DumbThings I Did in February

1. Bit off part of my tongue. Oh, but I AM serious.

2. Didn't know that LarryBoy = Batman.

3. Dumped salt all over Collin's kitchen table.

4. Drank ketchup through a straw.

5. Bought the same song on iTunes twice.

6. Said "You too!" when the ticket guy told me to enjoy the movie.

7. Got out of the shower and realized I'd shaved one leg twice and not the other one.

8. Tried to make a pizza. Without turning on the oven.

9. Called my dog a kid's name by accident. In front of the kid.

10. Broke my sixth month no-crying streak ten days before the six month mark -_-

11. Put a list of dumb things I did on the internet.

Aaaaand, thanks for following, Juju etc.! XD I couldn't find a link to your blog :-/ Comment and I'll follow it and link you up.

~Stephanie

The Author God

In the fourth section of Mere Christianity, “Beyond Personality,” C.S. Lewis uses an Author God metaphor to explain how God views time.

On page 167-168, the book says, “Suppose I am writing a novel. I write ‘Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!’ For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary’s maker, do not live in the imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half of the sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary.”

Probably because I’m a writer, I’ve always found it easier to understand God when I think of him as an author. He created a wonderful premise for us on earth. He made the world and its laws and he created the “characters” Adam and Eve with their unique personalities.

The Author metaphor has the potential to unnerve people, because they feel that by comparing God to an author, we’re saying that he writes our story all himself, with little freewill for us. For instance, if we think of God as an Author, we might be led to believe he actually planned and scripted the Fall.

Obviously no human metaphor for God is going to be perfect, but as a writer, I think this one makes a lot of sense.

When writing, you do get to create the characters—in a sense. (It usually feels more like meeting someone than creating them though.) You decide their hair color, put them into a family, and—to some extent—get to form their personality. You probably even have an idea of how you want their “story” to go.

However, as your character matures and is shaped by others’ actions, there comes a point when you are not exactly calling your character’s shots anymore. You might know that Paige needs to trust Darren for the story to work, but Paige has decided to take a more stubborn route.

After God's Adam and Eve characters took their own stubborn route, God did some reorganizing of the Story of Man. He realized that his characters were choosing a sad, inefficient path, but he was still determined to give them the option for the best ending, which is through Jesus.

Some might think that as an author, couldn’t you just force the character to do the right thing? Probably. But then not only have you violated the character, but your world of words turns brittle and gray. A good author won’t do that, and God is the very best. Instead, you have to persuade and enlighten your characters through situations and other people so that they will have a of heart. God does this for us.

Like an Author, God’s style is all throughout his Story; his fingerprints are on every tree, every sunset, and every person’s heart. God loves us, his characters, so much that he allows us to be ourselves, make our own choices—and sometimes we choose wrong.

At times it may seem like our Author is putting cruel obstacles in our way for no good reason, like he’s ruining OUR story. But we have to remember that it isn’t just OUR story; it’s God’s.

God doesn’t send misery to punish us. His heart aches when bad things happen, just as an author finds it hard to watch a difficult situation unfold. However, both God and the author know the ending of their story. They’re excited about the ending! They want their characters to see it, believe in it, run towards it! The author knows that Paige got kidnapped so that she could meet Luke; she knows that Darren got lost because he needed to meet Paige.

Thankfully, our Author is one of infinite chances, and if we love him, we can trust that he’s working our story towards the best possible ending.

It's true; no metaphor for God will ever be perfect. But personally, I find the Author God metaphor especially beautiful, relatable, and comforting.

~Stephanie

Choreography = Writing

My awesome dance teacher, Lauren, is also a brilliant, BRILLIANT choreographer.

It's an hour's drive to and from the dance studio from her house, so she listens to loud music and choreographs while she drives every day. In all her 10 years of teaching, she has never once written a dance down. And yet, if you ask her to do "Stronger" from her 2007 class of 13-15 year olds, she'd be able to do it on the spot.

Right now, she is currently choreographing THIRTY. ONE. DIFFERENT. DANCES.

Good. Gosh.

How is that even possible?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! And she doesn't write any of them down?!?!?! GAH! It's freaking incredible. None of the dances are the same.

Since she choreographs in her head, sometimes when we do the dance in class, she'll stare at us for a minute and then go:

"No. Nope. Looked better in my head." And we'll do something else.

After we've learned the whole dance she always goes back and tweaks it, too. Maybe a turn didn't take up as many counts as she thought, or we need to use the other leg for a fan kick, or start with the right foot instead of the left at some point. She was trying to explain this process to the class one night.

"I just have to get the dance first, before I fix it," she said.

A comparison popped into my head, and my eyes lit up. "It's like a rough draft," I said.

