Finished! For, like, four days...

I have completed Jan term! Woohoo. Lol. I believe I did okay, and it's possible I pulled As in both my classes. We'll just have to see...

I was shocked when I received my final for Athletic Injuries in my e-mail and found the multiple-choice answers at the bottom. Score! Also, I didn't finish my journal reviews because of a crazy day yesterday, but he allowed me to turn them in later. Everything's cool!

An End and A Beginning

Jan term is basically over. How sad! No, seriously, I believe I'm gonna miss it. Finals are tomorrow; I don't expect them to be real difficult, so I'm just messing around. Yes, I know - I'm irresponsible when it comes to schoolwork. I'll be fine.

After tomorrow, it's four days of break then back to school for spring semester. Which is just crazy. I just wondered if last year January lasted longer than it did this year... I honestly don't know. I want to say this January felt like it lasted longer. Hm. I've had a good time in both of my classes. Athletic Injuries was very interesting and cool; I love Dr. Van Neste, whom I have for New Testament. He's just awesome, and I really feel like I've benefited mentally and spiritually in his class. How can you beat that??

As for the question of what I want to do, I'm still kind of blurry on that. I want to think further about being an architect. (Sorry if I just kind of threw that on you, since you might have had no idea I was even thinking about it.) Athletic training would be fun and I believe I would enjoy it, but I just don't think it's where I need to be. Whew. I flat don't know.

I think this next semester will be interesting. I'm not going to say good or bad, cause I don't know and don't have a feeling either way. Or rather, I have feelings going both ways. Whatever - anyway, it's coming so soon. I know I am for sure looking forward to more crazy times with my roommates; that's what I'm looking forward to the most, definitely. My only complaint and desire would be... no more Christmas caroling. No. It ain't happ'nin. I love y'all, but nope.

There'll be nothing to do but wait and see how things go down... or up. ;)

Mmm...Massages...

Last week Mom told me not to plan anything for the coming Wednesday. Okay... She wouldn't tell me what she had planned, but she did - several times - tell me that she was excited about it. I love surprises, so I was excited, too. Yesterday she picked me up at 1:30 after my classes. Mama Jo was in the car, too, but we were just dropping her off somewhere. As we were riding to Mama Jo's destination, she asked me if I knew what Mom had planned. Of course, I didn't have a clue. She said, "Well, I think your mama oughta tell you...y'all are going to the gynecologist." I said, "What?! You can't be serious." Thankfully, she wasn't. She said she thought it would be funny; I told her that it was a good joke, just not fun. Lol. I was scared for just a minute. Then I told Mom that if she ever did that to me, I would be furious and might have to jump out of the moving vehicle.

Anyway, we dropped Mama Jo off and picked up something to eat for me, then headed towards the mall. We were going to meet Lavon at the place. We pulled up to Jackson Massage and Day Spa. Score! My gut feeling earlier was correct, and boy was I happy. We all got a full body hour long massage and then a facial. It was absolutely glorious. Afterwards, we sat in the "Relaxation Room" and just chilled. We were chill. Lol. I had planned on working out yesterday, but I wanted to stay that way for a little bit.

I've already told Mom "thank you" like six times, but I'll take the opportunity to do it again: THANK YOU, MOM! I LOVE YOU!

P.S. My mom's the coolest; I'm telling you in case you didn't already get the memo. :D

My Life and a Random Analogy

Bear with me and picture this: You're doing a report for a class. Let's say Written Comp II, and it's your biggest essay yet. You haven't been doing so well - you're struggling to keep a B - and have to really pull out an A to keep from drowning for the rest of the semester. When you finish, you breathe a big sigh of relief; you can finally get rid of the stress you've been feeling. The next day you turn it in, proud of your work and ready to get it back, expecting an A. A couple of classes go by, and your teacher returns everyone's essays. Without even looking at the comments, you excitedly flip to the last page to find.... D. What?! How did that happen? The teacher must have gotten my paper switched with someone else's... Nope, it's yours. Dumbfounded, you turn back to the first page with the teacher's comments. "Good ideas, but you need to read the directions more carefully." Still confused, you pull out the assignment sheet for the essay. You begin to read, thinking there's no way you missed anything... Wait. Huh? How did I miss that?! Suddenly the anger towards your teacher turns toward yourself. A simple mistake screwed up everything.

