And I Thought I Had A Full Year...

My grandma took me out to breakfast this morning. I ate, quite possibly, the biggest breakfast on the face of the earth. And I had a really good time.
We talked a lot about school, and I was reminded again just how easy we Americans have it. My grandma said that in Indonesia you are required to take twenty-one different subjects. Twenty-one!!! You have to take French, German, and English. Have to. After two years, you're allowed to drop either French or German, but you still have to take English and one other language. My grandma told me that when she went to school, they didn't have books. Only the teacher did. So the teacher would write it all out on the blackboard and you would have to copy it down. And then she said that the tests were really hard.
Really hard. As in, sit down and the question asks "What happened in 1776?" and you have four hours to write everything that happened in 1776. All over the world. Every continent and country. How many of you could do that?

...*Cricket, cricket*...

Yeah, me either.


And so then she said that once you got to your junior year in high school you would decide what you wanted to do with your life. There were three options. A, B, and C.
A's were into history and language. (That's what my grandma chose)
B's were into math and science stuff. Doctors, lawyers, engineers.
C's were the ones who would grow up and be teachers or something like that.
And so you would chose, A, B, or C, and then you would take classes that were specifically designed for that choice.

...So...does this make you feel like a whimp for complaining? Because that's how I feel right about now.

I'm Dreaming Of A...

White Christmas!

Only 99 days, 11 hours, and someodd minutes until

Christmas!

And this is going to be a good one. I can just feel it.


I can't wait till

Christmas!

Because my favorite day of the year is

Christmas!

And I am just so very excited for

Christmas!

That I can hardly wait until

Christmas!



And, now stores are already starting to sell Christmas! things. Because even they can't deny how great Christmas! really is! I'll even give them the benefit of the doubt and say they don't care about how much money they make selling Christmas! decorations, and Christmas! presents.

Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!

Can you tell I'm just a little excited for


Christmas!?

Annoying Faith

"I am beginning to understand that faith is not the way around pain, it is the way through pain. Faith doesn’t get rid of the opposition, it invites it over for dinner. Faith doesn’t give you the winning point at the last second, it ties the game and sends you into overtime. Faith doesn’t give you the solution, it forces you to find it. Faith doesn’t teach you at the moment, it teaches in retrospect. Faith doesn’t provide a net to fall into when your fingers are about to give way as you hang suspended over the cliff, faith gives your fingers the strength to hang on just a little longer.
In other words, faith doesn’t do anything when it’s doing something. Faith doesn’t change anything when it’s changing things. Faith doesn’t make a difference when it’s making a difference. Faith makes itself known in life’s difficulties by making the difficult more difficult. Faith doesn’t comfort, it discomforts by forcing us to recognize its unwelcome presence. It is a nuisance, really, an interruption when we don’t want to be interrupted. It gets in our faces and reminds us that it is not irrelevant, even though it seems irrelevant. Faith is the annoying recognition that demands us to take our relationship with Christ seriously, when taking it seriously doesn’t seem to matter. It is God shouting to us in our circumstance, "Faith in Me does matter; you figure out how!" It is the persistent, nagging presence that feels like an absence."

-An excerpt from "Annoying Faith" by Mike Yakonelli.