So this is weird I guess

I never really figured watching Rob & Big would lead me to have such a long discussion about Jesus with my mom. Yeah, it was pretty weird.

So, for anyone that didn’t see it, Rob felt he needed a turn around in his life, something deeper to help him out. He ended up turning to this new age therapy called Sacred Geometry. Apparently, these lines and patterns in the universe or whatever are supposed to send positive energy.. I don’t know, all this new age stuff is weird to me. It’s basically part of what I like to call the easy-way-out-religions.

Anyway, it just got me thinking about a few things. First of all, Rob showed something that I really believe is in everyone, the desire to know God. Everyone has that pull, to something bigger. It’s God, it’s Jesus. But so often because of trends, or past experiences people stay far far away from embracing Christ.

A lot of people think they can do it based on thier actions, or based on something they do. Like that book The Secret, where basically everyone can be Gods? I have got to be honest I don’t know much about it, but I know my grandmother believes that and it’s pretty scary.

It’s scary because thinking you can do it on your own is just not true, and it is basically a self centered way of thinking. You can’t. He can.

But everyone is out there trying these new trendy religions or whatever they want to be called, and they are really searching for Christ, they just don’t realize it. Everyone has that desire, just some people get lost along the way. It really worries me, and I feel for those people.

So, what I’ve noticed the most about the new popular religions or whatever they are called, is that they are very me-centric. They feel thier actions and thier abilites are what will matter the most in the end, and they don’t really take responsibility for thier actions.

I’m not saying they don’t have morals or anything like that, I’m saying they don’t really acknowledge thier sin as sin, and they belieive they are all just good people. No one is good. Everyone is screwed up, and people falling into that trap of thinking they are okay, or better than anyone else is really dangerous. I mean, my grandmother will get offended if you we’re to tell her she is a sinner. She thinks that means she’s a horrible person, but everyones a sinner. The person telling her is a sinner, but it’s this lack of understanding.

I’m so all over the place with my thoughts today, I’m a little tired and I said it last night, I’m not anywhere near as profound as Rob Bell. So forgive the lack of any order to this.

So, in todays self-centered society, (I sound mean saying that, but it’s true, everyone is all about making sure they build themselves up, which is okay, having good self-esteem is great. But keep it in check, you’re not Jesus.) people want to embrace these religions that tell them they are perfect as they are and all you need to do is just.. be positive or whatever they are telling you in that religion.

Jesus is about telling you he loves you. And yeah, you are going to screw it up, and there are going to be things you sturggle with, things you do wrong over and over, but he will take care of it. Just give it to him, repent and accept Christ. Know that he died on the cross for you, for your sins, for all those moments you mess up, Jesus is there for that moment, to erase it. You can’t ignore your sins, you need to face them, but you have to know that you’re not going to get it right all the time, probably most of the time you’ll mess up. But that’s okay if you give it to Jesus. You can’t erase your sin, only he can. So stop relying on yourself, that’s a pretty heavy burden to carry. Why not give it to the ONE that can really take it and wash it away?

I was in 9th grade when I came to know Christ, and it was this insane moment that i really can’t describe. I had heard all this before, but, it just didn’t really mean anything. It just finally clicked, in that one moment my brain finally wrapped around it, and I’ve never been the same.

Before then I had my own ideas of what religion meant and what was right and what was wrong, but that’s just it, they we’re my own ideas. I’d be quite a bit arrogant if I really left the world up to my own ideas.

Okay, I’m hoping this made sense, I’m going to sleep and maybe later I can edit it to be less crazy.

Forgiveness is so hard

This is probably one of the worst things I struggle with. I’ve always been known to hold a grudge. Before I was saved I was pretty much the queen of mean, you cross me and you won’t ever forget it. Luckily I have moved on from that, but forgiveness is still so hard sometimes. I have a really close friend, and there has just been this intense strain on our relationship for the past few months. I couldn’t figure out why, but even doing normal things with him I felt so distant. Now when he showed up at my work randomly I wasn’t happy I was annoyed. When his name popped up on my caller ID is was more of an “ugh” than a “yay”. How did I get there? How did it change so drastically with one problem?

