Thanking God for a cold...

So today has been so long. I have a cold so I don't feel good and... I don't know. I just didn't feel good today. 

It started out when I got to school and during second period, my stomach starting feeling sick. It was like I was really hungry but I wasn't, really. It felt weird. 

Then after I ate my snack in English, it kind of went away a little. Then my heart started hurting. It was odd. Below my shoulder on my left side it felt like someone  was trying to stab me (I mean it didn't hurt THAT bad but that's what it felt like). You know, like those little cramps you get in your chest randomly that hurts really bad but only for like half a second, then it goes away. It was like that for longer than half a second. Maybe I minute or two. It was weird and I thought my body was malfunctioning. 

Anyway, after that went away, I started to feel sick. You know when you just feel all stopped up in your head and everything smells different. Don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about. When you have a cold and you have all this pressure in your nose, the air smells weird. It's just the "cold smell". Anyway... and that lasted for the rest of the day.

Now, because I don't feel too good and because I'd be leaving tomorrow at lunch anyway, I'm able to skip school tomorrow, calling in sick. Thanks, Jesus. That was awful nice of you. Now I can actually sleep in and we'll leave early in the afternoon to head up to the mountains.

Oh yeah, I never told yall. This weekend I'm going up to this beautiful cabin (with a lovely view) in Blue Ridge with my mama, my aunt, and some of my aunt's friends. Yeah, they're all older ladies and I'm by far the youngest there, but I heard these ladies are nice and fun. Besides, I've never been intimidated by adults. In fact, I talk to them pretty well. Another plus is that I not only get my own room, but my own queen-sized bed. :D That's right, it's gonna be awesome. I'm really excited.

We're going to go antique shopping (which I love to do) and we'll go to Mercere's Apple Orchards (they have the best cider East of the Mississippi, I swear) and the rest of the time we'll lounge around and play games and eat lots of food. I'm so happy. Talk about pure bliss. 

I've been dying to rent a cabin in Blue Ridge since like last year. So I'm jubilant about it all (I'm expanding my vocabulary as you can tell). So... yeah. 

That's about it for now. I'm tired so I may go take a nap or watch TV for a while.

p.s. I still need suggestions! I have an idea that might work but I'll explain that later. As well as my big idea I want to share with you all. So I'll try to remember!

With love for my Lord.

Yours truly,

SD

I need your help!

Please, anyone and everyone who reads this, I need your help. I'm wanting to write a story, you see. But not just any story. I want it to be one that's meaningful and will speak to my generation. I want it to be a story that quietly speaks a loud message. A message that God's trying to get across to us but we're too ignorant to listen. I don't want it to be like a Bible study type thing like a testimony or me preaching at the teenagers for doing wrong, I want it to be a story with fictional characters and a made-up plot but that hits home and reaches the deep, most hidden parts of the heart. Something that the Holy Spirit can use to change us. 

I've tried to come up with an idea by figuring out what my main subject of the  book will be. I've listed things like love, forgiveness, blessings, redemption, answered prayers. But the problem with love is that I can't write about it without copying other stories that I've read about love. The problem with forgiveness is that you have to sin before you get forgiveness and I don't want it to be a depressing book where a ton of bad things happen and you have to wade through this sorrow until the end of the book when it finally reveals God's forgiveness and mercy. And then answered prayers and blessings are too light-hearted and wouldn't reach deep enough, I think.

So here's where you come in. I am in dire need of your suggestions. Anything! As long as it kinda follows what I'm looking for in the first paragraph. I know I'm probably being picky but I will never finish it if I am not in love with the plot. So please, if you think of anything I might like, please leave it as a comment! I would truly, honestly, genuinely appreciate it. Thank you!!! 

p.s. There's not much else to write on, anyway. Later I will let yall in on this idea I'm praying about. ;) It's really exciting.

With love for my Lord.

Your truly,

SD

Change is here.

