e-mail address lunacy

In case you haven't figured it out yet, e-mailing me at my old Yahoo Mail account is a waste of time. i was receiving hundreds if not thousands of Spam messages a day, with over half of my mail in my inbox being illegitimate as well. So don't waste your messages (and i know they are few) by e-mailing me there: it won't work. My new e-mail home is at GMail, and i have never ever gotten Spam in my inbox. For the past few months all of my messages from Yahoo have contained the new e-mail address for "Reply to", and i'm not going to be checking the old account anymore. So please e-mail me in a way that will actually get to me: rogue.fire.angel@gmail.com

yawn

i just left Juco to come to work. San Jac won (hurray!).

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will now be premiering two days early, on July 11th. The Leaky Cauldron has news about how Rowling has translated the title for book six... very interesting. In the news today (and on TLC as well) a woman is mad because she can't get the Harry Potter books banned from the local school library. She seems to think that everyone's kids are becoming witches. These people really tick me off, for crying out loud, it's make believe, not real, and if it was real to ban these books would be an infringement upon freedom of religion. i don't believe than any books should be banned, no matter what their content is. But if you're gonna ban Harry Potter we might as well ban The Lord of the Rings, Eragon, The Chronicles of Narnia, all fairy tales, mythology, most Disney films, etc. and ad nauseum. For crying out loud, Rowling is a Christian.

On a totally different note, i found out this week that Orlando Bloom is a buddhist. ): He's so cute, and a great actor, and Will Turner is so noble, why's he have to go all weird on me like that? Apparently he's in a sect that some consider to be a cult. It's not like i had a chance with him anyway, but it sort of ruins the effect for me. Oh well.

where i stand (rather, grovel)

So i've been feeling lonely, which is actually somewhat unusual for me. When i'm around people i still feel alone anyway, rarely feel anything but misunderstood and an outcast. i have this crazy inability to feel like i'm actually part of a group or know how to act in one. Sometimes i try so hard to fit in, but it never works, particularly because i am a non-conformist to the depths of my marrow and it always feels forced. i've understood since preschool that it's better to be what God wants you to be than your peers. Even when i want to make people happy it so rarely coincides with what my conscience and intuition are telling me that i always have to ask myself who i should please... God, others, or myself. i don't want to hurt anyone, but how am i supposed to have it every way? i can't.

i don't expect what God is doing in my life to make sense to anyone when it doesn't really make sense to me. For several years now i have embraced the concept that most of the world is mundane, that is to say, they don't pay close attention to God and the spiritual warfare that we are surrounded by. Perhaps this is how God intends most people to be, to be blind to the darkness so they are not afraid. i am not so inclined and am grateful for what he has unlocked in me, even as i live in fear. Many people would probably label me as depressed, maybe even disturbed, but that is not how i think of myself. i am blessed and i am cursed at the same time, and i am happy for it, because i do not want to go back to the way things were... Which is fine, because i don't think i could even if i tried.

i have been called a Drama Queen. To me, this seems an unfair assertion, as i am very easy going, i often roll with the punches instead of making a fuss, and i am not the type to scream or faint while watching the hero grapple with the archenemy: i would instead join in the fight. i am not one to overreact because i am usually too accepting and complacent: i don't fight against what i should, i let people walk all over me rather than cause a fuss, i don't stand up for myself. But things in my life are not so physical as in Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or Pirates of the Caribbean; what fight against is not understood by the world, and is rarely perceived by human eyes. i fight against the darkness, and i cannot take up a sword, or a wand, etc., i have only my beliefs, my feelings, ideas, and hope. i have only God's Word and God's truth.

It is true, i feel things (emotions) deeply. i am very empathetic: if someone is suffering, i feel their pain as if it is my own, i want to help them. Sorrow can be nearly paralyzing, but it is also empowering. i have long felt that one cannot truly know joy unless one knows despair, nor can one really have hope or faith unless it has been challenged. That is what i am going through, something which some would call a "Dark Night of the Soul," a time like Job went through in which Satan is allowed to do what he will and God is far away. i have no home or barn that could be razed, and i have no children, but it is as if i have the worst luck when it comes to jobs, supporting myself, and keeping a running car. i have no wife to torment me (ha, i would have a husband, but still) but to me it is worse that i have no husband at all. i have no friends to tell me how this is all my fault, but family and acquaintances have done just as bad from time to time. i do not fault anyone in this, it simply is. There was a time in which i didn't care what happened to me, that i was grateful that God thinks that i am strong enough to withstand this, but now i just wish it were over. The past seven and a half years have been extremely difficult, and i have begun to be afraid that i am not strong enough for the task, that i will fail.