I never let it go.

He’s apologized, but I never fully accepted it.

I kind of just realized that this morning. We’ve been arguing a lot, and it just hit me that I’ve never forgiven him. I’ve been dragging the past along for almost 5 months. That’s not good.

For me, when I think of forgiveness, it automatically takes me to the cross. I think of how God constantly forgives me when I screw up. And I screw up a lot. It’s not like God says he forgives me, and still holds it over my head. It doesn’t even exist to him anymore. That is just amazing. The love that it takes to do that is unimaginable. I’m not Jesus, I’m not even close, never will be, but I want to strive to do what he says, and just try to do better. That’s where this friend comes in. God has given me this opportunity to do the right thing, to do what he does for me time and time again. I am a sinner, so I should be able to understand mistakes are made, he’s human, he’s going to screw up. Yet I still hold it against him? It’s not right. 

I feel like God is showing me what he has to do for me every single day. He forgives me again and again and again. And God has never screwed up, he’s never wronged me, yet I have such a hard time doing it for one thing one person did. God just says I forgive you, and it’s gone. 

So I want to be able to do that. I want to just say ‘I forgive you.’ and have it gone. It won’t be erased, the consequences are all still there, Travis spoke about all that Sunday. But, I can let it go, I can choose to really truely forgive my friend and start fresh.

I found this definition of forgiveness on Wikipedia: “Forgiveness is the mental, and/or spiritual process of ceasing to feel resentment, indignation or anger against another person for a perceived offense, difference or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution”

So I forgive him.

I really, genuinely do.

And it feels good.

My Musique Artist #2: The Trews

I intended to do this a lot sooner, but I’ve been busy with the new job (which is great by the way and everyone there is awesome) and yesterday I spent the entire day (and night) throwing away about 90% of the junk I own and moving back into just having one bedroom.

So, now I present The Trews.

I first heard the Trews when I was, probably in 9th grade. I was addicted to this Canadian TV show called Radio Free Roscoe. To be honest, it still holds up to me as one of my favorite shows. The whole idea was these 4 kids showacasing indie music in an underground radio station, what’s not to like? Anyway, The Trews we’re played quite a bit in the show, and in what I believe was the 3rd to last episode of the series they we’re featured. The episode is called “The Trews About Rock and Roll”, it was when they really caught my eye, or ear I guess. I can’t accurately compare thier sound to anyone else, so I won’t even bother. Their new album, to be honest I haven’t listened to much at all, and the style is a bit different. I prefer the older stuff, it’s difficult for me to write about The Trews because I cant describe thier sound, other than: I love it. I’ve never had the opportunity to see them live so I can’t say first hand what they are like, and videos of bands live don’t ever truely do them justice. So I’m just going to simply say I really like this band, and recommend them.

This is the music video for Yearning, one of my favorite songs of thiers.

My personal favorites:

Not Ready To Go – Lyrics – Listen

Confessions – Lyrics – Listen

You’re So Sober – Lyrics – Listen

Busy Busy

The past week has been slightly crazy. So I will probably just do some bullet points to get it out of the way.

