God i want a thermal mug!

Posted by Teen Bean

so normally i totally avoid campus... like the black plague.... i mean, first off, there are way to many happy jesus people there and secondly, there are WAY TO MANY HAPPY JESUS PEOPLE THERE! ha ha! I give northwest such a hard time for being completely everything they say they are and what i voluntarily signed up for... so really everything i rant about is completely undue... but that doesn't stop me!

so today i had to go to meet a group of my classmates at an on campus cafe to talk about a book we are reading on justice. As i walked across this ever vibrant campus... that is sure to pump out yet another round of church leaders that fail to understand the true meaning of the church... i was caught off guard by the incredible comfort i got from a girl walking opposite me.

She was your typical fall college campus goer... back pack, soft knit hat tilted stylishly to the side, cozy warm scarf wrapped loosely around her neck... But strangely enough, what drew my attention to this girl was an ever defining thermal coffee mug she so confidently and securely carried in her capable hand. i don't know why i was so fascinated by this girl carrying a thermal mug, but it just made me feel so good about life i almost laughed out loud...

the entire time i was at this group discussion on justice my mind just kept wandering to that girl with the thermal mug... i really appreciated her... but i just couldn't put my finger on it.

as i strolled back to my apt, after said book study group was over, it hit me. That girl was ready... her whole persona screamed it. The message she was yelling, with out even speaking one word, was "Not only do i know what i want out of life, but i can get it AND carry it with me right here in THIS thermal mug... AND that ability lets me taste WHENEVER i want WHERE EVER i want!" basically with that thermal mug she was screaming at the world "I got this!"

and i thought to myself "GOD I WANT A THERMAL MUG!"

could you imagine being that person? Someone that knows what they want, makes it, and is capable of carrying it with them where ever they go!?!?! To be someone that ready for life, that prepared for what they know they will need or want... to take the time to find it, fill it, carry it, AND enjoy it!!?!? pffff that girl... the one that carries the thermal mug... is my new hero! I hope i can be her one day or at least get a thermal mug!! wink wink!

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my drive!

Posted by Teen Bean

listen carefully!!

Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground

DEAD TO THE WORLD,

it is never more than a grain of wheat.

BUT

if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.

In the same way, anyone who holds on to life JUST AS IT IS destroys that LIFE.

But if you let it go... RECKLESS in your LOVE

YOU'LL HAVE IT!

FOREVER

REAL

AND ETERNAL!!

John 12 (the message)

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i did nothing... :)

Posted by Teen Bean

so its been a rough week. i have this strange ability of connecting my physical self to my spiritual self... so i am not surprised, at all, that during a week of intense physical flu fatigue i also found myself becoming spiritually fatigued. I also have a bad habit of totally comparing myself to what the people i admire around me are doing... so it was a bad case of feeling apathetically distant from God combined with an intense comparison of what christians i really admire are getting up to and how i wasn't meeting that standard...

to be honest, i just found myself shutting off a little to God, because i just didn't want to care. Kudos to all you wonderful people that stepped in and kept reminding me how much God does care (eee even when i told some of you to shove the God crap!) and an even bigger thanx for everyone who has been thinking of me and praying for me. i would like to say something amazing happened, but nothing did... well outwardly that is. i still am in the same situ. i still am not seeing how God is going to work here or why, on Gods green earth, i feel called north when what i love and admire and want to be about is totally south (north and south purely being used as a metaphor!) but strangely it all is just going to be ok....

thursday i woke up the most happy person i've been in ages... and there was no reason what so ever... i didn't do anything and nothing had changed... it was one of those moments where i was like "someone is totally praying for me and its changing my life"... so, all i can say is thanx and i'm ready for the next round.

that being said... i totally went and checked out this place that i potentially was going to move to and have decided that i am going to move there in december. i'm a bit freaked to live all alone, but strangely even tho i am desperate for community living... i totally feel like God is asking me to live alone for a season. wow never saw that coming! i will be living in the basement, below this incredibly nice family above me... so tech i'm not alone alone... but it will be strange not having roomies.

i went to class the other day for the most boring lecture on APA style of writing and seriously wanted to carve my brains out with a spoon. But in between distracting my classmates with random notes about me being wonder woman, half of us signed up to play on a soccer league! WOT!?!? me?! play soccer?!?! mwahahahaha this should be interesting! but they assure me i don't have to know how to play and i think we get a team shirt so i am excited!

