I’m the victim of peer pressure.

So I’ve been THISCLOSE to deleting my blog in recent weeks. Haven’t felt like writing. Feel slightly obligated to write at least weekly to keep some sort of significance and readership.

I am getting tired of social media.

So I joined Twitter.

No, really. I can’t believe I did it either.

I’ve sworn it off at least a hundred times. It’s totally lame. And ego-centric. And no one cares about the meaningless things I do to fill my days.  But then I watched a friend get text after text updating her on our friends’ lives…and I felt left out. So I joined. Because who wants to be left out of something that helps people stay connected?

Two days later…and I think I’m actually going to like it. I’m the only person I know around here with Twitter…so I’m either going to be the laughing stock of the church staff, or (as I’d prefer to think) I’m expanding our ministry network one tweet at a time.

Found this diagram today. Thought it was completely appropriate. I’m the victim of ego-centric, stalker-ish narcissism. The first two days have been fun. The long term outlook is yet to be determined.

Happy Father’s Day!

Love you, Dad!

Go Dawgs?

How much longer till football season? Because we’re ready.

Everything.

If I told you I don’t ever procrastinate…

…then I would be a total liar. That’s why I haven’t posted anything all week long.

In random order….new lessons learned at this week’s Liberty intensive:

1. It is just as we have always suspected. God-Jesus-HolySpirit-JerryFalwell (followed closely by Mother Teresa and Billy Graham). No, they didn’t say that in exact words. But the evidence is everywhere. Ha.

2. It’s a small world after all. One of the girls assigned to my apartment this week actually went to Lee U for undergrad and we have at least twenty-five mutual friends from our years there. And over lunch yesterday, I figured out that one of my classmates actually lives about a half mile from Woodmen in Colorado Springs. Craziness, right?

3. I don’t think I’ve ever truly appreciated just how humid the southeast part of the U.S. really is. My hair hates this place, and I’m not sure I remembered how sticky summer months can be in this part of the country until I tried to take a run in the sauna outside.

4. I am ridiculously good (emphasis on ridiculous) at role-playing various mental disorders. It’s frightening. I mean, we spend our whole lives trying to hold it all together so the world can’t even see our idiosyncrasies, and I come to graduate school to play a girl with a delusional disorder…? What’s that about? And why am I so good at it? Should I be concerned about this?

5. I cannot believe that I have officially become that girl. THAT GIRL. The one who misses her prissy, three pound, sleeps-in-my-bed-and-has-more-expensive-haircuts-than-I-do puppy like crazy even though it’s only been like four days since I last saw her. Eesh. I’m so ashamed. And so relieved that there are only two more days until I see her again.

6. The more people I meet, the more fascinated I am by their stories. I love-love-love hearing about the path God has different people on, and it absolutely blows my mind to hear some of the journeys in their lives and the things they face and overcome. It’s unreal. And unbelievable. And it makes me increasingly aware of the faithfulness of God in guiding the steps of His people. There is simply no other explanation.

Home for dinner tomorrow. Back to the Promised Land on Saturday. And then my favorites (Alice and Allan) are coming to hang out on my turf for awhile!!! Great adventures to come!

I will not apologize…

…for shameless bragging about how cute I think my nephew is.

I don’t get to experience any most of his “firsts,” but I did manage to make it home just in time for his first swim. Yes, we know he’s huge. And yes, these pictures were taken before he figured out how fun it is to press down the inflated sides to get rid of all the water in the pool.

Denver airport.

I have a love-hate relationship with layovers. Love them in this part of the country because it helps ensure that my travel plans stay on track (since, you know, it could be eighty degrees outside at 8am and blizzarding at 10am…even in June). Hate them because I’m sitting in Denver bored out of my skull, wishing this flight to Knoxville would hurry up and arrive.

I’ve worked on this post in bits and pieces all week long, but I haven’t had time to officially post it because of the chaos that comes when I try to get out of town for a week at Liberty. I’m heading back to Virginia for my last week-long intensive. It’s my last regular academic course.

All I lack to graduate after next week is 800 hours of a counseling internship. I don’t know where I’m going to do that internship yet, but I have a couple of interviews set up in the next few weeks, and hopefully, I will have my own set of clients by the end of July.

It’s crazy to me that I’m almost done with my Master’s degree. I’m almost a well-trained, capable counselor. And not one ounce of me feels like that statement is at all true.

