Such distance from our friends, like a scratch across the lens

kite flying and good talks! oh what a day!!! then it turned into kite chasing and laughing!!!


everyone needs a kite!

look out april 11th!!! here i come!!!!!!!!!!

i'm coming to town soon!!!! more info TBA!!!!!!!!!

it's a girl!!!! i told her that a couple months ago but now she believes me cause the docter says so!!!!! i knew it! i sure am glad i bet that quarter!!!

It seems I hardly ever have anything to say anymore. Everything is in feelings lately and no longer in words. I wish my heart could translate for my head sometimes but i fear life would seem greatly less magical then. I like living in an indescribable magical world. it's like a dream you never wake up from nor want to. Oh dear, it's another Copeland week! I can just tell!

wow, it's been way too long since i've posted. i have about 3 months worth of stuff to catch up on! well i'll try my best! i'm just taking exerts from my journaling over the last few months so they may make sense but there's a good chance they won't!! hehe!

6/24/07
I really do love being here in Boulder but occasionally I do have these moments when i'm like "what have I done?!" when will i wake up and realize I'm not coming back to MI? or OH? I certainly miss everyone back home but for once in my life the loneliness which has always surrounded my life is seeming to disappear. I'm not sure how long that will last. maybe it's still new but hopefully it's not. I hope to live here for a very long time and actually have a consistent home!

I think loneliness is my greatest fear in life. which is funny because i've always known loneliness. there are very few times in my life when i haven't felt lonely. I'm tired of being independent. I've taken care of myself for soo long. i like th fact that i'm accountable to others now. i can't just disappear for hours at a time! it's almost like I'm part of a family and I love it!!!!

7/7/07> sweet! some good quotes!
"prosperity knits a man to the world. he feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him" ~c.s. lewis

"there is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on earth." ~c.s. lewis

8/15/07
wow! i can't believe its been over a month since i journaled last! there so much to tell! ok so about 3 weeks ago I got a spider bite. I never saw what bit me but that sucker bit me 3 times and when i went to doctor i found out it was poisonous whatever it was! I ended up going to urgent care after going through a week of agony hoping it would heal on it's own. i walked into the door and the nurse looks at my leg and is like "oh my goodness! it's a brown recluse bite!" now we will never know if it was one or not but the nurse said that's what it looked like. i have pictures but they're too gross to post i think! anyways, i had to have my leg lanced, which is sliced open! without numbing it because they kept trying to numb it and the stuff kept oozing out the hole in my leg! they had to scrape all of the poison out of my leg and not to mention gobs of pus! ick! oh and did i mention i've never felt pain like that in my life!? imagine someone taking a pair of scissors to your leg and slicing it open because that's what they did! oh and the best part of the story! i got this really nasty staph infection from the bite! yay! a drug resistant one too! oh fun!

ok, done with the nasty stuff and on to good news!!!! i got a new job!!! since the kids were all going back to school, i applied a few places and now i'm working at petsmart!!! for any of you that know me, it's a perfect job! i really like my store! they take such good care of the animals! i decided on the first day that if they don't take good care of the animals i would quit but they take excellent care and hardly ever lose an animal!! it makes me happy! i love my job! I am a pet care specialist!

8/28/07
I think i'm doing it again. I'm trying to withdraw. I don't want this to happen again! it really made life hard in MI because I was always trying to withdraw and succeeding really well. I've been really lonely lately and have been kind of homesick. in fact i had a dream last night that my mom told me and my sister that she missed us. it made me really happy but then i woke up. I dont know what to do, i feel really alone. will I always feel alone? i just came across psalm 68:6 "God sets the lonely in families" well he certainly has done that for me. he's surrounded me with wonderful people but at the same time they cannot fill his place. i'm lonely because i've distanced myself from God. i need to lean on him. no amount of friendships can make up for that!

I keep coming across this verse in jeremiah. it seems to describe all of my problems. it seems everything i struggle with comes from this:

"my people have committed two sins:
they have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water."
jeremiah 2:13

that's exactly what's wrong! i've forsaken God and i've turned to other people to fill that empty void. broken people at that! that verse really reads
"my kristina has committed two sins:
she has forsake me,
the spring of living water,
and has turned to other people,
broken people that cannot sustain her."

