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I
am
so
tired.

This has been one of the most tiring weeks in a long time. It ranks up there among the top 5 of all time.

if you have nothing to do...

If you have nothing to do this afternoon, I HIGHLY recommend looking at the David Crowder Band website, and reading all of their quirky and hilarious new items.

I particularly recommend a few:
Christmas Bells!
Merry Christmas
Face to Face encounter

and anything else you decide to read.
You will not regret it.

http://www.davidcrowderband.com/news

The Rain

So, it's been raining here -- spitting yesterday, and drizzling on and off today. It's funny. Today the rain makes me happy. Usually, it makes me feel sleepy and sad, but today, I'm glad that it's raining. Everything smells good when it rains, and the rain reminds me of being in Laos, and being cold and wet and not being able to do anything. It reminds me of sitting in outdoor cafes, wearing ALL the clothes I brought, and eating good waffles and strong coffee with a good friend. The rain also reminds me of rainy season at GES, where rain spelt disaster for the classroom. Indoor recesses are really a very BAD idea. (this is contrary to what i believed when I was in elementary school!!) Anyway, today the rain is making me smile. The good part about it drizzling now, is that the grass is starting to grow. I was encouraged yesterday, when I looked down while walking home from the bus. The grass is poking up -- little green sprouts, reminding me that spring will come, and summer will follow. How exciting.

Buying a sweater

I thought I should enlighten all of you, and tell you a story. This is how I buy clothes.

My mom and dad bought me a UofA sweater for my birthday, which was really awesome. When I got it, Mom said to me, "Honey -- there are so many colors and styles of sweaters at the bookstore, I didn't know which one you would like. So I just bought one. If you want to take it back, do it, because I didn't know which one you'd like."

So, i thought to myself: i'll go look.

There's something stupid about going "looking" at hoodies at the UofA stores. That in itself is a problem: THERE IS NOT JUST ONE PLACE. yes, that's right: there's two. You can buy hoodies at the UofA bookstore, or at SUBtitles. They happen to be right across the hall from each other, which means you can't just compare sweaters. You must make MENTAL NOTES, and then walk across the hall. The second thing that's dumb is that there are about a MILLION different sweaters in a plethera of colors, shapes and styles.

Back to the story.

I decided I was going to go look. Wonderful. I looked at a bunch of clothes, and was immediately overwhelmed, and then decided to leave.

As I was walking around, I decided that I needed to have MORAL SUPPORT in order to go sweater shopping at the UofA. There really were just too many options. So i called up my friend, and she agreed to meet me before her classes on Friday and help me decide if I was going to exchange my sweater.

We met on Friday, and headed over to SUB to check out the sweaters. First we went into SUBtitles, but we didn't find anything that I liked MORE than what I already had. So then we went across the hall to the bookstore. After looking at almost all of them, we found one that I liked. So THEN the problem is finding a mirror. We wandered around the store for a bit, and finally found a mirror.

great.

so then my poor friend had to witness me putting one on and taking it off, and then putting the other one on and taking it off. (i'm pretty sure she thinks I did it a MILLION times. I maintain I only did it 3 times.) But I still couldn't decide. Here was my problem: the one I was looking at switching to was grey, and I can't wear a grey sweater with gray sweatpants. (incidentally, I only own gray sweatpants).

My friend was pretty much rolling on the ground by now in agony. Did i mention that she hadn't had coffee yet?? She's a little like my sister in that respect...

I thought I had decided to go with the gray one anyway, but then I realized. "HEY! I've got my cell phone! I'll call mom." So I did. And we talked about the sweater. Finally my mom persuaded me to buy the gray sweater, and return the blue one that she had bought.

OK. Fine. No problem. Except she bought the blue one at the OTHER store. I had to traipse all the way back to the other store across the hall, and persuade them to return my money, even though more than 7 days had elapsed. Then I had to pusuade them NOT to put it onto my credit card, but to give it to me in cash. THEN, i went back to the other store and bought the other sweater. (which I am wearing now, by the way.)

After that, my friend and I went for coffee.

The moral of the story: thank goodness for friends, who will put up my my crap while I'm shopping. ( for those of you who may have trouble getting your friends to be this awesome: you just have to promise coffee afterwards...)

The truth of it all

My English Prof asked an interesting question in class a couple of days ago..

"What is the difference between fact and truth?"

I may seem a little naive to you, but those two words seem rather synonymous to me. To prove my point, I even looked them up in both a dictionary and thesaurus. They're used interchangeably: one to define the other, and they're listed as synonyms. As more and more people responded to the question, I started jotting down some of their points:

- Facts are what actually happened, and truth is an interpretation of those facts.
- Truth is your perception of what happened.
- Facts are included in truth, but facts and truth are not the same.
- Truth is biased because it contains your opinion.

AND, my personal favorites:

- Truth is the way we interpret fact.
- We can't judge someone else's truth. What's true for them might not be true for me.

In all of this, there was one guy who raised his hand and argued the opposite. (hats off to you, Adam) Although I know that this is rapidly becoming a commonly held view, I wondered to myself if all those people actually realize what this belief can do. What a sad state of decline our society is in. I would ask what happened, but I kindof know already.

I'm not exactly sure what I wanted to say with this post, except spew my displeasure into cyberspace. It made me hurt. How sad God must be when he looks at us. He is truth -- the REAL truth, and we walk away from him. He calls us back to truth, and we say there's no such thing. We're just echos of Pilate, just before he agrees to have Jesus crucified:

John 18:37-40

Pilate replied, "You are a king then?"
"You say that I am a king, and you are right," Jesus said. "I was born for that purpose. And I came to bring truth to the world. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true."
"What is truth?" Pilate asked. Then he went out again to the people and told them, "He is not guilty of any crime. But you have a custom of asking me to release someone from prison each year at Passover. So if you want me to, I'll release the King of the Jews."

But they shouted back, "No! Not this man, but Barabbas!" (Barabbas was a criminal.)


How much God must hurt when we turn our backs on him, and on his truth. Those “philosophers” in class think they know it all, but it’s only in knowing truth that we really begin to know anything at all….

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (Jn8:32)