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| Good afternoon, 2009! ....*since we are WELL into 2009 at this point.
its been wayyy too long since i've had a nice type-fest. Carley is bothering me right now though. she is rambling on about random things. But i understand her sorta b/c here i am, wanting to do the same thing except typing.....finally after she said she was going to sleep like 12 times, she finally left me alone.
I don't know why i felt like i needed this. Maybe because I was reading my olden-days journal from my olden-days website and i found all these magical moments i had long forgotten in my brain, but they were preserved "forever" on the silent, fragranceless, undying pages of the internet. how magical is that??
Also, i noticed (since i am so mature and grown up now) that i have, in the past, used an abundance of ridiculous words....or rather, overused them. Such as "the Bomb!" and "shibby" and "magical". How juvenile. But also, if I were talking all proper all the time i would gag, i think, reading it later. The dorkiness is endearing, atleast to me as a pitying, olderme looking back.
I still can't believe i am 24. It has already been 7 months since that happened, and i am still pretty bewildered about it. Since November of last year ALOT has happened in my life. I hired Samer at my store for christmas. Which was fun, while it lasted.......while christmas lasted i mean, not while samer's employment lasted....
He was AMAZING with the customers. Like I have never seen that kind of panache in any hallmark employee before or since. However, after Christmas, when the crowds suddenly disappeared, Samer became bored and lonely and our friendship became a tightrope walk for me trying to be his manager and his friend and him trying to be better than hallmark and wishing he had a "real" job....and he found a "real job" as a nursing home administrator finally in Plymouth, WI. And i AM SO HAPPY FOR HIM. but i actually really miss hangin' out with Samer. Oh well, the Lord has personalized plans for each of us, and He gives us moments, and we should enjoy them while they last b/c each one is just a moment, seriously.
Then came Dave's wedding in May!!! and David and Janice Hansen were married on May 23rd....i think. i will kick myself if i find out someday that that isn't their anniversary. but how will i know. like if i mail them a card....which i will....b/c i am SO hallmarked....it will get there somewhere around that time and they will just assume that i know the right date. but really, is it the date that matters? or is it the fact that i have a YOUNGER SISTER now! and one that is none other than my dear counseling, kitchen help, camper-ing, tradin'posting, counselor-hunt-rock, nixon-house-sister janice smithhansen!!!!!!! that is SO cool. I think God was just like, "ok, rachel...i love you so much, here's an awesome sister-in-law for you!!!!! just to make your life that much more beautiful." :)!!!!!!!
Then 1 last month of studying my brains out, after paying months of extensions for school (b/c with the bad economy....jerridee couldn't pay for my school any longer...especially b/c it was stretching longer than we thought....thanks to my great counselor, rachel, (not me) who gave me an extra management course and 1 less finance/accounting course than i needed....but that was also for a different degree since we switched part-of-the-way through.) i dedicated every spare moment to learning everything about federal income tax, took the test....and then applied for graduation (which was outlandishly expensive for graduation fees i think)....and then got my results back from F.I.T. only to find out that i failed it by 2 points. lemmetellyou, if there was ever a moment for me to rip the hair out of my head and spiral into a rocky-road-depression binge this was it. not that i did either....but looking back....i would feel justified in either, though i would also look ridiculous and/or feel horrible.
my leg is burning from this laptop. but i can't afford one of those pathetic triangle air-venty pillows for my laptop. i don't care about the thing that much. it's a $299 3-yr-old laptop for peter's sake.
Cody and my wedding is now 46 days away, Eastern time!!!! (b/c it's 11pm central where i am...in WI) It is getting stressful. Who am i kidding. It's always stressful. Life is just full of decisions and complications and responsibilities and joys and sorrows and risks and safety-nets and annoyances and blessings and grace and orchestration supreme if you ask me.
There are just a few tiny, big things that are bugging me that i just need to give to the Lord RIGHT NOW. actually, i have given one of them to Him already and i am living proof of peace and relief in giving it away. no matter what happens with my dress, my wedding will be magical. My dear dress-making sister-in-law-to-be has 1 week to finish it. and up until now, there hasn't been a understandable piece sewn together. I love working with her....when she is working with me.However..... She is a crunch-time maniac. This is scary to me, and as the days count down....it makes me increasingly anxious. but we have atleast 2 backup plans that will make me happy, so i don't know why i am so afraid and freaking out.