8/29/07

wow! that sure is a lot! i'll be mighty surprised if you've read all the way through this but that's the big stuff that's happened in my life the last few months!

one of my rats died the other day. it was really sad. she fell off one of the levels while wrestling in the cage with her sisters the other night and got a really bad head injury. i took her to the vet but there was nothing i could do. she passed quickly and hopefully didn't suffer much :( ruby was a good rat.

my dad called me today. i haven't heard from him since last april. i still feel really hurt and betrayed by him and i'm really not sure i can handle talking to him any time soon. he's hurt me too much. i want to forgive him but every time i do he hurts me again and lets me down. i don't know what to do. he just left me a message saying to call him back. i don't think i can do it. i don't know what the right thing to do is either. friends, i need help.

~~~well that's all i have for now! i miss you all sooo much! i can't even express it! i hope to see some of you soon!!!!!! i love you all!!!~~~~

oh i'm sooo excited for summer trips!!! i'm going to be in town on the 28th!!!!!!!

I need to confess my bitterness. it's been growing inside of me for almost two months. ever since learning the truth about my father on spring break, I've become really bitter towards him. sometimes I worry that I don't love him. But I guess deep down inside somewhere I must love him, otherwise he wouldn't have the power to cause me so much pain.

lately, I've been really struggling with the commandment from God "honor your father and mother". what does he mean by honor? Respect? How do I respect a liar? I'm pretty sure I can't. And I'm tired of people telling me so easily "just pray for him". I can't do that either. Stop making it sound so easy. It just frustrates me.

What if my father's love for me was a lie? Everything else was after all. He didn't love me enough to stay. He didn't love me enough to change. He didn't even love me enough to be honest with me.

I'm giving him 6 months. Not 6 months to change, no, i think he'll be back in jail within the next 6 months. Now there is something that I might be able to pray for. "God, please send my father to jail." I know it's weird but it seems to be the only place that ever helped.

Surely God had in mind what some fathers would be like when he gave that commandment. I am not an exception. It does not say "honor your father if he is good and deserves it". no, I'm afraid the best way to honor him now is to distance myself from him and pray that he goes to jail. It's definitely my weirdest prayer ever. not to mention the hardest. I would never pray for his happiness. I've seen where his happiness takes him. it makes everyone else around him hurt. no, I must pray for what will most likely be his misery. I pray that he gets sent to jail and for the longest he's ever been.

oh for weird prays...

well friends! maybe it's time for an update!

colorado is amazing, beautiful, breathtaking...I'm completely enthralled by God's creativity. but i doubt i'm telling you anything you couldn't already have guessed. but still, i feel like it needs to be said. i haven't started work yet. i'm hoping to start next monday at a ymca camp. i'd work with their special needs kid, jesse and it'd be soo much fun! as long as I get all my paperwork done in time, i should be able to start!!! so there's something you can pray for! if you read my last entry you will have noticed that I am without use of my car for now. the amazing thing about boulder is i really don't need it! i ran all of my errands on my bike today! i think they seriously have more bike paths than roads!! I'm living next door to the pruetts in a house with tracy and her son louie. i really like it here! i have my own room with my little critters, one of which is crawling on my bed right now looking for remnants of my lunch. won't she be disappointed! but they do find the occasional tasty book I left out.

I'm already working on a project! i'm so excited about it! Jenny stage told me of something they wanted to do to the pruetts house next door. she wants to turn their patio room into a therapy/play room for their autistic boy to be where it's safe. let me say, it's going to be a sweet room! we want to make tunnels above the storage and have a slide and a cargo net and we're going to cover the whole ground with mattresses so he won't get hurt if he falls, in fact he'll grow to like falling most likely. we collected a ton of materials yesterday and I worked on constructing a sensory board for him because he has a sensory deficit problem. we hot glued just about anything we could find with texture on the board. it's the weirdest thing i've ever seen!

well I think that about catches you all up for now!

oh I forgot to mention, I've set the dates for when I'll be back in michigan to finish moving my stuff. it's looking like I'll leave here on the 20th and reach michigan on the 21st and for anyone that wants to come on a little roadtrip we'll head back to colorado on the 23rd for however long you wish to stay. there will be a car going back so you can just ride back.

oh I was reading this last night:

"For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is." Colossians 2

ugh! i lost my car key today! and my only spare is back in michigan!! stink! so my car is stuck in the pruetts's driveway until i can get someone to mail me my key back! oh and it gets better! the pruetts are going to be back from vacation in 3 days! and they won't be able to use their driveway! stupid! stupid! stupid!

i don't know why i'm telling you guys, i just wanted to rant!

rambling on greatness:

I wish I were great at something. Anything. To be efficient in one thing above all other things. Isn't that where I would find my place? I sit nightly and dream of greatness. admit it, I am not alone in this. Do I even have greatness in me? Am I proficient at one thing that brings great joy and delight to others? I've tried to make several things fit this "greatness striving" several times in my life. I would read magnificent epic stories about trial and tribulation and wonder "am I brave like this person?" "have I come to save the day because I have greatness in courage?" I don't think bravery is my greatness. Does my greatness lie in musical lines and notes? Anyone who was in my highschool band class could tell you that music is not my greatness. Lately I've decided what my greatness should be (like we are ever given that choice!) My greatness should be in writing! I envy those people gifted in lines and words. I wish to write beautiful lines and wondrous stories for all to admire. you see, the problem with greatness is that everyone must decide for themselves what greatness looks like to them. To so many, my writing is not my greatness. It is choppy, confusing, Often unimaginative. Sometimes offensive. Yes, occasionally I make strike truth but more often than not I hit something...well, less than great. When I look at my writing i do not see something classy and disciplined and imaginative because I, myself, am not that! My writing is me! therein lies my greatness! I'm choppy, unimaginative, sometimes offensive, not well spoken. Granted if this greatness were measured by standards of others then this greatness would not be something to get excited about. But to me it is something to rejoice over. i can put myself in words. I can reveal my personality by writing a sentence. I'm not eloquent. I'm not sophisticated. I'm not clever or brave or musical. Much more often than not I am rarely even heard. Now my friends, finding your greatness is one thing but putting it to good use is an entirely different matter. For , I will simply be content with just putting it to use and will hope for good use later on. and for those of you who are actually still reading this...what i can offer you is my greatness. most in the form of confusing late-night ramblings! enjoy or not...it's your choice. just don't tell me that my greatness isn't great.

i was eating dinner with jenny's family at a yummy restaurant yesterday and she made me take a bite of her caesar salad and umm....i really really liked it!!!! i liked salad! i'm still trying to figure out what this means...

it's moments like this among countless others when i realize how much i'm going to miss you all!

it's nice to have your whole world come crashing down around you every now and then...

then again, it's really not

these might be my last few months in michigan as a resident...

i'd ask to trade with you but i wouldn't wish that on anyone!

Shhhh....I'm having a moment.

Have you ever had a moment?

Heck, you're wondering what a moment even is! I would be too.

A moment, by my definition, is an instant. A space in time where everything comes together in an epiphany of thought. Everything comes together and your realize that that cloud, that haze that’s hanging over your life has been hiding everything needed to understand what's going on. If you'd like to assume that everything coming together is a good thing, go right ahead. But you're wrong. Dead wrong.

 

It's when everything becomes clear, that's when we can see. Simple statement, yes. Or is it? It’s when everything becomes clear, that’s when we can see. Clear doesn't mean good or easy. No, my haze has finally cleared up for the worse. It’s when everything becomes clear, that’s when we can see. It's kind of eerie when you stop to think about it. It’s when we see clearly, that’s when we begin to see how horribly wrong things are. That’s when our world comes crashing down to the bleak reality known as life. That’s when we would all like to go crawling back into the shadows and the caves to put our sunglasses on. Yes, if we can only block out the details of life with darkness, maybe then we will be happy again! Ignorance is bliss, right?

 

The problem is, once we see things clearly we are jaded. We are tainted. We’ve found the snag. The hitch. The hold up. However we dress it up, it’s a problem. And the problem is when we wake up to the real world, we see things that are not right. Once you’re shown the truth, to go on in a state of “ignorance” is a fallacy. Not to mention, temporal. We cannot deny ourselves what we saw in that moment. It wasn’t a dream. It was in fact the opposite.

 

We now have two options:

1. Go on living in a state of false ignorance until life implodes on us and we are destroyed.
2. Take what we’ve seen and deal with it.

 

It’s messy. It’s going to be messy. Dirty. Shameful. But to ignore it is a time bomb. and mine is counting down to self detonation.

 

tick

tock

tick

 

weird! livejournal has been holding out on me on all your guys' entries! i haven't seen a single one till tonight! it's been almost 3 weeks since i've seen anything you guys wrote! what did i miss?!

so...we were planning on going to cincinnati for a wonderful switchfoot/copeland concert...but when i went to order tickets, i found out i was just hours too late. sold out today! soo sad. but in the light of that, how about an aquarium trip?!?! any takers? we'll leave friday as planned before and go to the aquarium on saturday and then come back to michigan saturday night! oh yeah, and that's march 16th by the way!

anyone want to live with me next year? :) no really, i have no idea where i'm going to live or with who!?



oh and sidenote: anyone want to live at my apartment now this summer while i'm in boulder??? :) i could use the rent break!