In death, there shall be life in Him

I know no one really reads my blog. :) So maybe I really just post for my own benefit. I like to get my feelings out. But if someone does read this, I just want it to remind you to pray for the Burgess family. Remind you how short life is. Remind you that we are not only earthly beings, we are spiritual creatures, created by God. And in God's sovereignty, He has a bigger plan for us that we may not understand. His grace is sufficient and it's just amazing how He cradles His children in the midst of their pain. I don't even realize just how present He is in my life sometimes. I take His grace for granted. But I know I would never be able to make it without Him. If you are reading this and you want to experience God personally, you want to know what people are talking about when they talk about their Savior and how He took them from a life of darkness and sin, you can know. These aren't just cliches that people use for crutches to make hard times easier or as an excuse for their wrongdoings. God is real and Jesus Christ, His Son, is the only way. He is Truth and He is Love. Please listen to the calling that is in your heart. God wants you as His child. He wants to share His kingdom with you. Accept Him, let go of your sin, and you will know all of these things are real and you will see them in your life.

Again, remember to pray for Rick and Sheri Burgess and their 4 children, as they're dealing with the loss of their 2 year old son.

BoNnArOo!!!

Can I just say that if LED ZEPPELIN is stinkin coming to this festival that is so close to my sweet Alabama home, I am THERE BABY!!!

Bobby P,
If you're reading this, please, please, Please consider adding another US spot to your tour. It would mean a great deal to your fans here in Yank-ville.
Thank you.

Sincerely,
~C

Everything is Upside Down

Everything is so confusing right now. I don't know exactly where I'm supposed to be, and how I'm supposed to act. I think God's trying to teach me humilty or something. Trying to teach me that it's not always right to be right. This is hard for me to deal with. I have always tried to defend others, strive for clarity, strive for others to understand each other and understand me. Apparently, this is impossible sometimes. And the fact that I know someone is wrong and doesn't care bothers me so much, but it seems like I'm just supposed to let it go and not try to do anything about it. I mean, I know that you can go to people (in love) and talk about sin that you see them living in. But some things are in that gray area. You try to get someone to see your point, but they're so far to their side, they can't grasp yours. Or it's so gray that neither point seems really right.

I know I'm probably going around in circles. It feels like my head is, right now. And maybe as I'm writing this, some of you are thinking, "well, duh." And maybe it's just an easy lesson I should've learned a long time ago. I need prayer. And if any of you would like to share anything about this with me, PLEASE, feel free. Although, I can't say that it won't make my head spin even more.

I don't want to force my opinions. I don't want to be an agressive, domineering, dramatic girl that nags people, attacks people, and argues all the time with others. And I don't want to be stuck in a personal rut, and not be reactive to God's moving. And I definitely don't want to make God have to tell me over and over until something much more severe has to happen to get my attention. I am thankful that God is showing me some discipline, because that means He hasn't given up on me in my "lukewarm-ness"! :)

I think God's trying to teach me love.

Hmmm...
~C

Christmas This Year

So, I'm not one to complain about Christmas (except the commercialism,) but this year, Christmas was just not the same. You would think that since this is mine and Matt's first married Christmas that it would be a fun, exciting time. But Matt and I agree, that this one was hard.

We didnt really get anything officially for each other. It was a mutual agreement. We both knew how much was in the bank, and we both thought we didnt really need to spend any money. But it kinda made it less exciting since we really didnt get to see the surprise on each other's faces when we opened our gifts. All of that though I think would've subsided if we would've had some set traditions in place that we could've been looking forward to during the month of December. Matt and I have tried to put some in place, but this year they weren't anticipated. Matt even said that if we had kids, Christmas would be a lot more meaningful because we could pass on our traditions to them, and share things WITH them that aren't new to Matt and me anymore.

But even though there was not much exciting that happened, we still had to stop on Christmas night and realize that we had done everything to feel Christmas-y but the most important. And I think that we put the best tradition in place. We read Luke 2 aloud. I'm really excited to pass that one along to our future generation :)

Merry Christmas everyone. Even 2 days after the fact.
I love you, Matt.

Happy Post

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

I hope everyone enjoys this wonderful holiday and is able to embrace

the goodness that this holiday was created for.

I hope you all know that I am very thankful to have you in my life.

You're all an intricate cog in the machine that is Carla.

Alright, so maybe the Thanksgiving spirit has made me all giddy.