It seems to me that people don't really understand this, and as such label it as depression, or something trite. To me, this hurts, but as i have said, i probably take offense too easily. People try to make light of what i'm going through, and i guess i'm like Mary Jane and assert that no one knows what i'm feeling. It's probably true to an extent, i doubt that many have been through this, though prophets and heroes in the Bible are obviously some who have. Others in history that i think this apply to are Joan of Arc and the Lady Jane Grey, but these are rare names that stand out in history. How many people have lived and died by their faith in today's world? Most people live their lives as if God is impersonal and far away; to me He is as necessary as oxygen or water and though He may not be physically tangible i see Him in everything around me, nature, books, movies, casual conversations, music, the news, the list goes on. To me, God has always been evident throughout each day, so to see Him at work around me while simultaneously feeling cut off from Him and caged is torture. i feel like i can't serve Him and am angry with Him even as i long to feel His touch again. Worst of all is trying to talk to Him when it seems like i'm being ignored and that prayer is hopeless.

i know Satan is lying to me. It looks like he is winning in this country, in the world, and i want to fight back, but it's not in my power. This isn't about what i want, it's about what God wants, and what He wants is not something i really understand. Why should i have to wait when i am ready to do whatever it takes? Even Jane ruled for nine days and Joan won many battles before they were imprisoned. i have never had the chance to pursue my dreams, i have yet to begin to fight, which is what makes this so hard. i don't want to watch a hero fighting for me, i want to help him, but i am not even allowed to fight. i have to withstand the taunts and insults that are hurled at me.

i struggle with this on many levels. i don't want to give the darkness power over me. The mundane do not understand what i'm going through, probably think i'm making it up or being overdramatic. How can i witness at all when i am full of so much despair and anger towards God, that i'm having to go through this and am feeling so misunderstood, when i'm supposed to always be ready to give a reason for my hope? It's hard for me to read the Bible right now, to see all of God's promises and then see how devoid my life is from that hope. i still believe every word, i know my Redeemer is faithful and true. How do i reconcile this? Because i recognize Satan, how he loves to twist truth into lies, and i know that my faith is being tested. If they aren't true in my life right now are they never true? No, they are always true, but sometimes we have to wait. And as much as i hate it, i still lack patience.

i feel like a fool to hope, but still i do it. The entire world tells me that i am stupid, but i know it's not true. Things are hard, but God will bring me through it because that is what He has promised, to never leave me or forsake me. i am tired, body and soul, and i cannot explain it, but it is true. It has always been true and always will be.

i wish i could write more, but i'm too tired to make sense right now.

stuck in my head all weekend long

the King and his men stole the queen from her bed ~ and bound her in her bones ~ the seas be ours and fight the powers ~ where we will we'll roam

yo ho ~ all together ~ hoist the colours high ~ heave ho ~ thieves and beggars ~ never shall we die
~ Hoist the Colours, from Pirates of the Caribbean At World's End

stuck in my head

maybe i've been the problem ~ maybe i'm the one to blame ~ but even when i turn it off and blame myself ~ the outcome feels the same ~ i've been thinking maybe i've been partly cloudy ~ maybe i'm the chance of rain ~ and maybe i'm overcast and maybe all my luck's washed down the drain

i've been thinking 'bout everyone ~ everyone, you look so lonely ~ but when i look at the stars ~ when i look at the stars ~ when i look at the stars i see someone else ~ when i look at the stars ~ the stars ~ i feel like myself

stars looking at a planet watching entropy and pain ~ and maybe start to wonder how the chaos in our lives could pass as sane ~ i've been thinking of the meaning of resistance ~ of a world beyond my own ~ and suddenly the infinite and penitent ~ began to look like home

i've been thinking 'bout everyone ~ everyone, you look so empty ~ but when i look at the stars ~ when i look at the stars ~ when i look at the stars i see someone else ~ when i look at the stars ~ the stars ~ i feel like myself
~ 12 Stones' "Stars" from Nothing is Sound

i am a virgin, part 4

i have been avoiding writing. What is there to say that hasn't been said before? This is why i don't journal anymore, why i don't go to church, because i am tired of pursuing God without reciprocation. i'm tired of doubting God, of being mad at Him for not keeping His promises, for feeling guilty because i'm mad at Him, because i am weak, because i am not doing enough to serve Him. i am exhausted.

i also think that i no longer believe in corporate worship as it largely exists in the U.S. today. In Acts and Roman it seems to me that the Spirit moves most powerfully in homes, not in a church building. Why should we spend so much on a building, on having a fake garden on stage, on the church workers, when we could meet in homes, at parks, and send all of that money to people who desperately need it for food, housing, clothing, health care? It feels like a vicious cycle when so few serve and are forced to do all the work. But i don't know how to find people who want to worship in the same way i do, who feel called to serve, to change the looming fate of a nation. Maybe it's too late, maybe Jesus' return is right around the corner, but i still struggle to be the optimist and fight against the pessimism that i am flooded with when i attend a worship service where so few sing and the sermon is about jokes instead of God's truth.