I praise God for this. :) I talked about my longing for change, well it's here. My new obsession is God. Loving God, adoring God, pleasing God. He died for me, I'll live for Him. It's only fair. He did so much, the least I can do is give my life to Him and love Him with my whole heart. 

The devil may try to make me fear giving my life over in His hands, but I don't listen. He says, "You're no longer in control." I say, "Good." Because I can't live in this world alone. God is my only way. I pray that this will stay and that I won't be distracted again. I live my life one day at a time, each morning choosing to follow Him. 

It may sound tedious to do constantly, but I find it a joy. It's so odd that I've changed so quickly. But that's God's redeeming love for you. It only takes a second for Him to turn your life around. And you can't doubt it. That's another way satan is trying to tempt me. "It's too easy. It can't be true." he says. I say, "God is truer than anything. He loves me and doesn't fool His children." Then he tries to make me fear my bold defiance toward him. But I rest assured that God protects me. 

It does sound awfully odd doesn't it? Haha but it's the truth. That's what I feel. And I think God worked amazingly in me through Immanuel's Veins. 

I hope I've inspired you. God longs for you. He loves you. So don't turn your back on Him, and don't feel bad that you have before. I did too. For much too long a time. But forget the past and look hopefully towards the future because God has big plans for you. Live for Him the the present and He'll take care of the rest. :)

With love for my Lord.

Yours truly,

SD

Love

Last night I finished reading a book called Immanuel's Veins  by Ted Dekker. And I will never, ever look at love the same way again. Just thinking about the end of that book makes my heart tug. I mean I cried. I never cry when reading books, so matter how well written or sappy the story line is. But this... this is something totally different. This isn't just another love story. This is the most amazing love story you will ever read. It will change you. I promise it will change you. After reading this book, I now see God's love for me as such a real thing. I am His bride and He loves me. We are lovers. He saved me when I declined His confession of love for me. He bled for me and He healed me. I can't believe it. 

Please.... I urge you, I BEG you to go buy or borrow this book. It's Ted Dekker's newest novel. It may cost you money but not reading it could possibly cost you a deeper relationship with Christ. You may or may not be intrigued by the first chapter but PLEASE read on! Just keep reading and it will change you! By the end of the book, I bet you will be in tears, because I was. And thinking back on it, my heart swells with awe. Ted is such an amazing writer and delivers the story so well. Please, please, please read this book! Please! 

Reading this book will give you a glimpse of what real love is. Of what God's love is. You will never be the same. I know I'm making it sound like the Bible or something and it's not, but it opens your eyes. This realization will dawn on you and you will be awestruck. So please, please read this book. I would absolutely recommend it for anyone and everyone (as long as their not a little kid, some parts may scare them). 

And as a girl, I just had to say this. Even the thought of love or attention from boys is dimmed in the light of this love. This... this is real love. 

With a heart for my Lord.

Yours truly,

SD

240 days

240 days (including today) until my school is out for summer. It seems like an eternity. And this is just one school year. Everyone says high school flies by but so far, it's moving slower than molasses. But this reminds me that I wanted to talk about my new tactic of surviving school. So first of all, my school has no windows. It drives me crazy and slowly kills me throughout the day. I long desperately to see sunshine and yearn to smell fresh air. I hate being held captive like this. So I try to make it through the day by setting very short-term goals, you could say. Let's see, I start school at 8:30. By 10:30 I can eat a snack in class (Mrs. Johnson my English teacher is the only one who doesn't mind us eating in class. Before lunch, that is.) so that is something to look forward to. Then after English is Geography and if I can just make it through Geo, next is lunch. Lunch is good and then afterwards is Spanish. Our teacher doesn't mind if you eat in her class but if you just ate lunch, why would you eat more? And then finally it's the last class of the day, Study Skills/Financial Planning. I have hope then because there's only 1 hour keeping me from fresh air and temporary freedom. It's hard sometimes, but I muddle through the day. 

