Another Day, Another Paper

I wasn't really sure what picture to choose for this post so I looked up a picture of the eternal flame here at Lee. Just cause... well.... it looks cool. If you've read my first post, you know that it was a paper for a class. Well, this post is a paper for the same class about what I learned while doing community service hours. I just wanted to share it, so here it is:


If I were completely honest, I was really stressed when I found out we had to complete ten community service hours on our own. This wasn’t because I didn’t want to do them. It was because I didn't know when I was going to find the time to do them or where to do them at. Also, I’m a pretty introverted and awkward human being, so going anywhere by myself automatically makes me freak out. When I finally decided to do my service, I decided to go to the LUDIC school for children with autism. My life was changed when I went to LUDIC.
LUDIC is here on Lee’s campus. It is located right behind Pangle Hall. I had been to LUDIC before I did community service hours for this class. The difference was that the first time that I went, I never got to work with the children. I was helping take down decorations and putting other decorations back up. When I did community service this time, at first I watched a video and wrote down everything the people said and did in the video. This helps children with autism learn. They have to have the same schedule everyday. Watching the same video over and over again helps them learn more about social skills and what is appropriate conducts in certain areas.
After I wrote down notes on the video, Mrs. Tammy, the director of LUDIC, gave me one of the kids to swing. LUDIC has this room called the swing room. In the middle of this room, there is a big home made swing attached to the ceiling. This is to swing the children because certain sensations calm them down. Mrs. Tammy gave me one of the children who was having a little fit. His name is Jonas. At first, I was really worried. I didn’t feel like I was qualified to be with Jonas alone. After a while though, Jonas and I started to have a little fun. Jonas wouldn't swing at first. He would swing and then stop and have a fit. After a while, I asked Jonas if he wanted me to swing him high. Mrs. Tammy told me the higher I can swing him the better. Jonas didn’t answer so I told him that when we get to swing, it is like we get to fly. He liked that and told me to swing him really high. As I swung him as high as possible, I started making an airplane sound like his was flying. He later started copying me. He also would count and say words that rhymed. For example, he would say, “cat” and then he would say, “hat”. Jonas was having the time of his life. He was grinning ear to ear the whole time. With this instance, I started to understand the love and the joy of Christ a little better.
I don’t know if it was that Jonas was having so much fun or that I was getting to have fun with him, but I felt so much joy in that room. Jonas and I couldn’t have a really good conversation. He understood me, but he could only say a limited amount of things to me. Regardless of that though, we had so much fun. We laughed together. We both acted like air planes together. It was the most fun I had had in a while and also relieved a little stress off of me in the midst of the end of the semester chaos. Basically, this changed every fear I had about being with the children at the LUDIC center. It eliminated every obsession I had with doing everything right when I got there. Jonas melted my heart.
Another little boy that melted my heart was Christian. Christian is around 5 or 6 and has down syndrome and severe autism. I was partnered with Christian the last two days of my service. I had to help Christian clap along to songs and play with toys. The first day I was with him, he decided to cuddle with me while we listened to the story for the day. I obviously had to pretend that I wasn’t falling in love with this little guy on the spot. Later, Christian and I went and jumped on trampolines. Christian can’t jump by himself, so I would have to bounce him. At the end of my first day with Christian, I had to help him eat. Christian had to eat at a separate table from the rest of the children in his class. I wasn’t really told why. The way he would tell me what he wanted to eat from his lunch box is he would pick out a picture of the food he wanted to eat with the food’s name on it. For instance, if he wanted to eat chips, he would hand me a picture of chips with the word chips on it. I would say, “I want chips,” and then I would hand him chips. It was a long process, but it was how he learned. The second day I got to work with Christian, I walked in and he was watching a movie. He got so excited when he saw me which made me excited. I went and sat next to him and he grabbed my hand and intertwined our fingers and started rocking with my arm in his arms.
I have never seen the love of Christ portrayed like it was portrayed by the children at the LUDIC center. Every child that I came in contact with had this look of love and excitement in their eyes that I have never seen to that magnitude before. Like Adam, the little boy I met as I was walking out my last day at LUDIC, who was so eager to ask me my name and if I spoke another language and if I liked Chinese food because he liked Chinese food. I have never experienced someone wanting to ask all about who I was in such an excited way before. So I guess what I am trying to say is, out of all the minor things I learned at LUDIC like how to take care of a certain child, I learned one major thing and that was how to love.

