It's Almost Christmas!!!

It's Christmas Eve...and I can't believe it. Ah. I love Christmas. I am very excited about giving people their gifts: one in particular.

So, I'm ecstatic about it being Christmas; however, one of the girls on Union's soccer team is in the hospital. They found a brain tumor on the 22nd that had been growing for six weeks. The doctors thought it looked benign, but they decided to go and perform surgery. It happened yesterday, the 23rd. The surgery went really well, but they discovered that the tumor is the size of a golf ball. It is also located in her brain, not on the surface as was originally thought.

I first learned about this when my roommate and teammate Emily called me Thursday night. When she told me that Nikki had a brain tumor, I just stood there and cried. I couldn't (and still can't) fathom what it felt like to Nikki and her family to find out about this. She had compartment syndrome this season like I did, although hers was acute and not chronic. My point is, she messed with that all season, and now this comes along. She was finally getting over her surgery for the compartment syndrome. Now she may have permanent damage to her left side. At one point, I considered the fact that the compartment syndrome might prevent me from playing soccer ever again. This, however, is a completely different ball game. This won't just affect soccer; it will affect her whole life. Please pray for her. The whole soccer team has been informed, and I know we will pray for her every day until this is over. Who knows when that will be except God?

To Be Needed

This morning I woke up and felt like I needed to turn on my cell phone. I usually don't turn it on until about five minutes before class, so that was different for me. I turn it on, and lo and behold, I have a text message. It's from Amy: "Help. Can u come upstairs?" My first thought was maybe she needed help with some homework or something to that effect. I had decided last night not to wake up until about thirty minutes before class; skip the shower. I was putting on clothes when Amy called me. I told her that I was just putting on clothes and would be there in two minutes. I began to get a little worried. I knew she had an eight o'clock class; it was almost nine.

I went upstairs to find her laying in bed, sick. She had been throwing up since six that morning. While she was in the bathroom, I called Mom to see what I needed to do. Sprite, crackers, and chicken noodle soup were the prescriptions. Mom and Amy both insisted that I go to my only class that morning at 9:25. It is the week before finals, and this would be my last class before my final on Tuesday. Reluctanty, I left for class.

When I got back, Amy was asleep. I took the chance to go to Walmart and pick Sprite and soup. The rest of the day I stayed in their room, taking care of Amy, and sleeping on the LoveSac (I love that thing, by the way). I hated that Amy was sick, and I felt bad for her. However, the whole time, I was glad that I could help. I was glad that she called me to take care of her. I was glad....to be needed.

I was writing in my prayer journal tonight about the day, when I realized something. I think everyone wants to be needed. It's one of those basic human instincts, I guess. It feels great to be there for someone. Now, I realize that not everyone would do everything they could to help someone, because not all people are willing to do things like that. They may not consider it worth their time. I, personally, consider it very worth my time to help someone that needs it. I hate being in situations when I feel like someone doesn't want me there. That is almost a fear of mine.

While I was thinking about the fact that I love to be needed, it hit me that God wants to be needed. Every human being needs God, but not every human being realizes that. Sometimes it's hard to admit you need someone; not until you have hit rock bottom and have no other way of getting back up. God is needed, but people need to respond to that need. That's where the problems begin. How many times have you said, "Don't worry, I got it." or, "I don't need your help."? We do need help. We do need God.

It's so hard for me to let God handle my life. I want to do it on my own. Even when I tell God to take over, I find myself slowly taking control again. Why do I do that? Why do we do that? Why is it so hard to let someone else take the wheel for a little while? Those license plates, bumper stickers, etc. that say, "God is my co-pilot" are incorrect. If God is your co-pilot, is He just the back-up plan if you go down? Is that all He is to you? That's putting Him in second place, somewhere He definitely does not belong. He should be in the pilot seat, first place.

To be needed is everything. God is everything. Or, rather, He should be everything to you. You know how it feels to be needed and to be able to fulfill that need...

Just imagine how God feels when so many people need Him, and so few accept Him.

So, I was told that I needed to update my blog, because I haven't put up anything in a while. It's good to know that someone cares......ha, just joking.

This weekend Amy and I stayed at my house. It was good to do a whole lot of nothing. We did watch four movies, decorated the Christmas tree (well, Amy slept through that...), went to a living nativity, made cookies, went to church, and ate lunch at Mama Jo's. I loved it. I love Christmas. I can't believe it's so close! It's crazy to think that in twenty-one days (technically twenty) it will be Christmas. Wow.

You know what? My family is amazing. I love them all to death. For example, Mom, Amy, and I watched a movie Saturday night. It was over around eleven or midnight, but we had planned to make the cookies. Mom did not complain about staying up later and helping us. She just does stuff like that all the time. Sometimes I'm an idiot, and I take my family for granted. By the way, Mom: I meant to tell you that I'm sorry I haven't called you a lot. You don't know how much it means to me that you respect me enough to wait for me to call you, and I haven't done that at all. Don't ask me why, because I don't know. I was being stupid. I know you'll forgive me, cause you've done that countless times before. I love you, and I thank God for you.