• My aunt and my cousin came down from Seattle, I took my cousin, Kelly, to Universal Studios and IOA on Tuesday.
• My aunt Brenda, my dads sister, had a heart attack, she has been in the hospital all week. This morning she had quadrupal bypass surgery. She hasn’t been awake at all since the heart attack. It’s extremely suprisingly she is still alive right now. Recovery is going to be very tough for her, and her daughter is probably going to have to move back down here from Tennessee to help her. We’re still waiting for her to wake up. My parents have been going back and forth all week and it’s been really stressful.
• I’m still training with LifeWay. I have 5 more hours of training and work tomorrow.
• I found a dog today, and called its owner. I kind of wanted to keep it. His name was Jaws.
• I need to register for classes tomorrow.
• I went to Backbooth Wednesday with Selina to see Sherwood. That was great.
• I got to see Steven at backbooth. It was crazy talking to him about all our old friends. We decided next time The All-American Rejects hit Orlando we’ll have a big reunion. Selina was a bit baffled that we all used to hang out with the band.
• I got a speeding ticket! That was awful, I completely and fully blame Daniel Sierra. I drove him and BG home from a soccer game and he just had to say “I can’t believe you haven’t gotten a ticket yet.” Sure enough.. got one Tuesday on Fairbanks. Dang.

I think that’s about everything. I will wrap this up with a few pictures from the week.

So, my cousin wanted to try everything at IOA, which is fine. However, I got drenched, not wet, on Popeye. I wasn’t a big fan of that.

After Popeye:

So we walked around, dried off a bit. She wanted to try Jurassic Park. Okay, so long as we don’t sit in the front row we won’t get wet. Generally speaking, the water goes over the front of the thing and hits row 1. So we sat 2nd to last row. No. No. This one particular time the water jumped all those rows and went straight for my face. The people in front of us literally did this “Oh that wasn’t bad, I didn’t get wet.” turned around saw us and laughed. “haha oh look at them!” it was funny. But, I hated being wet. So.. yeah.

After Jurassic:

Really, I am not a fan of wet jeans. Or wet face. I somehow also got wet on Twister.. which didn’t even make sense. Only the back, left side of my head? It was stupid. But I had fun with my baby cousin, who isn’t a baby at all anymore, she’s almost 13. dang.

We Shot The Moon @ Backbooth:

The Higher @ Backbooth:

By the way, The Higher played Bye Bye Bye. That was definitely a lot of fun, I recorded it and put it on youtube. Here that is:

Houston Calls @ Backbooth:

SHERWOOD @ Backbooth:

Me @ Backbooth

Now I’m off to get some shut-eye because I’m tirrrrrrrred and I have work tomorrow.

My Musique Artist #1: Brand New

I got really sick of constantly uploading music to a server to add to the Musique page on here, so I am going to blog every once in a while with an artist that is featured on my sidebar. It will just make it the work of getting all of the information up spaced out and not so daunting. Plus this gives me a chance to actually talk about the music and not just review the albums, which gets boring very fast.

So, the first one I’ll hit is Brand New.

I first heard Brand New when I was in 8th grade, when Deja Entendu was out. That album is still one of my favorites in my collection and it’s been there for a while. Brand New has this way of almost completely transforming thier sound every time they put out an album, a lot of artists try this and suck at it, Brand New does it brilliantly. Your Favorite Weapon was super up-tempo angry teen angst rock. A lot of “you screwed me over I hate you now” songs and the majority of them we’re just light and fun to jam out to. Deja Entendu was a bit deeper, had songs that were written about more serious issues, like the fatal illness of a loved one (Guernica), and other deeper issues, all brought mostly through elaborate metaphors. Then they had a ton of demos leaked out and all of those we’re totally different from the previous 2 albums they put out. Probably the best of the demos to me is Cleanser. I don’t know why I guess using armed robbery as a metaphor just peaked my interest. Then finally The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me was released in 2006. The album had entirely new songs from the demos, but some of them had the same melody, or would be almost entirely the same but with some lyrics moved around. The music got a lot more meaningful with the third album, Jesse Lacey has this ability to totally put his soul out in his music. That sounds so cliche but it’s really true, I think that’s why I’m always so awestruck when i get to see him perform live.

They use strong metaphors in most of thier songs. It’s nice to listen to a band that has deeper meaning behind thier lyrics that you actually can interpret on your own. Everyone that listens to thier music can find thier own meaning in it, wheteher it’s true to what Jesse intended or not, the listener finds his or her own meaning. Thier first album was pretty straight forward but the last two have had that quality.

