Grandma

I positively LOVE my grandmother.

She's so silly and adorable.

My mom says that children don't think that their moms are adorable, so she doesn't see it. But I think both my grandmother AND my mom are adorable, sooooo... I'm not sure what that means. Haha.

I don't talk about my Grandma very much... I'm not sure why. She is this little sweet lady in her mid-to-late eighties. She does soooo much for my family. She makes these AMAZING sweet rolls for every Sabbath morning. She does all my laundry. She loves Jesus. And she's adorable.

Hehe.

Well, today... today is the day my family celebrates time with Jesus. From sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. We have this card game called "Skip Bo", but on Sabbath we play "Bible Skip Bo". The only difference is when you lay down a Skip Bo on Sabbath, you have to say a Bible verse. It's actually quite challenging. Haha.

But my grandma and I played two games, just the two of us.

I love spending time with my grandmother. She's so sweet and wise and strong and hilarious. She laughed at me when all I got were 4 cards (cards with the number 4 on them), and I laughed at her when I won both games. :))))))

I don't know how to explain my time with her--just that I love it so much. It is like being completely safe and free. After nearly bursting into tears in my Creative Writing class this afternoon (the stupid professor tried to take me down memory lane through every single day that I was depressed. Stupid man should know better than to make me do that in the middle of a class of about 25 total strangers!), I really needed that. It made me feel safe and free and whole again.

I'm so glad that Jesus is here to give us just what we need, just when we need it. :)

Till next time,
Ash the (Refreshed) Dreamer

My Most Amazing Christmas Thought for 2009... :]]]]]

I love this very moment.

You know, I've had a lot of bad moments, depressed moments, horrible moments this year. But I can completely, truly say that at this very moment, as I write to you, fellow bloggers, that this is my very best moment of the entire year of 2009.

It's true.

It's just something about the way the Christmas lights my little sister hung around our room, and the sweet feel of the new pajamas my mommy freshly finished making for me, and the satisfaction that even though I'll probably only get five hours of sleep tonight, that all is still right in the world, at least for me. It's good to know that after waiting for 364 days to receive my portion of "Christmas spirit", it's finally here, and Jesus and joy and home culminate in this wonderful pleasure.

I wish you could experience it with me.

This is why I love Christmas oh-so-much. :]

Anyway, that's not really the reason I chose to blog tonight, on this night that has become sacred and holy for me.

I've blogged a lot this month about these lessons Jesus is teaching me about Christmas and this season for Him, but for almost a week now, I have been waiting to bring you this message that means the world to me.

I've cried a LOT this month. Not because I feel depressed or lonely or sick or lost--which I've felt a lot this year. But because of all these people who are not at home at this moment.

I've cried when I heard this Steven Curtis Chapman song. Please listen... the music didn't really hit me, but the words did. Please listen. :*(



And then this song always hits me, and makes me cry every single time. I think I promise. At least, I'm pretty sure there's never a time when I hear it that I don't cry. :*(



And then... then there's the "I'll Be Home for Christmas" by Josh Groban:



This month, I've cried for orphans, and I've cried for soldiers stuck halfway across the world, and I've cried for people who are lonely and weary and alone, and I wish I could turn their worlds upside down.

All I could do was whisper, "Baby girl, I'm coming for you... one day I'll find you... I promise. I PROMISE..." to the orphan girl who is lonely tonight and without a home that Jesus has called me to rescue, and all I could do for those military families at odds and separated from each other--all I could say was JESUS IS WITH YOU.

Because He is.

This feels like the wrong way to say it, but I don't know how to say it any other way. Jesus has been there--lost and torn from all ties to His home and confused and weary and teary-eyed. But He is with you NOW. And He won't leave you.

This is Christmas.

You could be alone, even in the middle of a million people. But you are not alone.

You have Jesus, the One who was truly alone and who blazed through the fires for you.

No matter where you are tonight, Jesus will be your Home, and you can count on Him.

Jesus is my Home this Christmas, the center of this love and happiness and security I feel--I am so blessed, but I wouldn't feel so much at home were it not for Jesus. :]

Maybe one day I'll be able to rescue 100 orphans like Gladys Aylward did, and someday I may baptize hundreds of people, like some preachers. Every day, oh world, I yearn to hold you in my arms and give you home and hope and love and liberty and safety and security, but for today, oh world, trust me and hear what I am saying.

PLEASE.

