preschool is not forever

doctrinal disconnect

someone says 'Christ loved you so much that he died on the cross for you' and my first thought is 'no...Christ died on the cross to glorify himself...his love for me was secondary at best.'

someone says 'God has only the best for you' and my first thought is 'yes...and that is HIS best...not mine...and he never promised me happiness...so his best for me is probably the worst i could imagine.'

why?

i'm intelligent.  i have right doctrines.

but they're all in my head.

my heart tells me that my life is evidence that God loves to punish and prove his sovereignty by dangling a series of proverbial carrots in front of my face just to yank them away again.

my head knows better.  but my heart doesn't listen.

so i run.  and i chase.  i chase things and relationships and feelings.

and i catch them.  and i lose.  and i break.

i'm broken.  everything in me and around me is broken.  my health.  my relationships.  my thinking.  my heart.  it's all broken.

i could blame things and people.  i could blame chronic pain and health problems since the age of 10.  i could blame my intelligence and tendency to reanalyze and overanalyze til i'm cross-eyed and numb.

i could blame the guy who took advantage of me 4 years ago.

i could blame the guy who let me fall in love before systematically crushing any ounce of confidence or trust i had in anyone or anything.

but it doesn't matter.  none of it matters.  i don't matter.

God does.

i'm just a tool.  a pawn.

or at least that's what my heart gleans from my theology.

my head knows better.  but my heart doesn't listen.

influence of a man

too many hoodies
and hats

cormac mccarthy
and football

coen brothers
geese
and ducks

the smell of winston lights
and kodiak

william cooper
and jonathan edwards

driving
with the windows
down

photography
from the ground
up

five years
almost married
walked away
the same

seven months
changed
forever

Lord-willing

thursday afternoon somewhere between minneapolis and chicago two truck tires still attached to their axle flew off a semi rig going 70 mph and bounced across three lanes of traffic before taking out an entire green highway sign and coming to rest in the ditch at the side of the road.  there were cars in all three lanes.  i was in one of them.  no one was hit.  no one was injured.  no one was killed.  not one dent or scratch or hair out of place.

impossible?  or the ONLY possibility?

this situation got me thinking.  is it impossible for anything to happen that does not happen?  could you say that for those truck tires to hit a car was impossible?  because the only possible scenario was the one that God willed to happen and that therefore did happen.  all things are possible with God because he can will anything he chooses.  but if he does not will it how can it be possible?  i don't think it can.  unless we can somehow argue that God not willing something to happen is different from him willing something not to happen.  but if he has not willed something to happen it follows that he must have willed something else to happen and therefore for the former to happen is impossible because God has already willed something to happen in that moment when the former could have been willed to happen but wasn't.  it therefore follows that everything within what we would normally dub the realm of possibility is actually impossible if it is not willed by God to happen.

all of this is perfectly acceptable to my finite human brain.  and very very cool.  it turns everything on its head.  instead of thinking that it is possible for me to breathe for the last 27 years it is even more amazing to me to think that it is impossible for me to have not breathed.  up until this moment it was impossible for me to die.  and until i do die it will be impossible for me to do so.  and when i die it will have been impossible for my physical life to have been preserved a moment longer.  it is not just possible for me to continue typing this blog right now.  it is impossible for me not to do so.  until God wills otherwise.  i am wiggling my toes.  it would have been impossible for me to not wiggle my toes at 2:09 pm on 13 june 2009.  amazing!

but while my little mind spins with exuberance it keeps begging one question: what about sin?

does this discovery mean that it is impossible for me to not commit the sins i commit?  would it have been possible for me to not commit the sins i committed?  in order for me to have taken another course of action it would have had to have been willed by God.  and if he did will for me to do something other than sin at a particular moment it would be impossible for me to do anything in that moment that is sin.  to do anything other than what he willed.  so if he did not will for me to do anything other than sin in a given moment then does it not follow that he therefore willed me to sin?

God cannot sin.  but is it sin for God to will something to happen that is indeed sin because of its setting?

i say setting because nothing in and of itself is sin.  sex is not sin.  unless it happens between two individuals who are not married.  killing is not sin.  unless it is purposeful outside of war.  having lustful thoughts or seeing lust-inducing visuals is not sin.  unless the subject is not the spouse.  drinking alcohol is not sin.  unless it leads to drunkeness.  the list continues but the point is made.  i have never found anything that is in and of itself sinful.  it is only sinful within certain contexts or outside others.

but even following this argument.  for God to will something the willing it includes the setting.  so God is not only willing something in general to happen.  he must and does will sin.

but how?  how can a sinless God will sin?

and if he does not will sin then how does it happen if nothing can happen outside his will?

we come full circle.

someday i hope to understand.

