thoughts. a lot of them.

There are certain days when everything you do seems to go wrong, and no matter what you do, your life seems to be slipping through your fingers and shattering at your feet. There are some days when you have no hope, when life in general seems to have swallowed you, overwhelmed you, defeated you. When evil seems to have overcome good, when things seem pointless, and the only constants in life seem to be pain and misery. When you completely forget that this is only how things *seem,* and not at all how they really are. When the godlessness of the world reaches into your head and shakes you until you ache.

Today was one of those days.

On days like this, I usually just shake off these feelings by thinking of "happy things." For instance, rainbows and butterflies, or maybe chocolate or bright colors...things that make me "happy." Positive things that I enjoy about life, and tend to make me optimistic. Like, "Oh, life isn't ALL bad! There's butterflies!"
But today, that just didn't work.
And why did I expect it to? You can't battle evil with butterflies, I'm sorry to say. When the sickness and disease of the world makes you want to scream, why should chocolate appease the knots in your stomach? I'm afraid you need something far more potent, and far more good. And I don't mean good like pleasant. I'm talking about the hardcore sense of good. The righteous, fiery, wrath-of-God good. The "I will never leave you nor forsake you" good. The good that only comes from God, no matter where else we choose to look.

I really forget, far too often, that God is 100% faithful. He's not lying about always being there for me, He really IS. And so, SO often, I forget to look up to him and place my trust in him. All I have to do is look up at him in faith, and yet that's the only thing I don't do. It becomes so easy to listen to the Devil whispering in your ear, telling you that life is meaningless and everybody and everything is going to hell in a handbasket. He's cunning, and too often he deceives us into falling into despair and self pity instead of looking to Christ in hope. It's surprisingly easy to get absorbed in pessimistic thoughts once you let your perspective get skewed, and once you take your eyes off of Christ.
My life would be so much easier if I kept my eyes on the goal, on Christ, and stopped listening to the whispers. There's misery and pain in this world, but there's an immense amount of hope and joy and passion and love in it too. The people who ignore the pain and wear rose colored glasses are delusional, but the people who wear glasses stained with despair have it off far worse. They are the ones who look at the world and see nothing but pain, and feel nothing but pain. They're the cynics, who think the world is out to screw everybody and if it doesn't get you, it's a matter or pure chance. I cannot stand those people, but I realize that every day I spend in misery and listening to the whispers of Satan, I am staining my glasses with despair. So I'm throwing away my glasses, and praying for God to give me eyes to see.
-Esther

God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
   never will I forsake you.”
So we say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
   What can mere mortals do to me?” -Hebrews 13:5b-6

"Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. When we have eyes that can stare into the sun, eyes that only squint for the Shenikah, then we will see laughing children pulling cobras by their tails, and hawks and rabbits playing tag.”
― N.D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl

The New Year, and other things...

Hello, people!
It has been far, far, too long. And we have a lot of catching up to do. :)

• First of all, I'm back in Texas! I got back in the middle of August.

• Also, I had a birthday!!! I'm now sixteen, and I don't feel any different, haha. 

• We got a cat! I absolutely never expected us to ever have one. But for Christmas, my parents let us keep a stray we found. Her name is Sheba, and she is furry and adorable and crazy. :) I love her. 

•  And, *drumroll* I have started a new blog! This will be my blog for random thoughts and projects, (and where you get to hear about my crazy life ;) and my new blog is about something else entirely: Fashion. I was sort of scared and hesitant about starting a blog about fashion and clothes, being a nerdy homeschooler who knows nothing about the world of so called "high fashion", but this is a blog about something I adore, Classiness. :) Here's the link! Feel free to follow it (actually, *please* follow it, haha)  http://theartofclassiness.blogspot.com/ 

•  It is now 2012!!! Yikes, my life moves far too fast. I haven't made many official New Year's Resolutions, but I am determined to blog more, keep a steady journal, and better myself this year more than ever. I am also determined to make 2012 a year that I look back on as one of the greatest of my entire life. So you see, I have a lot to do. :)

-Esther <3

If I could have a superpower....

It would be the ability to touch someone's soul and heal all of their emotional hurt.

-Esther <3

Bitterness and other negative emotions.

