Tarzan :

"In learning, you will teach, and in teaching, you will learn" - the Tarzan soundtrack will always be in my heart.

Re : stats :

Last stats test tomorrow morning, then stats final on Thursday. Please pray that I can retain and calmly relay the material that I've studied unto said tests, and that I pass so that I never speak of stats again!

PETA Pet :

My beef with Chick-Fil-A and the food industry in general is this:

Y U NO TREAT UR ANIMALZ HUMANELY

Final(s) week :

This is my final week of statistics. Hopefully, anyway, if I pass the final.

But I shouldn't talk like that. I should own this next test, own this next final and proudly declare that damn it, I AM going to pass, and with flying colours at that. Or at least, I hope to. No! False! I WILL! I can! I am going to succeed!

Alright, consider my self-pep talk complete. Now the studying begins.

Scraps :

At the coffee shop I work at, we have these boards on the wall next to the condiment counter to honour our favourite customers and employees. Since I started working there about seven months ago, I've been in charge of each and every board. Tonight, though, I realized how meaningful these little instances of colour and creativity can be to those who receive them.

For instance, our employee of the month is a much-deserving, two-time employee of the month veteran. His face will be on the wall for all to see, yes, but most importantly, he will be recognized by all for his dedication and hard work at our store. Two of my favourite customers, a pair of sisters (an eighth grade tomboy and a sophomore fashionista), are customers of the month. After I asked them a few questions regarding why they love coming to our store, they said that their favourite part is talking to me. I nearly cried when they said this, because they have no idea how much I love them!

It is such a privilege to be someone's barista. Not everyone's, of course. We will always have those crappy customers whose incessant caffeine cravings deeply impair their ability to exercise grace, patience, compassion, kindness, or friendliness of any kind. It is the few customers who I get the pleasure of falling in love with over and over again each time they visit my store, however, that makes me remember why I love my job. It is because I get to see people I love and care about and am so fond of every day, both customers and coworkers alike. And oddly enough, I get paid to do so.

Three hours of glue, glitter, and little bits of paper pieces later, I'm finished with these masterpieces. I'm off sleep before I have to wake up and smell the coffee.

How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep :

“You are on Earth. There is no cure for that.”

—

Samuel Beckett I have read each and every play, novel, and poem of Beckett's, and I hate that this is the singular quote that gets spiraled about in a tumblr craze, as if it this is what all of life comes down to, a matter of living and realizing the meaningless, purposelessness of it all. To Beckett, maybe. To you, maybe. This perspective is a choice. There is a cure to us here on Earth, for existentialists, nihilists, various other labels of logical, pragmatic people alike. Our choice is either to stay and learn to love and endure and persevere, or to leave. To choose life or to choose against it. I think the question that Beckett’s writing raises is this: Which will you choose in spite of this, and if you choose life, how will you dare to live?

The joys of being a barista :

Question:

"What is your best advice for life?"

Customer A:

"Exercise patience and perseverance."

Customer B:

"Enjoy it."

Customer C:

"Don't be selfish, put others before yourself first. Even before that, put God first."

Raw talent :

This is the kind of singing that I crave to do with others.

. . . how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! —Matthew 7:11

Sometimes I think that God allows/lets/causes us to obtain a brief glimpse into some of life's possibilities, only to have us realize that they were just that - a glimpse, a sliver of time allotted to us in order to enable our minds to comprehend something bigger - better, even - in order to revitalize lost hope, reverse seemingly impossible expectations, or to remind us not to be tempted to settle for things that are not of Him.

I just wish that the time would come for me to possess and embody these possibilities, so that I can become them and live them and love them as my own.

One day, maybe. One day soon, I hope. Maybe, I hope, one day soon.

Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One Who is leading. 


- Oswald Chambers

"It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don’t agree with us."


- Oswald Chambers

From '5 Things Women Should Stop Being Afraid Of' :

5. Ending up alone

“When am I gonna find a man? When’s it my turn? When will I get married?” = THE WORST. You are not going to be alone forever! Get off of Facebook and start enjoying the single life while you still can. Right now, you are totally free. You don’t have to wake up at 6:30 a.m. every day to make breakfast for your demanding family and take the kids to school. You don’t have to deal with your husband’s receding hairline, or expanding waistline. “Baby weight” is not part of your vocabulary. Additionally, the whole “Where IS he?!” question is so lame. It makes you sound like you’re standing around and waiting for the relationship stork to deliver a boyfriend to your doorstep. You have to put yourself out there. If you want to get married badly enough, trust me, you WILL get married to someone, somewhere. But right now, make the most of your time to hang out with your friends, sleep in, work jobs you hate, work jobs you love, go a little crazy, date some weirdos, and then settle down. There’s a chance that you may not even be married (or be with a man) toward the end of your life, but unless you’re a total asshole, you’ll have some friends, and maybe some kids who will see you through your twilight years. A friend of mine gave me a pin a few months ago that said “You are all you need,” which is some deep truth. You are actually all you will ever need. Think about it. 

"We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching - into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something."


- Oswald Chambers

I would find so much freedom in reading/writing/composing/playing music.

