New Moons Old Friends

I went home this past weekend to finish off a few loose ends like hair stylist and dinner selection, but the main reason was that my very good girlfriend Diane, who is one of my bridesmaids and lives in Cali, was in town for some family stuff. She hasn't been able to be here for any bridal shower stuff and won't be able to be in town for the bachelorette party either. So my four best girlfriends from back home asked me to come out so the four of us could hang out in a "bachelorette party" of just us, old school. So I did. :) We simply ended up at Perkins talking and laughing and reliving old memories and enjoying each others company. It's been years since we were all together, all four of us, in the same place at the same time. They had previously told me that what they wanted to get me for my gift wasn't lingerie or anything like that, they wanted to spend money on something for that I would love, something, most likely jewelry, that I'd been eyeing but not buying because it's something I felt like I couldn't spend the money on. Something meaningful. I love, love LOVE amber and jade and have recently also developed a serious love of moonstone. I think these are three of the prettiest gems, with very beautiful colors and physical attributes to the stone. I do know that all three have somewhat mystical connotations put on them by certain people but I don't know the specifics of that and certainly don't put any stock in it. Or at least I didn't.

My very best girlfriends got me a beautiful moonstone pendant much like this one:


And it is BEAUTIFUL. I love it. It's hard to capture what makes this stone so pretty in a picture, but it has to do with the translucent aspect, and the blue sheen that appears when it's in different lights or at different angles. It really is beautiful. And that's why I like it. Because it's pretty. But when my girlfriends presented me with my gift they told me that the woman who sold it to them explained what a moonstone "means". The moonstone has been called the "gem of hope". Primarily a moonstone is known for balancing your emotions. It stops you from reacting from emotion, and helps you center and process. It is also for new beginnings and helps you adjust to change. And it's considered to be for true love, to help maintain passion. It is also strongly connected to women, not in a fem-nazi way, in a femininity way, fostering happiness, gracefulness, wisdom, intuition, understanding, and lots of other motherly attributes (it also has strong ties to fertility and your cycle and such). I was thinking a lot about this and I started to catch myself wishing I believed in the power of this stone. These are all attributes that I want at this point in my life. I started thinking about different medicines and minerals. I began thinking to myself, Self, God made calcium good for you, it affects the body and the mind, the same with so many other elements and minerals found in nature, is it really so far fetched to think that moonstone (which is really just a mineral called adularia) isn't among them? The truth is that I feel like that is a good thought. I know that people who wear magnetic bracelets get flack from Christians, but it works for what it's supposed to work for! There is iron in your blood. It's simply the biology of our creation. The iron in our blood reacts to the magnets and you end up with better circulation. Christians label this as mystical or some kind of Wiccan or witchcraft-ey practice when it's not. And though I don't believe that wearing this moonstone around my neck will make me more understanding or give Aaron and I a better a marriage, I do have to wonder at what sort of biological reaction this mineral might have with my body and my mind (I'm sort of praying against the whole fertility thing since Aaron and I are wanting to wait a while before we add to our family). And like I said, while I don't attribute this stone any sort of magical powers that I will suddenly possess all the characteristics the stone is said to increase, I HAVE decided to use it as an emblem of those characteristics. To remind myself that I want to be hopeful, have balance and peace of mind, that I want to be joyful, graceful, and wise, that I want to be an understanding, nurturing, loving wife and (at some point) mother, a reminder to pray these things into my life and heart.

And as a reminder that one night about a month before I got married, my best friends wished these things into my life and heart, spoiled me with their love, and their hopes for my happiness.

grim resolve

One of the reasons I wanted to do this whole 40 consecutive days thing is because I need to work on my self-discipline. I've never been very good at disciplining myself. And I am still not. Perhaps I bit off more than I could chew with this particular commitment. I've definitely had trouble following through. I have goals!! I need to do something to help get started on them because the whole point was strengthening my self-discipline. I think that one of my problems is that I go FULL THROTTLE when I set a goal for myself and am extremely hard on myself when I fall short of that goal. I need to work, build this characteristic, not just decide I have it and expect myself to comply with these standards. I have poor discipline. The way to change that is NOT to just expect it to be different magically one morning. It will require working towards it, building it.