I also have decided that i am going clubbing on halloween night with one of my classmates jenny, which pretty much is going to rock my world and now i must find a costume ... woop there it is!

peace

1 comments »

no more community prayer house for me.. :(

Posted by Teen Bean

so i think this picture is pretty representative of where my life is headed... see here i am sitting in my room. i've been sitting here for a couple hours now... my head is still dealing with flu fogginess... but from my room you can see to the room across the hall. Last month i was so pumped to changed that into a prayer space... which i did... even put up a bit of "prayer material" to make it authentic (on the advice of a veteran prayer spacer).. yet ... you see that paper on the ground... yep thats the prayer wall... fell down a couple days ago... i've been to ill to put it up and now i think... "hmmm this prayer space stuff isn't working here."


then today i got an e-mail about moving to this place on the other side of town. seems pretty cool.. a place all to myself. i could do that. so i'm going on sunday to check it out. Me, my own place.. thats happened... oh yeah never! and now i think "hmm this community living stuff just isn't working here."

so while the only things i want to do are falling quietly out of my hands, all i can do is sit and watch..

and i'm praying and praying and praying for the dreams i have and every month i watch another part of my dream just fall...

So... I'm done here. Not in a pathetic "lets end life" sort of way...

i'm just done with the whole hyper-over-the top-crazy-prayer-god-street-difference-making-movement thing that is obviously not sweeping the west coast. maybe this other direction isn't so bad. i don't know i've not tried walking down it.

what does it feel like to serve God and not be crazy obsessed with prayer spaces, street ministry, and community living? Cuz i'm about to enter that. I'm done asking for community living and a prayer house and people to pray with and people to join in some hard core street ministry with...

i'm not that girl anymore... nope.

my prayers are getting boring. i ask for the same things all the time.... and you know what its just starting to feel selfish. so i'm done. God knows where i am... and if he wants me to be about something... then he is gunna have to like say what that is because... as of now... freak i feel like i'm just doing my own thing anyways....

and don't freak out... i'm not saying i'm done with God or anything... i mean its beyond me right now... but i don't know why God would ask me to lay down my love of making prayer spaces, and being about a prayer house, and community living... to leave it all behind and just enter into a completely new and potentially very lonely way of living, but he is ... so

with my bunny slippers loosely on my feet, my prayer space self breaking down, and an appointment to move out on my own... i say with a heavy heart...

i'm done.

p.s. and to my friends who this whole prayer space making, community, effective street ministry things is totally working.... i'm in no way trying to say this should stop or that i am not about it... (in fact i'm a little jealous of you...) but i'm just realizing maybe my lifestyles isn't meant for it.... ahhhh break my heart!! is this really possible!?!? well we are about to see...

1 comments »

Grad School is Not adhering to the "Tina Rule"

Posted by Teen Bean

Its simple... i have one steadfast rule i live by... the week consisted of 5 day... during those 5 days i will do whatever work/ get as little sleep/ go as crazy as is required to make life possible and be responsible. But at the healthy stroke of 5pm on Friday the work (in all of it forms be it job, school, home, or relationship drama) ends...


I take a shower... find my favorite black item from my wardrobe, put on some dangle earrings, apply smoking eye make up that will last the weekend, and top it off with my famous Pink lotion and perfume and then... and only then, I start to live! The Tina Rule is simple... DON'T WORK... DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT WORK... from friday at 5pm to Sunday at midnight.

This rule has seen me through every stage of my life... it totally worked in high school (can i get a woop woop for all the weekend madness that went down at my friend Corals house!!), to an even better process in college (talk about getting the party started... Ladies you know who you are... and that crew understood the Tina Rule and totally dominated life with it!!), to my time in England (where the level of hanging out was taken to an unknown level... boys remember how you just would hang out until the wee hours of the morning!?!? and i lived for beers and smokes on the curb!)... it just does me good.