The other things are unmentionable, but they involve relationships that i or others have with people that i would like to be instantly fixed. I would just like to see everyone get along. I would like for everyone to always be considerate of other people's feelings, and i would like for everyone to know all information about everything so that no misunderstandings or assumptions or "advice" or long-standing, compiling judgements be made. This is somewhat impossible because of a number of factors. Communication is hard and hardly anyone is willing to make REAL efforts to make it actually happen. This is too bad, because we could be glorifying the Lord for His amazing workings in us if we would talk to eachother kindly and lovingly and forget all past judgments and contradictions etc.
anyways. So Cody had all these semi-random interviews with this company called "Innovative" that makes the website for his parents' bookstores after Todd and Austin went to Denver to some bookstore/retailing convention thing. It was looking interesting/promising that he might have this pretty perfect-for-him job in marketing management for this christian website business....but the timing was not right with the man in that position right now and they offered him a much lower paying job (both would be in greensboro, nc, btw) doing pretty much mostly sales....which would be bizarro-cody....if that. He was not made, nor have his skills been developed to persuade people one-on-one or using promotional marketing tools to buy things. He has been gifted with the creativity of brainstorming and developing....and if there is anything i've learned about cody over the past 6 years...it is that there is a thunderstorm or some kinda crazy hurricane in that brain of his. It is....perhaps..."mind-blowing" if you will. I am like....very very amused and privileged to have been given by the Creator of that left-handed, atypical, dying-to-get-you-to-understand-his-typically-unique-point-of-view, the actual man himself to spend my life with.
i'm not saying that i haven't struggled with communicating with this soul that is, in some ways desiring all that i desire and in some moments talking about exactly the same thing in a completely different way with different words and the same feelings expressed completely different. There are moments where he is beyond me, or just RIGHT next to me, but we are looking at something from a slightly different perspective, determined by all previous moments of life and all previous words spoken, heard and read. but wow. this is so much fun for me. i wouldn't want another anything different than this.
i love him. i know it was all in the plan. i know it was written in the pages. and those pages have that golden page-edge. i know it. even the sad pages. the angry pages. they are all individually written. known before we knew them. and they are small bites and hard to understand alone, but read them all and the gold is found at the end when you close the book and each page comes together to form that beautiful golden seal around all the words and scenes together.
we have danced and cried and rejoiced and despaired and hurt eachother each in our own foolish ways with our own personal vices and forgiven eachother and talked so much and invented together and seen God work some wonders together and served together and fought through some painful growing-up together and learned to respect eachother and figured eachother out....to some extent....and i think about the past 6 years and it is really crazy to me to think that that all could be just the beginning.
If He is willing and the plan for these 2 lives extends further than today, i don't even know if i can handle the wonder of it all. could there be more than these 6 years? I know there can be no end to all that He has for us to learn. but to keep writing on these pages, where glory surrounds us and will bring us home to the Love that we don't even come close to understanding....is to wonderful for me....it is high...i cannot attain it.
You have hedged me behind and before and laid Your hand upon me.
This past sunday we sang a song that reminded me of nothing but Mrs. Linda Longbrook. And i had just randomly read that week the wonderful psalm that me and amy d. memorized with her. that is like....the most cherished chunk of verses i have memorized. i couldn't keep singing because the words were there and they were just pounding me with memories and amazement at the giganticness of this world and even the tiny lives we lead. How humongous He can make the smallest thing that we do.
Oh Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up, You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before and laid Your hand upon me, Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is high, i cannot attain it.
it's just big. it is not overwhelming though, somehow. i do not feel overwhelmed by it like i tend to with things that are beyond me. i feel contented by this and like this most valuable gift has been given to me somehow, completely undeserved.
so yeah. life is real and it is happening fast, it seems. it's almost 46 days Central Time now so i think i have done enough typefest. i can't describe how freeing and perfectly wonderful it is to have this. it is kinda like that tool that used to come with the play-dough we had when we were young....where you could stick a lumpy-gross piece of whatever play-dough you wanted into this spaghetti machine thing and it would come out all neat and perfectly spaghetti-shaped. that is what my typefest is for me. thank you. i should have done this earlier "today" than august i think.oh well. i still have 4 hours left in this "day" of 2009. and ALOT can......and will.....happen in those 4 hours. more than i know. more than you know even. and i mean, even if you are now past those 4 hours.....more than you know! so there! how many millions and trillions of things happen in one moment and no one knows them all except the One who loves me to the grave and beyond, forever! hm.
um.....okiloveyoubye!!!