"Yeah," Lauren nodded excitedly. "Exactly."

Thinking of choreography like writing has been a really exciting revelation for me. It helps me understand Lauren and dancing so much better.

The first attempt at the dance is like a rough draft.

How can Lauren remember so many dances? Well, how do I remember so many stories?

Choreographing on the go must be a lot like getting a story idea on the go.

When you see a dance in real life, sometimes it doesn't work the way you anticipated. When your characters do what you tell them to do, sometimes it doesn't feel right.

More often than not, Lauren's dances incorporate two groups of dancers doing different things. Some people ask Lauren why in the world would she make it harder on herself like that? I think I understand. When I'm writing a story, sometimes the characters do things that are completely unexpected, or react badly to something I give them, or refuse to cooperate. People might say to me, "That's ridiculous. YOU'RE the writer, aren't you? Make them do what you want!" And I just have to tell you, it's not as easy as it sounds.

Comparing choreography to writing has made me both appreciate and understand what Lauren does even more than before. It's so exciting to me when I can draw parallels like that that help me understand something else.

Isn't it cool how everything is connected?

~Stephanie

100 Books

I got this post from Anna of Artist's Charm a while back {her post} :) Apparently, the average person has only read six out of these hundred, which is astonishing to me.

Here's the list; I'm going to copy Anna's method and bold the books I've read, and italicize the ones I've started but not finished.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland -Lewis Carol
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Twenty-four down, three started, seventy-three to go...

Not TOO bad XD

~Stephanie

{me gusta}

Thanks for following, Shena!

no...but yeah.

~Stephanie

Holy Mother of Cows

<<<<<<<<< What's your opinion?

Lint.

Not to be confused with Lent, which started two days ago.

I've always wanted to participate in Lent. The idea of giving up something so I can focus on what's important is romantic and interesting. However, I usually miss Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, and figure, "Aw dang. Well, there's always next year."

The years I HAVE noticed Ash Wednesday, I usually give up something relatively small, or with conditions. One year I gave up "books, before reading the Bible." That was hardly any sacrifice at all. I could pick up my Bible, read a few random words, and proceed as usual.

Once I tried to give up "computer before doing school work." That didn't last in any way, shape or form.

This year, I saw Ash Wednesday coming, and decided what to do ahead of time.

The idea occurred to me as Sarah and I were coming home from dance one night. I had forgotten my phone at home, and was going through some withdrawals XD I'd reach for my phone to see the time, to check for texts, or just to hold it over and over. I couldn't get it into my head that MY PHONE WASN'T WITH ME, and I started to notice how attached and dependent I was on it.

So I decided to give up my phone, except for between the hours of 9 and 11 at night. Two hours for checking and sending messages etc.

Then I found out that one of my friends is giving up bread for Lent. {Holy mother of cows. How??}

And then that another is giving up MUSIC. {I would literally not be able to do this. I think I would actually become ill. Or do something terrible.}

And then there's me. "Yeah, I'm giving up my phone, except for between the house of 9 and 11 at night :D"

So far, I've been two days phoneless-during-the-day. It's been mildly difficult, but actually not bad. Not bad at all.

And some people are giving up BREAD.

So I'm starting to rethink the boundaries I set.

Giving up "texting, except between 9 and 11 at night"? Isn't that a lot like giving up "books, before reading the Bible"? Am I really giving up anything at all? Most of the texting I do anyway happens between 9pm and 11pm.

So I think I'm going to take this a step farther. I think I'm going to cut out texting entirely. Until April 8. For 46 days.

I've read that sentence six times now. And I'm not sure if I can do it. I'm really not sure. It's a terrifying, lonely, boring, tragic thought. FORTY-SIX DAYS? WHAT? It makes me slightly panicked. I'm really not sure if I can do it. The more I think about it, the less sure I am. Holy...mother of cows.

But I'm sort of tired of mediocrity. I'm tired of doing things "good enough." I'm tired of taking easy roads that I pretend are risks.

Can I do this?

For the last time, I really don't know XD

~Stephanie

Kids Know What's Up XD

Thanks for joining us, Gabi and Kayla! :D

Found this on Facebook the other day. Too funny not to share XD

How do you decide who to marry?

Alan, age 10: "You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming."

Kristen, age 10: "No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all way before and you get to find out later who you're stuck with."

What's the right age to get married?

Camille, age 10: "Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then."

Freddie, age 6: "No age is good to get married at. You got to be a fool to get married."

How can a stranger tell if two people are married?

Derrick, age 8: "You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids."

What do most people do on a date?

Lynnette, age 8: "Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough."

Martin, age 8: "On the first date, they usually just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date."

I actually lol'd.

~Stephanie