Is it raining? Or am I just thinking that?

I love the rain. I always have. It makes me feel like something bigger than me is out there. I know that there is but the rain makes me feel it. Thunderstorms make me feel it. Lightning makes me see it. I love to see and hear and feel. The rain that you see. The thunder that you hear. The drops that you feel on your skin. The light that you see flying from the sky. The drops that you hear hitting the landscape. The vibrations that you feel in your deep in your heart. Knowing that it could kill you doesn't even enter my mind when I sit outside in the rain and watch this vehement titan. The wind blows violently, tossing things up and down, from left to right. It howls. The lightning that falls from the sky, maybe starting a fire somewhere or maybe knocking over a tree. It crashes down and lights up the sky. The thunder is my favorite part. When I was little it frightened me. My grandpa told me that it was the angels in heaven bowling or moving furniture. That would make me feel better knowing that it was nothing that would harm me making the noise. Now that I am older and I know the scientific explanation for thunder, I have no reason to be afraid of it. I love it. I love the loud cracking, booming thunder that shakes the entire house or the ground that you are standing on and you feel it deep in your chest, in your heart place. I think that is why I like drums. I can feel it deep in my chest. I love everything about a storm. When people see the damage it can cause, I see the beauty and the cleaning power or such a storm. Then why is it when I go through a "storm" in my life that thunder that is so enticing, becomes scary again. Or why does the lightning become a hazard that can only send trees falling though your roof? Why do I lose that sense of wonder that I had for storms such as this? And why do I forget that there is something bigger than me that is letting this storm happen and the I forget that through the thunder I can feel that there is something bigger than me out there, holding onto me...

Restless

Not sleeping. Not knowing. Not seeing. Not hearing. Wanting. Needing.

I haven't been sleeping well lately. I can't sleep. Its not insomnia because I am tired, I just can't sleep. Sounds kinda like insomnia I suppose, maybe not, I don't know. I get into to bed and lay there. I think. Sometimes I think of important things. Most of the time it is one thought, that most wouldn't give a second thought, that snowballs into a avalanche. I normally write down my thoughts and then move on. Lately I am not sure if these thoughts warrant being written down. They have been written before and writing them again would just seem to be overkill. So I have just let them roll around in my head and they have begun to keep me awake again. So now I have begun to fall asleep when my body is so tired, I pass out. Which causes me to be tired and just gives me a headache. I am not sure what to do but breathe. Which is all I really know how to do anymore.

I watched a video a day or two ago and it hit me. That maybe all I need to do is just to breathe. Maybe that is all I need to do. Watch the videos and decide for yourself. See what you think. Is it just enough to breathe and know that He is there right next to me?

God is bigger than the boogie man?

Leave it to Veggie Tales to drive the point home.

Lately I have been having issues trusting in God. Things, from my point of view, seem to have been getting out of control. I have been looking for a steady job since school got out back in May. There has been nothing. I have applied to so many places, some more than once, and placed so many phone calls or sent so many e-mails, that I have lost all count. I have had some babysitting jobs but only being paid $20 a week is not cutting it. With my car being broken which cost $650 to be fixed (and thanks to God and my parents and my grandparents and myself that I have been able to get it fixed but that took all the money that was supposed to last me for awhile.), $20 a week is not cutting it...but I am grateful for it. I also have to pay off some of my school bill that loans and such didn't cover. So money is short and I have many bills right now.

Now, I am normally a pretty positive person and have no problem trusting that God will take care of me and all that entails. But as of late, its been very hard for me to do that. The control freak in me has been coming out for a visit. I tried so hard to beat down this control freak for a long time, now it is coming back with a vengeance and I am having a hard time just letting go and beating it and not being that way. But tonight as I am baby sitting, I popped in Veggie Tales for the kids to watch. It just so happened to be "Where's God When I'm Scared?" and if you grew up watching Veggie Tales, you know it has the song "God is Bigger Than the Boogie Man" in it. Well, of course that goofy little kid song would drive the point, that God has been trying to make to me for months, home. Of course...

Well I have noticed that things are getting better. I had a job interview today, I think that I have one Friday and depending on what happens Friday, I will have one on Wednesday. So you know what...

