lines

The lines on my face say more than I would like them to some times. There has been a gradual downward shift in the shape of my mouth over my years here in Kansas City. I noticed it a few months ago and wondered about it. What had changed in me so much that caused my whole face to be more attracted by gravity than it used to be? I don't laugh as much as I used to.

My friend Kristen told me that my contagious laughter made me bearable, because I am so melancholy the rest of the time. But when I laugh, the whole world laughs with me. I don't want to lose that part of myself. I have felt this last year in Kansas City weigh on me more than any other year I've lived here. I've become serious. And I guess I am sort of torn between serious and "grown up". I'm not that comfortable with being "grown up", and truth be told I pretty much suck at the refinements of it, i.e. suitable conversation for parties, making people comfortable when you first meet them, etc. Neither am I comfortable with being serious, in general. I guess I can't help but make jokes at every turn, sometimes it becomes compulsive, and I can't turn it off.

There is this new person I met. A brother of a friend of mine, and I don't know what my problem is, but I keep attacking, I keep pushing, and making combative verbal gestures. I don't mean it! I don't want to do it! Why can't I just be a normal 27 year old female that can "be", and not act like a threatened little 12 year old. I really like this guy, he is hilarious, doesn't deserve my abuse. Don't get me wrong. He said: "sarcasm is my love language", so he is sort of asking for it.

I am a witty and charming person. I enjoy being with people, especially funny people. There is a switch that flips, less now than when I was younger, and turns me into this bitch-machine that become inarticulate and combative, reduced to cussing and crude hand signals. WHO IS THAT? The worst version of myself, that's for sure!


This is me right before I moved to Kansas City. My dad was taking pictures of me and my best friend Missy. I don't even remember what we were laughing about.

I miss the people in my life that make me laugh like this. They have all moved away, and I will never live in the same city as them again. I hate that about life. I'm sorry but I do. It just makes me want to get to heaven all the more. I have a great theory that when we get to heaven (after a millennium of freaking out at how beautiful God really is) we will have these private screening rooms of different events in history. There is going to be a whole room of "funniest moments" and I will be howling and rolling on the ground with Jesus at some of these moments in my life and in other peoples lives. At least there I won't have to worry about peeing my pants.

This is a list(not comprehensive) of the funniest people I know, in no particular order:
Jeremiah Gonda
Jeremiah LaCoille
Amber Fannin
Heather Ayres
Gretchen Bourquin
Bret Bourquin
Rachel Liegghio
Samuel Sullivant
Colin Walker
Jason Henderson
Luke Sullivant
Joel Sorge
Prestidge Boys (I'm assuming the ones I haven't met are just as funny)
David Blackwell
Adam Short
Sarah Cox
Pamela Merwin
Kristen Curry
Tikva Twomey
Shannon Vinson
Gabriel Kellmer
Alissa Parker
Nate Haas
Greg Buckman
Jesse Robertson
Donald Carter
Jim Walker
Linda Walker
Missy Lee
Karen Stacey
David Rosen
Chris Dupre and Gary Wiens (together)
Stuart Graves
Leah Morgan

this is a short list of people that have made my life more bearable by making me laugh hysterically at least a few times, enough for me to consider them funny.

Best of all. Anna Walker. I make myself laugh more than anyone knows.

a whole lot I don't know about yet

Man and Wife, just say it, Man and Wife...

They never said, "I do".
richer, poorer, in sickness and in health, thick and thin, babies, death, lies and forgiveness...however it goes.

I am disturbed. I have become accutely aware of the lack of followthrough in relationship lately. I don't know how I am going to say all of this, I apologize for it's roughness.

I have cried over my friends marriages more in the last week then I have ever thought possible. For the first time I am seeing with differant eyes the lies that we are brought up believing are truths. And as I watch the unravelling effect that reality has on real life marriages it makes me sick.

Ideals. Optimisim, "hope", "faith", all these words that might describe someone who is nieve enough to think that the princess gets her prince and they live happily ever after.