Must Love The Georgia Bulldogs

I wonder how many people opened this thinking I was putting up an application to be my boyfriend with all of the requirements I want. Y'all, I'm not that crazy or picky. The picture above is my dream, though. If I could get engaged at the Georgia Bulldogs stadium, that would probably be better that the actual wedding for me. #GoDawgs

Finding someone is something I have been thinking a lot about lately. I don't know if it's the end of the semester stress or that fact that it's spring and I don't even have a guy considering giving me a ring. People younger than me are getting engaged and for some reason I am legitimately jealous. My sister and I have this thing where we look up at the sky and say, "Hey, God. Where he at?" (Horrible grammar. Apologies to any english teacher reading.) In all honesty though, it's how I feel. Where is he? I want to find the guy that will go with me to Georgia games and scream until we don't have our voices or be able to be typical college students together and go hiking and enjoy God's creation. Where is the guy that will take me being awkward and an introvert as a strength and is passionate about the Lord? All of these things have been running through my head lately. I've been wondering if God has created me to be a Church of God nun or something. It's frustrating, but then I start to think about the other people on campus.

There are probably hundreds of girls on Lee's campus that feel the exact same way that I do (maybe not about the Georgia Bulldogs, but hey, I don't judge). There are probably guys on campus that are looking for that one girl as well. We all want that person and we are all searching as hard as we can to find them, but should it be that stressful? Why do we believe that our lives are not complete until we find the special someone? For some reason a simple passage comes to my head when I think about this. Galatians 5: 22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Against these things there is no law."

All of the fruits of the Spirit are pretty relaxing words. None of these words cause me to freak out with stress which is pretty surprising because I freak out with stress over everything. So, who says we can't be this relaxed and peaceful person until we find "the one"? It's a challenge, but we all have to learn to have peace and dwell in the moment regardless of the situation around us. For all we know, God could be calling us to do something for his kingdom at this specific moment that we couldn't do if we were in a relationship. And when the time comes, we will find that special person because God wants us to have the desires of our hearts. So instead of worrying about ring by spring or just finding a bae by May, take joy in what is already around you.

Worship Night or Nah?

So, I did something crazy tonight.....well, crazy for me.  I went to a worship night on campus put on by a greek club. It was really good and I'm so glad that I went, but let me take you through the process of what went on before and after tonight.

Ever since I have heard of worship night, I've wanted to go, but I've never had anyone to go with me. Also, if you know me or have read any of my blogs, you know I'm a pretty introverted and awkward human being. So I haven't ever gone to avoid creating an awkward situation for me or anyone around me. Lately, I've had a change in my mindset. I got the email that worship night was happening tonight and I thought "Well hey. Bite the bullet. You love Jesus. They love Jesus. What can go wrong?" SO I texted my friend and told her we were going. Literally, I told her. Asking was not involved. (I'm so polite sometimes.) As it got closer for the time to leave, I started regretting my decision to go. I'm at the sink in my bathroom frantically trying to look decent because I don't want to make a bad impression on these people that I don't/barely know. My friend and I start walking to the lecture hall where this event is held. With every step that I took, I kept thinking "Why are you going? They don't actually want you here." I honestly just wanted to turn around and go back to my dorm, but at this point I'm already in the building and there would be no reason to turn around. As I'm trying to awkwardly avoid walking in the lecture hall, I start having a panic attack (shocker.) It got to the point where I couldn't feel my feet. That's really weird, but I wasn't for sure if I could walk or not. My friend who was with me says "well, I feel like we are more awkward standing out here than we would be sit in there." She was obviously right.