As I'm lying in my bed...
And the furniture starts creaking...
I'll just laugh and say "Hey! Cut that out!" and get back to my sleeping
For I know that God is biggest and He's watching all the while
So when I get scared I'll think of Him and close my eyes and smile

Cause God is bigger than the boogie man
He's bigger than Godzilla and the monsters on TV
OH God is bigger than the boogie man and He's watching out for you and me

ONE MORE TIME!! (repeat as many times as you deem necessary...)

((The sad part about all of this is that I wrote that from memory...yeah...I can quote Veggie Tales from memory...I also know "His Cheeseburger" "Where is My Hairbrush?" "Barbra Matinee" "and "The Water Buffalo Song" by heart....yeah I know...don't judge me....))

Jon & Kate +8 -Jon? -Kate? Wait. What?

So what prompted this blog? Well, if you must know...Jon & Kate +8. Now I have not been the biggest fan of this show and really just started watching it this past December. I really liked it. I like Kate, I thought that she was just shy of super mom for raising all of those kids. She was a little controlling and a tad OCD but I thought well you kinda have to be with that many kids. You have to want everything to be clean and you have to want to see things get done around the house if you want to have a house and not a pig sty...so I could even get past that. Jon was like the exact opposite of Kate cool, calm and collected. He was her other half...the half she was missing but none the less her other half and they seemed to go great together, they seemed happy. Jon had rumors come out that he was cheating and that was all that really came out and I thought ok, wrong place wrong time, not really what it seems, he wouldn't do that. Then it came out that Kate mas money hungary and crazy and I was like ok maybe she is a little crazy but I am not sure that she is money hungary. Then came this seasons premire and all hell had broken loose while the cameras weren't rolling. If you keep up with the show and all of the gossip crap like I do then you knok all or the stuff that has been said and all the stuff that has come out. And then you found out that all of it is probably true.

So now I have some things that I want to say becasue I need to vent...so if you don't want to read my venting and rantings about this show then go no further...I have no problem with all of the cosmetic stuff and the tanning and the teeth whitening and all that crap. John can pierce his ears at 32, I don't care. If they want to do it whatever. Its their lives and if they want to screw up all I can do is pray for them and move on. But here are my ventings....

#1. You can say that you do the show for your kids, so that you can provide for them and make sure that they will never have to go without anything ever. But do not say that you are going to get a divorce for your kids. Do not. That is a no. A divorce is never for the kids, it is for yourself because you can't stand the other person that you are with. In my eyes divorce is a selfish act. You are not doing it for anyone but you. The kids do not benefit from it. If anything it hurts them. I think that you should know that this is the person that you are going to marry. You need to know. I know that there is no way to know but you need to say at some point before you get married that this is it. I need to love this person no matter what and it is my choice to love this person daily. But if you have to get a divorce don't tell anyone that it is for your kids. Because it is not. And you know Kate sometimes you have to stop saying that this is for your kids and that this is for me. I think that if you keep saying that this is for your kids over and over and over you sound like you are trying to convince yourself and that you are trying to convince yourself. This is going to be the last thing that I say I think...I saw this coming at the end of last season. The problems were starting then and they were denounced as rumors. I thought that they should have taken a season off. The fans would have been there when they came back if they ever did come back on television. Sometimes you have to take time to make everything about you and your husband and not "for your kids". When you look at a picture close up, all you can see is that small piece of the picture. You can't see the big picture. I really think that they should have taken time off and stepped back from the picture and taken a good look.

Now I have said my peace and you can disagree but that is how I look at it.

Birthing Gideon Part 2

Before all of this changing stuff started I had become really sarcastic. Not that I am not sarcastic by nature but I had become mean sarcastic. Maybe just flat out mean. Not mean to everyone but I had my moments where I was not who I wanted to be and didn't know that to do. I just fell back into my default and you know I can fake it with the best of them. I can hide it all and act like I am ok and I can fool all the people around me. No one ever knows what it really just below the surface. I have met maybe three people that can see below the surface and one of them is my mom...she grew up with me and she knows me very well. Anyway, I had become this person that I did not want to be and I was unaware how I got there. I didn't want to be there. Then I began to have insane dreams and it was all pulled out from under me and I began to realize things about me and why I was where I was.

