It's official - I'm old.

Things are surreal right now. The sky has been filled with smoke for a couple days, but today was by far the worst. Seven fires (I believe) are raging around southern california right now. Three of my four cousins in San Diego have been evacuated, but thus far things are looking good for them. It seems like the foothills near my school are the only mountains that aren't on fire around here. I (and I know many others) would appreciate your prayers for this whole area. A few people have lost their lives, and many have lost houses. My roommate is facing a pretty nasty drive home from her house in Ventura county. Her house is in a very safe area, but the freeways she needs to take to come back to school are not. I'm sure some students here are from areas that are burning. Time to pray for rain.

My parents are coming tomorrow. I am sooooooooooo excited!!!

Ok so I've got a bunch of things spinning through my mind right now and I think I need to go "blah" and just get them all out. So it probably won't be pretty and it might sound a bit angry. I just need to get it out so I can move on.

Today a pretty famous worship leader did chapel for our school. This guy has wrote some incredible songs, and we do a lot of them at chapel pretty regularly. He seems like such a cool guy and you can tell his heart is in the right place. He has such a heart for worship and a desire to just bless God and be in His presence. But man, today felt like such a show. Not necessarily because of what he did, but because of how all the students responded.

This is the second time this month I've been able to worship with some pretty "famous" worship leaders, and each time I've been pretty appauled at how people can act. I just wonder if anyone realizes how much idolatry is taking place, and how as a whole body I don't think our hearts were turned completely toward God. Of course I can't be one to judge that, but there are things that people do that can make that clear.

I'm reading two books on worship right now, and in one of them it's talked about idolatry and just the rock culture in general and how we've become more worshippers of music rather than responding to God in worship through music. Today one of the guys on the worship team played this really really amazing flute solo with the worship leader on guitar. He got a standing ovation. A couple times the worship leader asked us to give a clap for God. What did he get? A mediocre round of applause. Does anyone else see the problem with that? Things like that happened over and over; it was so out of proportion.

Some personal pet peaves...it drives me nuts when worship leaders do a couple of things. For one, I hate it when they ask you to sing louder. Louder does not equal more heart felt or "better" praise. Generally (though I think there are times when it works) I also don't like it when worship leaders have just the guys or girls sing a section. I mean, I guess there's no one absolutely forcing you to obey, but what if I really just need to sing that section of a song? Not to mention that fact that it separates us. We come together to worship as the body, not as the female body and the male body.

Despite that, I know there were a lot of good things going on this morning, I just wasn't there. It didn't help that I was in an extremely uncomfortable part of the bleaches, pushed right up against the end and could hardly stand up straight because of the barrier I was next to. It also didn't help how my roommate decided to not tell me that she was sitting with someone else and wouldn't be saving seats for us like she had said less than 24 hours before. Communication was stellar. Not a huge deal, but not pleasant.

So now hopefully I can go about my day like normal and just forget about the frustrations. How about this for a happy thought, my parents are coming the day after tomorrow!

My stomach is churning. I just got back from the store where I bought what was necessary for dinner tonight: chocolate chips, blueberries, syrup, bananas, and ego waffles. Granted not all of those things are going to be used for dinner tonight, but the majority are. So we're having breakfast (pancakes) for dinner. Maybe it's a bit juvenille, but I don't really care. In fact, maybe I'll make a pancake in the shape of Mickey Mouse. That would be appropriate for my southern California residence.

Now that I've spent some time discussing the importance of breakfast food I'd like to move on to something a bit more substantial. Sometimes life comes up and just bites you right in the butt. Sounds like a painful experience and it definitely sometimes is, but I think today was just more of a surprise. For example, I talked to my sister on the phone today for about 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes requires a conversation. If you know anything about the relationship between my sister and I you will understand the significance of this statement. Surprise? Much. More substantial shock, finding out one of your best friend's Dad is in the hospital. Nothing extremely major but still something you don't wake up expecting. Life happens, and God taps you on the shoulder and says, "Hey remember all that stuff you were preoccupied with? It's not really important." Right. I'll try to remember that one for more than 30 minutes.