Quitting college has been such a relief for me. i never wanted to attend Mesa State, i never felt like i fit in there, that it was the right place, but i haven't known what else to do, where else to go. It kills me that i cannot support myself and that my life seems to be going nowhere. But as much as i appreciate my new freedom my loneliness has only become more pronounced. At school i had a few classmates that i connected with, and i would talk to them, see them three times a week. Right after i quit classes i started talking to RobG more, as i relieve him as MCO, but he complains a lot, and we have little in common. My granparents have finally been moved into assisted living (praise God) and i have an empty house with a cat that only barely tolerates me. So i am not paying my own way, i'm in so much debt from going to a school that was a waste of time, i have no friends, and now i'm thinking about moving cross country and going deeper into debt?

It's scary, to feel like God wants me to go to Florida on a whim, on faith, when at the same time i feel like he hasn't been providing for me. i've been forced to live off the charity of others, which is very humbling and annoying. All i've wanted to do is work towards and fight for my future, but the way is shut. i feel like i'm caged. But now there's the possibility of me moving towards something, and i have no doubt that i would excel at it, but is that what God wants for me? It's intimidating. And right now i would give up all my dreams in pursuit of the one that i have wanted longest of all.

My biological clock has been ticking. That sounds so stupid, but i knew when i was three that i wanted to be a mother and throughout my entire childhood all of my play was geared towards marriage and starting a family, whether i was playing with Barbies, Legos, Star Trek figurines, or Hot Wheels. i thought that my life would be set once i turned eighteen, that i would meet the boy of my dreams and we would get married and life would be perfect. Yes, eighteen was the magic number to me, the magic age, but here i am, twenty-five, and i've never even been on a date, or been kissed, had a chance to fall in love. i've always felt somehow guilty for it, to want this--love, marriage, pregnancy, children--so very much, to read the pregnancy books that were sprinkled throughout the house, to want every movie/show to have a romance with a happy ending. i have tried to hide it, tried to ignore it, but i feel it with all that i am. Even more than i want to make films, write books, change the world, i want this.

i know it stems from the fact that i have always felt that i could never do anything to make my father proud of me, because what i want to achieve he doesn't understand, and also because i am not good enough at the things he cares about. i know that it is because my Mom spent ten years praying for another baby, because she homeschooled me and brought me up in the Word. i know that i am rebeling against the feminists in the family, to not want to become a matriarch, to want nothing more than a good man who will take care of me, to submit to. And i also know that letting most guys know that you want to get married and start a family right away scares them away immediately, but i've never even had the chance to do that. The guys i have expressed interest in either ignored me, pushed me away, or were unavailable. No one has ever asked me on a date, and i don't believe in changing myself to make myself more appealing, flirting or dressing provacatively. But i wonder why i am always alone, rejected by peers, and outsider. Like Meredith on Thanksgiving on Grey's Anatomy, i feel as if my presence at a party is a downer, is not welcome exactly not welcome necessarily, but as if things are better without me and my baggage.

When i was eighteen i felt that having a family right away was necessarily something that had to happen for me immediately, that i would enjoy living as a married couple for a while, working towards a career for a little while maybe, and seeing the world with my husband. But it has been seven years now, and i still haven't found a book or screenplay to write, i still can't support myself (let alone a child), i still haven't met my husband, and for all my efforts i feel farther away from God than ever. i do not mind so much about not dating, because i have always known that i am not the shopping around type; i want to meet my imzadi and i want to spend the rest of my life with him, with that one man. And right now (in particular) i am glad that i'm not dating because i think i would find it very hard to remain sexually pure. It's like Elizabeth says in Dead Man's Chest: "I'm so ready to be married."

