A Lenten Promise

It started in November when it was still sporadically warm enough to wear shorts.  We wanted to avoid No-Shave-November to keep our options open.

Enter No-Soda-November.  For the month of November, my suitemates and I gave up soda.  There was a little bit of cheating forgetting but, as a whole, we did well.  Not going to lie, on December first I had root beer mixed with milk.  It sounds gross, but it's delicious.  I don't think I've had any soda since.

In December, Allyson and Jennifer gave up fried foods.  A little bit more failure.  Always justified in some bizarre way or another.

In January, the two gave up eating after eight pm.  By now the other four of us were beginning to realize this habit of giving something up was more about stubbornness than it was health.  More about temporary sacrifice and self control than building better habits.  We started to convince them that exceptions could be made.  "This fresh out of the oven cookie is still part of dinner.  Dessert just wasn't ready yet because we at dinner at 7:30."

In February, the shortest month, Jennifer and Allyson started their hardest mission: no sweets.  No chocolate, no desserts, no mochas, no Valentines candy...  They began to consume potato chips at the speed of light.  I kid you not, Jennifer ate an entire bag of cheddar Lays in one sitting.  Around the middle of February, they went to Taco Bell and declared cinnamon twists chips rather than sweets.  Allyson even poured the remaining cinnamon and sugar into her mouth.  Needless to say, we declared them failures.  For the rest of the month, they hid their sweet-eating from judgmental persons.

They did not give up anything for the month of March.  Ironically, the month in which Lent starts.

Today, Ash Wednesday, a lot of the Christian community around the world is sacrificing something.  However, unlike Jennifer and Allyson, our sacrifice is not out of stubbornness.  Our sacrifice is to honor the One who sacrificed His life on the cross.  Our sacrifice is about growing spiritually closer to our Savior.

Figuring out what to give up for Lent is always a challenge for me.  I try to avoid giving up anything food-related because we'll just be honest: I'm a skinny kid.  Skinny kids and food sacrifices don't sit well with the rest of the world.

Two years ago I gave up facebook... and learned refreshing the page actually helps me think.
Last year I vowed to blog no more frequently than every other day... a habit I have kept.

This year I'm thinking about:
- giving up my car to save on gas... but I only drive the car pool one Sunday morning out of every three
- giving up socks... that was Nikki's idea
- giving up the color purple... I might get in trouble for public indecency.
- giving up my thesis... ooh, I like that idea
- getting more exercise... can you see this skinny kid on a treadmill?
- drinking only milk and water... oh, wait, that's pretty much covers it.
- giving up breathing... what's that?

For Lent this year, I'm going to work on two things:
1 - spending more time in serious prayer, ideally in the form of 20 minutes or more a day in our campus prayer room.
2 - affirming or encouraging at least one person every day, perhaps through the mail or in other Project 7-like ways.

What are you giving up or adding for Lent?

<>< Katie

PS: Guess what?  Today's Ash Wednesday meaning... in 40 days I get to go home for Easter!  (I haven't been home since Christmas).

Tell Her She's Beautiful

This only blogging every other day has been really hard this week. Just a reminder, I'm updating my blog every other day for Lent. That means this week I'm on a Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday schedule; next week it'll be Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday and so on. Oh, and a special thanks to my newest "followers." I logged in and had a new one then refreshed the page and had another new one. I refreshed it again and nothing happened. However, several hours later Hannah joined blogger and my number of followers has almost doubled in one day! :-)

A few weeks ago an anonymous woman wrote encouraging notes and stuck them on the mirrors in every woman's bathroom campus wide. Apparently some people found them cheesy but personally I enjoyed being reminded that the mirror doesn't determine my self-worth. She (whoever the anonymous "she" may be) put a lot of effort into this project because every Post-It note I saw was different. Wow!

Like I said, this was several weeks ago and most of the Post-It notes are now gone. I don't think they were pitched, however. Instead, they're appearing in other bizarre places: on dashboards of cars, stuck to the outside of Moby Dick's fish tank, and on class notebooks. It's as if a girl says, "I need to hear this every single day, so I'm going to take it remember."

I didn't steal a Post-It note. Sure, I throw rants about clothing not being made for people but all in all I'm pretty content with who I am. I don't really struggle with my image, or at least I didn't think so. I don't wear make-up. My wardrobe consists of jeans and a t-shirt day in and day out (remember those clothes not made for people?). I use a mirror but don't spend hours fixing my hair. I really don't care that much. At least I thought I didn't. Until I realized I was only wearing earrings on days when I saw people I wanted to impress. That didn't really bother me. This past Sunday bothered me more.

Allyson and I were invited to sing with my church's choir. Wearing robes. This means all the congregations sees is heads. I actually curled my hair, wore earrings, and put on a full face of make-up (and I'm still paying for it, thank you, dry skin). Since she's learned almost everything I do is intentional and enjoys hearing my bizarre reasons, Allyson asked me why. My answer surprised me.

"If all the congregation can see of me is my face, it might as well be a pretty face."

Woah! This from the girl who doesn't really care?

Later that night, my dress for spring formal arrived. It's the same dress I wore for prom, so I already knew it fit, yet I still had to try it on. As the lavender floor-length dress slid over my head I was transformed from the exhausted college student ready to go to bed into a princess headed to a ball. Five minutes later, the dress came off and the exhaustion returned in an almost-overwhelming wave. I got nothing done for the rest of the night because I let the desire to feel beautiful control me and the pony-tail line in my hair wasn't helping.