We go in to the lecture hall and all I'm doing is telling myself to leave. I started thinking to myself that I'm not actually in this greek club. Why am I here? Like, I have made the biggest mistake of my college career. (I'm a girl. I over react.) As the worship night continues though, I get more comfortable and feel more welcomed and I started to realize that it doesn't matter. I may be an introvert, but it doesn't matter. They may be a greek club, but it doesn't matter. Worship isn't about who I am or what I think. It's about praising the one who loves us so much. If this greek club didn't want me to join in their worship, they wouldn't have invited everyone to come. So regardless of what the campus mindset towards greek clubs is, I would like to thank this greek club for breaking the mold and inviting everyone to be involved in their worship. How blessed are we to go to a school where we can have corporate worship nights like this?

Before I die, I want to. . .

A couple of days ago, I was walking on the greenway here in Cleveland. It's a pretty popular thing here in the spring. It's relaxing. It lets us college students take a break from losing our minds and enjoy nature. I was trying to be a typical college student. Enjoy nature. Enjoy Netflix. It's what we do. 

Anyways, I was walking on the greenway and I walked past this cool sign. It was a sign that had columns of the phrase "Before I die I want to. . ." and then there was a blank for people to write what they wanted to do before they died. I thought it was a neat idea. Let me include one of the funnier responses. "Before I die I want to marry 5 SOS." If you don't know what 5 SOS is, it is a band. Obviously, this person can not marry all five of them, but keep your goals high! I respect that. I wanted to marry the Jonas Brothers back in the day. It could still happen. Most of the rest of the responses were not really PG material, much less G material, so they didn't make the cut to be in this post. . . (Sorry, bro.) 

One response really caught my eye, though. The response was "Before I die I want to feel loved." Normal people would have thought, "Man. That's sad." Me, on the other hand, I can't let stuff go. I dwell on it. It consumes my mind and the thought that there is someone in the city I live in that doesn't feel loved bothers the mess out of me. I guess we fail to realize how privileged we are to be loved, but do we also fail to realize we come in contact with people every day who feel empty?  I do. I let my anxiety ridden, introvert self take over 75% of the time and don't show kindness the way I should. I show awkward, weird, and mute. I mean at least I'm not being hateful, right? Wrong. I'm being a bystander to suffering. I feel like that is worse. Honestly, It's something I have to work on. I have to pretend I'm not an introvert and say hey to people on campus, because someone might need a friendly good morning or how are you. 

Isn't that something we all need to work on? Do we get so caught up in our own selfs that we forget to have the little conversations with people that could possibly make their day? Everyone puts on a front. Most people are not going to just walk up and tell you what's going on in their life. To the people that can do that, I wish I was as genuine as you. So, think about it. How many people do you walk past every day that just want to feel loved? How far will lunch with a stranger on campus go? How many people do we have to lose before we realize Christianity isn't about trying not to sin, but it's about sharing the love of Christ that covers our sin? 

My goal for this week is to start saying hello and genuinely caring for the people around me and I urge you to do the same. Hey. You might knock "I want to feel loved" off of someones bucket list.

Dear, My Only Safe Haven

This post is about the band My Only Save Haven. (Pictured above) Their EP Letters just came out on iTunes and it is bomb! (If you don't know what bomb means, it means it's really really really good.) It's not only amazing because Kayla Saunders sings like an angel but, because My Only Save Haven is one of the rare bands that try to bring hope.

Obviously, there are a ton of great bands around. I mean, come on y'all! Maroon 5 is the epitome of hotness, but I've never heard a Maroon 5 song and consciously thought about my life. All Maroon 5 makes me want to do is dance and marry Adam Levine. (He's already married. I know. No need to remind me.) My Only Safe Haven though? It's a completely different story. The songs Today and Beautiful Life make me sit and think about what I'm doing with my life. Am I making a difference? Where does God want me to go? Am I acting like it's a beautiful life or am I acting like life is the struggle and it doesn't get better? These questions bring me to the song I really want to blog about.