The next thing I wanted to mention was math. Ok, I know some people love math and all that junk, but I am not one of them. And the other day I got to thinking about it and this question popped into my brain: Why is math so important? All of the SATs and stuff like that have a big ole' math section and math is worth more of your GPA. (I think I said that right, I could be wrong.) It's like math is the "big one", it's so important. Have you ever asked why? If you have, the teacher will say "Because it will only get harder as you grow." So we learn math because we will learn more math next year? And then they will say, "You need to know it for college. It's way harder in college." So we learn math because we will learn more math next year because it will be harder in college? And then they'll say, "You use it all throughout your life." And I'm like, really? I never see my mom sitting around calculating the volume of the can of green beans she just opened for dinner. Nor do I see customers in the store pulling out a calculator to determine how much money you will save if you got a bargain and got 12% off this shirt when there's no sale at all. I just don't get it.

And finally, I wanted to go a little more serious and talk about something that just kind of hit me a few minutes ago. I was reading the blog of one of my friends who has graduated high school and is doing what I hope I can do once I graduate. She is taking a... I think it was a one month mission trip to Brazil. She is staying down there and doing all kinds of stuff to tell others about Christ. I've heard Brazil is just messed up. And something she said in there really kind of hit home. She said, "My prayer is that I would focus so much less on all that useless stuff that won't even be coming with me to heaven and focus on God being my everything.  I want to live with such a fire and passion to see God's kingdom advanced and all of the stuff is just a distraction from my real purpose of being on this earth." She also said this was her prayer for everyone who called themselves a Christian. And I realized, something's gotta change. I can't just keep living on by myself and hoping God's still there when I get worried or when the devil's stronghold is finally noticed by me. It's ridiculous. Why would I choose a life of loneliness and sin to a live full of God's mercy and love pouring out on me. His joy would fill me, my feet would be firmly planted in Him. If I just took the time and discipline to really sit down and spend some real one-on-one time with Him. I could be on fire for Him, I could have the passion that I'm planning on teaching to middle schoolers in a few weeks. I could do amazing things in His name if I just obeyed. And I am hoping to start obeying again. It's hard sometimes, the devil is so enticing. But I have to resist. And He will help me if I ask. I'm never alone. I'm never too far gone for forgiveness because His mercy goes farther still. And I need to embrace that. So sorry if this was all deep and a totally different mood from the rest of the blog, but I just needed to write this down. And hopefully you will be inspired too. 

So now, I think I'm going to go have some of that one-on-one with God for a while. Have a great weekend guys. 

Yours truly,

SD

Things in this world that make me say, "Just, no."

1. Hot dogs

2. Old people on Facebook

3. Meatloaf 

 

4. Speedos 

5. Badly dyed hair

6. Bad spray tans

7. Phone solicitors 

8. Veins in meat

9. Most fast food places

10. Hair found in food

11. Morbidly obese people who do not dress adequately (not to offend anyone, but seriously)

12. Really sad, sappy animal rescue commercials 

13. Roadkill

14. Little kids trying to be cool 

15. You. (Hahaha! Just kidding!)

What does this have to do with my life? Well... nothing. But I hope you got a smile out of it. :) Have a good day! Hasta manana! 

Yours truly,

SD

Got nothing to say...

This weekend has been great! :) So far, at least. Friday I relaxed and stayed up late then slept in a lot later than normal on Saturday. Then I went to the Avenues with four of my friends and we shopped around the saw that new cartoon movie Alpha and Omega which was completely retarded. But we had fun laughing at it. Then today I went to church and this afternoon I'm going to read this new book I've been dying to get called Immanuel's Veins by Ted Dekker. So far it's really good but somewhat bizarre.  And tonight I'm going to this thing called Passion with some of my friends. It's a church event and the music director is Chris Tomlin and the speaker is Louie Gigglio (sp?). So I'm super excited and this weekend has turned out to be amazing. :) 

Other than that, though, I have nothing to say. Life is good, God is great, school... well, I'm not thinking much about school right now. So everything is amazing. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get some chocolate chip cookies and settled down on my couch with Ted Dekker (wow, that sounded so wrong). Have a good Sunday, everyone!

