Through High School and College I always enjoyed watching movies. I always like seeing how the story would unfold, and how the characters would get to the end. Half of the 'chick-flicks' that I watched you could almost predict how the ending would be, but the real reason to watch the movie was to see how they got to that point. How through the hardship and conflict, it almost always ended the way that, as a watcher, planned it would.
The characters in the movies were awesome. They would always have the prefect hair, the greatest smile, the perfect little circle of friends (where all of their friends knew and were friends with each other, for example FRIENDS, I mean what is up with that?), the story line, and the greatest background music. Growing up, I think that I thought that was something to aim for. The perfect 'movie story-line' life.
Now, before you say anything, I know that the movies aren't real and the actors who play the characters had real lives with real issues. But there was always something intrinsic, something to aim for: the perfect movie romance, the perfect movie story, the perfect movie life.
But none of that is real, none of that is true. In the movies that I grew up watching, the writers wrote the character script. The writers got to dream about how they wish life could be different, how life could be perfect. But they knew that real life couldn't be that way, so they wrote about it instead.
Now you are probably asking yourself why I am even writing about this, why does it even matter? But I do have a point. Growing up with those movies I thought that life wasn't going to be as hard as what I was expecting. In real life, there are group projects, due dates that don't get pushed back, people who are above you that are horrible and their funny factor doesn't make up for that. In real life there are no scripts that you can go by, no background music that emphasizes your mood, no flipping or fast forwarding to the end to see how the story is going to end. There is no way to totally predict what curve balls life is going to throw at you.
I have a great quote from a book that I am reading. In I kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris he has a quote that the end goes: "... Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocals. Because nobody wants to read the small print in the dreams." That is how it was for me, I had to get into reality, and realize that those movies, and their 'perfection' was nothing that I should aim for
In life we are not given a script to follow. The people that come into our life, won't follow the script that we write for then in our head. We have to realize that no matter how many scenarios we make up in our head, no matter how great they seam, they never happen just like that.
Life isn't the fairytale that we all dream up as little girls, Life is a roller coater that has its uphill climbs, and its stomach wrenching falls. But what is so great about that is, we get to ride the whole coaster, and we get to see how it ends, no matter unpredictable it might be.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
One Life to Live
So many times in our life we come upon forks in the road of our life path. It is a daily thing that we come upon.
Should I sleep in 5 more min? Do I really need to eat that cookie? or the more serious Can I just glance over and cheat off my partner? Should I flirt back with that person? Are my actions showing dignity?
There are so many choices that we have t choose every day. Sometimes we don't even realize that we have come upon those choices, until we are past them already. But we have to decide to move forward. Nothing good comes from retracing our steps and making that decision over again. That isn't the way that we are supposed to live life. That is why we are capable to be forgiven, and told to try harder every day that we are alive.
God didn't come to this world so we could always party it up, and live the high life. We aren't here on this earth for ourselves. There is more to life than just us. It doesn't really matter if we are popular, if we are the brains, if we have made poor decisions in the past, or anything. We are here to be, at one time or another, God's hands, feet, and heart to someone here on earth.
Life is a gift. We must remember that, it is all what we choose to do with that gift is what really matters.
So Live Life.
Should I sleep in 5 more min? Do I really need to eat that cookie? or the more serious Can I just glance over and cheat off my partner? Should I flirt back with that person? Are my actions showing dignity?
There are so many choices that we have t choose every day. Sometimes we don't even realize that we have come upon those choices, until we are past them already. But we have to decide to move forward. Nothing good comes from retracing our steps and making that decision over again. That isn't the way that we are supposed to live life. That is why we are capable to be forgiven, and told to try harder every day that we are alive.
God didn't come to this world so we could always party it up, and live the high life. We aren't here on this earth for ourselves. There is more to life than just us. It doesn't really matter if we are popular, if we are the brains, if we have made poor decisions in the past, or anything. We are here to be, at one time or another, God's hands, feet, and heart to someone here on earth.