The song is titled This Is Your Story, Not a Goodbye Letter. The title itself just kind of smacks you in the face with emotion. When I first heard this song, I was at a My Only Safe Haven concert in West Virginia. It was over Christmas break and if you have read my first blog post, you might understand the depressed an emotional state I was in. I didn't know if my life was actually my story anymore and honestly, I didn't care. I wanted it to be my goodbye letter. At this concert, I was thinking about what I wanted to do. I knew I needed to get better, but I really didn't want to tell anyone about it. When I heard this song, it finally hit me that the depressed state I was in would pass if I wanted it to. If I decided to be determined to choose joy and not look at myself as invisible and as someone whose opinion didn't matter, the dark place I was in could turn into being part of my story, which it has. This song was the pivotal point when I started having the mindset that I could get better if I wanted to. If it wasn't for hearing this song, who knows if I would have had the mindset that prepared me to change. Who knows where I would be now? So on behalf of the people who struggle or have struggled with depression, thank you My Only Safe Haven for not being afraid to write a song about a taboo subject. Y'all will never know how much hope you bring and how much hope you will continue to bring. And to my readers? In the words of My Only Safe Haven, it's a beautiful life. Just open your eyes.

"Pathetic Emptiness of Their Consumer Driven Lives"

I haven't blogged in a couple days because I have been rather sick. I wasn't sure if anyone wanted to read a Mucinex/Nyquil induced blog post. Chances are it would have been rather funny, but I didn't want to risk anyone thinking I needed to join a psych ward. If you could see the amount of medicine on my desk right now, you would think I needed to go to rehab. The struggle is real.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter celebrating our risen savior! (and eating candy like it's going out of style) But should our celebrating only be confined to one weekend? After Sunday, are we meant to go back to our normal lives? The title of this blog seems rather harsh and it is meant to be because, it's a quote. This quote is from 10 Things I Hate About You, which is by far the best 90's movie, in my opinion. I mean, Heath Ledger is in it. Who doesn't love him? (He is my favorite actor. I'm biased.) Kat Stratford says this quote in the movie. Kat is so full of anger and angst from her mother leaving that she just despises everyone. She turns out to be pretty bomb though, but how many of us think our lives are "meaningless" and "consumer driven"? You may not say it out loud, but a lot of people go through the motions of everyday life thinking that their life is meaningless and end up setting aside Easter to "really" celebrate Jesus, myself included.

It's really been hitting me lately the mindset I have been in in past years around Easter. The thought that I had and some other people might have is that fact that I had done everything the Bible had told me to do. I have accepted Jesus into my heart, but will Jesus accept me? I mean, I want to go to heaven. I want to live forever with Jesus, but does he want me to? So, I usually would just continue on with my life living like I know I should and just hoping Jesus actually wants me. Don't we all think that? We are Christians and we love the Lord and everything he has done for us, but actually believing he loves us no matter what we do, isn't that the hardest thing to believe? Is unconditional love actually a thing? It wasn't until recently I realized that it is. Most of us have heard about the man that was on the cross next to Jesus. He was a criminal hanging next to an innocent man and in his last breaths he claimed the Jesus as the messiah. Jesus told him he would spend eternity in heaven. He got to go to heaven even after his life of crime because he accepted Jesus and because God loved him and wanted him. He actually loves us and wants us. Strangely enough, the proof is in our everyday lives.

We have a family that loves us. If you don't, you have friends that love you. If you don't think you have friends that love you, shoot. I love you. We are blessed with opportunities. We have clothes and food. Nature itself is proof of God's love. Everything is so beautiful. Birds sing and flowers bloom and the sun sets in amazing colors just because God wants to show us his love. The sunset itself is just one big love letter from God and he thinks you are MORE beautiful than that?! Is that possible? I'm sorry to start sounding like a Disney princess, but his love for everyone is just so vast, yet so focused on each human being. It's unexplainable.

Because of this, shouldn't he be celebrated more than just one weekend? Obviously, he is worthy to be praised for other reasons as well, but his love changes us though. It gives us joy in times of grief. It gives us hope when there seems to be no hope. It give us life when we feel like there might not be a reason to live. Shouldn't that fact alone gives us a reason to praise him extravagantly for more than 3 days?