So I just deleted the starts of a post because it was so....well I don't know what it was but I didn't like it. So maybe I'll write more later when I have something to say. Happy Saturday everyone.

I read a bunch of old journals last night. I read, and then I cried. I cried for two reasons - first, it brought back some memories of things I'd forgotten. Not all bad things, but all heavy things. Second, I cried with a mixture of joy and gratitude. It's been a few years now, and I've somewhat forgotten the way things were then. How good can God be? How loving is He that he stuck by me through that time and proved his love over and over when I was so faithless. Hopefully more later.

I would like to take this opportunity to say that the newest Caedmon's Call album Back Home is completely amazing. I got it several months ago, but never really listened to it a lot because I had bought some other new CDs at the same time. Generally it takes me a while to get into a cd as well, so that didn't really help. While I was in Australia we listened to it a few times and I thought, "Wow, that's pretty good." Well, I'd forgotten about that until this weekend when I pulled it out again, and I'm completely blown away. The one thing that bothers me though is how alomst none of the songs are by them. Granted they're awesome songs, but one of my favorite parts about listening to music is seeing the piece of the person's heart who wrote it. So I guess I still get a portion of a person's heart, it's just not the person who's singing it. But it's not like it's impossible to take a song and make it your own, especially when we're talking about God's character, life, love, and other things of that nature.

It's been a random week. It started out pretty bad, but got better eventually. Thursday actually turned out to be a really good day to my surprise. My immediate responce was "Ok who was praying for me today?" Joan suggested it was Jesus. Yes, that's quite true. He's got that intercessory thing down I reckon.

I've come to the conclusion over the last week or two that I'm so not ready to get married for many, many reasons. There are the obvious ones like I'm young, I'm still in school, and there's still so much I want to do before I get "tied down." That's not to say I don't want to get married, I just don't want to right now. But along with knowing I don't want to, I also realize I'm not ready too. The past couple weeks I've seen how deficient I can be in my relationships in general, and a marriage relationship is an even stronger and more important one. If I can't treat my friends the way I'm called to treat them all the time, how in the world am I going to treat my husband? I'm so not ready for that kind of commitment or unconditional love.

I'm also realizing I totally don't have the relationship with God someone should have before they get married. That's not to say you need to have everything together before you get married, but I guess I'm just figuring out I'm not as mature as I thought I was. I can be so hot and cold...so non-commital, and that's a really bad trait in general. Until my love for God is 100% commited and not so based on emotion (though it should involve emotion) there's no way I'm ready to get married. I think I owe that to my spouse (as well as to God!). Anyway, that's my random tanget for the day, even though it's not so random to me because I've been thinking about it for a while.

I guess that's enough for now. Maybe I'll get back to my paper and write another paragraph or so. Only two pages (or less) to go!

I won the pumpkin carving contest. I did elmo. Granted I had to hold him together with a couple toothpicks by the end of it because a bunch of cuts were too close together, but when we turned out the lights that thing looked awesome. My aunt and uncle tell me I must come back next year to defend my title. If I'm not out of the country I'll be there for sure.

I don't know if it's the contrast or just that things are getting really hard at school (or maybe both) but it's definitely been back to reality this week. Actually I've pretty much hated this week. Maybe not hated, but I definitely haven't liked it. It's just been a long, hard week...and my hardest day (Thurs) is yet to come. I do have a pretty big weight off my shoulders though, because I just took my philosophy exam today. Twenty percent of my grade, and I think I nailed the sucker.

I don't really have anything else of substance to say, I'm too brain dead. I can't wait for December...

I'm in San Diego right now. It's pure bliss. I'm having an awesome time with my fam. The Hills concert was amazing. Tonight everyone's coming over to my aunt and uncle's and we're having a pumpkin carving contest. I've never carved a pumpkin. When I told my aunt that she said "Oh good, we'll all have a great time teasing you." Thanks. But little do they know I made a deal with my little cousin who judges every year. They might be surprised when she announces the winner tonight. Here's hoping. More to come.