Jesus, be Jesus in me
No longer me, but thee
Resurrection power, fill me this hour
Jesus, be Jesus in me
For comp class, we had to read 3 short stories and blog about him. All 3 were great stories and I would recommend reading them!
Here it goes….
Everyday use is written by Alice Walker. It is a story about a mother (“Mama”) and her two daughters (Dee & Maggie). It is narrated by Mama. Mama is described as a “big boned woman.” She does chores that are commonly thought to be chores that should be accomplished my a man. Because of these chores, she has rough man-like hands. We found out that their house had burned down in the past. Maggie was badly burned in this fire. She is very shy and tends to keep to herself. She clings to Mama. Dee is the complete opposite. She is very outgoing and lives in the city. She never appreciated their heritage like Maggie did. Dee comes home to visit from college. She brings a man with her. During this visit is the first time Dee shows any interest in the things that show their background. She asks to take some items from Mama’s house that have been passed down. One of these items is her grandmother’s churn. She doesn’t want to use these items, she just wants them to be seen.
A couple nights ago I had the opportunity to watch a documentary about the invisible children. It followed a girl who actually had the opportunity to go to Uganda and see what the war is like first hand. While she was there, she got to know a girls named Gloria. Gloria is HIV positive and has lost her will to live. She says that she has seen so much suffering around her because of the war that she doesn’t see the point of staying alive anymore.
I first heard about the Invisible Children when I went to Lipscomb. A group of us there watched a film that taught us all about it. There is a man named Joseph Koney who abducts children from their homes. After he abducts them, he brainwashes them and forces them to fight in what is called the rebel army. Once these children are abducted, there are no longer records kept of their existence (thus the name “invisible children”) This war is a devastating reality. There are many different things we can all do to help in the efforts to end this war. We should all do whatever we can get involved.
So I am apparently a very bad blogger. For the past couple of weeks I have blogged, but somehow managed to not save them properly. I think I figured out what I was doing wrong so if I get a chance this weekend I’ll retype those blogs for your enjoyment :)
Kylie seems to be losing some of her chubbiness lately. She still has those wonderfully thick legs, but her belly is not as big. She’s looking tall, too. She’s growing so fast; it’s just hard to believe she’s not that teeny tiny baby in the bassinet anymore. Kylie is still a speedy crawler and chooses to get from place to place by crawling or by cruising the furniture. She stands on her own for seconds at a time and has attempted to take a step (almost looked accidental) but isn’t that interested still. We’re still cheering her on in her efforts to walk.
Kylie’s new favorite food…Cheerios. She loves them. She sometimes gets a Cheerio and bites it in half. I think she likes that cool crunching sound. She is getting another tooth (8th one) beside her top left tooth. She also has enjoyed chomping on crackers this week. Her parents have been giving her different table foods lately, but she hasn’t liked most. She seems to warm up slowly to new foods, though. Right now, she is into her crunchy dissolvable foods Kylie has recently started drinking from a straw. She is still in the beginning stages of straw drinking; however, I am confident she will have mastered this crucial life skill by the end of the week. ;) Some straws are more difficult than others we’ve learned.
She is growing up so fast! I can’t wait to see what these next months have in store for her!
The past week of my life has been consumed with makin’ music. Last weekend was retreat weekend so we had nonstop practice pretty much all weekend. Phi Kappa’s show is called “A Whale of a Tale.” It’s about a fish who disappears and each of the other characters have a different theory of what happened to him. The octopi think he went to go be the star of the ocean. The mermaids think he went to find love. The lobsters believe he went to go save all the creatures in the sea. In the end you find out he really got caught by a man, but he threw him back in the ocean because he was so small. Each club has an amazing show this year.
Tonight is our first real performance. I am so excited. It starts at 7:30 but we have to meet FOUR AND A HALF HOURS before then to start getting ready. That’s right FOUR AND A HALF HOURS. Pretty intense huh? Yep. It’s worth it though. It’s fun to see all of our guys having make up put on them. They are hilarious. We also have two shows tomorrow. I have family that is coming to both shows and I’m really excited about seeing them. It’s going to be a good weekend!
Last week, Phi Kappa went to Little Rock for our spring break mission trip. It was very eye-opening. To be completely honest, I wasn’t sure how much we would be needed down there. I’m used to going to countries where everyone there needs our help. I didn’t think people so close would really be in need. I was wrong. We worked with River City Ministries. It is a ministry that feeds the homeless and has church services for the people in Inner City Little Rock. A majority of these people suffer from drug addictions. The ministry offers a 12 step program that helps them overcome these addictions and move on with their lives. Michelle and I got to go deliver food with Mrs. Deanne. She works at River City. She told us how she used to be just like these people. She had come so far. Places like River City devote their time to trying to help these people live a good life.
While we were there our group worked on half-way houses, painted the lobby of the main building, conducted a VBS for the inner city children, and helped serve food at the shelter. Our guys also had the opportunity to conduct worship services at a church in Searcy. All in all it was an amazing experience. We accomplished some awesome things. To God be the glory.