Now, that analogy doesn't exactly fit a current situation I've had, but it does resemble it. It does fit others; even very similar ones in class. When something goes wrong, when we mess something up, when others hurt us - we want to look for the cause. Of course, the first place we look...usually isn't in the mirror.

To stray from that a little, think about when you've been hurt by others. Did you blame yourself? Or did you just wonder if you did something that turned them away from you? I did. I questioned everything about myself, pondering what made me the person people turned away from. I analyze things badly enough already; I got worse, and I got pessimistic.

What does it take to get over those things? Once upon a time, I thought that I didn't hold grudges. HaHA. Now I find that pretty funny. However, I believe it depends on what it is. If it's something trivial, I get over it pretty quickly. If it's something that rocks me to the core and truly disturbs me...it's hard. It's really hard. And me trying to fix it just makes it that much harder, because I'm not relinquishing control to God, who knows what to do. Also, it's not just about "getting over it"; it's about forgiving it. I thought I was over it, but I was still letting it control me by not forgiving it. Not forgiving it only hurt me, because I was (and still basically am) the only one who really knew about it.

I've decided that walls are definitely not for me. I can't handle them; keeping things holed up inside only keeps me from letting them go and feeling better. I will be more reserved and in tune with what God wants me to do as far as talking to people about things. I was afraid of being hurt again; not that I'm still not, but I now realize that in order to be truly happy sometimes you must be truly hurt and broken. You have to know the difference. Avoiding one keeps you from the other. That's why we hurt: to know what it feels like to be restored. I've been wishing for quite a while that life was just simple, and I could just get away from stuff. But I can't. And I don't want to. Going through crap makes me appreciate what I gain (and keep) from it. Someday I'll look back on this and think about how much I've grown from this point. And I pray that I will.

It's not going to be easy from here; I know that. I'm not naive enough to believe that. I believe that God can make everything right, but only if He wills it. I don't think He has at this point. I have work to do.

Sorry I started out with a real random analogy that ended up not in any way (really) being related to what I talked about for the majority of this blog. That's just the risk you take when you read what I write. ;)

New Year

I never make New Year's resolutions. Not really. However, I do kind of look over the past year and see what I need to change. In a way, I guess that is a New Year's resolution. There are always things I need to work on.

Sometimes I look through old yearbooks or other things that people signed throughout the years, like my scarf-looking thing from Girls State. I can't count how many times someone has written on one of those things: "I love you, girl! Don't ever change!" Thanks, I love you, too. Lol. Seriously. But anyway, the "Don't ever change" part kills me. Why? Did they really think I was good enough the way I was then? Hoo boy...they were wrong. I'm still not good enough. I know I'll ever be, but I want to get as close as I can.

It always bugged me in high school when people would say things like, "Oh, come on Daron, you're so perfect," etc., just messing around. It wasn't a big deal or anything, but I knew that some people really thought I couldn't mess up. Are you kidding me? I messed up all the time! Still do! Haha...perfect...that's a laugh. Occasionally I got the feeling that people were just waiting for me to fall. Sometimes I still get that. It's not as though I have a conspiracy theory; it's just one of those things that people look for, especially in Christians who try to live right. Watch me long enough, I'm gonna fall. Of course, it makes it all the worse if you know some people are saying, "I knew it. She had to fall some time; they all do." Yes, we all do. But some of us get up and keep going. Some don't. Some want to quit, but God won't let them...and they're just too dadgum stubborn.

2006 was a pretty rough year. I gained and lost friends. I had surgery and recovered. I let people down, myself included. I cried, yelled, and screamed...and laughed. There's no telling how much I've learned this year. I've definitely learned a lot about myself, good and bad. I've had some people really let me down, but I've also had some surprising friends turn up that I didn't know were there for me. I've shut down and opened up. I've been to the bottom...and back.

I believe that the issues from last year are resolved. I may be proven wrong, but I also believe that how resolved they are depends mainly on me. One time someone told me that I had played soccer one day like I had something to prove; well, another thing I believe is that I do have something to prove - a lot to prove. And that's not restricted to soccer.

Let me know if I've proved it to you or not.