Twenty-five years of virginity is no easy thing, especially when you feel like you're the only one in the universe who's saving yourself, who's waiting for marriage, and certain coworkers think such a thing is unnatural, is freakish. i don't know how to not believe what i do, but it's not easy being alone, especially when i feel like i'm only half a person, incomplete. To me, it seems the most important thing in life (after serving God) is marriage, to fill the earth and subdue it, but what is left to subdue on this planet? And no matter how advanced our science has become we can only fill the earth when a man's dna interacts with a woman's.

i hate sounding like a depressed whiner drama queen. But how could i honestly wish to stop feeling things so deeply, when they are the very propensities that make me me? My empathy is what i hope to save, my anger and despair to destroy. But i don't know how to live my life alone, to live my life at all. i have always known that a am nothing without God, that i will certainly fail if i try to do anything in my own power. i cannot be an astronaut, or a pirate, or a rebel fighter, but those are the things that inspire me, to explore, to fight for what is right against all odds, to die for what you believe in if need be. i am so much smaller as an individual in comparison to the hope and promise that God has given me. It's hard to reconcile the dark and hope that i am overwhelmed with at the same time, but they are as surely as I Am.

i don't feel worthy of God's love, the faith that He has displayed in me. Sometimes i wish i could turn my back on Him, the pain, on my life. But if like is devoid of hope, devoid of Him, then how much worse would death be, an eternity without Him? i cannot fathom the boundless nature of the universe, how God always was and is and will be, how my soul is just as deathless. i do not fear death, neither do i want it, it does not hold sway over me. But the dark... i don't know how to get free of it. i don't know if i'm supposed to. i don't think i can. i feel helpless, and my hope is in God. He seems to believe that i can get through this, i'm not so sure.

i don't know how to be normal, or act like the world is fine. Nothing is fine. The world is sinful, war feels safer than peace, because peace would mean the end to so many freedoms. Nothing makes sense. i don't know how to tell anyone about God when i don't understand what He's doing myself and when it is deemed offensive by the media that i am surrounded with. Christianity, the denial of self, purity, are foreign concepts to the world. i try to stand apart, but it's unbelievably hard and painful. More than anything, i cannot fake normalcy anymore, i cannot play that game, but i don't know how to be true to God anymore, either. i feel as if i am at the end of a battle where all hope is lost and i cannot surrender but i cannot find the strength to fight, either.

It's hard for me to express this without sounding depressed or holier than thou. i'm not perfect, i'm sinful, and i fight against my sin nature while simultaneously wanting to give in to it. More than anything, i want to always follow God's perfect will, but i don't know if i'm strong enough... No, i know i'm not strong enough. i pray for strength, i pray for deliverance, but i don't know what will happen. Sometimes i wonder if i've got a chemical imbalance in my head, but i know that the spiritual forces i sometimes sense are really there, fighting over this nation's future, the world. i don't care if i don't play a big part in it so much as i care about doing God's will. If he would let me then i think i would be content to be a nameless individual with a husband and family, but somehow i've always known that it wasn't to be. i wish i were wrong, i hope that i can still have those things, but it's up to Him. And that makes me sad and hopeful at the same time.

i saw Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End!

The last time around i was more than a little surprised and at first i wasn’t sure if i liked or disliked the movie. i was so mad when Elizabeth kissed Jack, absolutely irate, not because of what happened to Jack, but because of what it did to Will. It gave Jack a chance to show his bold side, even if he hadn’t chosen that course of action. But Dead Man’s Chest gradually grew on me, for all it’s silliness and over the top humor, i couldn’t help but appreciate it the more i saw it.

This film has a surprise ending but without the negative shock value of the last, even though it is sad. i don’t think that i would have chosen this ending, and i’m actually surprised that i didn’t figure out the twist sooner, but i am still content with the film, even with how the Will/Elizabeth relationship is concluded. With more Jack than i was expecting i would have thought that the movie would seem more ridiculous, but somehow it worked for me. Norrington and Governor Swan come to satisfying conclusions for me as well, though also sad.

There is a lot more piracy going on in this film, even Will and Elizabeth start taking part in the back stabbing. The battles and locations are awe inspiring on a new scale, and even the lunacy seems to make sense. But not everything is fun and games this time around, everyone seems more serious. i feel so badly for Davy Jones in the end! For a while i wasn’t sure who i should root for, who i wanted to win, how i wanted things to end up, because the only noble ending was sad for so many beloved characters. Who would have ever thought i would be rooting for pirates anyway? i, for one, do not lack a moral center, but here the edges are blurred, the plotlines intertwined, i am going to need another viewing or two to take it all in and figure it out. But i’ve discovered that seeing any ship be blown apart really takes it out of me, no matter which side is being defeated. The film provides and interesting twist on pirate history and brings it around for a good conclusion while leaving the possibilities open for more sequels…

p.s. When you see it don’t forget to stay around for the “ten years later” at the end of the credits.