How To Be Happy

My friend Scout once told me that the key to happiness is getting excited about everything. 

"For example," said Scout, "Here I have a glass of water."  I looked at her blankly.  "You see, generally we would take such an object for granted, but think of it like this; more than half of your body is made up of water.  You need water to survive.  You can kill someone with water.  You can use water to save lives by putting out a fire.  It is made of hundreds of molocules.  We swim and splash and play in it.  There would be no life without it, and you have it in a glass!" 

Scout, you are absolutely right.  It's time we started getting exited about everything.  So, this summer, I will get exited about things. When I go to the beach, I will lay on the sand and wonder how anything so soft can be made up of millions of little pieces of rocks! When I let the waves crash over top of me, I will remember that I am sharing that water with sharks, and dolphins, and sea turtles!

When I play with my dog,  I will examine his little paws and feel his soft snout and think how crazy it is that God made animals to look cute to us (honestly, our dog is the cutest in the intire world)!  When I curl up by a summer bon fire, I will contemplate how the same thing that destroys forests and homes can give me such comfort.  While I stare up at the stars, I will not even be able to fathom how far away from me they are.  I won't be able to fathom how much God loves me (or why for that matter) or why he placed our world in the perfect location to view the universe. 

That is all.  Toodaloo :)

Ok, I Will

*No, I am not getting married!

Lately my mother has been asking me what I think I was put onto this planet to do.  That simple question is a lot harder to answer than you would think.  There are so many things that I want to do and not enough that I can do.  I've changed my mind countless times.  But now,  as my senior year stretches before me, that purpose has become clearer. 

When I was little I always said I would be an elementary teacher,  like my mom.  I pictured myself in a big class room (picturing myself was always difficult. When you're 8 it's very hard to imagine what you'll look like at 25), writing things on a chalk board, answering questions, smiling at my eager students; teaching sounded so fun!  I thought it would be a good idea to practice. So I did.  My sister and I made up a little "school" for my then three-year-old brother.  We taught him his abc's and how to count.  It was fun, but then I started Irish Dance and my priorities changed. 

Now my dream was to get my Irish dance teacher certificate and teach little girls (and the occasional boy) how to point and stretch and jump and spin.  The wonderful thing about this job, my 9-year-old self mused, was that I wouldn't have to go to college.  I could escape the grueling 12 page papers and the awful presentations that college professors dream up.  There was nothing worse in my mind than papers.  If I could escape that evilness, life would be so much better.   I could just go take a few buisness classes, get my certificate and start a school!  This dream stayed with me right up to my freshman year of highschool.

That freshman year was when realization started to settle in.  It was slow, but steady.  It started with encouraging feedback from my writing coaches.  One said "You should write children's books when you're older!"  Another said "I love your writing style!"  My awkward freshman brain started to realize something, I liked writing.  Sophmore year passed and I still liked writing.  Then came Junior year.  My friend Scout started a blog.  My friend stephanie started a blog.   I read my friends' blogs and said "I want to do that."  So I did. 

It was here that I formed a new dream.  Why not be a journalist?  I could write all day long for a living! No interruptions, no assignments, just writing!  But then I realized something else,  I got bored of writing very easily.  Infact, keeping up with my blog was very dfficult.   The busier I got, the more weeks and months went by with no posts.  And here was the really strange thing, I liked school better than blogging.  I loved learning to speak Spanish, I loved reading classical literature.  I even kinda liked Algebra 2! "Alright," I thought, "I'm going to college after all." 

During all this learning, something else was quietly growing in the background.  At the start of Junior year, I started teaching my piano teacher's daughter in exchange for free lessons.  At first the idea of teaching terrified me, but after a month or so I found that I liked teaching.  I liked seeing Kate progress through her lesson book and I liked the relationship I formed with her. So I asked my teacher for more students, and she took me on as an assistant.  I grew to love all of my students.  I praised them when they practiced, and encouraged them to keep going when they looked at me with their big eyes and said the forbidden words "I can't!" At first I only taught students under my teacher, but soon other people were asking me to teach outside of my teacher.  So I did. 

Junior year was drawing to an end.  I started looking at colleges and at different degrees.  It was overwhelming.  So, I decided to just get into a school and worry about the next step later.   My friend told me I should get the SAT over with. So I did. 

I dont remember exactly when, but one day my mom mentioned teaching.  I hadn't really thought about teaching in a long time.  I mean I thought about working with kids by being a guidance councelor or a child psychologist, but the idea of returning to my childhood dream hadn't really crossed my mind.  I looked at various interdisicplinary programs.  And slowly, the idea of me teaching grew more and more appealing.  I again pictured myself at the front of a classroom, this time knowing what I would look like.  I imagined walking around desks, kneeling next to little girls in polka dot dresses and pigtails and little boys with dirt and scratches on their faces.  And I smiled. 

The other day I was in my room, collaging.  My sister was struggling over an algebra problem.  "Rissa, will you help me?" She said.  I walked over to the wipe erase board.  I looked at the problem and started writing it out, "Yes, I will." 