He Made Up His Mind

As you read this post, you're probably going to wonder what Jesus has to do with it. You might even think it's a little depressing, but bare with me, y'all. I promise it gets better. First of all, I would like to express how excited I am about the Lord lately. I've been raised pentecostal, but I honestly don't think I've been this excited about the Lord before. It's different, but it's pretty amazing. It's to the point where if someone asks me why I'm excited, I'll start talking with my hands in wide motions and my voice will gradually get louder. Don't believe me? Try it. I can't explain it y'all. God is just so good, which is the point of this post.

I know you're probably thinking "Brook, this isn't depressing at all. What were you talking about?" It's about to get rough, but then it'll get better! It's always about how we finish, right? *everyone says right*

I was reading in Jeremiah 6 the other day. If you've read Jeremiah 6, you know it's about how God has made up his mind to punish Jerusalem. Who wants to read about that? God is a loving dude. That He is, but He is also to be feared. That's something I forget most of the time. In this passage God is describing to Jerusalem how He has made up His mind to punish them and all the suffering that is about to happen. What stood out to me was verses 20 and 26. Verse 20 says, "What do I care about incense from Sheba or sweet calamus from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable; your sacrifices do not please me." Verse 26 says, "O my people, put on sackcloth and roll in ashes; mourn with bitter wailing as for an only son, for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us." You're probably catching the depressing tone of the verses. You were warned, but it's true. If we look at these verses with a sense of destruction, they are depressing. God is being scary and we don't like that. At least, I didn't. But what happens if we look at these verses in a different light? What if we look at them at a place out of God's pain for his people? The verse about their offerings not being good enough probably was because their offerings were not pure. God wanted their offerings to be good enough, but they weren't. Let's take a look at that last verse, though. "O my people, put on a sackcloth and roll in ashes; mourn with bitter wailing as for an ONLY SON for suddenly the destroyer will come upon US."

Most of you are probably like, "Ok... so you bolded words in the verse and I still don't get it." Y'all. What if God didn't only make up his mind about punishing Jerusalem, what if He was describing how He had already made up His mind about sending His only son and He was describing the pain He was going to endure? Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament. Their sacrifices were not good enough. They never were. That's why they had to keep sacrificing, but God sent the ultimate pure and holy sacrifice to cover all sins. What if His thought process was, "Yes. I have made up my mind to punish you, but I have also made up my mind to suffer with you. The later generations of your family will not have to endure this, because I am sending my son to save you. It will hurt me tremendously, but your salvation is more important than my pain." My mind was blown when I started thinking about this. God could be describing the gospel to a group of people who won't even be alive to see it.

I Kind Of Forgive You

Have you ever forgiven someone of something they did and then years later realized you were still holding a grudge about it? If you haven't, you're Jesus. When you get around that person, you say you've forgiven them, but as soon they turn around, you start gossiping about them faster than you can even think about the fact that you are gossiping about them. If you haven't realized it, you haven't really forgiven them.

As a Christian, I always talk about how forgiveness is a part of who I should be, but actually forgiving someone and not blasting their wrong doing to every friend that I have is honestly one of the hardest things to do. When someone hurts me, I want to rant about it. I want to go up to the first person I know and say, "*insert persons name* did this to me. I hate them. They're horrible. May the Lord reap coals of fire upon their head!" Cause you know, God really pays attention to petty drama. He probably does his holy eye roll in hopes we'll feel it and just shut our mouths. Then, we start making excuses. "But you just don't understand! What they did is unforgivable!" "I'm too hurt by them to forgive.'" or my favorite "The Lord sent them to tempt me." Honey, if the Lord sent them to tempt you, you're failing. Honestly, we're all failing.

Have you not done something to someone that they might see as unforgivable? How did it feel when you thought they forgave you and turns out that they have been gossiping about you to everybody? As Matthew 7:3 states, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

I feel like we fail to realize that what they did to Jesus was worse than what anyone of us has gone through. His friends betrayed him. Guards beat him and mutilated him to the point to where people couldn't recognize him. After his back was ripped open, he had to carry a cross made of wood for miles just to be nailed to it. To top it all off, he did all this while a nation was screaming in his face about how horrible he was when he did absolutely nothing wrong. Yet as he hung on the cross, he uttered the words, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." If we have been forgiven for all of our transgressions that put Jesus on the cross, who are we not to forgive the person the doesn't agree with our opinions?