These are pictures of me with Kylie the day she was born and again on her first birthday. It is amazing how much she has grown! She’s such a good and happy baby. She makes the funniest facial expressions (I guess she gets that honest) She recently stopped drinking formula and she now drinks whole milk. She also just started eating these things called puffs. They smell like bananas. I love bananas. Moving on…She is starting to talk! She says “mama” (which always turns into “mamamamamamama”) and “dada.” She can also say “ball” and “dog” and a few other little words. Something else she does that is pretty funny is that she laughs when people pray. She thinks it is just hilarious. She’s also been working on her balance. She can stand without holding onto anything and she’ll walk if you hold her hand. I can’t believe she’s getting so old! I babysat her last weekend and it was so much fun! We read books, ran (crawled) around the house, and my dad took her for a walk around the farm. He let her sit on one of our tractors and he said she was amazed by it. Pretty funny. I can’t wait to see what this next year holds for her!
So this week has been absolutely crazy. I’ve been busy with schoolwork, basketball championships, Makin’ Music practices, and trying to finish making volleyball rosters. That might sound like a horrible and hectic week to most people, but it was fantastic. I can’t remember the last time I saw such beautiful weather! It has been sunny and warm almost all week. It is impossible for me to let all of the things I have to do put me in a bad mood when I look out the window and see the sun shining like it has been. I definitely have a major case of spring fever. I even woke up an hour early this morning so I could put away all of my winter clothes and get all of my spring clothes out again. Also, I sat outside and registered for my classes for next semester. It felt so good outside that I wasn’t even upset about signing up for twenty hours. I’ll probably regret that. Oh well.
Makin music retreat weekend starts tonight. I can’t decide if I’m excited or scared out of my mind. It’s probably a mixture of the two. It will definitely be hard word, but being surrounded by some of my best friends for this next week will make it all better! Speaking of Makin’ Music…I’ve never actually seen one of these shows before. I was in Singarama at Lipscomb, but I hear this is much different. I’m excited to see how it all turns out!
The average American sees somewhere between 400 and 600 advertisements on a daily basis. By the time we are seventeen, we have been exposed to over 250,000 commercial messages through various types of media. Different kinds of advertisements have been blamed for a plethora of problems in our society. There are all types of false advertising that cause people in our nation to believe lies every single day. Advertising has been accused of causing domestic abuse and violence among children. It has also been linked to some depression. Most people would agree that a majority of advertising today makes people have a distorted view of how they should appear on the outside. Advertising can be blamed for a great deal of the negative self-images that effect people in our society. Some ways advertising promotes these negative self-images is by telling us that people of the opposite sex are not attracted to physically “unattractive” people, by trying to convince their audience that they should be much skinnier than they really are, and by promoting expensive ways to change people’s looks.
Because of certain advertisements, people today feel that they must be outwardly beautiful if they want to be desired by someone of the opposite sex. We have all heard the saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The problem with this is that the beholder has often been overwhelmed with an abundance of commercials and fashion magazines. Some experts say that because of their exposure to these advertisements, the “eyes of the beholder” have developed tunnel vision. They have a false sense of what beauty really is. Because of the portion of people who sadly only look for physically attractive people, others think they must be almost perfect in appearance in order to attract a mate. It is unheard of to look at a magazine cover and see an outwardly attractively man with a woman who is anything less than incredibly beautiful. Unfortunately, many seem to buy into this idea and try to perfect themselves in order to attract others.
Something that has abounded in our society for what seems like forever is the desire to be skinny. Sometimes this desire is even to be unhealthily skinny. Advertising absolutely has something to do with this problem. People are constantly comparing themselves to the models that are used in advertising. Women do not realize that the beautiful pictures of other women in magazines are edited to perfection. They do not realize that many of these models with “perfect” bodies have a variety of different eating disorders in order to maintain their weight. Psychiatrist Adrienne Key estimates that nearly 40 percent of models are currently suffering from an eating disorder. The models that suffer from these disorders display image that women strive to mimic. Also, some men constantly look at fitness ads in magazines and in other places and see other men who are in great shape with huge muscles. They dangerously work their bodies every single day to try to achieve the physical stature they see in these ads. Something these ads fail to mention, however, is the fact that a majority of the men in these pictures have been caught using steroids. When men find out that this is the case, a majority of them begin using steroids as a result.
Another way advertisement negatively affects people’s self image is by promoting different types of ways to change your look that are extremely expensive. I asked fifteen random people what they spend most of their money on. The response I got from eleven of these people had something to do with changing the way they look. They said everything from tanning beds and make up to hair products and clothes. When I typed “beauty ads” into google, I received over two million hits. There are ads all around us for make up that costs up to hundreds of dollars. There are companies that center themselves around making people aware of various types of make up and skin care that are also very costly. When members of our society see advertisements on these types of products and services, they tend to believe that it expected for us to spend a good portion of our earnings on trying to perfect their looks. People have begun to believe that in order to be beautiful, you should change your looks to resemble celebrities and others who invest their time and money on enhancing their looks.
There are many ways advertisements negatively affect people’s self-images in our society. They give false images of what real beauty is. They always fail to mention that true beauty is found on the inside. If they really cared about their audiences, they would say things and promote things that help people understand that their character is far more important than their physical beauty. They try to make us believe that people of the opposite sex are not attracted to others unless they are physically attractive, that we should be much skinnier than we are, and that we should spend a lot of money on changing the way we look. If it were not for these advertisements, people would be much more comfortable in their own skin.