So this idea of a broken little girl has been here for a long time. I am not really sure when I realized that all I really am is a broken little girl. But I have been for a long time now. I put on a great front, even to myself. I am not all that I thought I was...well I am all that I thought I was just didn't have it all together like I thought I did and probably a lot of people thought I did. I am weak. I am frail. I am angry. I thought that the anger made me strong and held me up. I was wrong. It made me weaker and drug me down. Like I have said before that anger shattered me and harmed me more than it helped me. My life has not been hard by any means. But when you have daddy issues that gives you a whole new gambit of issues that you discover through the years. Its kinda like getting that sweater at Christmas that you want to return but you can't because it will hurt someone's feelings. I think that is exactly like that actually. You want to work the issues out but that involves hurting someone's feelings. Not to mention yours. You step on their feelings and they step on yours and you do it until the issues are worked out. Only right now I am stepping, no, stomping on my own toes. And it hurts like hell. But you know these issues have to be worked out if I want to heal and not be this broken little girl that I have been for a long time.

(Not sure that it makes sense but I needed to get this out of my brain...)

Family

Birthing a Gideon out of a Broken Little Girl

I think that I am beginning to get this whole Gideon thing, I think. I could be be way out in left field somewhere but I have a good feeling about this. I have read and re-read Judges chapters six through eight. I have come to the conclusion that something is going on with me. I almost completely (probably completely) identify with Gideon.

In chapter six verse thirteen it says "Gideon says to Him 'O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying 'Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?' But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.'" I am constantly asking God where he is and maybe he would like to fill me in on some of the things that he is doing at some point. I constantly think well Lord, if aall of this happened why can't you do this one little thing for me? HELLO?? Needless to say He doesn't answer me when we talk like that. Our conversations seem to be a little one sided some times. I do a lot of the talking. I think that He is just waiting for me to get it all out and then we'll come back to it. Just go ahead and vent and get it all out Alyssa and then we can talk. Maybe He was doing the same thing with Gideon when he didn't answer him when he asked the Lord where he had been. He just kinda looks at him.

It contiunes in verse 25 saying that the Lord tells Gideon to take his fathers second best bull and to pull down the altar to Baal then to rebuild an altar to God in its place. But then use the remains of the altar to Baal to feed the fire for the offering to God. "Ummm...excuse me God but ummm...about that...I can do all that uh but let me go and get about ten people or so to help me with that and the I think that I might take a nap and when I get up and make sure that it is dark outside and then we'll get on that..." Well I more or less think that is how it went. And that is what would have been said if God had appeared to me and asked me to do that. I am not to big on doing things on my own. I like to do things with other people. I like them to help me. But God didn't tell Gideon to go get ten people to help him. God told him to go and tear down the idol on his own. Not gonna lie but, I like my life and I would have done the same exact thing as Gideon did. There is no way I would have gone by myself and torn down an idol that maybe a couple hundred people worship at. There would have been Alyssa for dinner. But if you have ten other people, there are people to back you up in that you did and you can keep on living. God has called me to a country that not many people are called to. No one and I mean no one want s to live in Haiti. You might think that you do but once you get there and are there for a little while, you might not think that this was such a good idea anymore. The electricity only works...well not even half the time more like a forth or the time...maybe not even that. No one really wants to live there. But if you know me you know that I really truly want to. And that is totally a God thing. But if that is where I am supposed to be, I have to be willing to do things on my own and go alone. I have to learn how to lead and to rely on God always. I can not always rely on others to be there with me. Not everyone is cut out to live in Haiti or to even go to Haiti (I am not saying don't go if you want to I am just saying pary...A LOT). I realize now that might be the only one that is called to what I am supposed to do. You think that I sould get that already...I am the obly one that can do what God has called me to do, not the ten people that I want to come with me. I have just now really come to the realization. I have been called to do all of these things that I talk and think about not my friends.

Gideon went on to be a great leader. He defeated the Midianites and there was peace under his forty yeah reign. Maybe I can do that but I think that I'll just stick to Haiti...