i carved this little cutie.  scary, isn't it?

TIL 1

TIL that when brushing the outside of my molars, i shouldn't have my mouth open wider than a ~1cm gap or else a muscle in my mouth will prevent the toothbrush from reaching that area.

neat.

xkcd: Time

http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/

http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/

I love xkcd.

This is an incredible journey.

Take it.

"Candy?"

Friday night, that's the first thing the sixth grader in my small group says to me, without even a hi or a hello. Kids love their candy, so I laugh and smile and say, "Yes, I do have candy." I know he's still young, but I wonder when this little boy will understand there's more to our time together than candy?

Two weeks later, it hit me. How often do I come to Jesus like that? "Hey Jesus! Insight? Wisdom? Answers? "

And I wonder how many times Jesus has laughed and smiled and thought, "Yes, I have all those things for you. But when will this little boy understand there's more than just what I bring?"

i hate it when i have a lot of negative feelings. there’s nothing as overwhelming and distressing as emotions, with the staggering power of a flood, the chaos of a storm, and the maliciousness of a raging fire.

Adulting, by Kelly Williams Brown

This is from the “Get a Job” section of the book, but still applicable in regular life.

painting a picture of integrity

integrity is difficult.  i realized that recently.  and i mean REAL integrity, when no one would know a wrong i did.  it's not often i come upon situations where it's really just between me and God, but in those situations, my heart's struggle for righteousness really shows.

starting a few days ago, i have the opportunity to paint the basement of the house of one of our church elders.  him and his wife are two of the nicest people i know, and are incredibly hospitable and loving.  when his wife was going to pay me and asked how many hours i had worked in the past two days, i was prepared for the question and responded with the number of hours i had already calculated.

i gave the honest answer, so it's all good and swell, right?  well, not quite.

on my drive back home, i couldn't stop thinking about, what if i said 8 hours instead of 7?  or 9?  or 10?  those would all fly, since while i'm painting, they're doing other stuff around the house, and sometimes they aren't even home, so they're definitely not keeping tabs.

i thought about how trusting she was, and also how much control i had in maximizing the situation for my gain.  i was thinking to myself, if i could re-do that question, and i was given time to consider my answer, would i still give the honest answer?  my actions did the right thing, but was/is my heart in the right place?

it was then that i was reminded that integrity isn't just about lying about hours worked to make more money, but also about the state of my heart.

it brought me back to being in that basement by myself, and the thoughts that occasionally run through my head while painting the walls hour after hour.

i realized..  you know, if i don't work that hard at painting, if i slack off and dilly-dally and waste time, i would get away with it.  first of all, they haven't painted before, so they don't really know how long it would take to paint all those walls.  second, no one can really estimate how many hours it would take to paint that huuuuge basement that's literally the size of the entire first floor of my house.

i even had a bunch of different factors i could blame on things taking more time.  such as my hands getting sore (which was true) and needing to rest (not that true), or needing to move stuff away from the walls first to make room (which was true), or setting up the dropcloth and ladder and mixing the paint and all that stuff takes time (which was true, but could be greatly exaggerated).

basically, i could work at pretty much any pace and it would be satisfactory.

so, if i were working with my focus on making money, it'd be as lazy and slow as i could in order to spend as much time there as possible to rack up hours and $$$.

okay, with those sinful thoughts out of the way (of which there were a lot more than i initially thought..), now onto the good stuff!

the only way to keep myself working hard and honestly is i keep preaching to myself Colossians 3:23-24

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.  It is the Lord Christ you are serving."

i don't remember when it was, but the day i stored that verse in my heart was the day my view on work was changed forever.

God's challenge for me today: preston, does me being pleased with you give you enough motivation for righteous living?

so in GTA V Online, while doing missions with random people, i befriended some cool dudes, and they invited me to join their crew.  sure, why not?  the crew is called Authentic Zone Mafia.  lol.  but they’re really a cool bunch of dudes, they all have mics and they’re all really funny.  i think it’s ‘cause a good majority of them are actually black…

the first two pictures are shots i tried to get of everyone when we were chilling in one of their apartments.

and the last picture is a selfie of my awesome character, next to my ride of choice.  (probably slightly inspired by gal gadot and the f&f series)

i might be the only crew member who doesn’t have a mic, so i’m not sure if they assume i’m a girl irl or what..

I PLAY A FEMALE CHARACTER ‘CAUSE I’M A FEMINIST!!!

some cute/funny drinks at shoprite

thought 10

there's nothing like the feeling of giving yourself an excellent haircut.

rightly wronged

i think i'm a pretty forgiving person. with how i was raised, what i discovered to be common social sensibility, and God's grace in relentlessly refining my heart, i think i've gotten pretty good at giving the benefit of the doubt, approaching to resolve the situation before allowing myself to create personal feelings, and not approaching with antagonizing/accusing questions.

however, what if after forgiving someone, where after forgiving someone multiple times, there's no visible change. the question comes up, what if (it seems) this person wouldn't be able to understand the depth of the hurt they've inflicted without experiencing it themselves? or that they won't change without experiencing that hurt?

in turn, this raises the question: is there ever a time when we should withhold love from people who have wronged us? if even for just a temporary period of time?

now, my verbal response (what i want to say) to this question is pretty straightforward, something along the lines of "no, love them and forgive them and trust God to change them", but my internal response (what i want to do) is a bit more conflicted, because the main question that's been on my heart is this:

how in the world does loving someone change them if they don't know the extent of their offense?

to clarify, i'm not talking about if someone did something blatantly offensive, because in that case, responding in love is quite a strong statement, indeed. you hurt me, but i choose to love you anyway? powerful statement.

but [situation a] what if the person didn't know they hurt me, but i keep loving them? my expression of love simply becomes translated to "everything is fine", and no one is the wiser.

