falling streamers and pointless champagne.

I am sad. Normally, I'm really not a sad person. But the past couple of days, I have been sad. I'm ready for the new year to start. But really, when you think about it, nothing is going to change. It's just like birthdays. Your birthday comes and goes and nothing really happens - you just feel older, look older, and feel the pressure to maintain looking 25 or younger. Time just keeps going on. Life keeps marching on. Even when things happen that are sad and earth shattering for some, "the world spins madly on," as The Weepies would put it. The new year will come. I'll wake up on January 1st, and I won't feel any different. I will break the resolutions that I make. I will fail and probably fail miserably at the new exercise program or "eat healthy" promise I will make to myself. But that's okay. Because this is not my home. There won't be any pain or crying or failing where my real home is. People won't hurt, people won't die, and there won't be any sadness. I'm ready for Heaven. This year's resolution won't be about dieting or saving money or believing I can be a better person. It will be about thinking eternally, and living life so I can store treasures in my real home. It will be about pleasing the One who is preparing a place for me to rest. One who wipes my tears, counts the hairs on my head, and whispers to my heart - no matter what time of year - This one is Mine.

flossing my life

I went to the dentist the other day. I hate going to the dentist. It stresses me out, and I have an abnormal fear of the dentist coming in with a long needle, dripping with some anesthesia, and saying, "I'm sorry, but you have a cavity. We must drill. Here, have some Novocaine." Needle goes in and I cry out in agony. This has never happened to me, but I'm convinced it will some day.

Anyways, I went in. I like my dentist's office. The room is bright and cheery with pictures of happy people because they don't have gingivitis or plaque. Their teeth are abnormally white because "They love their local dentist", and the pictures give me an odd feeling that makes me think - I might look that good when I get out of the chair. They have a television hanging from the ceiling which is always turned to ABC Family so you can watch reruns of "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" or "Step By Step", while they scrape the crap off of your teeth.

Disclaimer: I'm not sure if they call the people that clean your teeth nurses or technicians, but it took two tries for me to spell "technicians" right, so I'm going to go with nurse.

The nurse started cleaning my teeth. It took - cue "Sandlot" kid voice - FOREVER. I watched one and a half episodes of "Sabrina" before she started the polishing process. Then it got me thinking, Wow. I have a lot of plaque. Maybe I should start flossing more often. I know that's gross, but this story ends up being redemptive - promise. Then I took the flossing idea way farther than it probably should've been taken, but oh well. Paul/Jesus tells me that I should take my thoughts captive. That is flossing my brain. I floss my brain to prevent the thoughts from taking hold. However, I've just been brushing. The thoughts come, but I don't take them captive. I don't necessarily act on them, but the thoughts remain and build up, just like my nasty plaque, and then Jesus, the ever so patient dentist, has to come and scrape away my sinful thought life and it takes awhile to get back to normal. He doesn't mind - that's what He loves to do - but He would be pretty excited if I kept "flossing" so the crap wouldn't build up.

I'm trying to apply this spiritually. To remind myself to take my thoughts captive, I'm keeping my trial size box of floss in my jacket pocket. I also floss before I go to bed. Nice.

Side note: I started wearing my retainer again because I wanted to take my mouth to the next level. I tried to think of a cool spiritual metaphor for that, but then I'd be trying to be cool and spiritual and want people to think "Wow, she's cool. She applies her pink, sparkly retainer back to Jesus in a way that applies to my life too! I want to be in her club." That's not going to happen. And I don't need to try hard, because that's, well, quite fake and not honest. SO all I have to say about retainer is - my teeth hurt like poop.

"rum pum pum pum" says the little drummer boy.

I love Christmas. I love the smells and the lights and the family activities. When I say family, I don't mean extended family. Not that I don't love my extended family...I do tremendously. It is just that things get a little stressful when I go to my grandmother's house one night and then to my grandfather's house (whom she is no longer married to) the next night. Same people, different grandparent. Gets a little weird.

Anyways, I love Christmas.


Another thing I love (when I can't get to Starbucks and get a 6-pump, grande, Pumpkin Spice Latte) is hot chocolate. I love it. It warms my body. Makes me feel happy inside. Last night my mom and I decided to be spontaneous and drive to Target to buy the new Josh Groban Christmas CD. I was so very excited. On our way home, we decided that we were going to get our pajamas on and listen to it by the fire. AH! It felt like Christmas. What an amazing feeling. I had these visions of mom and I crying by the fire together, wrapped up in a big quilt, enjoying the effortless Josh serenading us with praises to Baby Jesus.

That is not what transpired.

We got home. Changed clothes. I decide to make hot chocolate to complete my Christmas vision. The only kind we had was a can of Crate & Barrel White Hot Chocolate mix. Well, I figured it was Crate & Barrel so it had to be good. Not so much. It tasted like hot milk with sugar in it. (Which, I guess, is exactly what hot chocolate really is. But that is besides the point.) I had to pour it out, which made me sad. Mom sat on the couch with a magazine. I sat in the recliner and pulled out my Child Development and Psychology homework. Wasn't quite the Christmas vision that had conjured itself up in my head, but that's okay. Then, "The Little Drummer Boy" came on. It is simply the most beautiful Christmas arrangement I've ever heard. I felt like it just kept getting better and better. And THEN they added the bagpipes. I mean, really. You can't get much better than that. All in all, it still felt like Christmas. And now I know more about children's fine motor development skills from ages 5-8.

the corpse bride

She loves to dance. Her dress flows around her as she spins around in ecstasy. She cannot wait to be married, and adjusts her veil and dress obsessively. Everything must be perfect. The flowers, the church, the guests - nothing can be out of place. She loves to walk through the woods at night and dreams of her love. Sometimes, she hears her wedding march in the forest and thinks it is her imagination. But it sounds so real. It is so real. She walks down the path overtaken by leaves and roots, pretending it is her aisle. She holds a bouquet of wild flowers to complete her dream. Everything becomes hopeful - the wedding is almost here. Time to walk to the chapel!

