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WalkingInsideOut
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Name: Stephanie
Gender: Female
Interests: God, my family and friends. (to all my Missouri friends I miss you!!), social work, music (I play violin), coffee, traveling, purple flying hippos, water balloon fights
Expertise: What don't I do amazingly well?? I can't think of anything.
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
5/28/2004
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| I just returned home from a fabulous month-long road trip to 13 states with my friend Heather Kiegel. Our trip took us through Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington. To recount my entire trip would take much longer than one Xanga entry, and I am quite positive nobody would really care to read it. To sum it all up as concisely as possible, it was both a relaxing and rejuvenating trip for me. This past year almost killed me, and I needed this trip badly. I highly recommend everyone take time to travel. It gives you much perspective on life. I was able to see things of unbelievable beauty and to appreciate some parts of this country where God really does show off. At times, like when I stared down into the Grand Canyon, walked along the Pacific Ocean, or tried to wrap my arms around a giant Redwood, I felt overwhelmed by God's majesty. This trip was also a time to see old friends that I share such happy memories with. Thanks to everyone who housed us along the way. I must also say a great thank you to my friends in Chicago who missed me while I was away. I wish each of you could have come, but it does feel very good to be missed. Having people care about you as much as you guys do means a whole lot! I think that Donald Miller put it very well in his book Through Painted Deserts when he describes his own road trip. He writes, "I think again about this small period of grace, and thank God for it, that if only for a season, I could feel the why of life, see it in the metaphor of light, in the endlessness of the cosmos, and in the miracle of friendship." | | |
| I just walked out of my last class.....EVER!!!! I am officially done with school, and it feels phenomenally, stupendously, and inexplicably wonderful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have a masters degree. Whoa!
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EXCERPT FROM THE VELVETEEN RABBIT
~ By Margery Williams ~
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but Really loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get all loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." | | |
| “We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and everyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world…Pain is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectator, the compassion aroused and the acts to which is leads.” ~from The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis
Something I am coming to terms with in my life: Pain is a part of God’s plan for my life. Pain is an inevitable accompaniment of our greatest blessings and benefits. | | |
| Home again....back to reality. I'm counting down until graduation!! | | |
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