Busy Weekend!

This weekend was a lot of fun. Friday after class I got to sit around for a while and watch a movie at home, then I went to our swim meet against Willamette, we won. :) Then straight from there I went to the basketball game against UPS which are our srch-rivals, but unfortunately we lost....It was still fun though, basketball games are my favorite sport to watch live, so it was still good. Then I went home and watched another movie till I fell asleep with my housemates! Saturday I basically woke up and did a repeat. Swim meet against Lewis and Clarke, Basketball game straight after, then movie at night! It was a lot of fun. Then sunday got even better because after church, I checked my email and it said that on tuesday, my only class obligation for that day was to watch the presidential inauguration! So of course I did that today, it was good! Obama is a really good speaker. But anyway, back to sunday. There had been a swim team party planned for this night to do a white elephant gift excheange at one of the coaches houses...my car stalled on the way to their house unfortunately so that caused a lot of problems throughout this week, but I just got my car back and all fixed today, so that's nice. To make a long story short, apparently someone on the team put in as their white elephant gift, "a date with Brittany Gresset" without my knowledge. I was unable to go to the party because of the car problems, but at least I found out that I now get to go on a date with Ms. Christina Hinkel. :) hehe! It shall be fun. Yesterday, I went to practice then got my homework done, then headed to practice again later on that day. Me, Brenda, Nita, Sarah, and Jenn ended up going to Azteca for dinner afterward and then to the movie, "Bride Wars" which was Hilarious. Although I balled for some odd reason towards the end of it. I must've been emotional that night or something cuz it didn't seem like that big of a deal what was going on in the movie, but I still did anyway, and it felt good. :) Sometimes it feels nice to cry, I don't do it very often, so when I do cry, it's nice to let it out. So on the way to the car that night after the movie, me and Brenda found a Kanye West song, "heartless" which is one of our favorites so we started dancing all over the place in her car, and apparently this lady and her husband were walking out to their car behind us and Brenda saw the lady whisper, "they're CRAZY" to her husband....awesome. Glad to know I look like I'm insane when I dance in a car haha! Then once we were out of the parking lot, we were still dancing and this car full of guys saw us dancing and started cracking up haha! Oh the many ways that I can make a fool of myself... :) But all in all, it was an AWESOME weekend full of fun adventures. :) Next weekend should be good too, my parents are gonna come up and visit me! They are gonna come watch my last home swim meet against Whitman at our pool. :( I'm really sad that this is my last chance to swim at our pool in a meet for the rest of my life. :( I don't want it to end. Swimming has been such a big part of my college life, I don't know what to expect when it won't be there next year. But anyway, I'm gonna try to do my very best for when they come. Hopefully I can go out with a bang. We'll see.

The Excellence of Love

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am NOTHING. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Love is Patient, love is Kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, it does not seek its own, it is not provoked, it does not take into account a wrong suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the TRUTH; it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." (1 Cor. 13:1-8)

"When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, I used to think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things." (1 Cor. 13:11)

"But now abide in faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these, is love." (1 Cor.13:13)


I have been drawn to read these passages over and over again recently. Here's what God has clearly put on my heart: I want to find out what it means to ABIDE in Christ, and give him everything. I want to return to my first Love, Him, and the way it felt when I was so close with Him. I want to experience this love that He talks about...and give it to others. I want to have a very close and very intimate relationship with Him...I want what makes Him sad to make me sad, and what makes Him happy to make me happy. I really desire this relationship from Him and am praying for a (female) friend here at school that would be willing to embark on this with me. I think this is one request that God doesn't often refuse. :) I am ready to move forward and ready to give up what I've treasured for too long in my own hands. What a scary thing, being so vulnerable to having the worst of yourself revealed to yourself....but Love, God's Love, makes me do crazy things.... That's all I felt like saying today. I hope everyone is doing well, and have a good night. :)

