So, I think I know part of why I have been so inspired to blog. I simply am working so much on this copmuter on my homework that I need a break to think about things in my life, not just crank through the homework. Plus, all this work for this class is built around deep analysis and discussion, and so my brain is getting a full workout around the idea of critical thinking, so I am thinking critically about many things in my life. Not just the global competitiveness I am learning this semester... :)

So anyways, I am going to change things up tonight with posting a prayer on here. I have prayed a prayer like this many times before, but I believe that no prayer is wasted or too small for God to listen.

Oh God,

Help me change my ways. Help me see the injustice and the part I play.
Please give me the courage and insight to remedy it, to redeem this world in any measure I can.

Help me remember we are created equal - not one better than I, and not I better than one.

I need you, Lord, to guide my every step. To protect me from snares. To love me when I fail. To help me rise when I fall. And to trust in you for my life supply.

Patience is something I need, Lord. Right now, and every day forth. Help me remember that your time is the right time. When goals and ideals change, help me to accept them with grace and dignity.

And most importantly, help me to love. Even when it means getting hurt. Even when it makes no sense to reach out to that person. When it is draining of time, energy, and financial resources. And help me to love most especially when I don't feel like it.

I want to be more like you, and I cannot be more like you unless I am willing to trade my life and my desires and my ambitions for the things of your heart, your desires, and your ambitions for my life.

Amen, Lord.

Blogging is back! I can't believe how inspired I have been to blog lately. It's great!

Yesterday at church, some divine intervention was going on. I saw a woman I met in April at the Women's Retreat, and she is also adopted, like me. She pulls me aside and says "I've had news!" See, when I met her, she was finding her birth mom, and I shared my story with her. And now, it turns out that she never goes to the 11am service, espeically in the Studio, and yet here we both were, recognizing that God is in the details. We needed those moments to connect and share over something so big and life defining.

This past April 20 was actually the 2 year anniversary of my birth mom's passing. For those of you who don't know, I am adopted, and when I finally went to find my birthmom, she passed away from breast cancer 3 months before I sent my letter to her.

It was really, really hard. I mean, like, "can I still trust that God is good and has a perfect plan for my life" hard. I came out the other side (after many weeks of turmoil) with a stronger faith than ever, but every April 20 is still hard. Carrie left behind 3 other daughters who I think about often. My beautiful half-sisters are left without a Mom at very crucial times in their lives. They were 16, 18 and 19 when she went Home. And today I am thinking of those girls so much. I so very much wish I could be there, I wish I could be a mother figure and take care of them. All I can do is be the older sister they didn't know for 23 years, who lives many states away, speaks with a weird accent, and who is really hard to get ahold of. It sucks.

Yet I know I cannot replace their Mom, and I know I am not emotionally, spiritually or physically strong enough to be a mother figure to these 3 wonderful girls. All I can do is be the big sister, and I can pray for them. Prayer was a crucial part of my upbringing, and a big reason why I am who I am today. And I can love them. Maybe from many states away, but I can love them. And I can surrender my desire to make their lives better and always be there for them, because I can't do either. And that is a tough Isaac for me to give up - I always want to take care of those who are hurting. And believe me, they are hurting.

So to my new friend who is in the throes of meeting and connecting with her birth family, may God give you the strength to endure the emotional drain you will experience, may he give you the strength to pour out your love that they may see Jesus, and may he surround you in His love, his precious, perfect love.

Tell me baby, what's your story. Where you come from and where you wanna go this time.

Stadium Arcadium - amazing. That's all I am going to say about the latest RHCP album - I cannot get enough! Anyways, one of my favorite songs, Tell me Baby, got me thinking about how non-Christian music can actually be quite a spiritual experience for me & many others. For instance, a couple of the lines in this song hit on every person's desire to know and be known. I want to tell the world my story, I want the world to care about that story. God is crafting together the story of His world, and I am a part of it. A very, very, VERY small part, but a part none the less. I want to do all I can to help redeem this world before my time here is over.

And it got me thinking about love. And BTW, love does tend to be the one topic I think about and dialogue about most. What does it truly mean to love? At the heart of it, it can mean knowing someone at their very core and still accepting them and not trying to control them or change them. So many women I know struggle with that - wanting to change or control their guy, or their children, or their boss etc. What is it that drives us to that? It certainly isn't love. Or is it a skewed view of love? I think back to what I learned love looked like while being raised in the church, and it looked alot like not making mistakes, always volunteering to be part of every activity, always smiling (God forbid you ever had a bad day and felt frustrated or sad or slighted). Love was conditional. And I am here to tell you, friends, that I don't care if my entire life is spent alone (aka not married), I am going to work every day on loving people, including myself, for who they are, not what they do.

So that's it for now. Back to the homework, and to my, you guessed it, fast food. :)

Fast Food.

This seems to be everything I eat these days. I was a runner all through High School and college, topping out my weight at 120 senior year of Calvin. For those of you who know me and are reading this, I can't believe I am going to admit this, and be very afraid...but I now weigh 135. That is 15 pounds in the past 3 years! YIKES! And yet, I will sit down tonight, well, no, I will go through the drivethrough tonight at Arby's and bite into some delicious, "I didn't have to make it or clean up the dishes" food. I do this because I have made myself too busy to go grocery shopping or make a meal. Actually, it's more that I consider the other things more important than taking care of myself, so therefore I choose to use the time to do that instead of grovery shopping or cooking. Man, why is it that we feel the need to push ourselves to the borders of exhaustion just to feel like we are accomplishing something?

