Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The Longest Day of the Year

I often tell myself that I should never wear makeup to church, not because its wrong, but because it holds me back on Sunday morning. I always think that if I let the tears escape from my eyelids, then I am are going to have black smudges on my cheeks and bloodshot eyes during coffee time, and that is just not pretty.

But, it always seems to amaze me how captivated I am when singing Holy Holy Holy, Amazing Grace or any other song that talks about Jesus. Most songs I can't even get a whole verse out before I begin deep breathing and mentally singing just to keep the tears back.

It happened to me again this Sunday, out in Gun Lake, Michigan on the longest day of the year. Specifically during church, when we were all singing "Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me." I was just thinking about the character of Christ; his ability to love, but also his power, might and jealousy for us when we seek other things. I love it! I love every part of who Christ is!

I often think about challenging myself to keep the mascara off during church for one Sunday, to see where Christ leads my heart when I am not hindering the emotion.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Theory of Gardens

The past two weeks of working in high-class neighborhoods and learning the art of bush trimming from a talented landscape designer has been an eye-opening experience. It was the many days of maintaining beautiful landscapes that caused this thought: the way a person maintains their yard says something about their personality. This stems from a well-known theory: what a restaurants bathroom looks like is what the kitchen looks like.

That thought led me to these psychological readings on gardens:

If the plants are all close together and there is one too many, maybe the owner likes clutter.

If the garden is filled with lawn ornaments, one can assume their house is full of trinkets and when they go on vacation they buy everyone they know useless souvenirs.

If the garden is full of weeds, maybe their life has a lot of unwanted pain that keeps creeping in, and like weeds, if not taken care of they soon take over and make a pretty garden ugly.

If the garden has perfect landscaping, maybe they are perfectionists and controlling and if they are constantly using pesticides they are trying to hide the ugly because they are dominated by others opinions.

And for the people who put fake flowers in their gardens instead of real ones, maybe they have a fear of death or they just like to look good no matter how they are feeling.

Take a look at peoples gardens and tell me if I'm right, I hope I'm way off.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

This is My House

For Greg's internship in Nicaragua he made a film. Since I have experience in film making, I was able to be a part of its creation. I would like to post it on here, but I don't think I can, so just click on the link and enjoy!

http//www.youtube.com/user/estudiocn

*You can also go to youtube.com and type in This is My House (2Yt).mov

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Where the Wild Things Are

Watching the film Where the Wild Things Are evoked an emotion that I was not expecting. It put me in the shoes of a parent who hurt the feelings of their child. It also brought me back to the emotions I experienced as a kid; not knowing how to channel the feelings of loneliness and fear.

If you have not seen the movie, in the end the mother has this look in her eyes, like she is overwhelmed by the love she has for her son and drained from the discipline.

As a son or a daughter there is an unexplainable pain when the one person who loves you the most and says they never want to hurt you does. But, watching that movie helped me to see the other side of the story, discipline or fighting is sometimes just has painful for the parent.

Although it was a good movie, I walked away feeling down. It made me feel bad about the day I will hurt the feelings of my child or misread their calls for attention as bad behavior. I can only hope that my judgment will be right and my patience will be plentiful.