SO. Starting today I am rewriting my plans. Here are some of my current Goals as of today:

1. ONE HOUR A DAY WITH GOD
2. 30 MINUTES A DAY EXERCISING
3. CUT MY SUGAR INTAKE BY HALF
4. DRINK MORE WATER
5. MAINTAIN ORGANIZATION AT HOME/WORK
6. CUT FACEBOOK TIME BY HALF

(don't laugh at that last one, it's a problem)

These are things about myself that I would like to change. I am going to start slowly. I am going to mark off each day that I achieve these things and each day that I don't. At the end of the week I will look back and see how often I was able to keep myself on track and how often I missed the mark. Then I will try again the next week. Hopefully at the end of a few months I will see some improvement. Please pray for me. I have burdens in my heart for myself...there is a lot I'd like to change, ways I know that I am that I know keep me from God.

Today marks a change.

I hope.

Power - Outtage

Only not really. ComEd turned off my power. Long story short it's going to take three days for them to fix their mistake. That irritates me.

I am feeling so very strange right now. Life is moving forward so fast. I feel like I am missing what is happening. I want to enjoy this time. I want to NOT have to deal with everyone else telling me how I'm not doing things right. I want to have a slumber party with all of my friends where we can just be girly and ourselves and goof around.

The thing I hate most about the being engaged part is the words of "wisdom" or cynical commentary from the self-proclaimed "old married ladies", aka girls between the age of 19-24 who have been married between 6 months and 3 years. They say things like "Yeah, you think it's cute that he does that now..." or "That loses it's novelty" or things like that. I'd like to walk around with a little laminated card that says "I realize that as someone who has been married for all of three years now you have the market cornered on wifely wisdom and understanding and have reached a transcendental plain that I might never reach and so you are kindly bestowing me with that wisdom in an effort to prepare me the mediocrity and commonplace bore that marriage really truly is [for you]. But you could actually do me a favor and keep it to yourself. Just because you have fallen prey to that most worldly of ideas that marriage just ends up being another burden or inconvenience does not mean that I ever will, and thank you kindly for not poisoning my mind going into it."

I am psychotically impatient to be Aaron's wife. I can't wait. :) God is amazing and crafted a man that is so absolutely perfect for me in ways I didn't even think to hope for. There will be hard times, I know that. It's not always going to be blissful and perfect. But that doesn't change the fact that it will always be right, and not a day is going to go by that I don't remind myself how insanely blessed I am to have Aaron in my life, not a day will go by that I won't thank God. Not a day.

blaaarg

I'm feeling like an utter and complete failure. I have neglected more days than I've done by far AND I've stopped trying. I need to get on with this. I have 43 days till I get married. I would like to be done with my goal 3 days before I get married. For the love. Check up on me. Someone. Ask me how I'm doing. EVERYFRICKINDAY.

In other news tomorrow is my bridal shower. There will be people I love dearly missing and there will be people there I couldn't care less about. It's actually been really stressful. There is a person in my life who seems to be making every aspect of the wedding which I've allowed her to be a part of incredibly difficult. I swear to God it's on purpose. It's very irritating. And hurtful.

I need sleep and to unpack. I am feeling oddly discouraged right now and I don't know why. I feel like there is more to do than time in which to do it and I am feeling very overwhelmed. We have hit that moment where we have gained so much momentum that we are barreling forward, and it's not that I want to stop it or even slow it down (there are days when I wish we could just elope now so we could be married already!), it's just that I am slowly realizing things like I will never do this again and it's all gone by so fast. And on October 25th there will be over 200 people staring at me in what might be the most intensely emotional moment of my life. I hate that. I love to be the center of attention, but when it comes to emotional moments I hate people there with me. I watch sappy movies alone and I try to be alone with good news for at least a day. I do not do well with people staring at me. I can't wait to marry Aaron. But I really hope the whole audience doesn't think I'm a creeper when, halfway down the aisle, I ask them to please turn around.....

Irony

Tonight I am speaking at Frontline. After much deliberation and a lot of back and forth I finally landed on something that I really felt like God was putting on my heart for the kids. Tonight I am speaking on ministering to the poor. It's a foothold message. Soon we're going to ask the kids to come in with ideas for monthly service projects. Before we do, we want to be sure they understand just what we are aiming for and what our responsibility as THE CHURCH is. Some of the verses I'm using are:

Proverbs 31:8-9 "Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy."

Pvobers 14:31 "Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honour him."

James 2:15,16 "If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food,and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?"

2 Corinthians 8:12 "For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have."

2 Corinthians 8:13-15 I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written,
‘The one who had much did not have too much,
and the one who had little did not have too little.’" [I listed these separately because I am using them to illustrate two different points.]

James 1:22 "But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves."

So. I am nervous. Not going to lie. It's an important message and I don't want to screw it up with my own humanness.

Ironically, while serving in Uganda this morning my grandpa broke his ankle very severely. He has to have surgery and several screws placed in his ankle. So. Yah. Oh missions.