Yes, this is another one of those "I've been thinking" blog posts. You people haven't been getting cooking posts because I haven't had time to cook, just work. And learn. Hence, these blog posts, the thoughts of a fifteen year old girl that probably aren't significant in a world of six billion people, but ohwell. I need to let this out before I explode, okay?? Okay.
So, I've been thinking. About bitterness mostly, and forgiveness. That kind of thing. When somebody sins against you, or hurts you exceedingly, or even constantly. Because pretty much everybody's been sinned against or been offended, and bitterness is something I'm seeing a lot, even in my own church. The whole "Well that was just inexcusable..." attitude, and sometimes "She doesn't deserve to be forgiven!". And that's something that I've struggled with a lot, especially this past year, is bitterness and forgiveness. And not just with an acquaintance, but with someone that I live and interact with and see daily. You know what bitterness boils down to? Pride. Us letting our hurt feelings get in the way of loving someone. Us thinking ourselves above and somehow less sinful than that person. The Devil whispering in our ear that we need to hold onto our hurt rather than just let it go. And so we do. And our hearts and sometimes our lives get filled with and hindered by this sin. But if you turn it around, look at it from a different perspective, and quit listening to the Devil, then it makes it a lot easier to let it all go. Because everybody in the world has sinned, meaning you. Meaning that you are just as unlovely as the next guy, even the guy who's offended you or makes your life miserable. And God is constantly, daily forgiving you of your sin, if you are trusting in Him. And do you deserve it? No. Not one of us do. And yet He gives us His grace. Lavishes it on us, actually. None of us deserve to be forgiven, and the absolute best way of showing Christ to someone is by loving them. And Love keeps no record of wrong. So let God wash you of your bitterness, and forgive the person you're holding something against. If God can daily forgive a world of His people who constantly mess up and are undeserving, you can forgive that one person you have something against.
Just some food for thought.
-Esther <3

Humans are weird.

So every once in a while, I'll be sitting in the car or laying awake at night, and I'll think, wow, humans are just plain weird. And because it comes into my head a lot, I thought I'd list a few of the reasons that us humans are just plain weird.

-We transport ourselves in large metal vehicles that we mass produce and they're so much apart of our lives that we don't even think about it.
-We have never-ending rows of poles in our towns that wires charged with electricity hang off of. Without these wires, we pretty much can't function. We also don't usually think about this.
-Come to think of it, we don't think. Unless it's the "philosophical" (-insert sarcastic laugh here-) kind. The kind that inspires people to make useless ten minute youtube videos of themselves talking radically because they think they aren't special or something. Sheesh.
-We let ourselves become distracted by things of the world and ignore God, who's staring at us lovingly with open arms, and then we wail. "Nobody loves me!!"
-We're becoming harder to entertain. Unless you have a iPad 2, you pretty much have nothing to do. Oh, and you're also not cool. People who are easily amused are going to be the happiest people, in this world. And they'll probably be the ones with more money in their wallets, too.
-All of our News, National or Local, is depressing.

Those are just some of the things I think are weird about the human race in general. We pick up weird habits! And we're really dumb. We're like...blind. Even us who know Jesus as our Savior. We just live our lives, and don't notice anything. Not as we truly should.

Do something for me, please. Look at your hand. Either one, it doesn't matter. Study it. Look at the wrinkles and lines and crevices, the occasional freckle or scar, and the unique fingerprints God Himself chose for you. Now move your hand. Do you know what just happened? You thought about moving your hand in less than the blink of an eye, and then your brain sent a message to your hand, and it moved. Isn't that incredible?!?! And you move a lot every day. I'm moving right now, pushing buttons on a laptop while I think about what to say. And we don't even think about this! We encounter it everyday, so it's ordinary and plain to us. Now I don't really know much about nerves, or how they work. But God created us incredible, so we can move and run and walk, and sometimes even jump-rope. He made us so that when we get really really happy, we can't hold it in, but instead scrunch up our faces and make peals of something we've named Laughter. Isn't Life incredible?!?! You can keep your Ipads and Fords, I'm going to sit here and look at this tree. It's a really beautiful tree, really huge. And it came from a little acorn. How? Um. Water and air. Plus sunlight. Crazy, huh?

There's all of this crazy beauty around me, and I can't help but notice and marvel at it, and worship God for it. I find that I can worship God just as easily when I took at a tree than when I'm in church. You may think I'm crazy, or weird. My friends are kind and call me passionate instead. ;)

So do something for me, if you please. Smile, a lot. Notice things. Look at the bigger picture by noticing the little things. :) The next time you're outside, whether it's hot, cold, rainy or dry, take a giant breath and thank God for oxygen and lungs, sky and clouds, random things in front of you. Try worshiping God when you see what seem to be simple things. Please.

It's dark out, and I'm done talking. ;) God Bless you all, have a good week.
-Esther <3