chasing the sun

This entry is for my friend Jason...I just wanted to see if I could actually make 100.

100 Things You Might Not Know About Me
1. I've driven 4 cars in my lifetime and never paid insurance once (thanks mom!)
2. My parents will have been married almost 25 years
3. I’m 26
4. I found out my dad wasn't my real dad when I was young –
5. But I've never met my biological father.
6. I don't trust people either; they know that about me I think...
7. I have a lot of passion, but no definite cause or direction
8. I think I will make an interesting wife…someday
9. I’m not always right.
10. Most Sundays I go to church...I really hate church most Sundays.
11. I like boys, but I am completely terrified of them finding out.
12. I have read through the Harry Potter series 3 times
13. In my life, I have been about seventy shades of blonde and a distinct shade of reddish orange which I won’t discuss any further except to say “YIKES!”
14. I have to take air-sicknesses meds in order to fly, any time, anywhere.
15. I used to lie a lot when I was younger because I was afraid people wouldn't like me if they knew I was really plain and boring...turns out I'm not so boring...turns out I'm still afraid people won't like me.
16. My grandmother died when I was 11 and I still miss her so much it hurts.
17. I used to be on the puppet team at my church…that’s right 6 years, baby!
18. I quit most things I start (i.e. piano lessons, community theatre, taking vitamins)
19. My greatest fear is being in debt
20. I have never loved any job I’ve ever had
21. For the first half of 10th grade, the administration at my school thought my name was “Bill Ingsley” (my last name is Billingsley). Needless to say, I made an impression.
22. I am the oldest of three girls
23. And the first of nine grandchildren on my mother’s side (eight of which are girls).
24. My favorite place in the world is the Frio River just outside of Fredricksburg, TX (or maybe Disney World)
25. I used to grind my teeth so badly that I had to get fillings, but I’ve only ever had one cavity!
26. My grandfather was a world-class bass fisherman before his stroke…in one day he caught over a hundred fish with this disgusting bait he made himself
27. When I was in college I participated in a real battle of the sexes in which the boys made shields and swords from cardboard and painted themselves blue ala Braveheart.
28. I am very clumsy and have actually fallen down the side of a mountain, slid down really.
29. I have issues!!!
30. A friend of mine wrote a song about me/for me once.
31. I have seen the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice about 20 times. I love that Mr. Darcy!
32. I don’t usually make a great first impression
33. I have bigger calf-muscles than most men I know…kinda gross, kinda cool…
34. I always over-pack for trips
35. I pluck my eye-brows way too much
36. I received a good citizenship award from the Daughters of the American Revolution
37. I still have no idea who they are
38. I am the spitting image of my grandmother when she was my age.
39. I get ridiculously nervous in a crowd of strangers.
40. I have ambitions and dreams of playing my guitar like a rockstar -
41. But I’m really quite bad
42. I love weddings, up until the bouquet toss
43. Then I run to the bathroom and hide until its over
44. As I get older, I am learning to appreciate my family more
45. I’m also learning to love people better
46. I love to learn, to know things – even useless things, mostly because I like being able to answer people’s questions
47. I can’t say “abominable”
48. But I can spell “chrysanthemum”
49. My favorite flowers are gerber daisies and calla lilies
50. My sisters and I used to do plays for each other and our friends in our back yard.
51. We specialized in Haunted Houses.
52. I busted my lip on the first day of school two years in a row by falling out of a swing.
53. My first and only “C” was in geometry.
54. I have an unnatural obsession with movie soundtracks, Braveheart and Romeo and Juliet are my favorites
55. My friend Kristi and I were Star Wars Trivial Pursuit champions in undergrad…that’s Star Wars, not Star Trek thank you very much.
56. If I could have a supernatural ability, I’d really like to be able to read people’s minds or be invisible.
57. I miss being able to drive down I-635 with my sun roof open and the radio blaring, singing at the top of my lungs during rush hour traffic
58. I miss Dallas
59. I have a thing for musicians, but really, doesn’t every girl?
60. And, aside from the chewing tobacco, I think cowboys are pretty great too…
61. I talk too much when I’m nervous…it’s totally out of control
62. I got to name my neice: Gracyn Elise
63. I had two beagles named “Frosty”
64. They both died
65. I never had another beagle
66. I’ve been white-water rafting five times – I love it!
67. I got my passport in November of 2003 and I have been to England, South Africa and Jamaica
68. Almost all of the furniture and appliances in my apartment belongs to my roommate
69. I changed my major three times in college before they finally created a special degree for me so I could graduate
70. I used to work the drive-thru Taco Bell
71. I also worked at a tanning salon so I got to tan for free
72. Once I ripped a hole in the seat of my pants while climbing over a fence.
73. I didn’t discover the hole for another hour or so
74. Even when I feel like I’m being transparent and vulnerable, I’m really not
75. My middle name is “Lynn”.
76. I changed it when I was adopted by my step-dad
77. It used to be “Gayle”
78. In 8th grade I wore my dad’s cowboy boots in a school play
79. I am fascinated by the story of the Titanic (not the movie!!). My grandmother showed me this National Geographic when I was a kid. It was right after Robert Ballard found the wreckage and they had all these cool underwater photos.
80. I have a piece of coal that was brought up from the wreck site, complete with certificate and engraved case
81. The first thing I do when I get a newspaper is the crossword puzzle
82. I have been a secretary for the last 8 years
83. I’m ready to give it up and try something new
84. I love to be on, in or near the water…except for Lake Michigan in the winter!
85. My dream home is one that is very old and shabby and needs a lot of work that I can do myself.
86. I love that show, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
87. It always makes me cry…
88. I also love the Simpsons, Lost, and West Wing
89. Neither one of my parents graduated from college
90. I’ve narrowly escaped being hit by a car twice now.
91. I became friends with one of the best men I have ever known while traveling in a van for an entire summer
92. We hit and killed a deer that summer
93. Twice, I’ve been to Mexico
94. Twice, I’ve purchased silver jewelry
95. Twice, I’ve lost said jewelry
96. I hate beets
97. I love broccoli
98. The deepest desire of my heart at present is to know God in a real way and to learn how to follow Christ in a way that honors him
99. By the time I was 13, I had a full blown peptic ulcer
100. Stress runs in my family