It's Been a While...

I decided it's time for me to slip back into the world of blogging.  Summer, with it's cool green grass and warm, sandy shores has returned.  With so many other things returning, it seems fitting that my blog posts should also.

I learned today that every animal with a brain has a certain activity that it specializes in.  The part of the animal's brain that operates that activity is larger in comparison to the other parts of the creature's brain.  For example, the bony fish was designed to use it's keen sense of smell to sniff out food, so its olfactory lobe (part of the brain designed to aid in smell) is larger than the other brain sections.  It turns out that the Cerebrum (which controls thinking) is the biggest part of our brains.  Infact, it takes up about 85% of our brains.  We were made to think.  

If I was made to think, then it's time I started doing more of it. I have a blog.  I should fill my blog with things I think.  So, I'm going to go totally random and just make a list of things that I think right now. 

-Zits are agents of the devil.
-Summer is creatively stimulating.
-Online driver courses should be much less difficult to understand. 
-My room is awesome.
-The future is enticingly terrifying.
-People lie all the time. 
-French people just have awesome style.  I mean berets are adorable!
-My parents are awesome.
-Stars are inspiring.
-I am incredibly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, which means my mistakes will not mess up the world.  That gives me the oddest sense of comfort.

I suggest doing that.  It feels really good.  Thanks for reading.

Time

This morning, for the first time in far too long, I slept until ten.  Usually at this time on a Saturday I would be dancing away at the good old studio.  But not today!  Due to St. Patrick's Day obligations, my fabulous dance instructor decided to give us all a break and cancel class.  Needless to say, she is currently my favorite person in the world. 


I was shocked to discover that it has been four days short of two months since I last posted.  This is a bit terrifying and proves that I have a very poor concept of time.  I thought it had been maybe a month since my last post.  Time goes by way too fast. 

The older I get, the more I realize that I despise time.  If I were to have a nemesis in this world, it would be time.  I picture it as a conniving, ugly mutant bunny rabit with one twiching eye that's twice as big as the other and one ear that covers the smaller eye.  It tiptoes around, trying not to step on its pitch fork tail, snatching things from people right when they'er almost in their grasps and causing people to miss the train of life.  He has long gnarly fingers for grabbing things and a nose that can sense tardy people from the other side of the planet.  He has no soul.  He relentlessly keeps the world in a strict order. 

When my siblings and I were younger, my dad used to read us The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.  I used to love the scene in the darkness of the cave where Gollum and Bilbo exchanged riddles.  We would all try to figure out each riddle before we let my dad read the answer.  The one that had us totally stumped was the one about time;  "This thing all things devours: birds, beasts, trees, flowers; gnaws iron, bites steel; grinds hard stones to meal; slays kings, ruins towns, and beats high mountains down."  Tolkein was a genius.  This sums up exacatly how I look at time.

If I were a more organized person, I might not mind time so much.  If I was more like Effie Trinket from the Hunger Games, I would love time.  But I'm not Effie.  Not only do I avoid brightly colored wigs like the plague, but I am also incredibly disorganized.  That can be discerned by how my room looks.  I try to tell my mother that I don't have time to be organized.  In reality, if I was organized, I'd have far more time. 

But where woiuld be the fun in that?  If everybody in the world was perfectly organized, then it would be slightly less obvious that we need God.  My disorganization is a part of what shows me that I'm not perfect.  Therefore, it is one more thing that points me to God.

Time is also one of those things that shows us the imperfections of this world.  Time holds the world in bondage just as much as sin does.  Time causes Tsunami's, time kills people, takes too long, time goes too fast, and time drives people mad.  Sometimes I feel like I'm being dragged along  and pushed and prodded by an unseen force.  A force that makes me make decisions I don't want to make. 

So the good news?  We have a God who is not bound by time.  A God who created time.  One who promises to free us.  So when I cry out that I have no more time, I know that someday, I won't have time to worry about.

Maybe that's why I look at Time as a Bunny rabbit....

Other World

Do you ever look at a beautiful sunset or a raging ocean and feel an ache inside your heart?  Like you crave more and more of the beauty before you, but the more you look, and the more you drink in, the more you ache and the more you yearn?  C.S. Lewis says this of such feelings; "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."

I wonder often about what this "other world" that I was made for will be like.  I think of it as full of green valleys, dotted with tall, purple, snow covered mountains, and resplendant with a golden light.  I imagine more colors than we could have ever dreamed of and I imagine sunsets so breathtaking that they make ours look like dark clouds.

In this other world, I will drink in sunsets and skies hundreds of thousands of times more beautiful than the ones I see now, and I will not ache.  My new body and enlarged soul will be capable of containing the beauty around me.  I will "add to the beauty" and be one with it.  I will dance in beams of sunlight, I will roll in cotton candy clouds, I will fling myself into the arms of Jesus and I will celebrate before his throne. 