I mean, every time someone hurts me and I refuse to give in to bitterness/resentment/revenge, aren't I accomplishing something? Isn't Christ's work in me taking place? And when I take a quiet moment to talk to God and tell Him why it's hard for me to understand why we let so much 'bad' into our lives, when we see the consequences of our sin and still choose it over Him, aren't I accomplishing something?

My problem is, I see an opportunity in, well, every opportunity. A chance to welcome a new friend at work, and make him feel special. A chance to spend time with my girl friends who build me up and crack me up and lift me up. A chance to make someone smile. A chance to challenge the status quo, to let people into my life when our culture tells us "if you don't let them in, they can't hurt you". And all that leads me to say YES to everything offered to me, and not only that, but to say YES and How Can I Help Organize That? I was doing so well with the boundaries, but I think I have killed it for this week. Boundaries 0 Old Habits 5

But, thats OK. Redemption, growth, maturity...these all take time. I am learning this week from these over-commitment mistakes, and will do my best to protect myself for next week.

In random news, my lawn is coming back! I've managed to keep it green this summer and it's not looking too shabby! But hey, anyone who wants to mow it for me on Saturday...I'll buy ya lunch! haha Can you tell I love mowing? :)

-Melin

Blah.

That is how I feel this morning - the alarm went off and my head hurt so bad! It shouldn't really - I went to bed at my "summer class" bedtime, after enjoying a wonderful evening with a new friend of mine, but I feel so blah right now. Today could be tough to get through at work.

Not much else to say. I've been learning alot lately about not letting people have too muhc power or influence over me. It's easy for me, especially in "more than friends" situations, to let however that person responds to me to define my emotions in everything else. It's not a healthy habit, so I am working to break that. So far, Melinda 0.5 and Old Habit 3. :)

But God restores and He corrects, and He is doing both with me right now. So while somewhat painful and somewhat embarassing, I am grateful He cares enough to work on me in this area.
-M

Hope.

How important is that word to my faith? "These three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." Straight from the Man himself, and hope is one of the top three.

But here is what I am finding most interesting as I get older...I used to view hope as only hope in the 'big things'. I have hope that I will spend eternity with God. I have hope that my grandpa will not die this year. I have hope her cancer will not spread.

But what about hope in the little things? I mean, I woke up today, ready to feel sorry for myself (it's true - yesterday was horrible and I wanted to pout about it today) and yet I strangely felt...hope. Hope that today would somehow, even if only slightly, be better than yesterday. Hope that simply because I am a Jesus-follower, it's OK if life throws me curveballs and it's even OK if I can't handle them all....because there is hope in simply learning to see Jesus in everything. There is even hope in, simply, hoping. Read that one again. There is hope in hoping.

So today I wish for you, my friends, hope. Hope in the big things, and hope in the small things. Hope simply for the sake of hope.

Small Victories.

Do you know how important those are? I was thinking about it last night and this morning when I woke up...I conquered a very small thing last night, but it is this kind of conquering that makes way for self-discipline to become a character trait, not just something I do every once in a while.

Anyways, i sit here at work, been here for 45 minutes, and I am still wrestling with the same small thing: but knowing that again, if I can force myself to just bite the bullet and take care of what needs to get done, that again I am one-step closer to the character I want to have.

-M

So after 3-4 months, I'm back. I took a blogging hiatus, I guess. Just found that sometimes I realy enjoying putting my thoughts out there for the world to see, and other times, well, I just don't! But today seemed like a good day to put one up.

Because see, only maybe 1 -2 people will read it, and that makes me feel better. Becuase I don't like complaining - I don't like to be that person. Especially when it is about a situation I have placed myself in, but here goes....I am sick of school right now. Not the whole MBA program, just this one particular summer class. It is 6:12 am and I am headed off to work after this to finish up as much homework as I can before 8am, only to kick it back off at 5:30pm, and I worked on it yesterday for pete's sake! (who is this pete we refer to, anyways?) I am just drained, and I sometimes feel invisible. As though my friends don't understand how busy this season of my life is, and that I do have to make small sacrifices sometimes. As though they don't understand how tough the classes are, or how hard it is to still at work for 8.5 hours a day and then sit through a 3.5 hour class! I don't do well sitting still, so it is a super test of my mental ability to force myself through it.

Anyways, I know I put myself in the situation. Though it's fair to say that I didn't know this class would be so much work, and that I didn't know I was reaching a burn-out point....but now that I'm here, it's a bit lonely.

But then, think about Jesus. I wonder if he ever had times where he told God "I didn't realize it was going to be this much work" or "I didn't know how much these people would just take, take, take" or "I'm exhausted, and I feel so invisible. No one but You gets what I am going through", maybe even "It's a bit lonely".

I know I am not the only one to have felt this way. We all want people to truly see us, for all that we are. To appreciate our lives, and what we're about. I know I have failed my friends in the past at appreciating who they fully are, and so through all this I am hoping to become more sensitive to these needs of others, and to be a better friend.

That's if I can make it through these next 4 weeks....
:)
-Melin