I’ve seen Brand New live 3 times.

Once in a CD store, which was insanely cool and something I won’t ever forget.

Once at the UCF Arena, which was a great show, but the crowd kind of stunk. Me and my best friend have some ridiculous memories from that show, and I don’t think she’ll ever stop reminding me “Jesse Lacey saluted us duuuuuuuuude”.

Most recently I saw them at The House Of Blues. I don’t really think live music gets better than that show. I really was blown away at every single piece they played. Jesse pours so much emotion into his music, it’s just incredible. If you ever get a chance to see them live DO IT, they are sick.

Ok so now. My favorite songs.

Play Crack The Sky – Listen – Lyrics

Soco Amaretto Lime – Listen – Lyrics

Sic Transit Gloria… Glory Fades – Listen – Lyrics

 Jesus Christ – Listen – Lyrics

Luca – Listen – Lyrics

Cleanser - Listen – Lyrics

Mix Tape – Listen – Lyrics

I normally won’t list this many, Brand New is just.. ridiculous.

  

G’night

LifeWay Christian

I went in for training tonight at LifeWay, which was boring, but kind of cool. I basically just sat in the break room andwatched videos, some of which reminded me a lot of the cheesy videos we had to watch in high school. The cool thing is working in a christian environment, in a place where we all have the opportunity to minister to people every day. I had the opportunity at my old job too, but only with co-workers, and only once with a customer. I was talking to one of the guys there tonight, talking to him it was so refreshing. I liked my old co-workers but they either hated the fact I was a christian, or didn’t care and ignored it. I guess it’s just easier for me to know that I’m expected in this place to love Jesus and share that with people, as opposed to being told not to at work.

I’m really looking forward to working there, I’m going to be training for a while, but everyone I’ve met so far is really nice, and I like the store.

Okay and to be honest my mind is extremely cluttered with completely irrelevant things right now, so I can’t really focus on writing about LifeWay now. My brain keeps going off and it’s starting to be bothersome. But I love my new job, and the store is a great ministry too, not just a place to buy christian things. There’s so much more to that place and it’s cool.

Checkers or Wreckers

This is some shameless self-promotion.

I write on a blog called Checkers or Wreckers, we officially opened it today. Still needs work but we’ve got it open and it’s pretty cool, I think so anyway. It’s entirely NASCAR based, so if you don’t like NASCAR the blog will make no sense to you, but if you do it’s a pretty darn cool racing blog. That’s my little plug for it. There’s a link to it on my Blog Roll.

Last night my brother and sister-in-laws cat ran away. They have 6, so I would say no big deal, but it was thier second cat and one they actually chose to have. They had one, Thumbs, a Hemingway cat, and then they got Napoleon, the one that just ran off. They never got them fixed so they’ve had a ton of kittens and so currently they have 6 cats total. Down to 5 now I guess since Napoleon took off. My brother called me at about 1am to ask if my cat ever got out, and if she came back. My cat is spoiled, and acts like a dog, so she never stays out long.. she runs outside and practically right back in because she freaks out. Napoleon isn’t like that though, so he’s long gone. Pretty sad, I actually liked that cat, and Alicia is pretty upset.

In happy news Kertus made the Nationwide race, which is fantastic. He has gone through a lot lately and we’ve been pretty worried about him. He can’t keep racing much longer if he doesn’t get sponsored. There has been a lot going on in his personal life that isn’t good. His professional life isn’t going great right now either. When I met him he drove the #0 for Race Girl, and he ended up moving up to race with Kevin Harvick’s team. A huge step up, but Kevin really messed him over and kept him deadlocked in a contract that kept him from racing. It’s really upsetting and I hate to see someone I care about deal with all of this. He has always been kind to me and my friends, he is entertaining, and goofy and just a great guy. I’m so glad he made this race, it’s a huge deal, and hopefully someone takes notice and helps him out. Congratulations Kertus, we are all SO proud of you!