Ladies, we all need to feel beautiful now and again. It's natural. But it's not natural for this desire to consume you every being. Sure, some days we feel prettier than others. It's natural, again, if it's not controlling you. The mirror can be cruel but it does not determine who you are. Whether you want to admit it or not, you are beautiful on the inside and out. You won't be more beautiful with your hair curled (or straightened). Guess what: you won't be happy when you Wii Fit's Mii shrinks because you're underweight. Please trust me on this one. Be content in who you are.

Gentlemen, you had better tell her she's beautiful. Not "hot." Not "sexy." Not even "fine" like Andy tried the other day. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Stunning. Radiant. Every woman needs to hear she's beautiful. Have you told her today?

"You are altogether beautiful, My love; there is no flaw in you." - Songs of Solomon 4:7

That's God talking to you, friends.

<>< Katie

Lost: Thumb (Drive)

You know those songs you haven't heard in five or ten years? The ones that you forgot about? The ones that when they reappear become your favorite all over again? That's where this Relient K song fits into my life. I heard it earlier in the semester when Keith and friends sang it at chapel. I fell in love with it all over again and began singing it almost constantly! I don't have it on a CD and I can't find it online, but I make Andy serenade me every time I see him. Much to Amy's chagrin, he taught me to sing it myself.

"Technically I didn't teach her to sing it. She was singing it already. I just taught her to sing it correctly. Would you rather I let her sing it incorrectly next time?"

Never underestimate my Jesus. You're telling me that there's no hope; I'm tellin' you you're wrong. Never underestimate my Jesus. When the world around you crumbles: He will be strong; He will be strong.

Well, I was very grateful for his teaching me correctly because on Wednesday I lost my thumb drive (jump drive, flash drive, life, pick your term of choice). Like I've already mentioned, I eat computers so it wasn't a big surprise when my beloved blue side kicked walked out of my life. However, that doesn't make it fair or pleasant.

You're telling me that there's no hope; I'm telling you you're wrong.

Right. Hope is not gone. My thumb drive is gone. Along with it the latest drafts of my novel, my completed powerpoint for Monday's class presentation, my resume, my collection of crazy quotes, and I don't want to know what else. Of course, my first instinct was to blog about my catastrophic loss. I couldn't. Thanks, Lent. My life is missing and I can't even use my favorite coping mechanism! Yesterday was not a pleasant day.

Never under estimate my Jesus.

I'm a creature of habit. I use the same bathroom stall, I aim for the same computer in the lab, I sit in the same section of caf, so retracing my steps isn't hard. Especially since I can narrow it down to two hours from when I had it last to when I noticed it was missing. Retracing my steps was easy: computer lab (yes, I ejected it), copy room, three different professors' offices, bathroom, and the caf. That's it. The professors haven't seen it, the secretaries haven't seen it, the police haven't seen it, the caf woman hasn't seen it. No one has seen it. It's vanished into the dark abyss!

"Maybe you flushed it," Elizabeth suggested. That doesn't help.

When the world around you crumbles: He will be strong; He will be strong.

"CARL! Why are his hands gone?!" Screamed the llama in the disturbing video Andy and Dr. Z showed me on Tuesday. Well, my hands are gone; just my thumb. Drive. Most things I lost can be replaced with an earlier version... except the quotes list. Sure, it's just for fun but gosh can it make me laugh. I could use a laugh right now.

<>< Katie

PS: If you see a blue, rubbery thumb drive that says, "Katie" when you plug it in: it's mine. Yes, the one that almost never leaves my computer

Ash Wednesday

For Mardi Gras one of my friend Miriam bought us all a King Cake to enjoy. Excited to experience my first King Cake, I took a big bite and what did I find? A piece of plastic. Miriam and the other girls all errupted laughing.

Apparently, every King Cake contains a plastic baby and whosever piece of cake contains the baby is responsible for buying the King Cake the following year. They all noticed the baby in my piece but no one bothered to tell me it was there OR what it meant. Instead, I'm gnawing on plastic. Thanks, girls.

Oh, and thanks for giving the girl from out-of-state the fetus because she'll definitely be able to buy the King Cake next year! Not gonna happen.

For me, this week has always been about something different than avoiding plastic in a King Cake. Fat Tuesday's often passed over as we focus on Ash Wednesday.

True, I'm not Catholic, but it's our family's tradition to give something up for Lent. As I searched for something to sacrifice this year, I looked at were my time is going. Whether you can see it or not a lot of time is going to this blog. Don't worry, no 40-day blog haitus. However, I am going to give up updating more than once a day. ;-)

When I started this blog, I intended to update every other day or every few days. Well, "every few days" turned into "once a month" and I don't want that to happen again. However, daily blogging is incessant, and I never intended to keep it up as long as I have. We're going back to a roughly every other day schedule.

With that said, I can't write about everything. Sad day! Therefore, I want to know: what do you most enjoy reading? When you type in my url what do you most hope I've written about today? God moments? Suite stories? Writing tips? Family quotes? Book reviews? Some language mishap? Birthday blogs? Poetry? Other?

You already know my mantra, if you take the time to read this take the time to let me know you've read it.

Thanks!
<>< Katie

"Because [God's] steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise [Him]. So I will bless [Him] as long as I live; in [His] name I will lift up my hands." Psalm 63:3-4