Life is a gift. We must remember that, it is all what we choose to do with that gift is what really matters.
So Live Life.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Holy Week
How can Lent be almost over already? It is crazy how time has gone by so quickly and I haven't realized how fast it has actually been moving. But this is ultimately my favorite week in the church. There is such deep reverence and we go through Christ's passion.
During every Holy Week, I watch The Passion of Christ. It reminds me what Jesus put himself through for us! He didn't have to die on the cross, but he loved us so much that he wanted us to share with him eternal life. How crazy is that? For every single sin that ever was, he died for that.
Our crosses in life, we think that we are hard, but Jesus is carrying so much of our own cross, and we don't even realize it. In the Stations of the Cross book that I have, one of my favorite lines is during the second stations of Jesus takes up His Cross:
"My Jesus, LORD, I take my daily cross. I welcome the monotony that often marks my day, discomforts of all kinds, the summer's heat, the winter's cold, my disappointments, tensions, setbacks, cares. Remind me often that in carrying my cross, I carry Yours with You. And though I bear a sliver only of Your cross, You carry all of mine, except a sliver, in return."
Whenever I read that passage, I really see me just carrying a little toothpick size of wood, while I am walking beside Christ that has this HUGE cross of lumber on his back. I want to say that I will carry more, I want to tell him that he doesn't have to carry so much, just to help me a sinner. But he carries that cross not just for me, and not just for you. He carried that cross for EVERYONE.
This season makes me think of two songs that are really close to me. The first one is "By His Wounds" by Steven Curtis Chapman, Brian Littrell, Mac Powell, Mark Hall. The second one is a not as well known, but it was a song that I sang in 8th grade choir during Holy Week, and it has been always stuck in my head since. It is "Face the Cross" by: Ruth Elaine Schram and Scott Schram. That song is just powerful for me this time of the year. Listen to them, and think about what Jesus did for us this Holy Week.
How can we change our lives that just might make His Cross just a bit lighter?
We each have the choice, to face the cross, and be thankful for the greatest gift we have ever been given. Or turn away from this gift, and say that our life and our selfish desires are all what really matter.
During every Holy Week, I watch The Passion of Christ. It reminds me what Jesus put himself through for us! He didn't have to die on the cross, but he loved us so much that he wanted us to share with him eternal life. How crazy is that? For every single sin that ever was, he died for that.
Our crosses in life, we think that we are hard, but Jesus is carrying so much of our own cross, and we don't even realize it. In the Stations of the Cross book that I have, one of my favorite lines is during the second stations of Jesus takes up His Cross:
"My Jesus, LORD, I take my daily cross. I welcome the monotony that often marks my day, discomforts of all kinds, the summer's heat, the winter's cold, my disappointments, tensions, setbacks, cares. Remind me often that in carrying my cross, I carry Yours with You. And though I bear a sliver only of Your cross, You carry all of mine, except a sliver, in return."
Whenever I read that passage, I really see me just carrying a little toothpick size of wood, while I am walking beside Christ that has this HUGE cross of lumber on his back. I want to say that I will carry more, I want to tell him that he doesn't have to carry so much, just to help me a sinner. But he carries that cross not just for me, and not just for you. He carried that cross for EVERYONE.
This season makes me think of two songs that are really close to me. The first one is "By His Wounds" by Steven Curtis Chapman, Brian Littrell, Mac Powell, Mark Hall. The second one is a not as well known, but it was a song that I sang in 8th grade choir during Holy Week, and it has been always stuck in my head since. It is "Face the Cross" by: Ruth Elaine Schram and Scott Schram. That song is just powerful for me this time of the year. Listen to them, and think about what Jesus did for us this Holy Week.
How can we change our lives that just might make His Cross just a bit lighter?
We each have the choice, to face the cross, and be thankful for the greatest gift we have ever been given. Or turn away from this gift, and say that our life and our selfish desires are all what really matter.
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