singing and dancing for Jesus

Tonight was bible study night. Deanna led this week on the passage ask, seek, knock. I really get excited about this. Sometimes I just feel like Jesus doesn't care about my problems, or isn't interested in helping me out. But when I pray I remind myself of these simple concepts, "Ask and it will be given to you; Seek and you will find; Knock and the door will be opened to you." I am not sure why this gets me so excited about God, but it does. I want to knock and have God open the door. That would be awesome.

After the bible study a few of us went up stairs and hung out in Michelle and Laurel's room. We started doing this weird wrestling game that involves rolling around the floor trying to remove the opposite persons sock. It was pretty great. I guess we played it more violently than is intended, but I am pretty sure that made it more fun.

So we all know that Charlie likes to fight and wrestle. I mean you hang out with him for twenty minutes or so and you get to see him wrestle somebody. When I was young I used to always wrestle and fight with my siblings and cousin. I am not that strong, but I have a pretty good pain tolerance. Charlie told me that he will always hold back when fighting me because I am a girl. And I mean, I don't blame him for feeling that way, it just makes me sad. I have always been the girl who gets along better with guys (except at Evergreen, where all the girls are way more masculine than most of the men). I grew up preferring to do "boy things" opposed to the girl things. I hated growing up and not feeling ever completely comfortable with the guys, because they treated me different. But I also felt completely uncomfortable around all the girls because they were so different than me. When I was in the fourth grade my dad took me to get a hair cut that was ridiculously short. I looked just like a boy with my short hair, androgynous body, mariners t shirt, and baggy jeans. I started at a new school that year, and everyone just assumed I was a boy. At first I was really embarrassed about all the confusion. My teachers would often refer to me as him or he. But I quickly began to notice that the guy friends I made that year treated me a lot more like one of the guys due to my deceptive look. I've never really told anyone this before, but I started going out of my way to look more like a boy because I wanted to fit in. That was the year I stopped wearing stretch pants and floral shirts.

Now as I am older, I have very much so embraced my femininity and I am so glad to be a girl. But there are still times when I wish people wouldn't see me as a girl and punch me as hard as they could.


I went on winter retreat this weekend. It was cool. A lot of singing and dancing for Jesus. It was sweet being able to see a lot of old friends. I am glad I went.

This week is starting off a million times better than last week. Let's keep it up!