GAP casting call - I thought this would be fun - and maybe I'm bias, but I think he's cute enough! :)

I entered Elijah too, but for some reason the 3 entries that I posted for him are not showing up.  :(

Go vote for Judah!

http://www.gapcastingcall.com/GapCastingCall/EntryDetail.html?id=894497

TRASH TRASH TRASH!!! It makes me want to SCREAM!

I have just absolutely HAD IT with the GARBAGE all over the internet! It makes me sick to my stomach and honestly makes me want to scream! I really mean that. I want to scream about it. I was following a new story today about a friend and up popped an add for a magazine that just printed, on it's front cover, a completely inappropriate and racey picture of the 3 main characters in the "Glee" cast. I'm all fired up about it, and I find the need to vent about the issue in general. The human race is so completely depraved as it is, we really don't need any help with it! Flopping your bosoms ALL OVER our web pages sucks young men and old in to a vicious trap of peering at something that is NOT theirs to peer at! There's a reason clothes exist! TO COVER UP! Any what of our little girls? What does it tell them? What has it screamed it my face? I NEEEEED to be a rail with HUGE FREAKING jugs to fit the bill. I've struggled my ENTIRE life to pull myself away from the magnetic draw that society has shoved in my face! This is going to be a short lived post. I'm angry and this post is serving as a vent to my anger. I'd like to be able to feel safe pulling up face book and NOT have to worry about seeing some woman's barely clothes body strewn out along the right hand column claiming to advertise whatever line of women's wear. I'm tired of boobs, cracks and crotches being displayed where they DO NOT belong! COVER IT UP! Uhhhhhhhh! I want to scream! Have mercy on our men, our young boys and even our girls of ALL ages and COVER YOURSELF UP! PLEASE! I beg you! Respect yourself! Don't be sucked in to the black hole our PERVERT society has created! All of those who would love to scream out with me, say "I"! Let my fury and anger be a motivator to pray for our sick world! Join with me in praying for protection for the eyes that should NOT be seeing everything that is available to see!

little "faither"

We've been attending a church these last several weeks that is barely a year old.  It's a church plant that meets in a high school auditorium and for the time being streams in messages from Andy Stanley's church, North Point Community, in Georgia.  These last two weeks he's been teaching a series he calls, "Why worry?"  I feel like it was custom written for me.  I've been a "worry wart" my ENTIRE life!  I remember lying in bed worrying when I was merely 5 years old.  I have always been able to find something to worry about.  He made a painful, truthful and eye opening point when he said that living in worry is living just as atheists and pagans do.  Ouch!   Atheists and Pagans, I am not here to judge you, but I have chosen this life of faith in Christ specifically to avoid the life you live from day to day.  You may not understand why we "believers" put our faith in a man that lived over 2000 years ago, but living without trusting in him and having faith in him is terrifying.  I know, I've experienced it.  I prefer to NOT have the constant nag of being in control of my own circumstances - we all know how much we DO NOT have control over our circumstances!  Being able to rely on the fact that the Creator of our entire universe and being really honestly does have everything figured out and DOES have our best interest in mind gives me a peace that burns that feeling of hopelessness to ashes.  Again, I am not called to judge you, but I do continuously pray that there will be a day that you decide that this Jesus that so many of us follow will become someone you can look to with your challenges and realize that he is indeed real and trustworthy.  He is the best of friends, indeed!  

