Getting Rid of Bob

The time...the moment...the ahhhhhhhh!!!! I get to post on my blog!!!!

I know its silly, and anticlimactic. I'm very disturbed by my drive to blog. Especially since I'm not even blogging anything...humbug. I've been nagged incessantly by something or somebody (kind of like the little fella one the guy's shoulder in the old Golden Corral commercial- we'll just call him Bob.) Well Bob has really been bothering me. He's constantly telling me to blog, making me want desperately to blog, but in the same breath he's telling me to go do the laundry, go grade papers, go help out, go hither, go yon, but for heaven's sake, please somehow blog simultaneously. Now, my mom has said that I can multitask, that I take after Dad...but no, I'm sure she wouldn't think it a good idea for me to blog while frying eggs or anything else!

Time management. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. I thought it would get better after school was done, but alas, my troubles are only magnified. I find myself trying to play the martyr all the time...trying to do the "right" thing and serve other people and whatnot...and all the time Bob just keeps pinching and pinching my insides to pieces and every night I crawl into bed unblogged and un-a-hundred-million-other-things and quite discontent. Today Mom told me to do what I wanted this afternoon so that I would be ready to do stuff together tomorrow afternoon. Although you might hope I would be grateful to my loving mother who was concerned about my pleasure, I just had to fight with Bob all day. He is such a loser! I have never called anyone a loser before, but considering the kind of person Bob is, and that nobody knows him like I do (being a figment of my paranoid imagination) I feel the freedom to call him whatever I like. I definitely pick "Loser."

Yes...and I really don't fight with other people...just Bob. He wanted me to check a million things on the internet, blog, write a lot of letters, blog, do laundry, blog, make several phone calls, blog, and possibly even mow the lawn. Oh, and blog. Basically, Bob is mean. It's just blablablablabla all day long. Do this do that do this. Your not a loving person if you don't do this for so and so. Bob is also a great Bible scholar. Boy does he know how to use scripture to manipulate me! All I really want to do is blog a nice twenty minutes about four times a week. It would be nice to think that maybe since I've blogged today, Bob will leave me alone. Knowing him as I do, I'm not going to count on it. However, there is a possiblity that things coudl get better...

See, Bob is such a horrible pest...I know the Golden Corral image (three inch tall dude perched on shoulder in red suit w/ pointy tail and accessories) sounds kinda cute, and I probably sound like an ogre for calling someone I'm so personally aquainted with a loser, right? But Bob is really getting in the way of the Holy Spirit in my life. Sometimes I get the two mixed up. I said I fight with him (Bob) and all his confusing tidbits of advice. But I don't fight very well, because, you know, I'm just me, and Bob is rather, eh, elusive. Last night something sparked Ephesians 6 to my attention and I read about the armor of God.

"...With the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. Take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Put on the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God..."

This is just what the Ephesians prescribes for fighting off "people" like Bob. I'm tired of helplessly bowing down every morning to the various shrines lined up along the wall of my heart. There's the nice little shrine called "journalling," the one called "blogging," the shrine of "make no mistakes," the shrine to "control my time," even the shrine to Bob, the disgusting little creature. I will bow down to the one True and Holy God who bought me with a price (time and everything!) and listen to His voice alone. Only He will be able to help me get rid of Bob.

At the Bridge

The coffeehouse is here. Yes! Bridge 281 opened for its first Friday night and we got to be there. It seems like something we've all been waiting for for a long time...a place to come and be, to drink coffee and visit and pretend we're European or something (I'm not sure if that's actually a European thing to do, but it sounds like it to me.)

There isn't a clock there, and that makes me happy. It's like the saying the Russians have that "happy people don't have watches." Freedom from schedule is something were starving for just under the surface, but we're just so enslaved to time here...and I have a hard time giving up schedule too.

