Hey Hey Hey, What's Going On?

1. Jess and Micah are engaged! One of my sweet best friends wants to live with a boy!? But seriously they are getting married on November 14. The three of us at 4519 have had a feeling about a possible proposal for the last few weeks. We even had a small bet going on who guessed the closest to the date of the engagement. Christy was by far the closest. The week before, Jess and I had gone of a girl date (shopping, hair salon, diet coke). While Jess's hair was baking, she got a text from Micah asking her on a date to Lawrence for that night (sketch, you know). She brought her phone over to me and Ken (everyone's favorite stylist) and asks, "um, what does this mean?" Ken replied, "He's going to put a ring on it!" Haha, well he didn't put a ring on it that night, but a girls intuition can't be that off now can it? One week later, Micah asked Jessica Lynn King to marry her!

I am excited for her because they are definitely in love and care about each other so much. Sometimes when I think about how I want Thad and I's relationship to look, I often think about areas of Jess and Micah's relationship. They are good at loving. And she asked me to be her maid-of-honor which I am really excited about. My goal is to be able to give a toast without crying and squeaking!

I am also a little sad about her moving out. She is one of my best friends and best roommates. It is going to be lonely around here without her. The Roanoke 3 will always be the Roanoke 3 no matter how many of us live here. They are staying in the city so I will still get to see her a lot! And her baby bunny Brooklyn will also move out, which is very sad.

2. Thad is leaving for Germany on Saturday. He is going to there for 10weeks studying abroad. He is going to love it. I had to say goodbye on Tuesday which was less than fun. I had been dreading that day for a while and I honestly felt relieved immediately when I was the goodbye was finally over. We are used to being apart 534 mi, but over the ocean without being about to talk on the phone whenever we want too is going to be a little tougher.

I may have mentioned Thad and my theory about long-distance relationships before. We call it the cycling of emotions. The first few days after you see the other person you are so sad and miss them so much. Then there are a few days when you are upset and mad at them because it is easier than missing at that point. Then you are about a week out from the visit and you start to feel more normal again. Then you have a few good days, maybe even a week if you are lucky and then you start to miss the person again. The you go back and forth from missing to being ok to missing to being ok until about a week before you get to see the other person again. Then at that point you start to get excited. Now this excitement may seem good to those of you who have never been in a long-distance relationship. However, in our experience the excitement phase is when you argue, get annoyed, and frustrated with one another. I think it is because you are just ready to see them and it is easy to focus on yourself instead of the other person.

But it is just a theory...
We would like to hear from any of you who have had long-distance relationships. Does any of this sound familiar?

3. I am officially a career woman now! I made my first $52 last night during orientation. I am going to start working as a nurse tech on the Orthopedic/family medicine floor at KUMed Hospital. I am excited to get started. Right now I am going through orientation and hopefully while be able to start on the floor next week.

Hello Cupcake, Hello Yoga, Goodbye Twilight

I have had so much going on that I feel that you all would like to know about. When I write blogs of this nature, you know catch-up blogs, I typically think of a theme and then try to make all of the different topics fit into this theme. I think it may be impossible so here they are in random order...

1. I am going to be the cupcake lady! This has been a hidden life-long dream of mine. You know how my Grandma Schrag is the cinnamon roll lady and my mom is coming into her own as the brownie lady...I think I would make a great cupcake lady. I mean anyone can make cupcakes, but I want to spend love and excitement with cupcakes. I had been lusting after this one book in particular, Hello Cupcake, that could teach me the fine art of making and decorating the cutest cupcakes you have ever seen. I told everyone in my life that I thought might buy me a present that I really wanted this book. Actually now that I think about it I don't think I told my grandmas which was definitely an oversight on my part. Of course Thad knew about it because I nicely reminded him every time we were in a bookstore, which happens a lot with that sweet boy. Anyway, Thaddaeus surprised me with this book on our valentine's day (Feb 7 due to flight and school schedules...it was a great v-day even though it was a week early!). We made cupcakes, obviously the chocolate box! It is start of my growing into the coveted title "The Cupcake Lady."

2. Jessica introduced me to Hot Yoga or Bikram yoga. I went for my first time on Tuesday. Hot yoga is a 90min. yoga session in a 110 degree room. Yes, the first time was awful and I thought I was going to either pass out or vomit or both. But I got brave and went back on Thursday and was pleasantly surprised. It felt really good. I mean you sweat seriously cups; however, when you are finished you feel energized and on a natural high. I went for my third time today and I think that I am hooked. The teacher reminded me that I need to be drinking at least 10 cups (80oz, 2400mL for all you nursing students, yeah drug calc!) of water everyday. I am not so sure I buy into the whole "this is massaging your colon" while you are all twisted and light-headed or this is balancing out your hormones" while you have your forehead against your knee. But I do know that I feel stronger, mentally and physically, and I feel like I am doing something good for my body.

3. I am struggling to get through the 4th Twilight book. I flew through the first three and have been on this book Breaking Dawn for about 3 months. I just can't bring myself to finish it. At first I thought that perhaps something was going on in my subconscious that I really didn't want the series to be over. But alas, it is definitely not as good as the first three. The third book was the best and so I think that anything after that would be a let down, you know? So I could use some words of encouragement to get through it.

Forgive and Forgive

My deepest apologies for once again letting down the readers for not posting the rest of my Top8’s of 08. Maybe soon, I will get them posted.

Recently several key people in my life and I have been discussing the topic of forgiveness. Each of us has various circumstances in our lives that have brought this idea to the front of our minds. We have talked about how unforgiveness affects both the offended and the offender and discussed what forgiveness truly is.

Before I came into my own (my general term for before I started college and living on my own) I had it in my head that forgiveness included forgiving and forgetting. In my theory, I believed that I should forgive the person who offended me and forget the incident and pain that it brought into my life. I often had false guilt over not being able to forget what had occurred.

A few incidences came into my life that allowed to me try and put this theory into practice. And as you may well expect, the forgetting part was impossible. This caused me to question if I had, in fact, forgiven at all. It was during this process that I began to realize that the forgetting may not actually be a part of forgiveness but just a natural part of the process that happens over time after forgiveness takes place.

All this to say, I am beginning to understand that true forgiveness is forfeiting my right to bring up the situation again in a harmful way. True forgiveness means that I am acknowledging that someone brought hurt into my life, but I am not going to allow this hurt to continue to damage my relationship with that person. We see this being modeled perfectly in Jesus. He is all-knowing and all forgiving so I am not sure if He forgets what I have done to hurt Him (maybe He does, He is God and He could do that if He wants), but He sacrificed His life to remove the guilt of my sin and to show me that He is not going to allow this hurt to affect my relationship with Him. He will still love me just the same as before the hurt happened and is not going to bring up the hurt again (…as far as the east is from the west. Ps103:12.)

To be honest, forgiving is easier for me than accepting forgiveness. It is easier for me to let a hurt go than to humble myself and ask forgiveness of someone else. But this is where we have to allow ourselves to experience grace from each other and from Christ and live a forgiven life.