But honestly, I love you. And I hope your holiday is enjoyable and you

are able to withstand all of your family for a few hours. :)

WOOOOOHOOOOOOO!

Is anybody out there?

Alright, I've tried not to vent in a blog about my own personal feelings lately, but now I'm gonna.

I FREAKING HATE WHEN PEOPLE DONT LISTEN TO ME. I mean, you have NO IDEA how many examples I can give you when I'm just sitting there in the middle of a sentence and people just start talking to other people. Matt's seen it happen. It's rididculous. It's like my words just go silent. I'm not even speaking about things that are trivial. It's like actually something useful. But people just want to not hear it and act like they came up with whatever I said on there on in the next few sentences they say. OR, later on, I'll hear them talking to people about the SAME EXACT SUBJECT and the person will tell them EXACTLY what I said and they're like "Oh, yeah...you're right." I most of all hate it when I'm trying to just say one thing and it doesn't matter what it is, the person is going to disagree.

I know I'm opinionated. I know that I have a problem sometimes when I see someone not "living fully" or whatever just because they won't open their mind on bit just to try something new. But I don't want to be like that anymore. I'd rather be apathetic than argumentative. I am SO sick of arguing my opinions. You don't have to think I'm right. It doesn't matter. We are all different people, you know. I'm the first one to say that just because something is right or wrong for one, doesn't mean it's the same for another person. (Of course I don't mean what it out-right states in the Bible is up for interpretation, I just mean the grey areas.)

So I will live and let live.
I will choose my battles.
I will become a verbal pacifist.
(hopefully)

Easily Influenced

I just finished reading The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. It was great. I really am glad I'm able to finally enjoy reading. I hated being forced to read in high school. We never had to read anything very unusual or interesting, just things like Romeo and Juliet, The Scarlett Letter and The Old Man and the Sea. I do like Shakespeare and Hawthorne's ok, but nothing I had to read really sparked my interest (at least not enough for me to actually read the book and not use cliffs notes.) I wish I had read The Catcher...when I was about to go into college. It's a great coming of age book. (There's a lot of bad language in it and some immature phrasing because the protagonist is supposed to be 17 when he narrates the book, but that's to be expected and I just try to skip over the profanity.)

But I said all this to say that reading the book really made my mind start churning. In fact I wish I would've written this last night right after I read the book. My mind was racing so much that I don't even remember half of the things I thought about. Reading a great book or listening to talented musicians or studying great art just really influences me. I feel like I need to "do" something afterwards. Something to make myself or make the world better. Give something back. Some of the parts of the book really inspired me, like when Mr. Antolini gives Holden this quote, " 'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.' " Or when Holden says that he wants to go live on a ranch and marry this girl he was with right then, while they were young, because after college you become an adult and without even knowing it you accept all of these responsibilities and you will never be able to live your life as freely as when you were a child. I was just thinking, yes! That's totally the way I feel, and especially what I needed to hear when I was in high school. I wanted life to be more, but yet stay innocent and simple. (But I digress...apparently my mind's starting to race again...)

I think I'm very easily influenced sometimes. I was even so influenced while I was reading that my inner monologue began to sound a little bit like Holden's. It's kind of scary. What's more scary is that I think everyone is that way. I can't stand it when I start changing myself to sound like one person or another. Whether it's when I'm singing a song and I try to sound like the artist, or I'm writing and I try to fit into another writer's style or form, or when I'm around a certain group of people, I try to form myself to their pleasing. I don't do it so much anymore, and I feel like some of that is just natural because you always grow as a person and develop your interests and you try to fit into your own mold by trying others' on for size. But I just don't want to be blindly lead into being someone else's "picture" of me. I don't want to fit into someone else's box. And in feeling that way about myself, I get really displeased when I see the nation trying to do that. Most people just do whatever the popular census is telling them to do. We're slowly turning into a type of government that we started wars to break away from. We're being bombarded by messages of political correctness and we are subconsciously being PUSHED into "the people that we should be." It's apparently a horrible idea to look back to our past and gain some wisdom and morals from our forefathers. We barely even stand for anything on which this nation was founded. I'm not saying that progress is not necessary and that this nation hasn't made some good changes since the founding of this country. But I am saying that we have no backbone. We have no real standards to fall back on or to base our decisions. We don't respect our leadership and we are being led by any Joe Blow that has some good-smelling hot air to spread. It's depressing. In a sense, we have fallen off the cliff of rye.

I still want to be a catcher.