That weekend time is like my energizer bunny fix.... that will keep me hopping through the rest of the week till my next weekend...

so would someone please explain to me how yesterday, after faithfully applying the Tina Rule to my weekend... i found myself cheating and checking my school website to prepare for my week, only to discover that some how a paper had been assigned and posted and made due Saturday night, in which i had 30 min to read a paper and write a reflection!?!?

Do these people not understand me or what!?!? i've had it up to my eyeballs and fire is raging in my soul!! Its enough to make us read thousands of pages on globalization and how cultures can be paralleled to software downloaded into our minds, to having to complete a 200 page workbook dedicated solely to the murdering of my intelligence by having page after page after page of grammatical rules revolving around dangling participles, modifiers, and the effing name of long to short dashes!!!!

They slowly are killing my Tina Rule and with it my very soul! AND they don't even care! this week we have a second round of classes... you guessed it, OVER THE WEEKEND!

And yes i volunteered for this... damn i even paid for this... why do i keep torturing myself... there has got to be a better way to live the way i want with out breaking my Tina Rule!

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 comments »

The Weekend!

Posted by Teen Bean

so 3 major events went down this weekend


1! I went to Salmon Days in Issaquah, Wa. And let me just say this was quite a saturday. I ate the most scrumptious salmon burger known to man (the secret was that they mixed cajon spice in the mayo!). i got to hang out with an uber cool girl named Jenny from my graduate program. we saw really, really big (and quite scary) live Salmon in the river.... we walked further up the river and spent some time watching said Salmon try unsuccessfully to jump over a dam that was specifically constructed to stop them from reaching their spawning ground (very tragic!). I had a quality Margarita at applebees happy hour! yum!

the day continued to be great as Jenny and i came back to my apt and watch ... "Troop Beverly Hills" and laughed our butts off at how 80's this movies is... ahhh the good times. Then we got to chatting about prayer and i showed her the prayer space i had set up in our space room at the apartment. We chatted some more about God and how hard it is to be a christian and then spent some time praying for each other! it was amazing!

2! I went into down town seattle to a Tea Festival on Sunday! Some girls at my church were going to this festival and asked if i wanted to come and i was like... "hecks yeah i love tea" (tho really i only like enlgish tea and that is only because in england you either like the tea and then make friends or you don't and they hate you!)... so yeah, this festival was pretty sweet. you got a little cup and then mingled around different stands to try an array of tea flavors like, jasmine& vanilla white tea, to orange and cinnamon hot tea, to some really disgusting cold cough syrup tasting tea... gross!! I even found a box of, the all time #1 tea of england, PG tip and just bought that box right up. We then went an got some lunch and sat in the park right under the space needle and just had a good laugh in the sun... while getting sprayed by this fountain that was going mad!!

3. Monday Morning... i arrive back from work and am checking my school work, workiness, for the upcoming week when i notice i have a message from one of my professors about a paper i turned in... i think "ahh i'll just have a quick look at that"... oh man... a quick scan of my paper show an unusually high number of markings, but i take comfort in the fact that the marking come to an abrupt halt 1/3 of the way into my paper... this comfort soon evaporates as i move back to the top of the page to read the following quote "Tina this paper needs a lot of work. This is not graduate level writing. I have marked your paper only through the first paragraph due to the intense need for revision. I have given you a score of 6 out of 12 points for this assignment...." WHAT!!!???!! haha epic fail!!! I'll be honest this was a bit tough to take... i haven't failed an assignment in... well a long time... and if i did fail is was totally because i didn't try. But i had spent hours and that paper!! The remainder of that day was spent in a panic of trying to understand how the hell i was suppose to do better. Followed by the worst night of sleep, where i was typing and typing and typing up this paper but every time i looked at the screen it was just a blank page!! ahhhhhhh

the next morning i was stressed... UBER STRESSED! but then i just did what i do most morning... got my cup of tea, went into the prayer room, and just gave my day to God. It was strange because suddenly failing that assignment turned into this really great thing. It just made me recognize where i stood and also really defined the place i wanted to be. In a matter of an hour i went from this shakin maniac to a quite calm and collected person... IT WAS A MIRACLE!!