Sometimes, when I try to think about my past, I get dizzy.  It's like recalling someone elses life.  A life that I was once the main character in and that still makes up a part of who I am.  That is how we will remember this life once we enter the other world.  It will be nothing more than "a shadow and a thought" compared to the life that we will be living; a dark and distant dream (mmmhmmm Lord of the Rings quote).

Sometimes, I just want to stop being in this world.  This life can seem so pointless, so trivial.  But I know, that it's just part of the journey.  I know that despite my longings for another world, there is a reason that I was put into this one.  I don't know what that reason is, but I know that God does.  And that is comfort enough.

Morning Pleasures

It has been a horribly long time since I last wrote a post.  I am very sorry.  I have not had time for any pleasure writing in the last couple of weeks due to the bondage of school.  It's times like these that I wish I lived in a Utopian government where after working six hours in the morning, I would be allowed to pursue and immerse myself in my passions... not the passions of Machiavelli, Martin Luther, and Albrecht Durer. 

My family and I have always marvelled over how amazing it is that the stuff that our bodies need to survive tastes good.  I love food. I mean doesn't everyone?  Food just makes me happy.  Right now, I am especially looking forward to the rotisserie chicken awaiting me on my kitchen table.  If I could eat for a living, I would.  I really envy food critiques.   There is a plethora of food in this world.  To name every single dish known to man, would be impossible.  Therefore, I'm going to provide you with a sampling of three of the very best breakfast foods.  

1. "I want pancakes. Who wants pancakes? With butter, maple syrup, what!?"  - Gus from the TV Series Psych

Picture this.  It's 7:30 on a Saturday morning,  You were up late the night before, and now instead of sleeping in, you have to get up and ride in the car for forty-five minutes to get to dance class.  You trudge down the stairs, struggling to keep your heavy lids open.  Then, as you step into the kitchen, something amazing happens, waiting for you on the table is a stack of perfectly fluffy pancakes, the syrup cascading down the sides, the butter just starting to melt... problems solved.  Your fork cuts through the many layers of fluffiness, your mouth waters, and then you are chewing what seems to you to be a cloud of perfection.  Summary; Pancakes make everything better.

2. Banana Bread and Coffee. 

I'm not going to pretend to be a coffee fanatic.  I have known and loved many coffee fanatics; people who announce it to the world with triumph when they drink their coffee black and people who base their entire blogs on coffee (Love you stef :)).  While I may not be that crazy about coffee, I definitely enjoy a good cup of joe.  Banana bread is the perfect go-along with coffee.  It's sweet and dense, filled with nuts and sometimes chocolate, making a perfect start to any day.

3. "Eaggle Bagel" Sandwich....with bacon!

This has long been a favoite in our house.  We like to cook the eggs over-easy so that when you bite into the crunchy, sesame seed covered bagel, the yoke squirts out and makes a sticky, but delicious mess.  The trick is to not let the yoke squirt on you and your clothes.  I remember eating this at my grandmother's house when we were visiting once.  I was sitting at my grandma's old wood kitchen table, just as I have been doing for as long as I can remember.  My great-grandma was sitting across from me and we were talking about various subjects.  As I bit into my sandwich, my great-grandmother started giggling and pointing at my shirt.  I looked down and saw yellow egg-yoke, sprayed all over my sleeves.  It's best to eat this before you are showered and dressed in the morning. 

Those are my three favorite breakfast foods.  Yah, very startchy, but hey, at least I had some meat in there!  A nice, tall class of orange juice is also a great way to top off any breakfast meal.  Oh great, now I have a serious orange juice craving!

A Short Post About 2012

Guess what people, I haven't written a blog post all year! Haha!  Sorry Sorry.  I know that you are probably really tired of those sort of jokes.  But, I had to make at least one to start off this year. 

Now, what will this year hold?  What is awaiting us around the bend?  Will a new president sit in the Oval Office, or will Obama continue to wield power?  What new technology will baffle US citizens?  Will flying cars finally become a reality? What new catchy tune will rise to the top of the charts?  What will Lady Gaga wear to her birthday party?  Will we find the answer to world peace? Will we finally find the perfect energy source?  Will the world end? 

There are lots of questions and no answers.  Why aren't there any answers?  Because we're not God.  No one but Him knows what will come to pass this year.  Due to Walt Disney's influence, we all think that we're incharge of our own destinies.  Here's a shocker, we aren't.  God is.  It says in Jeremiah 29:11; " 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.' "  The future is not in our hands.  It is laid out before God like a big open pop-up book. 

  

We tend to micro-manage here in the states.  Our iphones and ipads help us with that.  Sometimes, we need to be reminded that we can't control everything.  The world is not in our hands.  No matter how much we worry about life, we can't change the future.  I'm going to make a new New Year's resolutiuon.  I'm not going to worry.  This year, I'm going to let God do his thing and take care of me.  My future is written in the stars.  So this year, I'm not going to get tangled in the sticky web of worry.