-rachel Hansen
_____________________________ Words: William Cowper Music: "Belmont" by William Gardiner
There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day;
And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.
Washed all my sins away, washed all my sins away;
And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.
Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.
Be saved, to sin no more, be saved, to sin no more;
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.
E'er since, by faith, I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.
And shall be till I die, and shall be till I die;
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.
Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing Thy power to save,
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave.
Lies silent in the grave, lies silent in the grave;
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave.
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| BLAHGAHGAHAFksadlfewjrelghjft!! uncontestable need to blabber!!!!!!!!!! the little colorblocked X on my shortcutbar was beckoning me. having had no caffeine and no serious emotional trials, for some unforseen reason i feel this crazy urge to rant and vent and spill unconnected events and thoughts that are somehow, through me, connected. it's been like a year or something since i even stepped "footprint" on xanga.
i need to cut my hair. and i just nearly dropped my glasses IN the toilet 10 minutes ago. i think i would have put in contacts and left them in for months til i ruined my eyes before going to the optometrist to get new glasses b/c if those things went in the toilet i don't think i could ever wear them again. what possesses a person to put their glasses on their head, ( which is covered in amazingly non-frizzy-herbal-essences-hair-that-has-no-restraint-from-gravity-or-toilet-falling) , instead of setting them down on the sink-counter-thing???
i don't think i'm stressed out. but i know that i am. no one wants to hear about me. but this is for me or is it? oyyyyy. carley's life/pictures of dead residents and 67 cents are interesting but not really....at...all.....hm....today i felt nerdy. why?? idk... i'm gonna miss kathy alot. she has become a special part of my life in a very short time and now she's going to go live in hallmark-headquarters-city with her husband. i think it's good that she is finally gonna be with her husband again after whatevermanyyears, but i will miss her dearly. people come and go in your life and you don't know how long they will be around or what kind of impact you or they will have until it is think-back-and-consider-the-passing-of-time-and-of-life time.
cody is stinkin' wonderful. i don't know if he just always was or if he is continuing to become anadarparson like we all do as we move along, but i keep on finding that i love him a whole chunk more like every single time i go anywhere with him or spend any time with him, even if we are wandering around target or figuring out future plans (which tend to sometimes be frustrating b/c i hate planning anything) or listening to amazing house of heroes and i'm all trying to figure out what all the metaphorical stuff could maybe mean and whether it is actually meaningful or just word-throwup, and he is very loudly singing his brains out not knowing 1/2 the words and making them up as he goes along, mostly on key.
CARLEY IS SOOOO ANNOYING> she always talks to me and plays with her blackberry. she thinks it makes her blacker or something. i don't efkjaflkjdsaflkdsaf SAMER IS HOUNDING ME ABOUT THE amount of hallmark stuff in my room. he needs to stop it. now he is telling me that i am marrying todd b/c cody looks exactly like him, which is not even true. anywaysssss.s...........
i'm really excited about being related to janice and brittany and lauren and ryan hublermaybe and everyone in the brethren church. that's kinda really weird to me still, but i like it. and i like wausau and the smallness. i just had a random chat with this woman, susan, who is from north carolina and moved to wausau 16 years ago and still has a southern accent. these people in wausau are weird. lots of them are really weird. about 2 times a week we get crazycrazycrazy people in my store and i always wonder about their lives and what made them like that or what is going on in their minds for real.
i need to clean up all my clutter. i live in the grand canyon of clean AND dirty clothes. some are indistinguishable. i always feel bad when i kinda may have probably washed something twice, having not even worn it, but because it is next to something i know i wore, i wash it. what a wasteful and also added-work-for-myself-adding erson. there is no time to sift and donate them all either. i have only had a nosebleed once in my life before, and it was when we were visiting my cousins in MI over christmas and their house was really dry and that is the dryness of this beginning-of-winter. i had like 3 brave gulps of nasty coffee today. i can't drink it without sugar. the third gulp was the worst because i knew i didn't like it but i was trying like crazy to like it or SOMETHING.