I love all of you.

Another fun night this week: Last night I went to see HARRY POTTER in Memphis on IMAX! How awesome is that? The movie started at 10:25, and Amy, Brittany, and I left Jackson a little after eight. When we got there, there was a line to get into the movie. They weren't letting people in yet; I guess they were cleaning up from the last show. We got really good seats. Emily and Cody came in later. We had to wave at them for practically a full minute before they saw us. Haha. Anyway, the movie was amazing. I cried at the end (with good reason, no matter what Brittany says... ;P ). They did an awesome job with casting once again. Voldemort was so creepy; it was perfect. I kept getting chills! After the movie, we drove back to Union. Unfortunately, I had to use one of my "passes" since we came back so late. Our curfew is two o'clock, and we came in around four. Amy had already used one of hers; we were going to hide her in the back. However, they only asked for my ID. She was asleep anyway.

Looking at my last post, I remembered that I came close to being that tired last semester when I was still in high school. I had a research paper due on Monday. What do you think I did? Waited until the Sunday before, of course! I think I skipped church that night, and I still didn't finish it until around three in the morning. Besides that, I had to get up at FIVE that morning. Our high school has a Great Pretenders show every year; it's a fundraiser for Project Graduation where the seniors and/or their parents perform or lip-sync songs...that's the very basic idea. Well, my mom was in charge of that. I don't know whose idea it was, but someone got the local news station to do a kind of promo the Monday of the week of Great Pretenders. We have a Good Morning West Tennessee every morning at six; I was the lucky person that got to get on the show and try to advertise our show. That meant a five o'clock wake-up call -- maybe it was actually four thirty. Either way, you get the picture. So I'm sitting on the couch in front of the cameras with news guy and the man that ran our show. I have had practically no sleep, and the news guy asks me what some of the different acts are. Oh man. I couldn't even remember my own act at that moment, much less anyone else's! I looked up at the five thousand watt lights on the ceiling and say, "Uh.....Spice Girls?" Lol. I looked so retarded. I was dead tired that day in school. I slept through a lot of my classes.

The moral of my story is: Sleep is good. So is staying up all night just because you want to. I don't regret staying up all night Monday night; it was fun. There's nothing to say I won't do it again. I won't this semester, don't worry. I may not next semester either. I have an essay that I'm supposed to be doing right now. It's not due until Tuesday, and it's just a rough draft. However, I want to get it done and over with so that I don't have to worry about it anymore. I'll try to get to that.

P.S. One more month left until I go to the doctor's to get cleared!!

This has been a crazy day. Well, it actually started out as a crazy night. I was up in Amy's room last night when she proposed that we stay up all night. That sounded like fun, so that's what we did. We got really delirious, and I actually created a PowerPoint presentation about it. If you want to see it, I'll try to e-mail it to you. Amy actually ended up going to bed around 5:45; I went downstairs and worked on the presentation. I never did go to sleep. I had class at 9:25; I slept through about half of the class and didn't even know it. I have never been that tired in my life.

I went to sleep not long after I got back from class. I woke up around 2:45 to rain pounding on my window and a siren: tornado warning. Gaines and I went into the bathroom. Everyone else was gone. I called to check on everyone; a couple of the girls from upstairs had knocked on the door, but Gaines and I were both dead asleep. Storms have never scared me, but I'll have to admit that I was a little worried. I was mainly worried about the other girls. I couldn't get hold of Amy, and no one knew where Kayla was. When Gaines and I had been in the bathroom for about thirty minutes, we came out for a little while. We heard a knock on the door. We opened it to find Emily and Amy; they had ran from the PAC to our dorm. Crazy girls. After that, we all went back into the bathroom. I think we were in there for an hour. It was around that. Gaines was sitting on the toilet, I was on the edge of the bath, and Amy and Emily were sitting on my pillows in the bath. We finally came out because we were hungry...lol. Around four they said it was safe to come out of the bathroom. Not long after that, I went to bed.

Amy woke me up at 5:40. We had planned on eating out with some of the soccer girls, but I thought we probably wouldn't go because of the weather. However, Amy told me that I had twenty minutes to get ready. I jumped in the shower, and Emily, Heather, Amy, and I went to pick up Cheslie. We met Nikki, Cynthia, and Jennifer at Snappy Tomato Pizza. I brought my laptop, and we watched the presentation I made about last night. It's so random. You have to understand that I was completely delirious when I made it. Anyway, after we got back from eating, I went straight to my room to study. I went straight to my room, but I didn't go straight to studying. I'm definitely going to bed early. I'm hoping for ten, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.