beautiful furniture and a new roommate

i am a fine arts major and i want my imphasis to be in furniture design, mostly wood working. while i was home over christmas break i went to a coffee shop in algona and they had a catolog for thos. moser cabinetmakers and they send out their catalogs for free, very exciting for me. and wow they make beautiful furniture, sadly expensive, but beautiful. this is the kind of stuff that i wouldlove to be able to make. so if you want to look at pretty things made of wood go to www.thosmoser.com it could entertain me for quite some time.

on another note the people in friley are being blessed with the pressence of my soon to be ex-roomie sarah. she is going to be the peer mentor in friley so i am without a roommate and get to once again experience the joy of random roommates. me and sarah were talking last night how all they'll need to bring other than their own stuff would be a tv and a microwave. everything else i got covered, i love free stuff, but sarah has mostly everything she needs for her room except furniture so she is pretty much set which is good. we also watched the grudge again last night, it was fun. the end

Journalism = Character Building

The longer I am involved in journalism, the more I realize it's a lot more difficult than I ever expected. I knew it would be hard - ya know - take me out of my comfort zone, but I never realized it would be this hard. But after pondering the difficulty for awhile, and debating over journalism or dietetics, I realized, everything that I don't like doing about Journalism is something that builds my Christian character.

1. Deadlines - ummm . . . okay, maybe not everything I don't like about Journalism is characer building. Let me know if you can think of any eternal benefits to dealing with deadlines.

2. Finding to random sources - I can't even count the number of times I have had to walk up to random people and ask them about a particular topic, or ask if I can take a picture of them, or ask if I can video tape them. It's hard to walk up to some random person you've never met and ask them some annoying questions that they probably don't really want to answer anyway! Kinda like it's hard to walk up to a random person and ask them about their spiritual beliefs and if they were to die today how sure would they be that they would go to heaven? Talking to random people for news stories or photojournalism assignments or what not gets me out of my comfort zone. I'm constantly worried that the person I'm talking to thinks I'm stupid, or really isn't intrested in talking to me, or doesn't have the time to chat with me. It is my hope that dealing with all of these fears for my journalism classes will help me overcome my fears with sharing the gospel and doing cold turkey evangelism!

3. Interviews - Interviews are just weird. I never know what questions to ask, I'm always worried that the person I'm interviewing thinks I'm doing a terrible job! But there is a lot about interviewing that builds character too! It's a great test in listening. You may go into the interview with a plan of where you think the interview will go, but you have to be open to where the subject leads it. I constantly hear the same example: You're talkin' to someone and ask him or her a question, he or she answers "Yeah, that's cool, but I really hate my life and I think I'm going to kill myself." Or "Yeah, and I started a meth lab in my bacement." And then the reporter goes on to ask the next question on the list having nothing to do with the suicide threat or the meth lab. BAD IDEA! When interviewing, you have to listen to the person you're talking to. You can't just turn your brain off. It's kinda like what ya have to do when you're talking to someone about a problem. You have to listen to what they're saying and let them explain it to you. You may have an idea where the conversation is going, but you have to let the person you're talking to lead it there. Also, interviewing requires silence. You have to shut-up and listen! You may want to put your two cents in, but the story's not about you - it's about your subject! So let them talk! Same deal with talking to people about threre problems (reflective listening), it's their problem - let them tell you about it. Don't chime in with how hard your life is too! I mean yeah, sometimes it's appropriate or okay, but most of the time people just want to be listened to, they don't want to hear about your problems. It's a selfishness issue. Who are you really thinking about: the person you're talking to, or yourself?

4. Not being able to use the word "fruition" - Journalism is all about writing for the mass audience. You have to use words that the masses understand. Aparently the masses don't understand the word "fruition." Pathetic! What are our schools coming to?!! Anyway, although the Christian life doesn't forbid the word "fruition," which I am very thankful for, by the way, I guess you could liken this to swearing - I don't know. I don't really have a problem with swearing, but some people do. You just can't use every word that you want to! So restrictive!

So yeah, I really hate Journalism, and I hate stepping out of my comfort zone and doing things I don't like to do (hence I hate doing them - I'm pretty sure hence is a no-no in the broadcast world too). So I might switch my major to dietetics and go to college for three more years. But I think that I'll find there are a lot of things about dietetics that I hate too . . . and I haven't found many character building opportunities in science.

