I haven't blogged in a while...for many reasons: I didn't want to take away from the plea for the compassion child; I didn't know what I wanted to say; I didn't really think people read this anyway. (Wow, that's a lot of punctuation. You grammar folks out there are probably gnawing on your fists. ) My life has been in its usual state of insanity. We had the big ASP faculty breakfast and the ASP Christmas party last week, which was the last week of classes before finals. I have one on Wed., a take-home due Friday, and the big daddy on Monday. THERAPEUTICS! Eesh, does that not send a chill down your spine? It does mine. J/k, it's not that dramatic. I actually enjoy studying for this class, because it's the stuff I need to know to be a good pharmacist.

Now the real stuff...I've been pondering and learning so much this month. As you may or may not know, my mind's constantly running, but the thought process is not always productive or efficacious. But lately God has been showing me how to optimize my time in that area. By that I mean I've been able to shut the analysis down when it wasn't necessary. I've started to let myself just live things through instead of working to foresee any and all possible mistakes at the risk of obtaining scars. Did someone say, "grace"? Because I've completely negated its worth and work in the process I'm in when I refuse to let go of what makes sense to me. This is the sweetest time of my life so far. God has been revealing my true worth in Him, and I'm so excited. It all started when I went back through Search for Significance , a Bible study (and book) by Robert S. McGee with Nat, Meg, and Britt this fall. I started to understand how deceived I was to give man's opinion so much weight in my perception of reality. What a constraint! And how fickle is man? I know you're laughing if you know me, because I'm the case study of that. But the freedom comes in knowing that I don't know everything, hardly anything, and no one else does either! But God knows it all, and I know Him, and He loves me. So we're set. Really, I've come to believe that. And I can sleep at night because of it. That peace is pure and priceless. I wish everyone had it.

That's been on my heart lately as well. As Pastor Sam has been going through Ecclesiastes at church, there a few themes that seem to come up every Sunday, such as:

1. Get wisdom. And reverent fear of God is the first step toward that. (Psalm 111:10, Prov. 2-all of it)
2. Live it up. "Everything is meaningless..." may sound dreary at first, but looking at it from another direction can be a bit freeing. The catch here is WE DON'T KNOW THE LIMITS!! We're limited by human minds. But God's not. I'm sure you've all heard this before, but come with me here...

If you purchase a new hi-tech gadget with a million features and options, how do you get the most out of what you paid for? How do you use it up to its full capacity? Read the manual! Who else is going to know how best to manipulate the beast besides its designer? Well...it's the same way with us. We're creations. We don't know it all...about life or love or happiness or ANYTHING. But God does. AND He gave us the manual. Yep, so go on and break out your Bible. We've all got a lot of catching up to do.