sinning goes!"

The end.

What the hell? Is the point that God is merciful? Then why was Jonah even necessary? I'm so confused!!

Part of my confusion is the whole part about how God keeps making it hard for Jonah. I mean, Jonah acts kind of like a spoiled child. So maybe he deserves it? But then that gets into the whole idea of "deserving punishment" from God. I have trouble figuring out what God wants for me to do already without worrying that he is punishing me for "fleeing" somehow. It just is a hard theological read, especially when your husband is not working and you are economically not where you want to be. (and why am I equating happiness with money? Have I not been paying any attention at all?!")

Hmmmmmmm....