I stood around drinking my Chesterton, and talked with Bailey (its so delightful to have an unexpected conversation with a friend you didn't expect to see about pieces of life you love...it was a good coffeehouse moment, I think, perched on a tall chair at a tall, smooth green table under somewhat dim lights...it started raining out the window, and I fidgeted with an unlit votive candle and its holder as our conversation waxed and waned.

So. As silly as it may sound, I'm a little nervous about the coffee shop. How do you "be" in a coffee shop...kind of an inhabiting sort of hanging out...very akin to "fellowship" with a touch of sophistication that I'm totally at a loss about, living in the part of the country I live in. I have an unsettlingly small amount of coffee-know...(I do know what a latte is, and thankfully Bridge 281 is really down to earth...none of the Starbucksy "talls" and "ventes" to worry about!) I would like to be posh, but I'm don't know how, and imitated poshness disgusts me-- especially in myself! Isn't the coffeehouse supposed to be about sharing lives and being real, not about being something you aren't? Right. And besides, the kingdom of God is not posh.

Dver

"Close the door and open your heart
Get on your knees and stop thinking about death
May the angel of death lose your address
You will be different, you will live in joy."

That is the chorus to a Russian rap song...is it not amazing? It's like a direct command to me and my thought life; it smacks me in the face. Yeah...I don't like rap, and I've never listened to Russian music, but I suddenly like this A LOT, simply because it is Russian, and the lyrics are piercing, and they say bookfuls not just to me and teens in general, but mainly to and about Russian (and Ukrainian!) teens. Since the chorus of the song is not rappy, I can sing it, the Russian version, so I do... non stop around the house, in the parking lot, and in the shower. oh...and "Dver" means "door." more later!

People and Personalness and Contentment

May 12. A good day has passed. Today was my dear friend Chelsea's graduation...among others (I mean others graduated...Ashley, Meredith, and Laura are my friends too, only I've known Chels a quite long time :) We went to her house for a nice party afterwards.

Got to meet her friend Charlotte from the junior college...she's actually from Hong Kong! I was very excited to meet her and really enjoyed getting to know her as a person over the afternoon. She's so sweet, pretty, inquisitive, and fun to talk to!

I just thank God for personal conversations. I couldn't survive life without connecting with a human being and being able to say those two, super-precious words: "Me Too."

I must be off to bed, but want to leave a parting thought...

My life prayer right now is for contentment. I read in a book recently that Fanny Crosby (blind hymn writer over a hundred yrs ago) determined at the young age of about eight that, despite her blindness, she would always hide the "jewel of contentment" in her heart. That meant refusing to complain about her lot, refusing to dwell on complaints inside. Refusing to regret and be wistful. What could I have to be discontent about, you might ask? After all, I've just graduated, and the world seems virtually at my fingertips. Youth, Health, Friends, Family, God's amazing Care and Grace are on my side...well, its the little foxes that ruin the vineyard. It's the chinks in your happiness that rub. Like Fanny Crosby, I claim the Jewel of Contentment. I want to learn to polish it...and I hope it will shine all my life.

Here is the definition of contentment by Jeremiah Borroughs (I'm not familiar with him, I got this quote from a book entitled "Believing God for His Best," which I recieved as a grad gift.)

Contentment is: "a sweet, gracious form of Spirit which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition."

There we go.

Post- Graduation

Graduation has come and gone. Years of hard work... What seemed like years of making a grad. video. Cranium crunching headaches and feeling like I was eating rocks at every meal (The totally unintentional diet plan, I'm telling you. Nerves will do it every time.) Frets, laughs, and a few tears and...then a whole lot of joy, a virtual bath of care, friendship, and lovingkindness, and a grin that wouldn't go away. I was so blessed by the evening. Its weird to have it over now, and I've felt a bit lost this week, but God is still "the Holy One of Israel, your Redeemer." Very cool. As the saying goes, "I'm not lost, I'm just wandering!" Wandering around in the palm of His hand...a very safe place to be :)

I have much more to write, but...later. I'm off to a tea party with various female relatives...both grandmothers included. That's a rare privilege. So, bye :)