How to be a Functional Trainwreck

1.  Never wash your face.

Let the residual mascara from yesterday salvage a few of the minutes you're losing due to unapologetic laziness.

2.  Get a fish.  

It gives the appearance of responsibility without much of the hassle.  Just throw some food into the tank when you don't want to eat dinner alone for the eighth time in the last five days.

This is Duck.  He is a fish.  He think's he's intimidating.  He enjoys avoiding the leaf hammock I bought for him for $2.99.

3.  Christmases and birthdays

are golden opportunities to request groceries ...which you have been neglecting.

4.  Scroll through the Yahoo News on your phone whilst binge-watching Netflix.

Doing so will ensure that you will sound up-to-date on the times (as well as Grey's Anatomy).



5.  Acquire a taste for questionable food choices:

Frozen bread (because you never eat a whole loaf before it goes bad), room-temperature meats (after forgetting it in the microwave overnight), second-day coffee (because what else should you do with the leftovers?).  This not only saves on effort whilst running late on early mornings, but also saves a ton of calories when the voice of reason sets in.

6.  Divide your meal planning into two weeks.

  During the first week, go out to eat multiple times, order too much to eat, and cut your meal in half, taking the leftovers home.  At the end of week one, vow to save money and cut back on outside meals.  During week two, eat all the leftovers.  At the end of week two, realize you have no food.  Repeat.

7.  When you get paid: 

Place a large portion of your paycheck in a saving's account and vow never to touch said account until you get to x amount of savings.  Use the rest of your check on bills and Netflix, and cling to dear life to the $30 you're down to the day before your next paycheck.  Live humbly, save royally.

8.  Know approximate mileage to various important locations in your nearby area....

...so that you may be better suited to leave as little room for error as humanly possible when finally arriving back at a gas pump.  Welcome to feeling superior to your overachieving counterparts.

9.   Build your caffeine tolerance.  

No time for food?  Caffeine.  No time for sleep?  Caffeine.  Headache?  Caffeine.  No time for time?  CAFFEINE.  What if all of these dilemmas happen in one day?  You're a trainwreck.  That's what you've built the tolerance for.

10.  Learn to roll with the derailments.

Because at the end of your train wreck of a day, you have to remember you're not the Conductor.  Not every failure is supposed to beat you to a bloody pulp.  Sometimes, it just puts you on a better track.  Pick your caboose back up, toss some more coals in the engine, call into dispatch, and get back to the haul.

To Anyone Hurting,

I've got at least 20 unpublished blogs in this site.  All started based on a catalyst of joy or heartache, but mostly the latter.

This one is no different.

It's been nearly two months since the incident.  It came swift, it came ruthlessly, and it ripped a hole in my chest that I am still trying to control the bleeding to.  I lost something dear to me, and now I'm just trying to make it through the "I feel like I'm dying" phase.

I relate it all to a war movie scene where a bomb goes off and the main character's hearing gets dulled into this low-volume, high-pitched ring and the camera goes in a sort of hazed slow-motion manner.

http://alphalewolf.tumblr.com/post/53467940950/your-mother-and-i-were-as-much-a-product-of-the

 But you know the main character is going to be all right at least for the next few moments because no main character dies in the low-volume, high-pitched, slow-motion shot.  They die after everything picks back up again.  When the shock of it all has passed and the raw grasp of what just happened comes and slams them in the face, that's when you really need to worry.

I ache with this loss.  I find it difficult to get out of bed, begging God to give me a break.  "Lord!" I cry, "don't let me go through this.  Let me wake up and it all be a dream.  Let the last piece of my life be a bad dream and let me wake up and be grateful for what I have and thankful that that nightmare was just that--a nightmare."

But I haven't woken up.  Every morning, I am stabbed in the chest with an alarm clock telling me to face another day I'm not ready to face, and honestly, sometimes don't think I'll ever be completely ready to face it.  I don't want to.
"How long did it take you to get over feeling like this?" I ask people who tell me they've experienced what I'm going through.
"Oh!  It took me years!" they say.  I can't do this for years.  I'm not strong enough to do this for years.  "Lord, deliver me!  Please, deliver me or kill me, but don't force me through this."  (I am kind of a child sometimes).  Each time I've begged for a pulmonary embolism, fatal heart arrhythmia, or aneurysm, He's said no.  The only evidence I have for this is my lack of any of these moralities thus far.