Let me state: I am getting the cynisim knocked out of me right now, even as I attempt to write some thoughts about this. It all started last week after I watched the interaction of a married couple that I know in front of all these people at thier daughters birthday party. I ached inside when I left. I groaned. I got angry. I began spouting poison about how marriage never works and how its all a big sham from the beginning. God never meant it to work out, it was just pain and brokenness magnified. As I was spewing these vile lies I felt deep inside of me this tug to go to Jesus about it and repent for accusing God of not being good.

I broke down in my car. drapped over my steering wheel weeping, repenting for taking the imperfect and blaming God for it. I set my heart to live and not to take in the poison that I had been from my childhood watching my own broken parents struggle with what marriage was.
I think something changed inside of me. I think that God flipped a switch in me. I prayed for mercy on my friends who were hurting each other. I begged God to protect them and to show himself to them.

a day later, on my birthday, my friend got a phone call from her boyfriend and he broke up with her, stating something like insanity for his case. (thank you very much for your perfect timing) And it began to strike me that something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong. I had an appointment with my counsellor on my birthday and it was something we talked about. About marriage and relationships, etc. and the piece of massive truth that has since been totally unravelling me was this: At the moment of seeing sin (someone procreating sin in someone elses life, etc.) there are two options for a response. The first, being the godly one, is that you can see the situation as it is, feel the impact of sin and fallenness in people's lives and grieve, with Jesus, about it...which often times I have discovered leads into intercession for those people/that situation. The second, being the ungodly response, is that you take what you see and you swallow it whole as "life experiance", and you let it sink deep into you. Usually this produces a deep anger and rage about the unfairness of life, about the seeming lack of God's providentual hand in our lives, and worst of all it becomes a part of you in deep levels that you don't understand and you begin to create a world view around these things you percieve as truth, and cynisim sets in. Oh the depths of depravity that need Jesus!

I have done this my WHOLE life up to now! It has literally mutilated my body, interfered with my relationships, with family, with my hopes for the future, and I haven't trusted God because of MY persceptions of a situtation (as though I have the ENTIRE picture!).

Since I ran face first into this wall of truth I've literally become a ball of mush. You could poke me and I would probably start crying. I've known for a long time that grief (and my avoidence of it) was a big part of my healing, and now it is as if the perverbial snowball has begun its decent down a snowy mountian.

The amazing thing to me about all of this is how absolutly freeing it is. In the moments that I have been faced with the choice of whether to grieve about something or get cynical and I choose greif, I have experianced such an amazing lightness of heart afterward. It is as though I do not carry it, whereas, every other time in the past because of my ungodly responses I've become the bearer of a burden that was never mine in the first place.

As I said before, this is all very rough, which I guess everything I write is. I hope you'll forgive my lack of articulation, and hear the heart behind this. I hope that Jesus can get to the places inside of you where you've become the unlawful bearer of burdens that were never yours to begin with.

And I really hope that this really does radically change my entire life so that people who know me will be in total awe of what God can do. Cause if he can make me compassionate and not cynical, than you ought to know it is a miracle!

Ah, the great Mundane...and Superhero's

These are un-extraordinary times. It seems to me that life goes on tick after tock, breath after beat, and there is no accounting for taste. I am sure someone somewhere is experiencing some exhilarating portion of life. Maybe my friends in China. Maybe people in Africa. Maybe it’s just the Adam Cox’s in life that get all the good stories.

I want to live. What does it mean to live, really live? When will I find the thing, the people that win over my heart indefinitely and cause me to live inside? Maybe I am the problem. I feel somehow that it is not likely. Seems that everyone I know is struggling. It used to be so exciting when I was younger. So much of the world seemed conquerable. Now, I am conquered. By some weathering force of time, I feel as though I have become a part of the worn away terra where I exist.

Confession: I want to be a superhero. I want super powers and I want to save the world with them, and I want all of the attention, for at least a little while. I’ve wanted it my whole life. Zorro, Mighty Mouse, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aqua Man, Spiderman, He-Man, She-Ra, Wolverine, Rogue, Storm, the list is extensive. I love comic book movies and I always look for hidden meanings in them. Maybe God will talk to me through this one, and tell me that I am going to supernaturally have a healing web come from my wrist or a super utility belt of truth and justice will fall from the heavens and I will have the cure for redundancy all at once.