Chaos Theory

Ok, so in my college experiences, I have taken a lot of courses that have altered my life a lot, made me think outside of the box and have experienced a lot of life situations that have "forced" me to change my close-minded view. I am taking a course this Jan-Term called Chaos Theory. I think that already, this class is going to have a big impact on my life. This was the first week that the class started, and I was already intruiged by the subject, but today, it was like God smacked me upside the head with something that I always knew, but couldn't really accept. My teacher is Jack Burns, so I'll just call him Jack for now, but basically, today in the middle of class, he was discussing this theory about how there are three different stages in which an organization can be it. The first is the "equilibrium" stage or the "implosion" stage. This stage reflects an organization that is secure; and by secure, I mean that the organization is stuck on its long term plan and is not willing to make any changes along the way. The reason why this stage is also called the implosion stage is because any organization that stays in this stage will evenutally implode and die. The reason why?? -THINGS CHANGE. Not a single person can predit the long term future of an organization. No one could have predicted that the 9/11 crisis would happen and what it would do to people in the U.S., nobody can say that they are going to be able to reach a certain point in the long-term future because life just doesn't happen like that. Accidents happen, changes happen, growth happens, destruction happens...it's all very ambiguous. The second stage is called "Chaos." The chaos stage can be depicted with a picture similar to what the results of a lie detector test look like, wavy, sporatic, and almost never consistent. Then above the wavy line there is the concept of the ultimate purpose of an organization. (Or mission statement as some people might call it.) Below the wavy line is the organization itself, either in hierarchical format or as Jack proceeded to draw it as, in circles with boxes surrounding each circle to represent the team members of the organization. Each Box on the circles represented one person in the organization and each box was connected to others and so on, symbolizing the relationships that each member of the organization had with eachother, as well as the relationships that people had with other people outside of the organization. Now, if you can picture this, and if I described this right, then I will be amazed haha, but if you can imagine taking a line from each of these circles, through the wavy line, and eventually all connecting to the purpose statement above the wavy line, then this may be clearer to you. But anyway, the interesting thing about this picture is that the wavy line is representative of all of the crazy stuff that life brings...the conflicts, the different personalities within an organization, the different talents, natural disasters that have an effect on the organization, etc. The list could go on. Jack explained that the waves within an organization are the keys to helping the organization survive and thrive. the purpose at the top of the picture is something cohesive that can bring the whole organization together as a whole, ideally. The circles below the waves cannot stay in their "dominant schema" or in lamen's terms, they can't stay with one way of doing things for so long without changing. Jack asked us, "have you ever been around a really creative person?" And we all raised our hands, and then he was like, "well, weren't they really annoying? How do you feel when your around somebody like that?" The class didn't know what to say. He characterized the extremely creative person as someone who was all over the place. They did their own thing, they messed up the order of things and made things uncomfortable within an organization. Immediately I started to process this information and relate it to my own life. I don't think of myself as an extremely creative person at all. I try to be logical and cool-headed about most things, and that's pretty much who I've tried to be. But the memory of a swim team experience in the past brought me to realize that I am one of those people who would manage my business in the "equilibrium" stage! :-O I thought of some people that were on the team that I just had the hardest time dealing with because I would always think that they were there solely to disrupt any kind of peace/unity that I wanted so badly for the team to have. I had to learn this the hard way though with experience throughout the past four years that I need to be flexible. I need to adapt. I need to be a person that is ok with change and that is open to learning new things. Now, I had definitely learned this lesson through the swim team by the end of my freshman year and have definitely found myself improving a lot on noticing when this happens, but to have had it spelled out so succinctly by my professor to me with that one example, I knew I could not be a leader unless I was willing to lose control. When an organization, yes, has a long term goal, but doesn't bank everything on that, and just takes things one day at a time within the "chaos" model, they are the most successful organizations and learn the most. The third stage is the "random" stage which was basically was all of the really creative people that were out in the world that wouldn't belong to any kind of organization that may have a very strong expertise in something, but are not willing to be within an organization. This stage wasn't all that exciting to me so I just ignored it haha. :) jk, jk. But still. :) So anyways, this whole lesson today made me really think about other aspects of my life that I have held in the "equilibrium" state, whether that be in my family, relationships, friendships, acquaintances, etc, you name it. The same basic concept applies. You gotta lose your life to live it. Such a good reminder of God's calling on us. I was very convicted. I really hope that God will remind me of this daily so that I will not lose sight of the fact that I have a mission in this world, and its not a mission that I can go on if I think that I am in control of it. Chaos is actually good for me. It is learning...we learn when we are in hard times, or at least I seem to think that....and the same can be said for when God brings us through trials...it's way harder, but it bears the most fruit. So with that, I am SO rediculously excited about life. Still nervous though...I'm not THAT good at giving up control and I know that some things take a little time, which God is VERY patient with me on that, but I'm very compelled to see if he will make a possible success out of all of my many failures.

Christmas Training Part Two...

What a relief! I'm finally over with the mind-grinder. The mind-grinder is the one dreaded set of 11,ooo yards of swimming in every Whitworth swimmer's mind that comes only once every four years...because it is that horrible. BUT...I was able to make my send-offs every time, although a few times I was cutting it pretty close. God was good to me. My body was prepared for the yardage and did pretty decent actually, but my brain was going all over the place during some of the 300's. I kept getting lost on what lap I was on and would finish at the wall and yell at Gary to tell me where I was haha! It was pretty rediculous. But I had fun and I'm glad to have finally experienced it. I took some pictures of the momentous occasion so you will see them soon on facebook. So last night was New Years Eve, and honestly, I was so tired that day that I went to bed at 8:30 pm and woke up at 8:30 am the next morning! haha! I got 12 hours of sleep! It was amazing! But you can't blame me really cuz I definitely have had to wake up at five o'clock in the morning every morning this past week to drive to practice, so I don't feel THAT bad. :) Now that it's '09 I realized that I graduate soon! Agh! Crazy! I have major denial issues and tend to not look at things the way I don't want to see them, so the fact that I will never have another Christmas Training on the team is so depressing that I can't even think about it now....and I probably won't, till its too late. :/ But, with this problem, it does have it's perks! Now I can enjoy this year for what it is and what God is going to teach me through it....It seems like every year for like the past eight years has had some kind of a theme to it, of either learning something specific that God had shown me that year, or learning something more about myself and others, so I'm excited to see what God is going to do with me this year. :)


Now that the swimming is all done for my time here in Cali, now we get to have fun!!! The rest of this evening we have off, so I think I'm gonna read a bit and just relax, then tomorrow we have our "fun day" where I'm gonna be headed off to a Laker's game!! YEA!!! SO stoked! Basketball is one of my favorite sports to watch live, and I'm glad I get to watch it with friends! Our seating tickets are kind of sporatically placed, so hopefully some kind soul will be okay with switching us seats to sit with more of the swimmers. I'm really excited, it'll be way fun. :)


After that we leave sunday morning and I head back to Seattle, go home and pack up, then I'm off driving to Spokompton once again....I guess by now they have had six feet of snow build-up......grrrreeeeeeeeat. I'm not excited to see snow again. Normally I don't mind it, but in Spokane, it is very accessive, and it NEVER melts away. LAME. So pray for me that I can get there safely and on time that night, it'll be a LONG day. I hope everyone had a great New Years!!! I know I did! :)