dehydration is a serious concern lately. why? i have NO idea. michael phelps scares me in every picture i've every seen of him. he has a very intimidating face. i don't think it's intimidating b/c of his mad olympic skills, he just has a facial structure and expressions that scare me.
samer just ripped the nose out of my bath-and-body-works sheep by taunting oscar with it. he is seriously a physical hazard. he has broken atleast 3 things that i know of in the past month. i probably need to stop spending time with samer, then i won't know about all of the hazardous things he does, or atleast i won't be able to keep track of them. it is really hard to vent/ramble with PEOPLE all upinmygrandcanyon. whew. cody got a clue. samer and cody left and carley plopped right back in here with a NEWSPAPER she is reading and asking me about what different cars are...like i'm a car expert. i'm not mad @ any of these people. and i actually want to talk and be social but i am in this typing zone and typing what is happening around me is not the solution or the stress relief that i was dreaming of.
indifference is suffocating.
i've been in a place of forgotten purpose and unfocused mundane treading on, working and pushing forward in every area, over stimulated and overcommitted with less sleep than i need and every day i have off i am so tired of going and going and working and studying and figuring out and planning that i get sick on every day off and sleep it off and then shake it off for the next time i have to work so i can get through everything.
there are like 20 separate relationships that i feel weird and estranged from, but i know they are good and fine and we are all just going on with our busy little lives but have no time to spend with eachother or no means to do so. i'm bored. and there is no brainpower in me to think of anything.
yoga makes me sick. i got a book on it so i could find out who was right. the people who say "yay" or the people who say neigh. i think i'm a naysayer but it's hard to say b/c how meditative are the mantras and what is all this mysterious world of otherspiritsthatwecan't see and that whole dynamic and i love the way cslewis (man, cody's obsession is rubbing off on me) makes it seem a little simpler but all the more mysterious and strange but real and still confusing. but whatever. it's not worth my time to breathe and be calm for no reason and say words i don't understand but that, to the best of my knowledge, mean that i and the universe are one and i have all of this power in myself. but some of the ideas are good. atleast stopping and breathing. but there is purpose and reasons for deep breathing and realization that we keep on causing the earth to spin faster than it should. and it's like i wish i was on the swings in the hickorycove snowglobe, but that's not where i need to be right now. i have no power in myself. i and the universe are at complete controversy. i am part of it. it is fallen because of me (or man in general) and i belong to it sort of, but i seriously and completely do NOT belong to it and am not in any way one w/it. it is offensive to me. all these parts of the earth keep me alive but not because i am one with it, because beyond physical stuff there is more meaningful reasons for all of these tiny things to work together to keep me alive and to allow me to experience the specific life that is intended for me. it's bigger than just being and just experiencing. that is so basic. because we can't just know and comprehend every purpose intrinsically, these zen people, these "new" thinking ideas revert to simplicity because they think that if the answer is unanswerable by us, we must be wrong, and it must be something we just passed over in overcomplicating. but it issssss overcomplicated. there is SO much more that we don't even know that is going on around us every single smidgen of every second. everywhere. far reaching and microscopic. it's big and tiny and all together mixed and it all works together is so much of a perfect harmony that all we can see is randomness, when the randomness is not even randomness at all. but time is a force and disallows us to think because we think in the linear lines of time and rationalize everything according to our day-in and day-outs and forget things because of distractions and are able to focus only on one thing seriously at a time. so what? what then? what are we doing? what am i even doing @ 12:40 when i have a 1/2 week and then a month of norest ahead of me??
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| DEAR DIARY..... BAAAHHahahaha.
events that led to mascara all over my face tonight.
1.long wonderful beautiful breakfast at george's restaurant with cody.
2. many cups of coffee throughout the day.
3. getting to see kathie, megan, phyllis, thea and brothers today (some of my ultimate favorites) randomly.
4. talking to my big-tummy-baby-having-with-a-wittle-NOSE-now mom, lauren for less than i wanted but enough to know about the nose.
5. arguments last night that woke me up.
6. getting saturday night on my schedule @ work filled through persistence and then a happening completely separate from my persistence.
7. working hard and getting mucho things done @ work.