***edit: I got a call from Kristen, in post qualifying tech, they failed to pass. There was something wrong with the aero. I don’t know all the details, don’t care really I just know they booted him from the race. So that went from very happy news to very sad news. I’m not sure he can afford the trip to California now.. he had this same problem 2 years ago. So that stinks.

 ***2nd edit: Kertus gets to race! This is so insane going back and forth, but when he got booted, that put the 01 in on speed, but Dwayne, the guy that drives th 01, is his teammate. Kertus’ dad owns the team, so Kertus is taking that car today. It’s complicated and weird, BUT, main thing is KD is in the race, and everything worked out.

Happy Valentines Day

Hope everyone had a great Valentines Day. Mine was pretty darn great so I’m happy with that.

Brian raced his way in to the Daytona 500 so I can rest easy, finally. I got to talk to an old friend today which was crazy but in a good way. And I went out to Kayleighs ‘I love you’ party, which was fun.

I have nothing really meaningful to say so I feel like this is kind of a waste of blog but, I felt I had some kind of obligation to do a Valentines Day post. So there it is.

Oh tomorrow. Boo.

I don’t think me and Thursday are going to get along. (technically today I guess since it’s past 12)

It’s the Duels.

You thought I’d be T-O’d about Valentines Day eh? I’m over that mess. The Duels, though, those are going to rattle me.

So here’s the deal, it sounds stupid, but for me it really isn’t. My favorite driver isn’t locked in to the Daytona 500 by points. He HAS to race his way in. Now, I won’t get into the details on how the rules work for this event, because people that have watched the sport for years don’t get it. Lucky for me I’m smart and I do. ha…eh. Anyway, generally speaking 2 races decide the field for the race. So, in the simplest terms, my driver (Brian Vickers) must finish as one of the top 2 of the guys who aren’t locked in in his race. Or, he could get lucky and have certain guys be the top 2.. and he’d still make it. that’s where the confusing horrible rules come in. Thank goodness I understand them or tomorrow would be even worse.

He missed it last year, and quite frankly missing it again would be ridiculous and suck really bad for th rest of the season. Making up an entire races worth of points is not easy. 

In unrelated-topic-stuff, I went to community group tonight, and I gotta say I really like that. The book we’re reading is great, it’s kind of hard to read so little of it at a time but it’s nice to really dig into the book with other people and see some things from other peoples perspectives. All the people out there are awesome and I actually genuinely like spending that time with them, which isn’t something I’ve had before in a bible study class or anything like that. So I’m really grateful for that group, it’s working out well for me.

oh, lastly, my dad bought me some really nice flowers for Valentines Day. He works nights so he bought them today, it was really sweet. The past few years he has skipped over it so it was actually kind of sweet. Me and my dad have had a ton of issues the past few years so, it sounds dumb but that was actually kind of a big deal for me. The past couple weeks with him home during the day I thought would be really tough but they have suprisingly been nice. A few months ago I was pretty sure I couldn’t live in the same house as him anymore and was pretty close to giving up sollege to move into my own apartment, but things turned around drastically so I’m really happy. I’m just going to keep praying things can stay good.

Now I’m off to go to sleep and wake up in a full-on panic about dumb NASCAR. (yeah i realize its dumb and I still care.. weird right?)

<3 <3 <3

Poverty Branch/Sherwood @ Backbooth

That’s the next show I’m going to hit. Sherwood as I said in my last blog is a really awesome band, so I’m glad to be able to see them, and Poverty Branch I just found out about yesterday. Well, I guess I’ve technically heard about them a lot since my parents are friends with the parents of one of the guys in that band. But I just found out thier name and heard thier music for the first time. Probably the first time I’m going to check out a band based on the recomendation of thier parents but, they sound good so it works out.

I need to head out to get Genesis and head to C3 now, so that’s all I’ll write.