As I’ve been looking for internship opportunities and trying to figure out how to squeeze 800 hours into my regular work weeks for the next 8 months, different supervisors have continually asked the question “What exactly is your heart for counseling? What do you see as your role?”

And I’ve been stuck thinking about it.

It seems to me that there is a lot of misconception surrounding brokenness and woundedness within Christian circles. It’s not whole. It’s not right. It doesn’t represent a completely restored mind. It’s a flaw.

And brokenness is all of those things.

But I think for the longest time, I really believed that woundedness and hurt and some of the more difficult emotional battles people face needed correction a lot like sin in my own life.

It just seems easier (and common) to equate healing with repentance.

And sometimes those things are the same.

But a lot of times, it’s not that neat.

The goal of both repentance and healing is restoration – to change the direction a person is currently walking in. But repentance is an about-face, a point in which a person stops and changes directions abruptly. And healing ends in a different direction…but it gets there one degree of change at a time. It’s not abrupt. It’s a process. And that is okay.

I don’t really know what kind of counselor I’ll be at this point. But I know that I want to walk people through that process. I want to be a voice that helps them understand that change may not be abrupt and may not look like overwhelming victory…but one small degree of change at a time can result in an entirely new direction for their lives, and I want to be a part of walking them through those changes, regardless of how small or tedious they may be.

My flight is getting ready to leave. I’ll likely have time to blog some this week because being at Liberty affords me some quiet evenings alone in the dorm. And, of course, I’m going to see my nephew for a few hours today. So I’m probably going to need to post some bragging pictures.

Just another night on the front range.

Those cops? I called ‘em. That car? Filled with a bunch of pot-smoking underage thugs that were formerly standing in my parking lot (and trying to gain easy access to the inside of my car). And the photo? Definitely taken when my roommate and I followed them out of the complex to see them get busted. Ah, yes. A little adventure, a little justice. All in all…a fun way to end the day.

On the agenda for tomorrow: making sure said thugs don’t show up to our complex pool ever again.

There are some bonus features of living within plain sight of the police station. Unfortunately, weed and alcohol apparently inhibited their ability to see the full parking lot of cop cars less than a hundred yards away.

Bahahahaha.

Morning light.

My roommate made it into the living room before I did this morning – a rare occasion since I get up at 6am and she generally wakes up after 8am.

And she opened the blinds to let in all the fierce sunshine.

Eh.

I have this particular pattern that I work through in the mornings, and I like everything to be the same every day. It’s kind of ridiculous, but the pattern helps me to be consistent. Get up. Take the dog out. Make coffee. Eat breakfast. Take coffee, Bible, commentary, and journal to a particular corner of the couch next to the lamplight, and spend some time in the stillness.

This has been the pattern of my mornings for at least the past three years. I don’t remember why this has become the most comfortable routine for me, but I have grown to love the stillness of morning and the idea that my day hasn’t offically begun until all of these things are complete.

And at no point in my typical morning routine do I ever open the blinds to let in the glaring, early morning sunshine.

I don’t like the bright morning light pouring into my living room while I sit in the stillness.

I wanted to close the blinds again when my roommate left this morning for her early morning coffee date. And then I felt like that would be a bit overkill. I’m not into setting a mood to spend time in the Word or prayer journaling. I regularly spend time doing these things outside of my typical morning routine. But I wanted the darkness this morning. I wanted the dim lighting, the hot cup of coffee, and the security of my particular spot on the couch.

More and more I realize that this time in the morning has become my covering. I felt so unprepared for the glaring sunshine this morning, so overwhelmed by how bright it made the room and how distracted it made me feel. The stillness and the darkness of mornings with the Lord has become my daily refuge, my chance to breathe in Truth and the possibilities for the day before I’m actually confronted with its harsh reality. And while there is nothing about the morning light that makes my time with the Lord any less significant, I am learning that I love the significance of His covering in my life, His sustaining shield, and it’s easy for me to sense that when the day hasn’t even begun.

So I closed the blinds again and sat next the the dim light of the lamp. Until the Lord and I had met and I felt certain in His covering of my day.

And when I got up to open the blinds again, the morning light didn’t look so overwhelming anymore. It was beautiful – like the day outside and all the possibility it holds.

Proselytizing.

Seen this? It’s not new, but it was certainly new to me when I saw it this weekend. Pretty interesting.

Meet Penn: Atheist.

Kind of convicting, right?