There's a murder, a child dies of starvation, someone you know dies of cancer... All of these terrible things happen in our world of imperfections and tragety. Just this morning someone told me about a shooting in an art gallery and concluded, "The world's still spinning, just not in the right direction". We all know that these things happen, and every once in a while we can get caught up in it and just wonder why. Why do such terrible things happen to me? Why is this world so terrible? Why do terrible things happen to good people? We also see these things and wonder how could things like this happen. How could someone throw their life away by doing that? Who in their right mind could do that? Or even claiming that we would never do that terrible thing ourselves. Recently I read a book of the Bible called Job. It's about this guy named Job who everyone, including God, thinks is a great guy. And one day all of Job's wealth was destroyed and all of his children killed... everything was gone. At first Job is still faithful to God, and we all think that he's alot stronger than us. But when Job finally get's caught up in it all, he just doesn't get what he did wrong to deserve all of the terrible things that happened to him. This is the low point where we curse God and wonder why all of this is happening. But when we're at our low points, there's nowhere to go but up. And I know that sounds cheesy, but it's true. To finish Job's story he eventually realized that the answers to all of his questions where beyond him, Job 42:3, You asked, "Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?" Surely I spoke of things too wonderful for me to know. And even if you don't belive in God you can still realize that we wont know the answers to these questions. But ultamiltly God is the answer for how to deal with these trageties, and how to dig ourselves up from our low points. He is surely planning out everything in our favor because He loves us so much. He loves us enough to send his one and only son down to die for us so that we may live with him forever. That's the whole basis of the Bible, Luke 2:10-11, But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid, I bring good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord." So while there may be a lot of sucky stuff in this world we can put our faith into God that He has a plan for it all. And we can always find hope in the Lord and remember that Christmas is the time to remember the most important birthday in the history of the world. Merry Chirstmas everyone!
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"Go away!" was the response my sister gave when asked to state a phrase to describe how she feels in the morning. Most people can relate and understand this concept, and we have a name for people who feel the same way: a non-morning person. I actually can't quite relate to this since I'm what most would call a morning person. While I'm still tired I also tend to be in a better mood in the morning than most. But from what I've heard some people don't end up fully being in their usual mood for 2, 3, 4 hours after they've woken up. Or some people are just grouchy all day and when you ask them what's up they respond with, "I didn't get any sleep last night". While this could of been true that they didn't get enough sleep, it could also be something else. And I would know since these last couple months I thought that I was super tired and not in my very best mood because of lack of sleep. But when I really thought about it I was getting at least 7 hours of sleep a night. So what was the problem? Well I've finally figured it out!!! But before I share the solution I came to I must give you a little background about myself. To start I have to tell you I'm a very athletic person, I do sports all year around with running in the summer, spring, and fall. And in the winter I Nordic and Downhill ski. Really as long as it's outside and I'm sweating then it's my kind of thing. But this past August I've had a knee injury as well as a surgery, so I had to take off all of fall and now most of winter. So for a long time I wasn't able to walk let alone do anything active. While I have to say I've been fairly positive, but it's still pretty hard. And since I've started Physical Therapy I find myself becoming in better and better moods. Today after a hard workout I came out feeling great. Now if you haven't caught on to what I figured out it's that when I was living a sedentary lifestyle I wasn't as complacent as I am now that I've began to exercise again. On a more scientific level, when we exercise our body release lots of neurotransmitters including endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, and GABA. And all of these things make us feel good and improve our overall mood. Not just that but when you exercise your heart beats faster increasing your blood flow. Which in turn can make you feel more focused by promoting the growth of new brain cells, especially in the hippocampus or the part of your brain that is mainly associated with memory. So the next time you think feel enervated when you feel there's no reason for it try going for a run, to the gym, or just on a bike ride. And you may start to feel those crazy awesome neurotransmitters being disseminated throughout your hippocampus! (Sorry I geeked out there a little bit).