If you are experiencing anything like that--if you can't eat, can't sleep, can't think without feeling the shards of a broken heart piercing the pericardium that used to contain it--it is my most sincere prayer that you will find solace in knowing you aren't alone.
No, this season is not without purpose no matter how it may feel.  Want lessons?  I'm giving lessons.

1.  You have to believe what you know,  and not just what you feel.

http://divampire.tumblr.com/post/21976362967/listening-to-michael-bubl

Sometimes, it doesn't feel like God is good.  It doesn't feel like today is worth going through.  It doesn't feel like this season will ever come to a close, but I am being continually reminded by people around me that it does end.  The depression lifts.  The breakup stops cutting you like a knife.  The job gets better.  God comes through, even if it doesn't feel like He will.  Take encouragement from Hosea, where a people so fallen from God had to endure what sounds like hell on earth, but He always promises to come through on our behalf for His glory.
My biggest tip here is to reflect back on when God has come through for you in the past.  Psalm 26:3 says, "for I have always been mindful of your unfailing love and have lived in reliance on your faithfulness." Of course it's not always easy to think back to blessings when you feel like your life is in shambles, but take it one step at a time.  This is not a race.  Remember things one-by-one and keep a record of them.  When you're alone and the weight of the world starts crushing you again, pull out that record and play it over and over, reminding yourself of exactly who is carrying you.



2.  The world is full of beautiful people...

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/5c/cd/f4/5ccdf489dbb4087129f78da9fb3912a1.jpg

...who will hold you while you ugly-cry, who will cry with you, who will be angry on your behalf, who will gently redirect you back to a path that does not lead to bitterness or resentment, but rather growth and healing.  Find these people (or be open to letting them find you), and hold on.  Speaking of...


3.  Holding on is easier when you visualize it.
I feel like I'm in the middle of the ocean during a hurricane, and I'm drowning.

http://anelectricant.tumblr.com/post/122202245276/im-drowning

Visualizing a fishing hook that I'm holding onto helps when I need to remind myself who I'm holding onto.  I call it my "Jesus hook" because I can.  Yes, at times it is small, and the hook part hurts a bit, but I know if a fish can get forcibly reeled in, then a willing participant shouldn't be too much of a problem for the Creator of the Universe to pull from these murky depths, right?  As long as I've got that hook, the fisherman on the other end is going to keep His end of the bargain.

4.  Healing is not linear.

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/success/files/2013/10/typical.jpg

I hate this one.  It upsets me to no end, but there is also no avoiding its truth.  When someone experiences a severe physical trauma (a car accident, for example), the immediate pain is excruciating and the future is terrifying, but everyone thinks that as soon as you get to the hospital, the rest is downhill.  Hate to burst the bubble, but prolonged immobilization or a long bone fracture are high risk factors in blood clots, and the compound fracture you're probably babying has a very good chance of becoming infected.  Emotional healing is not always linear, either.  You have good days, and bad days, and ok days and, days you wish never existed, and days that make you wonder why you've ever cried.  It's ok to not feel ok at a certain milestone.  Congratulate yourself for the milestone and muscle through to the next.  You can, I promise.


5.  Take some time to be alone with the pain.

I hate this more than number 4.  (So sorry about all the physical metaphors, but that's just how I process stuff.)  When people get burned too severely or scrapped up too harshly, the medical procedure to heal that injury is something called "debriedment," where the patient is forced to have the comfortable layer of infected or defective slough removed from the wound, exposing the raw tissue underneath in order to give that tissue an opportunity to repair itself, and it can be quite painful (look it up if  you want, but I'm a nurse now and can say that kind of crap without a citation).

For me, the alone-time in the company of my pain is usually in the shower, where everything else is crying, so I probably should too.  

Take the time to say "this sucks and I don't want to take another second of it!"  Cry it out if you have to.  Scream into a pillow.  Run until your lungs give out.  Just give weight to the fact that you ache, because believe me when I say that pain has a way of making a forced entrance if not welcomed in for a brief visit every now and again.


