I wasn’t going to do this quiz because I know everyone is doing it, but I just couldn’t resist. There’s nothing shocking here. I doubt anyone will fall out of their chair upon reading the results. It looks like Makeesha is the only one who shares my “humour”.

choleric
You are Choleric. Confident, strong willed, and
self-sufficient, you make a strong leader and
delegator. You are the type of person that gets
things done, and motivates others to do the
same. Though generally optimistic, you can be
driven by anger or revenge, and are at times
referred to as both unemotional or cruel.
Cholerics make excellent teachers, athletes,
and military professionals.

Ahhhhh (That’s a sigh of relief). I’m in a much clearer place of mind this morning. That’s a nice feeling.

I was able to go to sleep nice and early last night, which made for a much happier morning. I love waking up feeling rested. That’s an awesome feeling. Ironically, I prefer having that feeling early in the morning, because then I feel like I have a full day to use up. The problem is that I usually go to bed so late that I can only get that happy-morning-feeling around 8am That’d be a lot easier if I didn’t have kids who wake up sometime in the 6′s. I used to be such a night person, but since my kids are forcing me to be a morning person, I guess it makes sense to at least try to be a pleasant one.

I’m going to go clean up the house. I’m attempting to have my house clean by 10:45ish each day. Then I can have the afternoon to either deep clean or do fun stuff!

Bye everyone!

Thanks everyone for the comments! In a weird way, hearing your experiences helps me to understand my own

Tonight I’ve been thinking about what I want to do with my life. Not in a global “I want to save the world” or “I want to be a veterinarian” kind of way, but more as a matter of how I want to spend each minute… each second…

Joe’s grandmother is back home and preparing for death. She’s still completely mentally clear and I honestly cannot fathom the things that must be going through her mind. She seems to be anxious or anticipatory or scared of what is to come, since none of us know what it will really be like. The thought of it is just bigger than my brain can grasp.

As she gathers around with her children and grandchildren, she is preparing for her final moments of life. I started thinking tonight about how I would feel if I was suddenly in her place. Despite all of my fear of death (see previous entries), I am not at all prepared. I’m in a weird denial / obsession. If I was in her place, with days to live, I bet I’d wish that I could trade in the month worth of hours that I’ve spent on GCM this year and spend it with my kids or husband instead. I love GCM so much, just like I love running, bellydancing, programming, etc… but I guess I’m not good at understanding the balance between “good” and “best”. I think that God has done things through me and to me thanks to GCM, running, and ChristianPunks, please don’t misunderstand. I guess… I don’t know… I’m such a drastic person. I am so “all-or-nothing”. I’m not good at balance. I’m too passionate or something like that.

Well, thanks for listening to my random musings. I guess I’m just trying to sort this all out in my mind. I’ve just developed a cough in the past hour or so, and now I’m a bit freaked out. I definitely think I need to go pray. My mind is a bit mixed up…

Love ya’. Thanks for reading

Do you ever get a feeling like God is trying to teach you a lesson that you don’t neccessarily want to learn? That’s how I feel right now.

It seems like I’ve heard a lot of sermons and read a lot of Bible studies recently about the fact that suffering and blessing are very interrelated. For example, Mary received an amazing blessing by being the mother of Christ, yet she also had to deal with incredible pain. I can’t imagine how it’d feel if everyone hated your son and then murdered him. How painful! How horrible! Yet she was blessed. This was something that had to go along with the blessing of being the mother of Christ.

I get uneasy as I realize that this message seems to be coming at me from every angle. Is God trying to prepare me for something? I really wish that I was at a point to say “Bring on the pain! I want you to bless me and use me in any way possible!”, but my fraidy-cat heart is saying more like “God… I’m scared. I’m scared of pain and I kind of want to take the path of least resistance.” Its horrible. I know its horrible.

The only good thing about it is that it kind of makes me look forward to heaven where we won’t have suffering. Maybe this is how God is answering my prayers about my previous post (fear of death).

