Month: April 2015

Places I DON’T Want To Visit

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To be honest, the short response to this post’s title is:  nowhere.  My modest goal in life is to visit every continent in the world, and hopefully every country.  However, since I know this is pretty impossible, I’ve made a hierarchy of of destinations, and some fall lower on the list than others.  For instance, I don’t have much desire to go:

rainforest-rainforest-32472978-1024-7681.  Anywhere along the equator, aka rainforesty places.  This includes northern South America, mid-Africa, and East Asia.  I just…ugh. Hot humid places with massive bugs?  It doesn’t immediately appeal to me.  Granted, I have learned that I can fall in love with places I didn’t expect.  And I mean, look at that picture.  Clearly I’m an idiot.  It’s gorgeous.  But I just keep imagining sweat continuously dripping into my eyes as I swat away hand-sized mosquitoes.  Continue reading →

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

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Apparently, I’m really into unapologetically other mythical creatures.  I’m glad we’re trending away from nice vampires and friendly werewolves.  The fun of fantasy comes from the collision of two cultures that are truly dangerous to each other.  Black’s faeries are wild, passionate, and creepy.  Fairfold is a place of changling babies, drowned tourists, and missing persons.  Despite this, the humans are tentatively accepting of their faerie-surrouned world…until the sleeping prince wakes up and everything falls to pieces.

I love Black’s high-stakes world of debts repaid, female knights, and sibling support.  The Darkest Part of the Forest was entirely engrossing from page 1.  Hazel was a super cool protagonist whose eccentricities are fleshed out as the book progresses?  What makes a girl desperate to become a knight while kissing a bunch of boys on the side?  She’s not a Mary Sue character–she’s got reasons for her actions, and I loved seeing them explored.  Her brother Ben is also amazing.  I really enjoyed the gender swap dynamic wherein the older brother feels secondary to his younger, battle-ready sister.  Continue reading →

My Brief Obsession with Soccer

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I’ve never been very into televised sports (Olympics obviously exempted), but in the summer of 2014, the stars aligned and I became intensely invested in the World Cup.  That was the summer that Liz and Mallory and I were having a Senegal reunion, and I was annoyed by how often our text planning devolved into the two of them talking about soccer.  In a desperate attempt to fit in, I agreed to watch the USA vs. Portugal match.  I knew a girl I follow on tumblr was fanatical about “her son” Christiano Ronaldo, so I rooted for Portugal.  Although they lost, I was hooked on the game.

It was a perfect setup.  Liz was the soccer aficionado who could explain offside rules and eloquently describe the beauty of the long choreography that led to a goal.  Mallory was the man appreciator who responded “YESSS” to my texts of “take off your shirt!!”  I was particularly in love with Ronaldo (albeit briefly because of Portugal’s loss) and Mesut Ozil, who someone described as a big-eyed orphan boy, and my heart was gone.  Continue reading →

Bible College Fight Club

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When I was twelve years old, I fell in love with Fight Club.  The plot blew my teenage brain, Brad Pitt was overwhelmingly attractive, and the anarchist violence appealed to something some dark part of me.  I watched the movie four times in a week before my mom realized the content of my latest obsession, and she forbade me from seeing it again.  It was too late.  The movie was deeply ingrained in my psyche.

Fourteen years later, I sat on my bed at a Bible College in Greece when my American roommate said she was going downstairs to a fight club.  Continue reading →

The Signature of Jesus by Brennan Manning

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Many books that describe “how to follow Jesus” read like a to-do list.  Pray, read your Bible, fellowship with believers, confess sins, practice accountability, etc etc.  Manning’s book does none of those things!  It’s as if he really believes and understands that Christianity is a relationship with God that involves interaction and emotion.  Instead of checking off spiritual disciplines, Manning tells his story, detailing moments in his faith when he felt close to God, when God seemed distant, when he was overwhelmed by the reality of Jesus’s love for him, Brennan.

The Signature of Jesus presents a high calling to a life of sacrifice and discipline, but Manning makes it sound not only possible, but desirous.  And that’s the difference.  We don’t do things to please God or to make ourselves feel closer to Him.  We seek out God and receive Him and feel His love for us–and then we do things.

I love everything Manning has written.  I think he is such an important voice to listen to, especially for perfectionistic task-driven people like me.  Continue reading →

Good Friday

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Tonight is Good Friday.  I asked to get off work early so I could go to church, where everyone wore black in anticipation of our mourning.  Our service was somber, lights dimmed, people hushed.  People read the story of Jesus’s arrest, trial, and murder, not as a skit, but as something more than a recitation.  The story was interspersed with music, sometimes performed by a choir, by the congregation, by a soloist.

I’ve been learning about the value of walking through Holy Week one day at a time.  Too often we jump to Easter, because it is easier to focus on good news and hope and life than to let ourselves sit with disappointment, rejection, fear, and death.  But I think it is valuable to walk with Jesus and put ourselves in the shoes of those who knew him, listened to him, trusted in him, and watched him die.  Continue reading →

Holy Week

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I often forget to celebrate Holy Week.  Sometimes this is for amazing reasons–like a visiting friend who brings me so much joy.  Sometimes this is for dumb reasons–like being anxious about the future and how to make hard decisions.  And I think God is patient with me, understanding my distractions, waiting for me to realize the gift He’s given the Church in walking through Holy Week year after year after year.

On Palm Sunday, we celebrate Christ as humble King, entering the city not on a military horse but on a plodding donkey.  At my church, we walked down the aisle with palm branches, laid them on the alter, and took Communion from our elders.  We were encouraged to symbolically lay down something along with the palm branch, and I gave up control.  Or rather, for one moment I gave up control, hoping that God would honor that fleeting moment of trust and see my heart that is scared and doubtful but so desperate to lean on Him.  Then I took the bread and the wine, looking back at what Jesus did for the world so that I can look forward to what He will do when He returns.  In all this, Christ is King.  He is in control.  Continue reading →

Rachel Held Evans Addresses Abuse and the Church

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I spent the morning of my 27th birthday listening to Rachel Held Evans lead two conference sessions–the first on Gender Equality and the Church, the second on Abuse and the Church.  Three hours later, as we walked out the door, my mom said, “We should do something fun for your birthday!”

Looking at her in confusion, I said, “That was fun.  I can’t think of any other way I would rather spend my birthday.”  Continue reading →

No April Fool’s Prank Here

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I thought about pulling some kind of April Fool’s Prank on my blog.  Maybe I would reveal that Greece wasn’t happening or Surprise:  I’m Pregnant with Triplets or this whole time I’ve been a robot posing as a confused human female.

But no.

I don’t really like April Fool’s.  Partly because the holiday often devolves into “I Just Wanted an Excuse to Lie to You” or “Why Aren’t You Laughing at this Mean Prank?”  But mostly because I’m so gullible.  I fall for everything all the time.  I like to think this means I’m very trusting, but I think it also means I’m a little bit dumb.  So in the spirit of do-to-others-what-you-want-them-to-do-to-you, I won’t be playing any pranks today.  Enjoy a totally normal first day of April.

Okay, but there’s totally a dark side of me that loves pranks–got any good ones?  Either pulled by OR on you?  Leave a comment and let me know!