I'm about to sound like everyone who has tried to encourage me in the past couple of months (and at times, I have resented them a little), but this will pass.  Each day gets a little easier, and by the time two weeks has rolled around, you realize you don't spontaneously burst into tears.  At three, you don't dwell on the loss as much as you initially did.  At four, you don't cradle the hurt as often (these may go in a different series and at different times for you).  Instead, you take on a new awareness of God's provision in your life (be it a new job, new friends, a knack for obsessive baking).  You lean on people you never realize cared.  You discover things about yourself that you never considered before.  And over time, the clouds roll back just a little further.

"so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe at your signs. You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy."  Psalm 65:8

It Is Well With My Soul

My soul hurts sometimes.  That's a strange thing to say, but it's the only way I know to describe it.  My body feels weak.  My heart trembles as though each beat just may be too overwhelming for it's broken fibers.

I have tried to be a harder, colder person.  I've wanted to keep emotions suppressed and pressured until they turn to stone, never again to affect me so profoundly.  But I have an impressionable soul.  I feel things with an intensity so strongly at times that I fear I may cave in on myself, collapsing into a black hole in the middle of my chest to be stretched through anguish and heartache indefinitely.  But after a while, it is as though my mind is too overwhelmed by the multitude of anxiety ridden questions about what I did to deserve this hurt, and everything shuts off.
The black hole stops swallowing me, and I am suspended in a time of trans-like existence.  I like to refer to this time as my "Emergency Reset."  Physically, everything is going just as it needs to, but my head is a barren wasteland, and my soul aches with the residual from the reset nuke.

My soul aches.

I may or may not have an old hymnal
 taking up space on my bookshelf.

I read a biography about Horatio Spafford, author of the hymn "It Is Well With My Soul."  He was a privileged lawyer who lived in Chicago with his wife--Anna--four daughters, and a son.  He invested a substantial amount of his wealth in some real estate north of Chicago, but in 1871, the Great Fire of Chicago destroyed his investment.  In 1873, he put his wife and daughters on the S. S. Ville du Havre, while he stayed behind at the last minute to attend to some more estate business, but yet another tragedy struck.  The ship was struck at sea and his daughters died.  Anna sent a telegraph back to her husband:  "Saved alone.  What shall I do..."
Three years later, Horatio's son was born, but at four years old, the boy died.
In spite of all of this, Horatio wrote a hymn that continues to be sung to this day.

"When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll; 

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say

It is well, it is well with my soul"

Spafford wrote this following the death of his daughters, as he sailed across the Atlantic to bring Anna back.  In the midst of a loss as profound as losing his children, he acknowledged God's faithfulness and our call to remember His sovereignty.

In the book of Job, a man who also experienced great loss swallowed the lamenting he did in chapter 3 where he says, "let the day perishh on which I was to be born" (Job 3:3), and instead shifts his focus to the glory and majesty of God, proclaiming:

"As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,

And at the last He will take His stand on the earth.

Even after my skin is destroyed,

Yet from my flesh I shall see God."

(Job 19:25-26)

In times of trial and heartache, it is important to accept that we hurt.  It reminds me of a song by twenty one pilots, where the lead says "sometimes you gotta bleed to know/that you're alive and have a soul" ("Tear In My Heart").  I'm not saying we've got to go around kicking doors and stubbing toes in order to know that our nerve endings are functioning efficiently enough for us to be deemed living, but that it's all right to know that something is causing us pain.  The danger, however, is sitting in that state of mind for too long.  It becomes a poison, and the longer we dwell, the harder it is to avert our eyes to the One who offers the very peace we seek (Romans 5:1).  

However, I must be honest here.  That peace doesn't always come the moment we ask.  Sometimes these trials double as a lesson in patience, and if I'm being frank here, my patience is one of those Fruits of the Spirit that I've been neglecting for a while.  

If you're going through something--anything that's causing your soul to ache--it is my hope that you will take some time to shift your gaze from the ache to the Lord.  Glorify Him instead of the trial.  I'm not saying it will fix everything immediately or that everything will be hunky-dory.  That's not what we, as followers of Christ have been promised, but we are promised that we are not alone (Matt. 28:20).  We are promised that "God caused all things to work together for the good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28), even our suffering:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too."