Because I can, I will, I am :

Years from now, years from this moment in time, I will look back and smile slightly at the thought that I never knew where I was going, yet I ended up there anyway. I will remember how I fretted anxiously over all the menial statistics assignments I had to complete - rather, I won't be able to recall any of them.  I won't remember my GPA, I won't remember how the hell I got through writing all those essays for college admissions. I will remember the stress, the anxiety, the nervousness, the terror of waiting and not knowing. But because my life will have happened, perhaps in a way better than I could have possibly imagined or expected it to, I will be sitting and smiling back at myself, remembering all the professors who believed in me first. How I came to believe enough in myself to get myself somewhere, somewhere where I could become enabled to help others. I will be helping others, I know this. I may have a family, I may not. Perhaps I will have finally dated someone, perhaps I will still be alone without being lonely. Maybe loneliness will become my company. I'll have a dog or a cat, if I live alone, or a roommate; I won't be living alone. But I'll remember back unto the days of college, where I was shifty and inconsistent, yet eager and ready to learn and grow and develop and plan. How I barely had the confidence to get through to the next day while others expressed their confidence in me. How I never believed, and still find it hard to do. But one day, I became successful in my own right, not overnight. How student loans sucked me dry, yet I managed to make it, even if I was eating bread and cereal. How I made those moments romantic, savoring every drop of milk, every measly crumb. How I knew I never would be homeless, that my parents would never let me. And look at me, I am not, I am living somewhere. I'll remember the thoughts I had about living in an old, rundown brick apartment building in a city someplace like New York, which I never wanted to live. I'll remember the glistening strands of lights that I wanted to put up, to light up a bit of the part of my life that I did have control over. That I chose to be happy and joyful and positive and optimistic and trusting of others. How that got me to the place I needed to be, rather than pursuing a path of negativity, pessimism, hopelessness, a faithless approach to humanity. I'll remember the times I cried hot, frustrated tears that simmered on my face as I flipped through the papers I was convinced I could have done better on. I'll remember the minutes I spent in front of the mirror, putting shades of red and purple on my lips and pairing it with a neon green sweater. How I didn't care, I just wanted to feel comfortable while I diligently did my homework in a faraway town. That in my spirit, there was a restlessness - there is still a restlessness - a yearning, a hope for a dream in a place just outside my grasp, yet it vibrates and buzzes as it closes in to my fingertips. The future, how I desired that so deeply and greatly. The reality that the future held bills and deaths and unexpected unions of people and things, the future that held failure and success and an extraordinary sense of feeling lost. The moment, the moments I felt found. The people I found myself in, the people who found themselves in me. The times I held on without knowing why, without understanding how there could be another step to take, and the after effects of taking that step into the dark unknown. When I realized that the dark unknown was not always dark, or most surprisingly, not always unknown. That my travels never really did help me find myself anymore than reading coffee grinds or tea leaves would, but the experiences I collected are still evidenced in my very being, my thought processes, my friends, my love for others. That the life that seemed so promising would always fail me, too. But that I made it, at least to this point, that I made it somewhere, farther, so much farther than I ever knew I could or would. That I would never come to read all the books I meant to, that I would never return every phone call that I thought I would, that I would never have a chance to love every person I intended to, that I would never remember to brush my teeth every night. But yet I have arrived, not in to the future, but into the present, and I will realize that my future, my life, my heart, the parts of myself that I worried over day in and day out, years later - these are the vital parts of myself that I will realize in this moment, they were always going to be alright.

Hey, you know what I realized? Guys hit on you when you aren't thinking about them. When you're least interested in men. When you are about to consume an entire plate of food or you just want some damn tequila but you're underage and you are concerned with everything but the opposite sex - then they hit on you. So basically, we need to be hungry and distracted and then God will bring us our boyfriends.

"If you know and love somebody who is gay and LDS (or Christian), your job is to love and nothing more. Let go of your impulse to correct them or control them or propel them down the path you think is right for them. Do what you need to do to move past that impulse.  Do not condemn the choices your loved one makes. Love. Only love. Show your love in word and deed. Embrace them, both literally and figuratively. I promise they need it—and they need to feel like they can figure out this part of themselves in a safe way without ridicule and judgment. It’s what Christ would do. It’s what your loved one needs. Accept them. Love them. Genuinely and totally.

If you are a parent or guardian, teach them what you know to be true in appropriate moments, with the Spirit. But then let go and let them govern themselves. Trust that they can find their own path. Let them live their life and have the experiences they need to learn and grow. Trust that they are in charge of their own agency and destiny. I promise you they will thank you. I also promise that pressuring them to live the life you want them to lead will only hamper their ability to make a genuine and authentic choice for their own future, be it what you hope for them or not. You will never, ever give your gay loved one a better gift than to love and accept them for who they are, right now, no matter what, period. The friends and family who did that for me (at varying points in my journey, including very recently) are cherished and will go down in the history of my life as the people that truly loved me, and as true Christians who helped me on my path. (And, btw, some of them are not technically even Christian—but to me are like Christ in their actions.)"

- Josh Weed

Read the rest here:

"The Christian life is a life characterized by true and spontaneous creativity."


- Oswald Chambers

God, lend to me faith and fortitude until I come to possess them myself.