so I did the thing I wasn't sure I wanted to do at all today and i went to see "Hotel Rwanda." My excitement about the movie had waned with my mood and bitterness toward the Chicago cold, but my roommate and I braved the harsh winter weather and went. I don't cry at movies, hardly ever actually. I did put on my bravest face and cough down a few sobs that sort of sneaked past my throat. I was stunned and frankly, enraged by the time the movie was over.

Will there ever be a cure for ignorance?

I knew the story, but I had somehow missed out on the knowledge that it was the Belgians who first began distinguishing between Rwandan Africans, setting one group apart from the other as those who hold one race above another are often liked to do. Rwandans actually had to look at someone's papers to even tell whether he or she was Hutu or Tutsi.

I remember hearing the recount of a man who went in after the genocide had stopped and the stories people told him, the atrocities he saw committed against the Tutsis...in one instance thousands of them were herded into a stadium and then slaughtered to death with machetes for a period of about two days, the soldiers killed as many as they could the first day, then took a break and started again at sunrise. Some victims survived by lying underneath dead bodies for days until the Hutu militia left.

Yet the most difficult part of the movie for me was when the bus load of white folks, European and American, loaded up and left the hotel, left over a thousand African people behind to be slaughtered. I wonder if I would have been brave enough to stay behind, to show solidarity with the Rwandan people. I'd like to think I would stand up for justice...that I would yell loud enough until someone heard me. Hell, I'm from Texas, maybe I could get George W. on the phone.

What do I do with that? The guilt of doing nothing seems like it would almost be worse than having literal blood on my hands. But I can't save the world from its ignorance.

Don't tell me anymore that people are inherently good, that they will do the right thing because they don't do the right thing. They don't make good choices...they make ignorant choices...they make choices to remain ignorant because they like it.

We all need to feel empowered, we need to feel that we are strong and capable and worthy - and people who have never known true empowerment will mame, slaughter and destroy to get some well-conceived imitation of it. And I'm not just talking about the Hutu...before them it was the Belgians who took what they wanted by force and military might because they could...and before them it was someone else who taught them how to oppress and so the oppressed become the oppressors and it starts all over again.

It sickens me and yet I can't deny who I am and where I come from. I can't feign some moral superiority and say that I, unlike all these other heathens, have always made the right choices and stood up for the oppressed.

Don't you see the future we condemn ourselves to when we follow the wisdom of "might makes right" and "get the hell out of our way because we're the superior super power and we get to make all the rules for everyone"!!

I don't know what I can do, but I've got to do something. I can't just sit here in my comfy apartment watching terror and poverty and injustice on the evening news like its no big deal and well, thank God it isn't me...because it is me, its you, its all of us. When one of us suffers, the rest of us ought to do something and not just let tiny children starve to death. When is it time to stop praying for a solution and start being the solution!

