Every day I want to thank God for eight different things
For Mr. Miller who went with me to the mechanic
For Sebo who lent me Scarlett to drive around town until my car is fixed
For a warm place to live and study and sleep
For food in my belly
For Jason who got me coffee and a bagel this morning
For Shannon who took me to the wings game last night
For movies, like Lord of the Rings, which delight and entertain me
For a way out of every mess
Despite the inaccuracy of statement, I feel this gif will especially please najonin.
(via gohugatiger)
Forgetting. Remembering. Unexpected.
Writer. Activist. Leader. Christ-follower.
Things I forgot I was.
Not in name, but in practice.
I haven’t written.
I haven’t supported a cause.
I haven’t led.
I haven’t followed Christ.
I thought I was doing okay. I thought I had it all together.
Great job. Great car. Great classes. Great everything.
Until it all started crumbling.
First my car broke down. $5000 in repairs.
Then my graduation application didn’t go through, because I’m 6 credit hours short of graduation. $1000 in tuition and books.
Finally I got a medical bill in the mail from two years ago that had gone to collections, because I didn’t know my insurance didn’t cover it. $200 in bills and damaged credit rating.
And last night I broke.
I laid in bed, and I just sobbed, unsure of how to proceed.
What changed?
Why was I so afraid of the challenges in front of me?
When did the anxiety become so great that I could literally feel the weight in my chest?
…
Then the text came.
The one that reminded me of something I knew, but had forgotten.
Something I knew, but had ignored.
God is still in control.
Even when I’m not.
Especially when I am not.
…
Remembering that made the difference between paralyzing anxiety and peace. The difference between throwing up all night and finding rest. The difference between fear and courage.
…
That was last night. This was what followed today:
My advisor approved my graduation date being moved to August to accommodate the additional classes.
My friends and family have provided a temporary vehicle for me, as well as much of the finances required to repair the vehicle.
And although those are great things, which I am thankful for, peace came long before any resolution, because peace is not dependent on the situation, but recognition of who is in control. Which, as it turns out, is not me. But I’m thankful that God most certainly is and provides for me in ways I cannot possibly fathom until they happen.
…
My eternal thanks to Lynn, Sebo, Rhianna, Mike, Jess, Jason, Reggie, Nathan and anyone else who not only put up with my anxiety, fear, and general insanity, but helped get me back on track.
Love you all.
My life.
Jesus
Grace
Love
Clarity
Friends
Family
Peace
Hope
- Plato: For the greater good.
- Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
- Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
- Hippocrates: Because of an excess of yellow bile in its gallbladder.
- Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
- Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
- Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
- Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
- Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
- Oliver North: National Security was at stake.
- B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will. The chicken's action was reinforced, hence, it was done.
- Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
- Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
- Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
- Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
- Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
- Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
- Salvador Dali: The Fish.
- Charles Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
- Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
- Epicurus: For fun.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
- Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
- Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
- Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
- David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
- Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it [censored] wanted to. That's the [censored] reason.
- Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
- Ronald Reagan: I forget.
- John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
- The Sphinx: You tell me.
- Mr. T.: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
- Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
- Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
- Molly Yard: It was a hen!
- Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
- Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.
- Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.
- The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.
- Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.
- Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.
- Othello: Jealousy.
- Dr. Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.
- Mrs. Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.
- Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.
- Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.
- Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.
- Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.
- Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.
- Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
- Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter.)
- Hamlet: That is not the question.
- Donne: It crosseth for thee.
- Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.
- Constable: To get a better view.
- Yeats: She was following the Faeries that sang to her to come away with them from the dull, bucolic comfort of the farmyard to the waters and the wild.
- Shelley: 'Tis a metaphor for the pursuits of man: though 'twas deemed an extraordinary occurrence at the time, still it brought little to bear on the great scheme of time and history, and was ultimately fruitless and forgotten.
- Tolkien: Chickens are respectable folk, and well thought of. They never go on any adventures or do anything unexpected. One fine spring day, as the chicken wandered contentedly around the farmyard, clucking and pecking and enjoying herself immensely, there appeared a Wizard and thirteen Dwarves who were in need of a chicken to share in their adventure. Reluctantly she joined their party, and with them crossed the road into the great Unknown, muttering about how rude the Dwarves were to take her away on such short notice, without even giving her time to brush her feathers or fetch her hat.
- Forever Reblog <3
This is how I am getting through today. Thanks Krista! (Taken with Instagram at Rochester College)
New job with an incredible company.
New friends that I know will become like family.
New car that I like a whole bunch and will probably last forever.
Incredible mentors that bless me in so many ways.
Groceries for the week courtesy of my mother.
An unexpected two week vacation.
Phone calls from old friends.
Toy Story 3.
I have the best customers ever. A gift from one on my last day. (Taken with Instagram at Biggby Coffee)