(2 Corinthians 1:3-5 ESV) 

So breathe.  

Rally whatever energy you have.

Remember the sovereignty and mercy and grace of God.

And let it be well with your soul.

Not By Our Strength

I am not a theologian.  I am not a Christian studies major.  I am not a certified priest or minister.  I am merely an unworthy human who was given unimaginable grace and mercy by the One True God through His Son.  So I say none of the following to in any way bring myself glory or praise, but instead, let all be given to He who holds my life in the palm of His hand.  And so with that little disclaimer, I have to tell you of the amazing works God has done in the past few weeks.

Seriously just found this on Google...
This should be my driver's license picture

So as I said before, I allowed my relationship with God to take a back-burner this past year.  I stopped my pursuit of Him to instead seek out my own path (which doesn't work, so don't try it).  Mercifully, He gripped my heart sometime at the end of the school year and told me to help with the youth at my church in South Arkansas, and for the first time in a while, I was obedient, not by my own strength, mind you.  My sinful nature wanted no part of this, but God was persistent.  As the Sundays and Wednesdays of this summer went on, I got to know more and more of the youth group, and steadily the Holy Spirit drew me to certain people and showed me ways in which God wanted to use me.  Among the various ways, perhaps the most tangible has been prayer.

Prayer has not always been a very strong presence in my life.  I go through phases where I pray like a madwoman, even going so far as to mark an "X" on my thumb to remind myself to pray every time I see it (and let me tell you, you look at your thumb a lot more than you realize).  Then I go through times where I treat prayer like a nuisance.  I don't want to take the energy to humble myself and pray, and even then, all I can think to pray is that God will help me, and do for me.  But Scripture gives beautiful examples time and time again of prayers of pure praise to God, where the prayers are not self-focused, but rather divinely focused, such as King David in 1 Chronicles 29:10-13.  

I'm trying to condense this, so please bear with me.  A friend recommended a book to me a little over a week ago, called Because We Love Him by Clyde Cranford.  I love the way he puts the necessity to pull our strength not from ourselves and our own power, but from the Holy Spirit.  

But any discipline apart from the Holy Spirit is self-generated, rooted in pride and unbelief, and 'of no value against fleshly indulgence' (Colossians 2:23).  Thus holiness cannot be its result (Cranford, p. 21)

My prayer changed after I read that.  Instead of attempting to pull from my own strength, I prayed for the strength to pray as I should, and for the Holy Spirit to guide me in whatever way God saw fit--to remove myself from my focus, and instead aim it wholly on His glory.  Do not misunderstand.  I am not a pro at this, nor do I claim to be a the pinnacle of my prayer life, but what I am saying is that God took this prayer and completely shifted the way prayer worked in my life.  No longer is it merely a way for me to talk to Him, but I'm finally seeing that He uses it to talk to me as well.  

Early one morning during camp, I sat down in my dorm, pulled a chair close to the bathroom door so that I could read by the light without waking my roommate, and as I began to pray for focus during my quiet time, I felt a draw to go and ask one of the other girls on the trip if she would like to do a morning devotion with me.  Immediately, fear that she would reject the offer or think that I would judge her began to sweep over my mind, but our God is a mighty God, and He pushed me out of my chair and to her door before I could talk myself out.  The result?  She happily agreed, and with the strength of the Holy Spirit, I was able to share different truths of the gospel and show her how to get into the Word.  

A day or so later, while at a mission site, a friend who who was assigned to another group at the same site approached me and confided that she felt as though she was about to have a seizure.  Now, I may be a nursing major and all, but it is still terrifying when you know that you may actually have to use what you've had to learn concerning the health of someone else.  So I took her to a room upstairs, away from the commotion of the kids at the site.  I grabbed our head staffer, and after about five minutes in the room, my friend began to seize.  The head staffer left to call the camp's head honcho (I am not sure what his title was...), and I was frozen in this moment of utter helplessness.  But, thank GOD for the wonderful gift which is the Holy Spirit living within us!  And praise Him for the times when our own sinful nature is stifled and the Spirit of the One True God is able to use us for His glory!  I have always been told not to touch someone having a seizure, but I broke a rule.  I told my friend, "I don't know if you can hear me right now, and this may feel a little weird if you can, but just trust me for a second..." and I laid one hand on her shoulder and began to lift up a prayer of comfort and healing over her, and within a few minutes, she came out.  She later described to me how she heard me praying, and she felt as though God were leading her out of her seizure.  