On this day, when you are lonely and weary and lost in the middle of the masses, know this. Know that Jesus is the One who holds you, the One who rescues you, the One who satisfies, strengthens, and supports you, the One who cradles you in His arms and protects you from all harms. Know that the once-homeless Jesus Christ will now be your home and provide for you every good thing that you don't have. Jesus is the One who loves you, the One who saves you, and the One who is like the Daddy who cradles His little girl in His arms when you fall and scrape your knee, or when you lost your one true love, or when life is too big for you. Jesus is your Daddy. And He is HOME.

Someday, I might know you, oh world, and someday, I might be able to rock your world so you can see, but until then... please see. Please know that Jesus can hold you when I can't. Jesus can love you when I can't reach you--when no one can reach you. Jesus can be your Healer. Jesus can be your Home.



Until next time,
Ash the (Hoping) Dreamer

worst week ever...

I know I said I would be back tomorrow, but I only have one class today, and I'm kinda hiding from the real world right now.

Probably just my overdramatic self taking things way out of proportion, but I just have to step back and be able to see how overdramatic I'm really being, and I'm pretty sure nothing major is happening in my lit class today. Besides, it started 45 minutes ago, and I'm a mess.

Yesterday one of my bosses talked to me about not doing my job right, and I guess I just wasn't seeing things that needed to be done, and she was thinking that I was all lazy and it was just a mess. Have you ever cried in front of your boss? Yeah.

EMBARRASSING!!!!

Anyway, she's going to try and get the managers to help me so I can be a better worker, but there was just stuff at that time that I really didn't know how to say, so I feel like I got a bunch of heat that really didn't need to be put under my rear, but whatever.

My mom's been so sweet about everything, and when I told her, she told me about how once one of her bosses told her that she was basically the weakest link in the whole production, and she bawled like a baby, so I don't feel TERRIBLE. I just cried all the way home, and I can't stop crying now! Gah, it's so annoying.

But then last night I had a dream that after helping the people in the show Numb3rs (aka, my new favorite TV show!) solve this crazy case on a beach somewhere (it was really weird, like a mix between Lost and Numb3rs, and I didn't know what was going on, lol!), I came home, and for some reason, my name was Arianne. Not sure why, but it was. I'm cool with that, though, because Arianne's probably my second favorite name right now, just after Eliza. :) Anyway, my parents didn't even TALK to me about this, but they said, "Oh, you have a letter waiting for you in our room." So I read the letter, and it basically said that my parents were tired of me not taking responsibility for myself and they were so tired of all my emotional problems (aka my depression and OCD) that they weren't going to put up with it much longer, and they were going to kick me out of the house just before the next school year started. Gah, what kind of dream is THAT?! I think I was crying in my dream, too, and so now I'm freaking out and reevaluating my life and such, and it doesn't help that my dad actually said that in real life... that if I didn't get my act together I could just leave.

Gah.

Anyway, so if I missed my lit powerpoint presentation, you know why. I feel like I'm a ROYAL MESS. :/

But out of all of this, I am learning that I've been taking the easy road, and even though I keep saying all these things about following Jesus, I've been going my own way, and I'm trying to come back to Him and make Him proud.

Pray for me, if you read this.

Because, well, GAH, I need it SOOOO much right now! :/

Until next time,
Ash the (Tearful) Dreamer

A Hope and a Revolution

I can't believe that it is going to be Easter on Sunday. I haven't really celebrated Easter as much as the common Christian does... Because I know it's was built on top of a pagan holiday, but so was Christmas, so go figure. Anyways!

But Easter does hold a lot of meaning for me. I like being home, and being with family, and coloring Easter eggs and writing all the names of the characters in the story I am writing all over the Easter eggs, and the way my family thinks I'm crazy for doing so, and hiding Easter eggs for my two little sisters to find, and eating this amazing egg concoction called "Goldenrod" that my dad makes every Easter for supper, and going to the Easter Sabbath program the day before Easter, and hearing about all the hype and seeing what is in my Easter basket... all that yummy candy and an occasional gift (this year, I think my mom sent me two! I won't get the package till Monday, though).

Anyway, all of these Easter traditions my family has reminds me of home tonight, and I just wish that I could be there. Whose bright idea was it to make spring break to be a month before Easter in college? Yeah, they needed a brain transplant, that's for sure.