Lord-willing.

weird day

today was a weird day and for whatever reason i feel compelled to write about it.  if nothing else i guess i hope that if i vomit on technologically advanced paper maybe some of it will stay there and out of my head as i attempt sleep tonight.

today's weirdness started at the gas station this morning.  i pulled in behind a guy who of course did not pull up to the farthest gas pump which forced me to go around him and back up and inevitably end up two feet away from the pump.  i get out of my car only to discover that said moron is blasting the most insidiously vulgar 'music' i have yet to hear anywhere around 10am in public.  i put up with it for a few minutes but after the gas pump that he should have been using in the first place wasn't working right and the no-help attendant yelled at me through the speaker telling me to do exactly what i had already done i'd had enough.  i kept my cool though and relatively politely asked him to please turn off his music.  his response was something like 'it's a free country girl.  don't go around telling people what to do.'  to which i replied shocked and appalled 'i didn't tell you what to do.  i asked you.'  i then said something about respect and he retorted with yet another brilliant 'it's a free country girl.  stop telling people what to do.' and 'i hope you don't talk to your husband or boyfriend that way.'  to which i kindly replied 'the men in my life respect women.'  after that he kept blathering and i just kept forming somewhat silent 'wows.'  after i drove away i thought of the retort i really wanted to have said.  something about forefathers fighting and dying for that freedom but not freedom for this!  but i didn't think of it til afterward.  and i'm glad.  because it really wouldn't have been the 'christian thing to do.'  and he probably would have kicked my lily white.  so that was round one.

round two was a job interview.  job interview number two.  weirdness number two.  it was at a 'corporate office' which consisted of a house turned office.  inside was one of the most depressing looking places i could have possibly imagined to spend 40 hours a week.  the staff was made up of a jean-clad receptionist, a blond chick with an all-too-plunging neckline, and a heavy set woman in knit shorts and flip-flops along with various other non-descript individuals.  the actual interviewer was wearing a sleeveless shirt and jean capris.  i had been worried i might be under-dressed for the interview as i didn't wear a jacket or button-down.  i was now worried i had over-dressed.  to add to the weirdness another woman was there applying for a job and she had brought along her daughter and her daughter's backpack and other paraphernalia.  going into this interview i didn't know a lot about the job as the job description online was almost non-existent.  i just knew it was something clerical having to do with medical records.  the job was actually 8 hours a day of putting together paper files on people along with one week out of every three or four taking phone calls 24 hours a day on a cell phone.  did i mention ten bucks an hour?  yeah.  and when i asked about benefits the answer was something like 'well we have a medical policy but you pay the premium and we reevaluate every year.  in fact we might switch to a cheaper policy with less coverage if enough people want to.'  in other words my co-workers vote on my benefits.  i think not.  did i mention i have a bachelor's degree??  i cried most of the way home.

the rest of the evening was remotely enjoyable but one more weirdness was still to come.  round three happened at the front door to my apartment complex about an hour ago.  a guy i know who happens to be a raging alcoholic was out there with a few buddies he just met today at our pool.  he introduced me with an 'isn't she cute?'  only slightly awkward.  then i find out they're going to hit up a bunch of bars.  i tell them flat out he has no business going with them but of course i really can't go into detail beyond that.  so it's only slightly more awkward.  i came inside.

so that was my weird day.  my very very weird day.  and now i'm sad.  i'm sad because the world has no respect anymore.  no common courtesy or decency.  i'm sad because professionalism barely exists and where it does i still don't have a job.  i'm sad because people are alcoholics and drug users and abusers.

and i'm sad because i'm telling all of this to a computer screen instead of you.

luther cartoon

happy birthday greg boyd...

wordy funniness

i found the following on someone else's blog and laughed hard enough i thought it worthy of re-post.  these are the winners (minus a few inappropriate ones) from the washington post's mensa invitational which asked readers to take any word from the dictionary and change one letter and then write a new definition:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an ***hole.

3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation : Belief that one will come back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

11 . Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right?  And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. A rachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

the following are the winner's of the post's yearly contest in which readers are asked to write new definitions for common words:

1. coffee, n. the person upon whom one coughs.

2. flabbergasted, adj. appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. abdicate, v. to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. esplanade, v. to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. willy-nilly, adj. impotent.

6. negligent, adj. absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. lymph, v. to walk with a lisp.

8. gargoyle, n. olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. flatulence, n. emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. balderdash, n. a rapidly receding hairline.

11. testicle, n. a humorous question on an exam.

12. rectitude, n. the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. pokemon, n. a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. oyster, n. a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n. the belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. circumvent, n. an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

top 10 reasons i know i'm a bbc girl

1.  i have an ESV study bible next to my bed and a mini-ESV in my purse

2.  i have a john piper book in my purse next to my ESV

3.  i laugh at the idea of completing a sermon series in less than a decade

4.  my idea of a good weekend is a theology conference

5.  my idea of a good date is reading jonathan edwards together

6.  '5 point calvinist' is a pre-requisite for spousal potential

7.  my first son will most likely be named jonathan

8.  i know the difference between supra- and infralapsarianism and i have an opinion on it

9.  i have not only sung 'God moves in a mysterious way' but i know who wrote it and can quote a portion of it

10.  i am in love with a bbc boy

my dream man...

ok one more...

i'm njoying my tea...ladies...