Today my young, but brilliant pastor who puts poignant and profound thoughts together so well said that the struggle for identity is not a war between pledging allegiance to something or nothing. No, it is allegiance to either Christ or something else – in other words, you can’t not be serving something as Lord in your life. And so I sat there on the verge of tears and frustration trying to think what the Lord is in my life. I know it’s not Christ.

Lately I’ve been feeling completely unsaved and stubborn in my devotion to Christ. Even now I can’t think how I feel…a little panicky, a little sad…it is desolation and aloneness like I’ve never felt before and my first thought is that I should pray, but I’m too rebellious to give into it. I want interaction with God on my own terms in a grandiose way that will make me feel ridiculously special and loved. I am guilty of all the things I see as hypocrisy in the church among the pseudo-religious, but I can’t really admit it to myself. How can I realize something is wrong in my very soul and, at the same time, not be able to change it, not be willing to change it? God, I am a “stiff-necked” rebel, always blaming others for what I do to myself by choosing to submit to the wrong Lord over and over and over again.

I know my desire to be exceptional is definitely a controlling force in my life, if not the controlling force. Is it wrong to want to be extraordinary? I don’t want to fit in, I want to excel and that has brought me to this, my current state of living in fear that someone might notice that I’m not that smart, or that I’ve gained ten pounds since summer, or that I don’t practice much of what I preach and am really just a fraud in Christian clothing.

The truth is that all of this leads inevitably to insecurity, which I possess in abundance. I’m always wishing I was better and more than I am: smarter, thinner, prettier, more athletic, more creative, more poetic, more compassionate and caring, more carefree and easy-going, more loving and loveable…

But always I come back to this staged and very fake self-confidence that protects like a sort of shield. Few can get through and I rarely let my guard down, though I might say I am being completely open and honest, you’re still seeing only what I want you to see and nothing more.

I don’t have any brilliant ideas for how to end this modest admission of failure and defeat. Let’s be honest, who really reads this junk anyway???

my first post in the year of 2005- seems like it should feel more like a new year, but it still feels just like 2004. Although I did have a very fun New Year's Eve, complete with freezing cold weather, fireworks, auld lang syne and a cute boy I may soon develop a crush on.

Chicagoans, for the most part, let me down on New Year's Eve. The party of seven I was with were about the loudest and most energetic folks on Navy Pier Friday night. Everyone scrambled to get out of there as soon as the fireworks stopped. We took our time, moseying (if you will) off the pier, even stopping to see how many of us we could cram into a small photo booth, before heading back to a 24-hour diner that was full of people, all in much better moods than the crowd we'd just left. All in all it was a very pleasant evening/morning. I didn't get back to my apartment until after three and was wide awake until 4:30.

Good stuff about the year so far...

1. fireworks and dancing in the freezing cold on Navy Pier
2. my first meal of the New Year was free
3. breaking in the new shoes I got for Christmas
4. my friend in England finding what appears to be true love while on a five day trip to Albania
5. University of Texas kicks a field goal in the last two seconds of the Rose Bowl to win by one point over Michigan, final score 38-37, wow that was a good game

I've resolved myself to actually making resolutions this year. I usually don't because I think it's stupid to pick one day out of the year to determine to change my life cold-turkey, but I feel like I should at least try and make some progress toward reaching my long-term goals, which as of yet are still undefined. I am hopeful, however, that this year will be better than the last...not that it really matters, because at the very least, it will be new and different...and that's what I'm looking forward to the most.

I've reached at least one conclusion already about the state of things and what might be wrong with our thinking about them. I've heard a few people's theories and I want to get mine out there, because this in my blog and I can...anyway, a challenge to me (and maybe to you): we should live in such a way to give ourselves away, as long as we have breath in our lungs.

Life may not be beautiful all the time...it may not suck all the time...we have good days and bad days, days when we can just stop and smell the roses and days when the roses get cut up in the lawn mower and the bus splashes rain all over you as it turns the corner. I don't think its necessary to try and see the silver lining of every cloud or to try to see the good in every situation because if you can't find it you begin to doubt that its there. Maybe you'll never find it this side of eternity. Mostly, trying to "stay positive" even in crappy situations just makes you a phony as much as playing the pessimist in every situation will scare away all your friends and make you resent the happiness of others.

Resolved: to stop trying to figure it all out and just go with it...take what God gives and cease striving for what He hasn't given...serve Him and others and not myself

sure, it sounds easy now. Ask me in a week or two..