A tid-bit of news

Ok, so I've been forgetting to mention this on here. I am over RS. I know, I know, I sound bipolar or indecisive. But from what the girls who've at the school a long time have told me, he's a jerk. And I could easily see that. Apparently he just goes through the girls, dating them and dumping them without every saying why. Yeah... oh well. 

On the bright side, there's this other guy... hm... let's call him Cody. No, I don't "like" him. I've just realized lately (like, yesterday and today) that he's a really nice guy and I could see us being real good friends. Which makes me happy because he's the first guy at this school that I haven't felt really awkward around. *sigh of relief*

So all is well in the world of Sarah. I'm not gloomy anymore and every time I go to school I realize it really is fun, just not perfect. And what school is? Since when is school supposed to be perfect? Haha so yeah... :) 

Oh and I forget if I mentioned it already or not, but in Spanish class we've picked out Spanish names we're all going to be called by. Mine is "princesa" which, as you might could guess, means "princess". I chose this because my name (Sarah) means princess. But now I'm wondering if I should change it to "indita" which means "little Indian girl" because I'm part Native American. I just think it sounds more like a name than "princesa" don't you? Leave a comment and tell me your opinion. Or let me know if you have another suggestion for my Spanish name.

Well, there's not much else to tell. I need to go to homework, anyway. Have a good evening everyone, because tomorrow's Friday and that means the weekend!!! :D 

Yours truly,

SD

Tests, quizzes, retakes, and melancholy

So many of them! I had a Spanish quiz and Geography test yesterday. I have a Physical Science test and Geography quiz and a Geography retake quiz tomorrow. Next Tuesday I have a math test, next Thursday I have an English cumulative vocabulary quiz. Seriously, this is crazy. I don't consider this learning. I consider this drilling my brain until it wants to quit on me. Of course like every other teacher of mine is saying, "It's just like this in college except worse." And that isn't really encouraging. 

I am so messed up right now. I've eaten all kind of crap lately and haven't set foot in a gym in months. I'm getting pimples because I'm stressing more than I usually do. Normally, I never stress. Like at all. But this new school has brought more worries than I've had to deal with before. Oh, and I haven't found the time or will to pick up a Bible and do a quiet time for forever up to yesterday. I gotta remember to do that again today. 

I don't know, everything in my life right now seems... difficult. Like you can't just do it, you have to work to do it. Like I have to work to find time to go to the gym, I have to work to find time to write on here, I have to work to get homework done so I can hopefully have a few hours in the evening to relax so I won't go insane. All these tests, all these things they're trying to stuff in my brain. 

Granted, some things are interesting and fun. Like Spanish. We're doing a fiesta for Columbus Day. It'll be great. But will I survive until then? Sometimes I just want to rewind. Back to when I was at my old school with all my old friends and I was able to completely be me. I didn't need to worry, I got to have an amazing worship chapel every Friday after lunch. I wish I could go back and appreciate it more. Because that was like, the best time of my life. Now, it's a little harder. But like they say, a smooth mountain is hard to climb. 

And I mean it's not like I'm depressed, just a tad bit more... down than usual. Part of me thinks it's the devil trying to make me miserable, and part of me thinks it's just the outcome of all the events that have happened. I mean, who expects everything to be perfect, awesome, and even better than before when you move to a new school and have to start over?

Even my mom says she missed my old school. Which makes me hopeful that maybe if she gets to where she doesn't like my school that much at all, I can go back to Heritage. But she just isn't willing to drive me like, a little over an hour away to go to school. Hey, I'm willing to get up at 5:30 in the morning. 

*sigh* I dunno... it's all just weird. Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I'm blowing everything way out of proportion. Who knows? I'll just have to keep trusting God and working my butt off to not fail any of these tests. Haha wish me luck! 