[situation b] what if the person knows they hurt me, but doesn't know how severe, but i keep loving them? my expression of love becomes "there was some pain, but i chose love anyway", but the expression of love is limited to however severe the perpetrator thinks the offense was.

let's say someone close to me wronged me, and my response was "hey, that upset me, but i choose to forgive you". is that always going to be sufficient in optimally reconciling the situation? and (in a separate question) is that doing the best for helping that person to be more loving and understanding in the future?

i suppose this is the one of the motivators for revenge. a typical motive for revenge is "i want to see that person hurt because they hurt me and it will make me feel better if they are hurt, too." i'm not talking about that motive. i'm saying, what if my motive for revenge is "i want to see that person hurt in the same way because then they will understand the extent of the hurt they caused"?

there's a part of me that resonates with that idea, but at the same time, another part of me that feels like that's not what the Gospel says.

so, while i may not know the ins and outs of how God uses our loving actions to change hearts, i'm going to love and trust.

bad decisions

one thing that's been bothering me a lot is the whole "bad decisions" trend going around. why do we celebrate making bad decisions together?

often i hear things like "heyyyy let's make go bad decisions together!" as a way to segue into hanging out or going out to eat or staying up late, and i'm like.. really? why? i absolutely do not understand why it has to be phrased in this way.

yeah, i get the appeal behind it. yeah, i get the convenience factor of giving the time/activity a concrete name. but are those necessary, especially at the potential damage it could do?

the appeal - why is making bad decisions appealing? well, quite frankly, it's because we're all geared to want to make bad decisions, to rebel and break the rules. it's exciting, it can make us feel like we're living "life on the edge", and it's just fun to break rules.

the convenience - in my experience, "let's make bad decisions!" is most often equivalent to "let's stay up and talk!" or "let's go out to get food!". the last time i checked, "let's stay up and talk" and "let's go out to get food" were perfectly acceptable phrases for initiating those activities.

i agree that it helps to get people together in places where bonding can happen, and that's something i fully support.

still, why do we have to call it "bad decisions"?

my beef with the expression is this:

the appeal comes from our internal (and perhaps hidden) desire for rebellion. whether it's that we want to stay up later than we think we should, or we want to eat late at night when we know we shouldn't, or we want to reassure ourselves of our power to choose and control our own lives -- those all stem from a rebellious attitude. my question is, why do we not rebuke this rebellious attitude, but instead, we advocate and pursue and celebrate it, in groups, and with other believers, no less?

here's a question for you: do you believe that the "bad decisions" you're choosing to make are actually bad? if so, why do you still choose it? if not, why do you call it that?

we're called to set an example for others and live out our beliefs, because we know there are people watching and observing and looking up to us. i don't want our community to set an example of supporting rebellious mindsets and lifestyles, simply because of a name we have for an activity.

notice i've been writing this whole post using 1st person plural pronouns - us, we. the reason being that, even though i don't advocate and have never used the phrase "bad decisions" in this way, i know that i support the community's actions and words, whether actively through reinforcement or passively through acceptance. so, this is me being active and encouraging us to think about our choice of words a little bit more carefully.

this "bad decisions" phrase is, at best, an oddly-named activity that facilitates community bonding, and, at worst, a bad witness and a comfort for complacency.

tell me once, tell me twice, tell me all the time

me and laura went to see the icarus account concert, free at tcnj!  it was sad none of the other ten people i asked were able to come along, 'cause it was FREE and they were so GOOOOOOD.  i love their music, and it was incredible getting to talk with them and ask them questions and all that good stuff.  hearing their harmonies in person is incredible, and their guitar-playing is simply inspiring.  so good.  got a poster!  :D

i’m a youth sponsor at my youth group, and i lead a small group of 6th grade boys.  it’s been so long since i’ve been in youth group, let alone 6th grade, and i forgot how awesome it is to be young.  talking with these kids is always a blast, and i love that the only way to really get them intently focused and eager to answer questions is if i reward them with candy.  we had one night where we wrote encouragement notes to the college freshmen who just left yg, and my three sixth graders wrote ten cards!  hahah they’re so great.

and something about using those markers makes your writing look like it was written by someone at least five years younger than you.  i wrote “clifford” on that box in the second to last picture, and it looks like a middle schooler wrote it LOL.

love these boys :D

i’m not sure what it is, but let’s all appreciate my sister and how awesome she is :D