By this time today, about two thousand years ago, if this was the actual weekend that Jesus was crucified, Jesus would have already faced all the torture. Last night, He would have been publicly humiliated before Caiaphas and Annas, and tried unfairly, and eventually spit upon and flogged and punched. By now, the crown of thorns has been pressed so deeply into the soft flesh around His temples that He bled. And bled. And bled. And He has already walked up that long walk from the Via Doloroso to the Place of the Skull, and He had seen how they had forced Simon to bear His burden. And then, He stumbled to the ground when one of the Roman soldiers shoved Him there, and He bit His lip so hard that blood came out when they pounded the nails into the soft flesh just below His wrists to keep from crying out. And when they nailed His feet to the cross, silent tears trailed down His grimy face, and He glanced over to see His momma, at the front of the crowd, shaking and sobbing, not understanding. He didn't understand! And when they lifted the cross from the ground! It jolted His body with more excruciating pain than He had ever experienced, and when they dropped His tree into the ground, the nails ripped bigger holes in His feet and his hands, and His head bounced off of the wood. The thorns pressed deeper into the back of his head, and fresh blood oozed out of his head. He waited for hours--He waited for hours to DIE. At one point, He saw the pain and loneliness in His momma's eyes, and the fear in John's eyes. And He gave His mother to John. More waiting. More pain. And on top of it all, all Jesus experienced was that He was dying. And His Father had rejected Him. I'll never see Him again, He must have thought. And then, He cried out, "It is finished!" And it was finished. And God died.

Can you imagine? Why do we downplay the raw emotion in this story? To these people--John, Peter, Mary, Judas, Jesus--this wasn't a BEGINNING. It was the bitter END! And it was bitter and painful and cruel and heartless, and we go and pain Easter eggs and wave to the Easter bunnies all over the malls and by the side of the road and we watch passion plays, and yet, the last time I cried about when they killed Jesus was when I was an innocent six-year-old. Jesus, why do we make little of You? World, why do we let everything get in the way of seeing how beautiful and loving and present Jesus is? World, why are we content with the Easter Bunny when we can have JESUS?

The Christian church says that Easter is about hope, and it is. And I don't want to downplay that. But Easter is also about a revolution that began. And I'm afraid half of us have lost the fervor for that revolution.

Jesus, help me to have the hope and the revolution. Amen.

Until next time,
Ash

the icarus account, sanctus real, and elisa. :]]]]

i just wanted to say all over again how much i LOVE this time of the week! it's friday night, no homework, no social pressures, my Bible study's already done and i feel really close to God. i've been watching some A-Road podcasts, and i pretty much love them. i love the new icarus account single, "so in love," (check it out... www.myspace.com/theicarusaccount, it's awesome). i love it that i am going home in a couple weeks (actually, in 13 days!!!! eep!). i love it that i'm going to my second sanctus real concert on march 14, and that this time i get to take my little sister, too! i love it how i saw Jesus' heart in my Bible study tonight, and how i wasn't the only one who thought the accusation that Michael W. Smith's music being of the devil (especially his worship songs) was a bunch of baloney that made us all really mad, lol (really bad vespers, don't ask... okay, maybe you can, but it is still really frustrating). i'm in love with the story i'm writing right now... it's called "Elisa", and it's about this band and a little girl that finds hope. it's gonna be a best seller if i have anything to do with it, and i love it to death! and i really love all the characters, especially elisa, noah, and hadley! and grant, abby, and jacob aren't bad, either!!!! it's snowing here in the midwest, and that's kinda cool, too! mainly i love too many things!!! lol.

i haven't been up to much, i have a bunch of projects due in different psych classes, lots of midterms (oh, i happened to sleep through my first one, that was BAD!!! but i got to make it up. i love grace!). my roommate's painting a few feet away, and i'm considering going to bed relatively early this friday night (i usually don't call it a night until at least one o'clock... silly me).

tomorrow's my dad's birthday. well, wait, i lied. i am just so used to SAYING that it is his birthday, because he's a leap year baby, so we celebrate it on feb. 28. i wish i could be there! and i wonder where my family put that big recliner that my mom got him for Christmas.

i'll try to post more often, probably more like once a week, even though i don't really have anything to say. i'm just really happy to be alive; i don't really have anything else to say.

oh, here's the lyrics for that song... it's so simple and raw, not like singers who have been playing for decades and everyone thinks that everything they do is gold. it's simple and beautiful. their music makes me want to fall in love. :)

your hand it fits perfect in mine
the world has stopped
and so has time

cuz we're so in love
we're so in love
we're so in love

city lights, cloudy skies,
slow dance in the rain,
i won't forget how it sounds
when you say my name

so we saved the best for last tonight
a simple hug, a kiss goodbye
as all of the angels sing a song
heaven and earth join to sing along

and we're so in love
we're so in love
and we're so in love

i'm turning the table, i'm changing the time
i'll do anything just to keep you mine
you're one of the angels, yeah it's true
i'm saying it happened when i'm with you

and we're so in love
and we're so in love
and we're so in love
we're so in love
we're so in love
we're so in love

i love the way that you say my name
i love the way that you hold my hand

like we're so in love
cuz we're so in love
and we're so in love

well, happy Sabbath!!!