I'm not usually one to be sappy, and I apologize for my how I am giving this event such a lack of justice, but my words fail in the face of the mercy and grace of the Father.  Regardless, the power of prayer was made evident time and time again, in so many examples that to type them all out would probably make me hit the limit on a post length, and I am humbled by the continued faithfulness of the Father. 

So now we're all back, and it has become my earnest prayer that every one of us will not attempt to ride out the rest of the emotional intoxication which so often accompanies a week at church camp, but that we will draw our strength off of the Lord in order that we may further His kingdom.  

Blog Years Fly

Can Google take your blog away from you if you forget to blog?

I know it's often silly to post one's hardships on the internet, and I won't lie, I'm often one who sees it as a cry for attention; however, that's not at all why I'm about to tell you what I am going to tell you.

In China, I saw God move.  He weaved in and out of each and every situation we found ourselves in, intricately using every single moment to remind us of His eternal glory.  Don't mistake me--I did not always see these beautiful intricacies.  No, often I turned a blind eye to His work, and it was only in the afterthought that I found His hand.  Regardless, His majesty astounded me, reminding me of my place in this world.  Humbling me.  And then I returned home.

Long story short, I fell right on back into complacency.  It wasn't that God wasn't still doing marvelous things around me, but rather (and it seriously shames me to have to say this...) I merely didn't care anymore.  I was spent.  My drive to serve Him went kaput (side note: that's the coolest word ever).  I thought when school started back that I'd turn back, much like every time I'd walked away from Him before, but week after week went by, and my Bible collected more and more dust, and my prayers got shorter and shorter, and my church saw less and less of me, and...you get the picture, right?  Like I said before:  kaput.
Now, before you get yourself to thinking that this post is going to end with me telling you about my humbling return to Him, and how everything is just peachy, think again.  I'm still struggling, but my God is a forgiving and merciful God.  Each day, I feel Him tugging again at my soul, convicting me, and reminding me of His grace, as well as my absolute need for Him.

So here's the past year summed up in a paragraph as best as I can: I started nursing school and stepped off leadership at the church I attend in Conway. I died a little under the weight of school demands, but summer has revived me. I decided to stay home this summer and help out with the youth at the church where I'm a member, as well as try to tackle the looming thesis which I'm praying I will have finished before school starts back in the fall.

Blah blah blah, I know. But here's my attempt to better record my coming back to Christ and finally disciple someone (did I leave that part out? Well, that's a post for another time.)

Here's a random tidbit about the not so glorious parts of a south Arkansas summer:

A Little Over A Year Later

It's that feeling right after you've finished a really long workout--the kind that you ended by running up a hill, and as you stand there, hands on knees, you feel almost nothing else but the exhaustion setting in and a numbness to everything around you.  That's right where I'm standing.

It still kind of startles me to realize how detached from the world I am.  Not in a way that says, "I am better than this world," but in more of a way that C.S. Lewis described as this:

"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."

All right, enough of the cryptic nonsense.  I'll tell you what's going on.

About two weeks ago, I returned from a trip to China.  There, I was blessed to have the opportunity to talk to students, both in secondary school as well as college.  They taught me so much about their culture and way of life, and I can't help but just feel as though I've lived in a teensy tiny bubble all of my nineteen years of this short life.  Radically impacted doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of how this experience left me.  I so wish that I could wholly express my thoughts on the three weeks that I was there, but I suppose that it would be best to leave some things open for conversation in person.