This all, however, is beside the point.  I was lying in bed on Thursday night, the 23rd of last month, weeping once again about the current condition of my left ear.  No doctor has been able to shed light on what is truly wrong with it.  I've grown more and more discouraged over the past 9 months with my rapidly diminishing hearing and sense of balance.  It day to day struggle I've had with it since this past January have profoundly effected the way I live each day.  This is where those messages about "why worry?" come in.  My worry in this ailment as not stopped at just the reasonable worries you would expect.  I've let me mind run hog wild with ideas of being inept as a mother, being completely bed ridden as someone else raises my kids for me.  I've had visions of driving off the road to mine and my children's death due to "drop attacks" of virtigo (I've never experienced a true "drop attach", but you just never know...see, that is the way my brain works - I worry about ridiculous things).  I, over time, have become completely consumed with my condition.  Is it Meniere's or Labrynthitis or maybe a whole new disease...Storey disease!?  I've had head scans, hearing tests, inner ear hearing tests, Meniere's tests, allergy tests....blah blah blah and the list goes on.  NOTHING!  So, as I was in bed weeping I BEGGED, pleaded with God to PLEASE, for goodness sake, give me some sort of reassurance that I wasn't laying and crying out to nothing, to no one.  PLEASE Jesus, restore my hearing so I know you haven't deserted me!  Give me this, if even just for a day!  Please let me know you are still holding me in and through this!  I've run everywhere else and nothing has worked (surprise surprise).  Show me you are in this!  I woke up the next morning to an ear that was functioning at nearly full capacity.  I COULD HEAR for the first time in months!  My condition became significantly worse after moving to Florida.  It used to be that I would have a few days every month where I couldn't hear very well out of my left ear, but shortly after we moved here it changed to only being able to actually hear out that ear for 1 or 2 every couple of weeks.  It got bad!  My vertigo attacks had disappeared for a while but returned with a vengeance, I developed an ulcer....things got bad! (I know, it's all relative)  I've never been good about fasting from food.  I've fasted from other things, but always assumed that my tendency to get the shakes after being without food for just a few hours was good indication that fasting from food just isn't for me.  Well, that Friday morning a couple weeks ago where I woke up and could hear, I felt a strong nudge to fast.  So, I did.  Throughout the day even the tinnitus in my left ear diminished.  I felt completely liberated.  It was a busy day, so I didn't spend much time praying (as is the point of fasting - when you are feeling overwhelmed of the pains of hunger you are reminded to pray - pray instead of eat).  I prayed here and there throughout the day and at the day's end I felt pretty strongly led to stop eating gluten.  So, that is what I've done.  I've gone gluten free and a short road though it's been it's been really difficult.  That stupid stuff is in EVERYTHING!  I've received overwhelming support from my peers on Facebook and emails from family members giving me links to good websites with recipes and gluten free food references.  I noticed within a few days of cutting gluten out that my energy level increased significantly.  my general sense of wellbeing improved and I feel like I have more body strength than I have in years.  I just feel good!  Well, I woke up this morning and my ear is "stuffing" (thats the only way I know how to explain it - it's not my middle ear, its my inner ear - it just feels stuffy and full and my hearing in turn decreases).  The panic and worry come back.  I find it funny that these past couple weeks I've been able to give God all the credit for leading me to stop eating Gluten and praise him for what he's doing in my faith and my trust and my life in this process, and then I wake up this morning and JUST because my ear is doing it's silly routine again I start to panic.  These next questions are the actual questions that have been running through my head this morning, read them with panic, like they were your own questions.  "Oh no!  What if Gluten isn't the only thing I'm supposed to cut out?"  "Why is this happening again?  Did I eat something with gluten?"  They are probably less dramatic and panicked ridden going through your head than mine, but I truly have been in a panic.  The white noise has returned, the stuffiness, the hard hearing...it's back.  What I have to remind myself is that for the past 9 months this has been the routine of my left inner ear.  It has suffered MUCH damage in these months and expecting that it will simply heal immediately upon cutting out gluten is expecting too much.  I believe whole heartedly that God is the one that led me to be gluten free.  So I obeyed.  He blessed me these past couple weeks with better hearing than I've had in months and oh what a sweet sweet blessing it has been.  I am a "little faither".  As soon as a problem arises I let the panic and worry flood back in!  It's super easy to trust him when I can hear and I feel like I'm healing, but it's much more challenging when this condition re presents itself.  Andy Stanley said "worry" is a preoccupation with tomorrow.  Have any of us EVER EVER EVER been able to control what happens tomorrow, or even in the next hour, EVER?  So, what the crap is the point of worrying about it!  IT DOES NO GOOD!  Worrying actually wipes days off of our lives!  Worrying is like prayer, in reverse.  There's a direct relationship between the size of our worry and the size of our faith.  Worry is a trust issue.  Worry is snatching, out of God's hand, control over our lives.  Our human ness tells us we have to be in control over EVERYTHING, but we aren't, so whats the point of trying.  It only makes us worry.  I dream of the day I can live a worry free life.  Oh how liberating that will be!  It's a daily battle for me to hand over control of my life to a man that lived over 2000 years ago and I've never physically seen face to face, but it certainly beats the alternative of being in constant worry, anxiety and utter consumption with my inability to control anything at all - which in turn creates a debilitating sense of hopelessness.