So this week has been tough... really tough... i laid in my bed the other night all curled up in a ball thinking "there are such better places and people i want to be with right now... maybe i'm not made for this..." and normally i would let myself just get completely wrapped up in that train of thought for hours, but this ever clear voice whispered in my ear and reminded me of this... "Discipleship is hard... being disciplined is hard... living for Christ is hard... but through Christ who give me strength, it is possible." And the possibility of what i hope my life in Christ will be, is what i cling to and what pushes me on....

i was reading an article called "The Enforcer" by Samantha Power on Gary Haugen and the organization he started called International Justice Missions. Haugen made this statement "with out a fierce commitment to the sharpest standard in operational and tactical excellence, we do not honor God". That so is the ring of my heart... i want to be fierce and through that achieve a level of excellence that screams out honor for God...

that is what i live... and for now... that is what gives me the motivation to learn from my epic fail and battle this grad school with the fierceness i have for running life's race well and hearing God say "well done my good and faithful servant"


3 comments »

i found it!!!!!!

Posted by Teen Bean

I found the thrift stores.... they are totally on the complete opposite side of town... but never in my whole life have i been soooo happy to find discount item and second hand goodies! there tucked away in a very hard to get into parking lot... was an entire section of them... Evergreen East Care Thrift... Fabule$$... Value City... i was in my element.... so many things i needed and so many things got... with out breaking the 50 buck mark! i'm telling you... it was pure bliss.


then i made my way over to target (ching da la ching!) they had the fairy lights i needed ... and bam homeward bound... i feel so successful today! I even made myself a full dinner... spaghetti and garlic bread... yumo...

and now i going to take a hot bath... listen to my iron and win selection (wishing i could have a glass of wine), lite a good smelly candle, and completely relax... in the atmosphere of life and living well!

live on thrift stores, live on!

top buys of the adventure: two pairs of earrings for $1.50 (total), a hair dryer for $4, a roll of paper for $2.50, and decorative lace curtain for my prayer space... all in all it rocked my world... i might go back again tomorrow... who knows what i could find... plus one of the stores started to close and they kicked me out.. and there was still a whole other section to browse...

did i mention i love thrift stores!?!?

0 comments »

best of both world... i don't think so

Posted by Teen Bean

so out of shear curiosity i decided to take a walk through my new downtown of Kirkland, WA... and let me just say, i really, really enjoyed myself. The shops down my way are just completely fascinating... it was easy to just get caught up and, I'll be honest i really did! i just kept thinking of all these things i needed... correction wanted.


Tall brown boots, no heal, not to dark not to light

A decor fan in the shape of a snail, with bouncy antenna on top his overly cute face

window cling decor, fabulous little sticky shapes and colors that bring any boring window to a whole new level of living.

wine glasses that have been specially decorated and painted to match any occasion... Christmas, Halloween, my Bat Mitzvah!?!?

a book explain in exact detail how i can transform my entire life to a green lifestyle

3/4 length light gray, soft as all get out, knitted sweater

decorative boxes ... so many shapes and sizes and some played music when I opened them, double score! ....

the list goes on and on and on... then i stopped in grocery store to pick up the local newspaper and reality was brought back... across the head line read "Twin Tragedies: Quakes, Tsunami. Samoa and Indonesia: hundreds killed, thousands trapped."

It made me really sad, because here i am in normalsville America totally getting lost for hours at a time with completely meaningless activity of window shopping through stores i never in my lifetime will be able to afford crap from and people on the flip side of the world are just praying to survive the day. How can what we live in be called One World... they seem so far apart?

I just don't really get how I am suppose to be living in this world. Every time i get into the American way of living, i finally will start to feel at home, but then I start carrying this huge burden of guilt and shame for enjoying my life. But when i try and take on the reality of what other people are going through, the weight of their reality just crushes me!

How am I suppose to be here and yet understand life and what it take to live over there? how are they suppose to benefit from how i am living when they are not living near me? Is there a way that the best of both our worlds can come together and exist under the "One World" happy label of everyone getting the most out of life...

i just don't think so...

so what am i doing here?

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