Thanks for listening to my banter! It was great fun!

divorcing the world

I started reading a book called girl meets God, the other day. It is by Lauren F. Winner, a former Orthodox Jew who converted to Christianity. Before she accepted Christ as her savior she was talking to a Presbyterian minister and told him that she thought she was beginning to believe in Jesus. He responded with this, “You know Lauren, you can’t just divorce Judaism.” Lauren said that she felt like she had been socked in the stomach, later she realized the truth behind his statement. “Pastor Mike’s metaphor, I learned, was useful: trading my Hebrew prayer book for an Episcopal Book of Common Prayer felt exactly like filing for divorce. That was the only word I could come up with. The more Christian I became, the more I needed to have nothing to do with Judaism. Every new Christian habit, purchase, or prayer was accompanied by the unlearning of a Jewish habit, the cessation of a Jewish prayer.”

I thought that this was an interesting metaphor and it could also be related to Christianity in general. I am not sure if that really makes sense or is written in the best possible way but it is all my brain can think of right now, so just so I hopefully don’t confuse anyone let me explain. Once you’ve accepted Christ and have decided to live your life for him you are divorcing the world like Lauren was divorcing Judaism. Living for God means living differently than the world, you are separating yourself from it and living by God’s standards. Like it says in Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” The world lives for earthly things like money. To be living for God you can’t serve them both. Lauren chose to accept Christ and give up her Jewish beliefs. We need to chose to life for Christ and give up the ways of the world, and it is a daily choice to make. And it will be well worth it in the end.

And on a completely different note, signing off on im is like hanging up the phone on someone. And Katie totally hung up on im on me I mean I just don’t understand why after saying bye 10 or so times she needed to get back to her painting. Just kidding, but not about the hanging up part. Oh I think I need to stop talking to myself and my computer now and go to bed… and people say I’m crazy really what are they talking about... oh wait... nevermind.

Quit Boosting Self-Image!

We as women, and men too (I think), are told constantly to be ourselves and love ourselves. We are taught ways to boost our self-esteem and our self-image. It's easy as Christians to think that we have to love ourselves ("Love one another as you love yourself."). But really the idea of boosting self-image is a very selfish one.

I've been struggling with a lot of lies receantly and I had heard that it is good to go through the Bible and find verses that combat all the lies you are believing. Now, I am in no way knocking this practice, I think it is a very good one. However, for the kind of lies I was struggling with, there aren't really any verses to expose them as what they are. For example: nowhere in the Bible does it say that Christy Korthals is a fun person to be around.

Dictionary.com defines self-image as follows:
self-im·age
n. The conception that one has of oneself, including an assessment of qualities and personal worth.

In "Only a Woman," by Terri McFaddin, McFaddin says "self-image is based on feelings and perceptions that may have nothing to do with whom God intended you to be." She says that self-image is very much culture based - because of what our culture values we feel we are the wrong size, shape, body type, and have the wrong personality, sense of humor and whatever else. McFaddin writes of our "God-image," and she defines this as "the person God intended you to be from the womb - the person with specific gifts, purpose, and calling."

When we are worried about our weight, our appearance, and our personality - thinking no one really loves us or cares about us, we are worried about how the world sees us. We are worried about how we are rated in the culture we were raised in. When really what we should be worried about what God thinks of us, and how He rates us. And the fact is, He thinks we are pretty darn sweet!

"just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be HOLY and WITHOUT BLAME before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will"
~Ephesians 1:4-5 (NKJV)

"God purchased you at a HIGH price. Don't be enslaved by the world."
~1 Corinthians 7:23 (NLT)

So let's quit boosting our self-image and start boosting our God-image. I don't want this world to define my worth or my value. So really why should I even care about my self-image? The fact is, I don't! Well, at least I'm working on not caring. It IS going to be a struggle and it isn't somthing that I can just decided to do today and plan on doing the rest of my life. Like most of the Christian life it requires a daily dying to self and choosing to see myself as God sees me. And seeing the potential God has for me - who He has predestined me to become! It will be a long, hard struggle, but one I am excited to make!

ARE YOU WITH ME?