God is good

hi guys! it's me again. i'm sorry that it's taken so long for me to write something. february has gone by SO quickly! it's crazy. but i wanted to just drop a quick note and let you know that there is much more to come. tonight i had the privilege of attending my first protest/rally. The government is looking to repair the deficit and in order to do this the proposal by the house of representatives is to drastically decrease Americorps funds or cut the programs all-together. this is really difficult for me to imagine because i truly see the benefits and the need for national service as a way of uniting this nation and employing diverse groups of people with the passion and desire to help and make change, especially in the area of education. it's what i have the honor to do through the americorps program that i'm with and it's what others in the hundreds of americorps programs in the united states have the opportunity to do as well.

so what does all of this have to do with God being good?

well, gratitude. you see, in the tiny little realm of my life and my universe, this rally - my first - was just one thing on the list of the things that i am grateful for. i'll definitely tell you more about the protest in a later post; but for now, in no particular order, here is a list of 20 things/people that i am grateful for.

1. music

2. theatre

3. city year

4. my team at city year

5. mercedes mccurdy

6. my relationships in new jersey

7. sue and terry folker

8. prayer

9. the bible

10. my family

11. josiah

12. pride and prejudice

13. food - good food

14. stick shift cars

15. the disney channel

16. the jonas brothers

17. the twilight series

18. the harry potter series

19. the universe that God has created in the most bombastic way ever

and lastly, before i get ready for sleep,

20. second chances

it helps me to think of the things that i'm grateful for. i should do it more often. it reminds me of all the little things that God has done for me or given me or chooses to share with me in our relationship. i think that remembering things that i'm grateful for is God's way of helping me smile and laugh about things that we share. that excites me, that He wants to engage my heart like that. in addition, gratitude has a contagiousness about it in that once i think of one thing, i find that i'm grateful for many others. and after having a long day, it also helps center my mind and calm me down. it reminds me that not only is God good, He is good to me. 

i would love to hear about some things that you're grateful for! for now, i'm going to get ready for one of the things that i'm extremely appreciative of and that's sleep. till next time. goodnight!

farewell facebook

hi all! i hope that you're all doing well and that exciting things have been going on with you so far in the new year. there is SO much that i feel like i could talk about. maybe that means a bunch of blogposts in a short amount of time. we'll see. but for this entry, i wanted to talk about something that has been a little interesting for me. so from december 28th until about half an hour ago, i had not been my facebook account. i was kind of taking a break--i say "kind of" because when other people were on their facebooks i didn't like turn away and run--from the social networking beast. close to the new year i found myself on facebook a lot and just decided that i could and should take a break from the connections that facebook sometimes provides as well as the one's that it can convince me i have in hopes of focusing on some other things.

the first few days were rough. i realized just how much time i spend just sifting through my friends' profiles or writing on their walls. i can honestly say that i was used to checking my facebook like over 5 times a day. it had become like a pandora or any other music streaming site in that i would just go on it and leave the page up in different tab while i was doing other things. now, i'm not saying that that is a bad thing. i just know that for me, it was something that i was not as aware of until i decided to take a break. and this was important for me because it helped me learn some other things about myself too.

for example, the thing that i love about facebook--that i can so easily feel connected to people--is sometimes, how do i say, a fallacy. thus i feel deeply connected to all these people, but the depth of our connection is an illusion. like, i know all these things about them--what they did this past week, what they may be doing next week, what they're thinking about certain things and how they've been feeling even, but these are just strands of connected. it's like in some world wide webby cyber way i actually am more connected to certain people than i would be otherwise, but in the reality of the real world, i'm not. i mean, i haven't spoken to them personally, they don't really know what's going on with me, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. taking some time away for the book of faces helped me to realize that feeling connected and actually being connected to someone were two very different things. this also helped me value real world contact with people and appreciate phone calls, texts, and emails of even the smallest degree.

i think the other big thing that i realized is that i really need deep connections with people. i have a hard time with shallow relationships. and i don't say this to say that i need a deep connection to every single person around me. but i don't know that with my friends, i need more than a status update. like, our friendship cannot thrive on status updates and wall-to-walls and comments on my pictures. don't get me wrong: i love those things and prefer some connection to no connection at all. but my break from facebook reminded that i need more.

all that being said, i'm back on and trying to make sure i regulate my time on the site. also, i'm trying to remember that nothing beats good ol' face time. so next time you're thinking about droppin' a comment on the facebook wall, do something in addition to that: drop a text, or better yet, a phone call. it won't only be wonderful for the person receiving from you, it'll be uber wonderful for you too =-) until next time. i do have much to tell you so stay tuned!