"Oh, wait," she sighs. "I'm dead."

Dun, dun, dun. This is the corpse bride.

Last night, I did not watch this movie. But I had this image in my head. I was writing a piano composition, for my audition to the music school, and this story popped into my head. The piece is very melancholy - haunting, actually - and it becomes hopeful, and then she realizes she is dead. And it is melancholy once more. I love the story. I love the composition. I hope that listeners can hear the rise and fall of the corpse bride. No pun intended. When I make it the theme for the academy award-winning movie that I'll compose, I hope you - my delightful readers - will remember the story of the corpse bride. Most of all, remember that feeling of, "Oh, wait. I'm dead."

college: time to really live it up?

"Those four years were the best of my life."
"Don't let it slip away, college is where you have fun and meet people."

That may be true for some people. It is not true for me. I enjoy the age I am at right now. I enjoy the fact that I am kind of on my own. I do not enjoy the fact that I live in a dorm room. That I am forced to eat in my bed because there is no other place to sit down. I don't like that at 3:30am I am awoken by the oh-so-drunken cries of the sorority sisters all over the hall screaming, "OH MY GOSH, BROOKE! WHY ARE YOU NAKED?!?!" *GIGGLE, GIGGLE, GIGGLE* Or when I hear rhythmic smacks against my walls above and beside me from premarital sexual intercourse occurring. I don't appreciate the loud rap music that booms against my window at night. Or the dump truck that rolls in at 8am sharp - every morning - to get rid of the stinky trash in the stinky dumpster outside my building's door. I don't like that I am awoken by someone else's alarm every morning. I don't like that I have to wear shoes in the shower. Or freeze in frightened alarm when I hear a male voice booming in front of my curtain, "Hey babe, which shower do I go into?" In that case, I don't like having to hastily put on my robe, pretend that I am not naked and dripping wet, and hurry out of the shower while some 20-something is ogling at the girl in the short, blue robe.

But then, I think about how blessed I am. I can go to college. I am getting an education. I can live on campus. I am not drunken naked girl. Then, I feel a little better about my college experience.

2010, how I await for your arrival, though.

of fallen leaves and twinkle lights.

I love cold. I love the smell that you can only smell on a frigid night. I love when you can see your breath, and the stars twinkle like they are winking down at you. I love sitting outside, wrapped up in a blanket, and then looking down at my hands and seeing how red and chapped they are. But they are numb, so it doesn't really matter that they are chapped. I love walking on crunchy leaves that have fallen from their little homes in the trees. I love watching the stars fall across the sky and making silly wishes on them.

What I really love is enjoying these things, and then realizing that the same thing that created me has also created my favorite fallen leaves and twinkle lights. Then I think about this.

If I was the only person on the world, Jesus would die for just me. He would do it all over again, just because He loves me that much. I think that this fact transcends our salvation, though. If I were the only person on earth, He would still create a beautiful world for me to live in. He wouldn't leave out the different trees and stars and seasons. He would create them all so I could enjoy them. The main reason why He created the world as He did was to bring glory to Him. But I think He wanted us to enjoy His glory. That's why I love fall. Because I love God. I see His handiwork in this earth. Fallen leaves and twinkle lights speak my heart language. They make me feel special. Because they remind me that Jesus delights in me because He loves me. The stars fade, but new ones are reborn. The leaves fall, but they grow back. You can see Christ's resurrection story in nature. You can see how we are like those old naked trees before Jesus gets a hold of us. Then we are transformed and are turned into beautiful trees with blossoms and full of life. "Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow out within him."

16The trees of the LORD drink their fill,
The cedars of Lebanon which He planted,
17Where the birds build their nests,
And the stork, whose home is the fir trees.
18The high mountains are for the wild goats;
The cliffs are a refuge for the shephanim.
19He made the moon for the seasons;
The sun knows the place of its setting.
32He looks at the earth, and it trembles;
He touches the mountains, and they smoke.
33I will sing to the LORD as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.

-Psalm 104: 16-19, 32-33

grace is my middle name.

The other day, I was sitting in my inappropriate and obnoxious Earth Science class. Quizzes were being handed out by my highly inept professor who fervently believes that cursing equals getting respect from students. As she handed out our "damn quizzes", I listened and observed my fellow classmates. The girl in front of me, who smelled like a nuked perfume factory, was flirting with a guy who smelled like dirty laundry. And I mean DIRTY laundry. SUPER combo. As their conversation went on about how much they drank and degraded themselves the night before, I decided to tune them out. Before I did however, I heard the dirty boy say,

"What can I say? Sexy is my middle name."

First of all, I highly disagreed with that statement. Secondly, after swallowing the bile that was welling up in my esophagus, I started thinking about my middle name. Grace. Do I live up to my middle name? Then I began thinking about how my first name means "grace." Double whammy. Do I need to live up to my first and middle name? I then set a goal for myself. I want to be a grace-filled person. AKA: graceful. I want, when people think of adjectives about me, to think of me as graceful. (Not that I think people REALLY sit around and think up adjectives about me.) It's my new goal.


Then I got my quiz back. And I had failed. I had two options. Throw a fit and act like perfume girl and dirty boy were acting - because they failed, too. Or I could accept the fact that I failed my quiz which counts less than 1% of my final grade and move on.


I slid the quiz in the folds of my notebook quietly and gracefully. Score one for the team.