Sheesh. He never answers prayers the way that I would. Praise God for that though, because I would be a really sucky God.

Death is really creepy to me.

I know that we are to aim for the “…to die is gain” viewpoint, but I’m really not there yet. And honestly, I’m afraid that God will take me as soon as I get there. Then, the other part of me thinks that I need to get there just to truly live…

Our sermon this week was on death. We asked the members of our Life Group to share experiences they’ve had with death, and Joe and I were pretty much the only ones who have had any experience. That really shocked me. One other couple had a miscarriage, which is certainly a death, and several had extended family who died, but no one had experienced the up close, painful, robbing kind of death that Joe and I have. Joe lost his sister, both of his grandfathers, and his great grandmother. I’ve lost Nick, my grandmother and grandfather, and several friends growing up. I didn’t think we were that weird.

Joe’s paternal grandmother is about to die. He’s about to deal with all of this stuff all over again. She is in kidney failure and refusing dialysis. It’ll only be a few days. She made the choice to die, and that’s a first for us to be around. We’re used to death stealing people, and here is his grandma, who is choosing death. She doesn’t want a life on dialysis. I totally understand. I’ve seen my uncle go through it and its terrible. Still, I can’t even wrap my mind around being in a place where death will be right in my face like that. I can’t imagine having to choose to die immediately or in a few years. I can’t imagine choosing death and just waiting for it to happen in just a few short hours.

It makes me want to hyperventilate. I don’t like it at all.

ETA: Ironically, I was afraid to play this song around Joe when we were first dating. I would skip this track and another similar one when we listened to this album because it talks about dying on train tracks, and that’s how his sister died just a few months before we started dating. He had no idea until a year or two later when I let the song play (I hadn’t realized it was on) and then he figured out that I had been skipping it.

Your Personality Is
Guardian (SJ)

You are sensible, down to earth, and goal oriented.
Bottom line, you are good at playing by the rules.

You tend to be dominant – and you are a natural leader.
You are interested in rules and order. Morals are important to you.

A hard worker, you give your all at whatever you do.
You’re very serious, and people often tell you to lighten up.

In love, you tend to take things carefully and slowly.

At work, you are suited to almost any career – but you excel in leadership positions.

With others, you tend to be polite and formal.

As far as looks go, you are traditionally attractive. You take good care of yourself.

On weekends, you tend to like to do organized activities. In fact, you often organize them!
The Three Question Personality Test

Honestly, that’s pretty accurate. Not bad for only having 3 questions. Much better than that stupid boyish one The only part I’m not sure about it where it says that with others I am “polite and formal”. I guess I am with strangers, but definitely not with my friends. The part about me organizing the weekends is funny, considering that it is SO true.

We went to the apple farm / pumpkin patch today. It was a nice way to finish “A” week. The apples are really good, and I’m not typically an apple person.

I’m making pumpkin bread with puree that I made from the 20lb monster of a pumpkin that we picked. I could hardly carry it. I’m sure I looked pretty funny in my skirt, corralling 2 kids, carrying a bag of apples, and desperately grasping that silly pumpkin. It kind of felt like I was pregnant. That’s birth control. I was seriously uncomfortable. Of course, my dd insisted that she hold my hand, so I had to hold my purse, camera, apples, and pumpkin all in one hand. Nice.

Oh, and we went with a friend and I was watching her oldest son for a little bit in the pumpkin patch. Some old lady came up behind me, saw the 3 kids (assuming they were all mine) and said “So, what do you do in your spare time?” Har. Har. That made me wonder what people would say if I had another. I suppose I should brace myself for rude comments, eh?

Well, the animal alphabet is almost over, so I think I’ll go play with the kids Talk to ya later!