I can, however, share some of the things that I learned in my time there:

1.  Kindness is vastly underrated.  


2.  When you are in another country, and you don't know the language, the only people you can pick out of a crowd are the twenty people who got off of the plane with you, and you only know how to order fried rice because you can't remember how to say any other food in Chinese, you can look for comfort in two different places:  memories of home, or confidence in the present.
     The former is easier to fall into because there is a security in knowing you'll go back to a place where you already know everything you need to make it through, but if that is how you find comfort then you sacrifice making your time wherever you are count.  You will begin counting down the days as though you have died and the moment that plane takes off toward your home is the moment you will come to life again, and because of your self-prophesied foreign country death, the time you spend in wherever you have gone will not be lived to its full potential.
     The later--a confidence in the present--is difficult to choose for some.  It's difficult because it's comparable to jumping into the middle of the ocean head first.  No two days will be the same, and there is no guarantee that everything will go according to any kind of plan you make up, but your time will not be spent in vain.  Home will no longer be the place you came from but wherever you are; you'll carry it with you like a coin in your pocket.  You'll notice little things that will shape your view of the world and change your life forever.
Stepping off my soapbox now...

3.  A smile is universal.

4.  It really is all right if things do not run smoothly.
     Don't fret if the taxi driver is on the wrong side of the road and blasting his horn at every moving object.  If an escalator is not moving, it merely means that they wish to function as stairs, and there is no harm in honoring that wish.  Playing Frogger with the cars and buses to cross the road is actually kind of fun once you get the hang of it.

5.  God has a plan, even for those 24 hour delays.  
     And trust me when I tell you that He will use even the worst of situations for His ultimate glory.

The GMPMBSORWD

I dislike the word "no."  I will genuinely do almost anything to escape hearing that word.  As a kid, I remember refusing to ask my mother if I could have a friend over because I was so scared of hearing it, and even now, I would rather do everything myself than risk asking for someone to do me a favor and potentially hear a "no."

Yes, I am well aware of just how ridiculous I am, thank you very much.

I regret to say that sometimes my prayer life works in the same way.  The fear of receiving a sovereign rejection is overwhelming, so I will kind of leave out some things.  There was one recent request that I couldn't quite leave out, though.  It wouldn't be anything major to anyone else, but sometimes tunnel vision gets the best of me and this one measly little issue turned into the Great and Mighty Problem that Must Be Sorted Out Right Away and Without Delay.  I'll call it the GMPMBSORAWD for short (because I'm a sucker for acronyms).

Well, long story short, I went to God with my GMPMBSORAWD, and here is where I am standing today.  I know exactly how I want Him to answer me.  I can clearly see how bright and beautiful life would be if He would just listen to my logic!  And there would be sunshine and rainbows and half-price jelly beans everywhere (gotta love the after-Easter sales).

But He is not giving me that answer.  Let me assure you; in my very human nature, this is quite possibly one of the hardest lessons I'm having to learn.  To deny the will of the flesh in pursuit of the will of the Lord...  This is more than saying no to a second slice of your friend's birthday cake, or being strong enough to get out of bed instead of pressing the snooze a seventh time (don't judge).  This is one of those GMPMBSORAWDs that has taken me to the darkest pits of this world I've ever seen, and I'm utterly terrified to go back.

I thought that maybe I was being ridiculous at first--that maybe I was just picking up on cues that weren't there--but the more time that goes by, the more I see God putting His foot down.  I'm hearing it spoken through others, and in Bible studies, and I'm being bombarded with eye-opening realizations about the situation each day, and if I'm just really being honest with myself, after all of the prayer and fasting I've done over it, I can say that something about my idea on how to go about solving my GMPMBSORAWD just feels wrong.  Sorry for the cryptic wording, but I'm not sure of another way to put it.

This is not to say that I'm not still (all right I'll admit it--selfishly) hoping that maybe He will change His mind, nor am I saying that I've hit such a resolve about the issue that to deny myself is going to be easy.  I'm just saying He's worth it.

Gracious, I'm wordy today.  I found this in Ezekiel today, and it kind of brought me to a standstill:

"And the word of the Lord came to me saying,
'Son of man, behold, I am about to take from you the desire of your eyes with a blow; but you shall not mourn and you shall not weep, and your tears shall not come."
Ezekiel 24:15-16 

God told Ezekiel not to mourn for the death of his wife.  Don't worry--there was a reason behind it.  He wanted Ezekiel to be an example to the exiles, to show them not to mourn over the fall of Jerusalem.  It just struck me as one of those things that I question if I could do.  Could I deny my desire to mourn the death of someone I love if God told me not to?   How far am I willing to take my self-denial in the pursuit of God's will and glory?

And such are the questions of a rambling student on a Tuesday morning.