In which I talk to Jen M. and my fair city reaches a state of mayhem

I saw Jen M. today, and she took me aside and said, "I saw you a few times over the summer and every time I've seen you, you've been exstatically happy. What happened?" Eeek! Kelly called that one! She told me that people were going to be so surprised at how different I am from even six months ago. Yay! It's totally God. He and I have been on a few dates, one could say . . . and He's talked to me about a lot of things. One of the reasons I was so sad all the time before was because I couldn't like myself and I couldn't like myself because I didn't have anyone else who liked me so I couldn't see anything about myself TO like. And, I had a lot of issues with my parental units and a lot of sadness about various things that had happened and I just couldn't deal with it all. But as I've told my Cru boy buddies, the only reason I couldn't deal with it was because I was hiding behind it and I was only letting people see that it was there, but not letting anyone else know exactly what "it" was. Then I had to write some stuff for Cru and I had to tell the boys exactly what "it" was and I learned that when you stop trying to protect yourself, God honors it -- you become stronger when you show that you're weak and you heal when you stop hiding your brokenness. I was sad because I was hurting, but the Lord has taken my sadness and hurting away. I used to be in so much emotional pain that I cried myself to sleep nearly every night but now I can't remember the last time I cried. Then the Lord started to show me how precious I am to Him. It says somewhere in the Bible that He holds us in the palm of His hand. That gives me a vision of each of us sitting in His hand and He's gazing down at us with love and pride in His eyes, kinda like a new mum and dad examining a newborn baby. One day I was at home and I couldn't handle my boys anymore so I went to the river to ponder and I thought about the verse that says "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." I've always loved that verse, but I hadn't thought about it in a while. After I went home, I began to think about it when I went to bed that night and I was praying and it was almost as if God said to me, "You know MJ, I delight in you way more than you could ever delight in me. You are so precious and so beautiful and so perfect in My eyes. I created you the way that you are, and everything that I do is perfect. You're not a mistake. You're not unlovable. You're not anything less than perfect, beautiful and precious." As I thought about that, I realized that if God finds me perfect and beautiful and precious, then I certainly MUST be, because there are so many other people out there that He has to deal with too, but He took great care in making me just how I am and I fit his spec sheet perfectly. And then I lived with Shannon and Sara and Lindsay and Kelly, and they are amazing and they let me know that yes, I am good enough and lovable. And being neighbors with Eric and Jason and with Beich in June and Andy and Scoop every so often was good too. God has done a lot with me this summer. I am just so thankful that He made it possible for me to stay here and to be with the people I've spent the summer with and that He's allowed me to work more with worship at church and get to know Joyce and . . . God is good!

My fair city is going nutty over gas. I'm stressed about it too, because I have to go home and come back twice in the next month to the tune of roughly 220 miles each way times roughly 10 cents per mile at current gas prices. ($3.11/gal) Ouch . . . that would be $22 each way for a total of $88 and that is totally way too much to be spending when I owe the school a lot of money by Oct. 19 and I have no idea where I'm going to get the money . . . I think I need a fairy godmother or something. Or a rich prince. Or a knight in shining armor who will kill things and plunder and pillage to provide for my needs. People around here are predicting that they're going to start rationing gas and if we go home for Labor Day, we may not be able to get back here on Monday because there won't be any gas to be had -- even if we could afford to pay the outrageous prices they're going to be asking (at least $4/gal if not more) by that unholy date. I can't decide if I want to go home or not with that threat hovering over my head. I want to see my family, but I want to come back to my church and my "family" there and to Cru and to my jobs here. I guess I don't have a choice, what with having to see my eye doctor and getting my tires replaced and doing curtain stuff.
~MK