8. getting home @ 9 to a letter from aunt joy.
9. searching for address labels in my desk drawer.
10. finding checks and 2 old old super old letters cody sent me in NC in 2006 and reading them.
11. looking up on this xanga thing trying to find what i was going through when cody wrote those letters and whether i actually received them in NC or whether they were sent to WI later and wondering whether they had been opened before they were sent b/c i can't remember those specifics.
12. after reading alot of my funny july 2006 posts....finding this: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=rachewe&nextdate=8%2f17%2f2006+23%3a59%3a59.999
manohmanohmanohmanohman. to quote andrew boom.
wow. the angst, the pain, the reality, the beauty. i can feel it all again like it was yesterday.
that fateful jump. my doubting heart. i can laugh at the doubt i was hanging onto then b/c now there is clarity to all of it. after sobbing through the pain that was so real at/after that young adult week, i look at the decision days and the things i prayed for and the work i knew He was doing He has done, but it's not done, i'm not saying that. but i see some of what He's done and i LOVE it and i love Him for it. and as I look at my life right now, I regret not having the powerful quantity of Bible soaking through my life. sure i'm memorizing the whole Bible, lofty goal, accomplishable only with Him......but i was SOAKED in it 2 years ago. I also see myself at another end/beginning time. my store has changed with michelle leaving for romania. she was like a rock for me. This solid, real relationship-building, God-honoring beautiful woman that I had the opportunity to spend aLOT of time with @ hallmark and talk about things all of the time and learn from her. My school thing is changing. I have just started 2 actual classes online with Thomas Edison, and I am choosing to forego paying (or Jerridee paying) for collegeplus/having someone help me through the next/last year of school that i have, so i'm on my own with that. Summer is here and beautiful weather. weddings are impending for many people we know and eventually for us. decisions about summer and ministries are coming up or have already occurred. and i see myself in a scary place of alot less accountability spiritually than ever before. And while i was reading that whole long thing, this song started playing on my computer (because a few minutes before, cody had given me this cd to listen to an everstaysred song, which i like that band sorta....and by sorta i mean i've been playing it in my car for a month) and it wasn't everstaysred b/c it's a compilation cd....it was sanctus real....a song i never heard and it was beautiful b/c i think it represents where i am right now.....
It's time for healing time to move on
It's time to fix what's been broken too long
Time to make right what has been wrong
It's time to find my way to where I belong
There's a wave that's crashing over me
And all I can do is surrender
(Chorus)
Whatever You're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but somehow there's peace
It's hard to surrender to what I can't see
but I'm giving in to something Heavenly
Time for a milestone
Time to begin again
Reevaluate who I really am
Am I doing everything to follow Your will
Or just climbing aimlessly over these hills
So show me what it is You want from me
I give everything I surrender...
To...
(Chorus)
Time to face up
Clean this old house
Time to breathe in and let everything out
That I've wanted to say for so many years
Time to release all my held back tears
Whatever You're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but I believe
You're up to something bigger than me
Larger than life something Heavenly
Whatever You're doing inside of me
It feels like chaos but now I can see
This *is* something bigger than me
Larger than life something Heavenly
Something Heavenly
It's time to face up
Clean this old house
Time *to* breathe in and let everything out
it's really funny to me how i can hear a song and the words mean alot more to me in HEARING the song, than just reading the words silently. esp. sanctus real. they are so emotional. so i think....instead of reading the lyrics up there....everyone should buy whatever cd has this song on it....it is called "whatever You're doing"
anyway. the best part that i liked, b/c that's what i was struggling with back in north carolina in 2006, was the,
"Time for a milestone
Time to begin again
Reevaluate who I really am
Am I doing everything to follow Your will
Or just climbing aimlessly over these hills
So show me what it is You want from me
I give everything I surrender..."
what i miss is my hippie attitude. but i think i was sounding so crazy at that time because there was no peace and I needed to follow Him to find that peace, and i needed to give everything to Him to have that peace and to break down the barriers between us that i had built in fear and doubt. And right now I know that I am where He wants me to be, and the question in my heart is not, "what do You want me to be doing" but "how can i do this Your way" and "am i doing everything to follow Your will, or just climbing aimlessly over these hills?" everyday is a hill. and it's easy for me to go through them.