Yours truly,

SD

Ice cream and Frank Peretti

So today is the Forsyth Family Fest. This is just when a bunch of churches in the community (a.k.a. county) get together at the fair grounds to have a morning service and then an evening service. Normally there are some pretty well-known artists and stuff there. Last year we had Steve Fee and Toby Mac perform. This year we have Charlie Hall (he wrote Marvelous Light). But anyway, the morning service was good but kinda gave me a headache, partially because we were so close to the speakers, and partially because half of the songs were sung in Spanish while the other half was sung in English. This is because we're reaching out more to the Hispanic community this year, I guess. It was cool but kind of tiring for some reason. 

Anyway, my family is just chilling at home this afternoon until the evening service at 5. There are inflatable bouncy things, rock climbing walls, booths, a few little bands playing around, and these biking, skateboarding dudes who do awesome tricks. But it is just a little too hot outside and we didn't feel like staying. 

And so instead of doing homework (like a probably should because I have a geography test and Spanish quiz Tuesday), I'm going to wait and let the stress come tomorrow. Besides, this is the Sabbath, the day of rest. I will sit on my comfy couch and each my chocolate ice cream and read Monster by Frank Peretti (yes, definitely the best thing to read on the Sabbath. haha). Oh well, the Lord will forgive me. ;)

Have a wonderful Sunday, everyone! Let it be a restful one! And if you happen to live anywhere near the Forsyth County area, please come to the Family Fest tonight at 5! For details and such, go to http://forsythfamilyfest.com. 

Yours truly,

SD

And if you're wondering why all that up there is highlighted in black, it's because I accidentally pressed the highlight button on black and the stupid thing won't undo it. They really need to change that and have a "none" option. Geez... oh well. I'll be more careful next time! 

Rage

So I wrote this really nice, long blog about my terribly Study Skills class and how tired I am and how I plan to sleep all weekend, but my stupid, freaking computer flipped out and deleted it all. I will not even attempt to convey my frustration. I am too tired to deal with this. Sorry guys, but I am so NOT rewriting all that. I am way too tired and too short-tempered at the moment to do such a thing. Gahhh!!! So irritating! Ok, I'm going to stop now. Maybe I'll get to it later. Have a nice evening.

Yours truly,

SD

It's been a while...

I know, I know, shame on me, I haven't written in a long time. But how could I when I had homework and then spent the most fabulous weekend with my dearest South African friend?! I couldn't help myself but neglect this duty! Anyway, time to stop the melodramatic act and just tell it like it is. 

I. had. the. most. amazing. weekend. ever. Period. What is better than spending three days with a dearly-loved friend whom you haven't seen in months? Or spending a day in a cabin with the doors and windows wide open letting in the cool mountain air blow through? Or snuggling on a futon and watching 6 episodes of The Office? Or drinking a Yoo-Hoo while sitting in a warm hot tub? Or learning a few words and phrases in Afrikaans and feeling like an expert? I haven't the slightest clue so if you do, please inform me immediately.

By the way, happy birthday to my brother-in-law, Kyle Cash! Yay! I believe he is 23 now. :) So hooray for Kyle! 

Oh and here's an update on RS. I have decided that I don't "like" him per say, I am just... intrigued by him. I like to watch him, he is an interesting character. I don't know how to explain him in words yet... but I got it in my mind. Maybe one day soon I will be able to put it down and you can see what I see in him.

Oh, and I think I'm going to post my latest story I'm working on, on here so that you all can read it and tell me what you think. And I'm all about criticism. It's what makes a story good. So I am totally open to any suggestions you may have. If there is some glaring error, then please let me know. But because I don't exactly know who all is reading this (if it's just my friends or if someone I don't know way out there is actually reading this too) please use kind words. :) Thank you. 

Well listen, I am feeling a little tired after a long day of school (actually today was pretty good; no failing grades, no excessive embarrassment, a few good laughs. Counts as good day in my book!) so I'm going to go lie in bed and watch cable TV that I just got today on the television that's in my room. :) I know it's nothing big but it's nice. Anyway, hope you all have a good night and I hope you all haven't given up on me for my carelessness (how many E's and S's are in that word?). 

Yours truly,

SD