Christmas in the Air

It's incredible how the smallest Christmas related things can lift your mood up! I was not in the best of dispositions to place the Christmas lights on our Christmas tree given the fact that there were three other very capable people in my household that could do it and had the time to as well. Eventually, my father's menacing voice implored me to and what choice do I have then. As I began to place the lights on the tree, I was complaining about how my hands would burn after because of having to turn the tree while placing the lights and how it was going to take forever and so on and so forth. But something happened when I got to the fifth line. I began to stop complaining and instead trying very hard for the lights to look perfect throughout the tree... "Not too much here but a little more there.... hmmmm.... maybe if I move them a little toward the bottom" Halfway through the tree I was laughing with my brothers and father and everything felt like Christmas. I know very well that Christmas is not an adjective but I think it should be. Or maybe there's another word for that "Christmas-y feeling" that you feel around this time of year. I love it! You begin to change your outlook on certain things and it's harder to get mad and feel discouraged. There's a feeling of unity and happiness all around you and there's really no where that you can go to hide from it. It's a time to look forward to new beginnings and forget old pasts, even if just for a second. Can you feel it?

First Day Back In School... Again

So this is my first day back in school since my break but it feels like a first day of school in September. I'm ready to bring a new light to my learning. I'm a tenth grader who's technically a ninth grader (don't ask) and I'm ready to kick butt in school. I've said this many times before but for some odd reason, I didn't seem to have enough determination. Now I feel like I have the "umph" necessary to carry out this goal. One of my friends once put up as his status that he found the following quote stupid: "Shoot for the moon because if you miss you'll land among the stars." I couldn't see why he found it stupid. I actually kind of liked that quote. But his reasoning was that there was no need to miss. When you set a goal, you don't stop until you reach it. What's the point of having a goal if you don't reach it? He said to "get you ass to that moon!!" I think I'll take him up on that. I can already see that this year will be full of challenges and triumphs. I'm planning on really dedicating myself to my studies as I once had. (Why is it that we seem to lose that momentum that we had as kids in elementary school once we get to middle school and high school??) I hope to stay on task because it's my future on the line not the future of my teachers or my friends. It's also my parents' dreams on the line... They brought me here so that I could have a different life than they did. So that I wouldn't go through the same struggles as they did. I can't afford to let them down. I just can't... So new semester, HERE I COME!

Love

What is love? Have you ever really sat down and thought about what love is? It's hard to come up with an answer because it's such an intangible feeling but at the same time, many people say they feel it... And there are different kinds of love... The two that I have in mind, particularly, are love in a romantic sense and love in a spiritual sense. I have it proven that you cannot fully experience or even begin to understand the power of love in a romantic sense, if you do not have love in a spiritual sense. I'm a Seventh-Day Adventist and I've been baptized for a while now. When I was younger, I thought I fully understood (or at least had a basic grasp of) the love that God has for us. I knew that He sacrificed himself for our salvation. I knew that He would come back for us someday, even though we may not deserve it at all. I got that. But I wasn't connecting in a deep spiritual level with that love. Because you see, God is Love. They're one in the same. God is Love. Can you even begin to imagine that? That's why he can love us all individually and love us all the same, at the same time. He is the God of Love. The God of all the Love in the world. And once you understand that (as much as our earthly minds can) and once we connect the Love, then we can appreciate Love and enjoy and live it to an immense extent. Then we can begin to really experience what Love is in a romance. I'm in a relationship right now and I'm enjoying it, because I have connected with the God of Love and now I can begin to see the way it grows in my relationship. I can appreciate the way it lives in my relationship. I can see that this love, is just the beginning. I can see that this love is new and that there's so much more to go and so much more waiting for us, for me and my boyfriend. We cannot grow in our love without having the connection with the God of Love. it's just not possible. It's not at possible to do so. We see that. Do you?