ALSO. it makes me so happy to see what all He has done through Taffy's Hallmark in my life. wow. who knew....that that fleece, that 3-day-night, that that random phone call from brittany would end up like this. who knew that that strange summer proposition from nicole to work in the kitchen @ hickory cove would end up like this. who knew that sad, confusing, frustrating time of culture shock and no more lori and macaroni and sweetie #1, would end up like this. who knew that one frustration with the public school system in my awkward tweens would end up like this. who knew that one long bike ride would end up like this. who knew that one jump would send me here. who knew that that one crazy, inventing, job-hopping, entrepreneuring dad of my childhood would end up with me doing this. who knew that one long winter would end with so many mosquitoes....and yet also so much beautiful fresh wonderful spring/summer.
GOD DID.
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| i need to figure out what some realistic goals are for the summer. b/c i have too many i think to implement instantaneously. i am in self-improvement mode and it is slightly overwhelming when there are alot of things that i want to improve at once.
i talked to rachel yesterday (my counselor for school, no, not me...actually ANOTHER person named rachel in georgia...there's too many rachel's in the world.) and we decided that since i am braindead @ night (as far as studying and trying to comprehend financial things) after working all day, there MUST be another time of day that might possibly work....and after i was like "um....i don't think there is" we came up with a wonderful idea of me getting up early and studying like anhour&a1/2ish in the wee hours of the morning. rachel (other one) said that when she was in college she would get up @ 4:30 or something and study for hours.....she said that was slightly imbalanced and that maybe closer to daylight would be better....
so ok. today was day 1. it was good. and i feel so financial already.
also....i think i am going to decide to not-re-enroll with college plus at her suggestion and attempt to complete the well-set-up map that she has made me on my own with my own determination for the next yearish til i graduate from thomas edison. it's sorta scary b/c i feel like i really want someone calling me all the time to check up on me and see how i am doing and what i'm doing...and to ask questions when i don't know what to do for tests 'n' stuff....but i think i can do it. determination, rachel. diligence. the end of the tunnel is in sight. i feel like in july when my counselortime is over, i am like....REALLY taking control and making this happen like a grownup or something. AHHHHHHH.
also michelle (my old assistant manager that i love!) is enroute to pennsylvania w/the kosobucki's (however you spell it) to go to romania today. i'm so excited for her and for them and i think she is gonna be an amazing addition to their family and i think the Lord is going to do really cool things with her and for her in romania, however long she is there. but i have been missing her already for a month and i've been experiencing a hallmark with no-michelle and it is slightly reminiscent of other times that i've worked @ hallmark pre-michelle, but so different b/c i have the memory and the knowledge of what michelle-hallmark is/was.....snifff!!!!!!
ok. today my goal is to figure out what my goals are and to make them more realistic than the idealistic things i have in my head. i will try to narrow everything down and paperize it today. these goals may or may not make it to xangal format depending on the personal nature of some of them. i need to determine, discerningly, what is shareable and what is not. i'm a pretty shareable person though.....but i think that is bad sometimes....and i'm shareable to the point of finding out that people have actually read and paid attention to what i've shared and then i want it back...HAHAHAHA. i'm a indian giver. WHEW. lifelifelifelifeliflifelifelifelifelife.
"So the men said to her, "We will be blameless of this oath of yours which you have made us swear, unless, when we come into the land, you bind this line of scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you bring your father, your mother, your brothers, and all your father's household to your own home.." J217&18
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| so....i have this goal that i made in....april?? like maybe the beginning of april i think....to memorize the whole bible in my lifetime....i'm doin' ok....not exactly 2 verses a day like my goal....but this is joshua, and a very interesting/hard-to-memorize book.....but that's not my point....
the verse i've been thinking about the last day or two is about rahab...
"Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was on the city wall; she dwelt on the wall."
and i know not every version says it just that way, but the repetition hit me a little....especially, "she dwelt on the wall"....(just to let you know i have a fat, amazing study bible filled with everyone elses opinions/thoughts about the bible, given to me by my grandparents for my like 16th birthday or something.) and in my bible there is this little thing about rahab and the controversy about whether lying is good or bad and what rahab did, how do we justify it b/c she is said to have had faith and she is honored for that and becomes one of the few women mentioned in the lineage of Jesus in the NT.....and i read that.....and then started trying to memorize this verse and "she dwelt on the wall" was just filling my mind.
what does that even mean? she dwelt on the wall? i know it means her house was like part of the wall-ish.....but i've been thinking alot lately about decisions that people make and that i make and how our lives are sooooo filled with decisions in everything we do and they are....pretty important (most of them)....and i think rahab was dwelling on the wall like in a deeper way. She saw that the God of israel was the only true God and she decided to sorta take her life and the life of her household and put them in jeopardy for this, and allow these spys to stay at her house and hide them and proclaim to them that she knew that the Lord of Israel was the one true God.....she LIED to the king and his men, (treason), and she snuck the foreigners out after they had gone to pursue them. she was doing SOMETHING with the stalks of flax on her roof, like making baskets or whatever stalks of flax are used for after drying on the roof.....so she was like a businesswoman and was honestly trying to earn a living but she was also a harlot. My Bible says (in the opinions section) that probably she was a harlot b/c of the death of her husband or some misfortune that forced her into that lifestyle...but why do we have to justify it in our eyes? Sin=sin.....alot of times people have good reasons for sinning, from their perspective and sometimes from the perspective of anyone who knows the situation, but not from God's perspective. But even though she was on the fence, even though she DWELT on the wall, she saw God as the only true God. Even though the king of her country did not share the same allegiance and faith that she had, she chose to help the Israelites. Could God have conquered Jericho without her help? definitely. But did He honor her faith and her belief in Him while surrounded by a nation who didn't? yes.
And in the last week I've heard this verse like 2 or 3 different times from different things "today I have put before you life and good, and death and evil" and i started thinking about how Rahab had life and good and death and evil to choose between and she knew that Jericho was going to be destroyed, but we do too, and every day we are dwelling on the wall and we need to choose life and good or death and evil. And i wonder how many decisions are life and death, REALLY.....we will find out in the end, but i think alot of the smallest decisions we make everyday are life and death even.
I looked up the verses about choose life or death today and i'll put them all at the end of this b/c they are pretty interesting together but it is like a paragraph.....but it says "i have put before you life and good, death and evil, in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to keep his commandments, his statutes, His judgements..." so it wasn't like just that day, moses put before the israelites life and death, he was putting it before them EACH day b/c to love the Lord and to follow His commands, is life or death. Every single day we choose life and good or death and evil when we choose to glorify Him or to serve other gods like ourselves or money or whatever.....
i just wonder how small of decisions are life and death, really. I was trying to think of stupid decisions that we make....like small ones, like what to eat or what to wear, or whether to answer the phone in the middle of the night when you know it's carley and she wants you to drive her somewhere or do something ridiculous for her, or whether to drive somewhere or walk or whether to buy something or not.....and really....all of those things are life/death decisions......b/c you have to decide whether what you are doing in honoring God, whether you are loving him and following His commands in the decision you make....and who thinks, when they are sitting in a drivethru, "ok, Lord, I want to make a decision that will honor You." for me this is pretty real, but i never think that....but every single one of those little decisions changes your life. some change your life and your future MORE and some LESS, but they all do something, and your attitude about them changes everything.
this morning i went and walked in the park @ 8 with all the old people in windpants, and i stopped and just looked at the hundred-year-old trees everywhere (marathon park is amazingly beautiful) and i looked up as the sun hit all the trees from the same side at a 45 degree angle and i saw all these lumps and twists and differently placed branches and leaves and different buds and fruit and flowers on each one, and i thought about how through the life of each of those trees there was something that caused the twist of the trunk at that part, and the knot at that part and the dead branch on this side and the healthy, flowering branch on the other and it is forever etched into the image of that tree, it will bear the knot and the broken-off branch and the twists forever until it's life is over. They are all unique, but there are reasons for all of the aging and differences in all of these trees, and every person is unique in that way too, and all the decisions we make grow together to form who we are and what kind of character we would choose for ourselves, and it shows where our allegiance lies and what our lives revolve around.
i don't know. interestingness. decisions. decisions. decisions.
deuteronomy 30:11-20
“For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. It isnot in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil,
in that I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His
ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments,
that you may live and multiply; and the LORD your God will bless you in
the land which you go to possess. But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess. I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore
choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is
your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the
land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, to give them.”
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