You Are 60% Boyish and 40% Girlish
You are pretty evenly split down the middle – a total eunuch.
Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes.
You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don’t actively fight them.
You’re just you. You don’t try to be what people expect you to be.
How Boyish or Girlish Are You?
Dude, it appears as though I am one confused girl… I would just like to say that their ideas of boyish and girlish are really quite offensive. For example, I’m boyish because I am shameless, think I’m right, would rather live with interesting, messy people rather than boring, clean people, I curse, I consider myself “firm”, and I think brains will get me farther than looks. Hel-lo? Its boyish to be less focused on outward appearances? Yeah, I really believe that one

Blogthings has some interesting ideas for polls, but their writers are… less than stellar. Sorry, but its true. I guess that’s the boyish, “always think I’m right”, “totally shameless” part of me talking

Most of my wardrobe is pink. I squeal at bugs. I cry in movies. I hate guns. I prefer baths. I practice yoga. I listen to folk music. I iron laundry. I paint my nails. I wear skirts almost everyday. Doesn’t this count for anything, blogthings?!

Well, I’m off to go shower and BLOW MY LONG HAIR OUT. IS THAT BOYISH?! HUH, BLOGTHINGS?! Sorry, I promise I’ll get over this soon. Blogthings has just messed up my gender identity for the day…

Your Kissing Purity Score: 49% Pure
You’re not one to kiss and tell…

But word is, you kiss pretty well.
Kissing Purity Test
Well, I don’t like to brag…

That’s a pretty steamy cartoon there. He looks like he’s going to bite her like a vampire. I knew a guy like that in college… He’s the reason for my answer to the “kissed someone who you didn’t want to kiss” checkbox.

I’m looking for some good aromatherapy and natural cleaning websites. Anyone know of some good ones? I’ve been googling and finding info, but I’m sure there’s some underground ones that are awesome. Comment if you know one!

Later!

Tonight I attended my first CBS (Community Bible Study) class. It was really awesome. At first I started getting nervous because I was significantly younger than most of the people around me, but I decided to focus on learning from my elders, and I really feel like God spoke to me before, during, and after the class. I really feel like this is a place where I am supposed to be.

Before the class, I met a woman wearing a Chick-fil-A uniform. I believe that God crossed our paths as a way of giving me a sign that I needed to be able to share the story of what happened to Nick. I kind of tried to ignore it for a minute, but then started preparing myself and looking for the moment when God would want me to open up. A point came in the study about how God answers prayers in ways that we’d never imagine and also about how God brings suffering, even to the faithful. I felt a tug and knew it was time to share. I talked about how I had often prayed for Nick and that in the year after his murder, I found a prayer journal and saw that all of my prayers for him had been answered. Prayers about his girlfriend, his mom, his family in general… God had answered them all, but certainly not in a way that I would’ve ever asked for. I became a bit choked up, but it was good.

The CBS lesson went on to talk about how we respond when we feel God leading us to do something. It was cool how that worked out.

Anyways, the whole class was great and I feel like I have a lot to meditate on this week.

Love you all! Thanks for all of your sweet comments. They mean so much to me I think I’m getting incoherent, so I’m off to bed!

Sorry, I think I’ll have that song stuck in my head for the next 10 years. My kids are OBSESSED. Dora is soooooo “last week”. All the cool kids like Diego. Duh.

I started our little homeschool curriculum today. The kids are totally psyched. We’ve eaten pancakes shaped like “A”s, colored, sang songs, read Bible stories, recited poetry, thrown bean bags, and made posters. Life is grand! Matt was so impressed with my pancakes. He even had to go tell Joe.

I was pleasantly surprised last night when I was able to do my sword routine with a book balanced on my head. My next step is just to get a sword. Joe is skeptical. That’s a nice way to put it. He’s supportive, but skeptical.

I am about to go to the library. My Martin Luther book is overdue and I’m not done yet. I just found it (used) on a website for $1.95 and free shipping, so I ordered it so that I can finish reading it. Its really good. I’m just too busy these days to finish a book in a few weeks.

Gotta go – the kids want to build a tower with blocks!