Don't you hate it when your trying to log into an old email or website of some sort and you forgot your password? I know that now there's the thing where the computer will remember it for you and all, but it will only be on that specific computer. Which is vaguely frustrating when you use a different computer and end up having to reset your password. And it could be soooo easy if we all just used the same password for everything, but apparently there's something about if a hacker figures out that one password they can get into everything... and that's supposedly a bad thing I'm told. Just kidding, of course that's a bad thing. But yet it would be just a bit more convenient to have the same password for everything. There's a lot of thing in daily life that could be made just that much more convenient, but yet we don't do it. Let me give another example... Let's say Justin just isn't feeling the best on certain day and he goes up to his friends with a big sad look on his face... and instead of telling them he isn't feeling all that great he waits till they ask him, "What's wrong Justin?". This is something that happens to me all the time where people go up to me and expect me to figure out their emotion, and I do the same as well. And really this is something that makes the situation more complicated since the other person has to figure out what's wrong or if there is something wrong. When Justin could just simply tell his buddies that he's not doing too well. And really I was just thinking why people do this... and the only thing that I came up with was that it makes what your feeling more dramatic... By finding out that Justin is sad you don't only feel proud of yourself for deducing this, but you also want to figure out what's going on and are more interested in what Justin has to say. To be perfectly honest, I prefer someone to tell me what's going on since sometimes I don't notice certain things. Well I just wanted to share this little tid bit of society that I found out this week. That when someone could easily take an easy way out of a situation, they still end up taking the harder way.
I have recently finished a book called In My Hands. To give a brief summary it's about a 17 year old girl named Irene who lives in Poland during the holocaust and ends up doing all of these amazing things by rescuing Jews and fighting back against Russia and Germany. And it really got me thinking about how powerful youth can be in a society. Most people have associated the youth, teenagers especially, with being tricksters. Instead of the Terrible Twos, it's now the Terrible Teens. When we are walking by a tipped over outhouse we say, "Dumb teenagers". And the fact is that it's probably a teenager who did that too. But all of those crazy and terrible adolescents ruin the ideology of all teens, even though some are perfectly great people. This creates the voices of youth being suppressed because they are considered radical and irrational, leading to the "good kids" feeling as if they have no say or power in this world. When this is really not true. According to the JOCI-IYCW (International Young Christian Workers) a character our youth has today is, "We are serious about life and want to live for some purpose and meaning". In other words the youth of our society actually has serious ideas and aspirations. But then why are so many of these youth angry, depressed, etc.? It's because our society is full of things that tell them they can't do this or be this, according to the IYCW. My only opinion on the matter can be summed up in this simple verse: 1 Timothy 4:12- Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. As young people we need to realize that whatever society says about us, any stereo types or names don't matter. Because we can prove everyone wrong by acting with love, faith, and purity... and this works whether your a Christian or not!!! But of course this can be a challenge of trying to live life in this manner, but the bible has answers to this too... Psalm 119:9- "How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word." There's two of the reasons why I love the bible, it has all the answers and it tells you that it does!!! And lastly just think of all the amazing things we can do if we act like this, we can save lives, by showing people love we can create world peace. And not just that but by showing love we show God, which saves lives by letting others follow God and live with him eternally. While we may not be able to change the view of our society we can make a difference... You can't control the wind, but you can adjust the sails.
During exercise, work, school, or anywhere else our society tends to be listening to music. I mean music has made it into the category of questions to ask on a first date, which has to be of some significance... for some people at least. Today I wanted to talk about a few different aspects of music since it's apart of most of our lives. Some have heard that listening to music can actually be good for you. And did you know that there's some phenomenons that can go on within your brain that has surprising effects. I did some research and really it's not all shock and awe on if it is actually good for you or not. But to sum it up music can keep you calm, cheer you up, elevate your workout performance, help you focus, and even ease your pain. So really it's all the reasons why we even listen to music in the first place. The one I found most interesting is that it can ease pain. I found out that it can help people with fibromyalgia also called fibrositis (widespread muscle pain and tenderness are the most common symptoms). Not just that but it's been shown to clear up head aches. Some music has special isochronic tones within them. These are tones that are basically being turned on and off quickly, and research shows it can help focus and relive the mind. Oh course I had to try it, but being a person who doesn't get headaches typically it was hard to tell if it worked. But I can tell you one blogger who thought they worked and her name is Nikki Albert. In one of her posts she gives her opinions on some isochronic music and says she thinks that while is can be somewhat painful, it's kinda nice after a while. So really listening to music can be good for you, I guess that's a relief that we all don't have to get rid of our iPods and MP3 players. And on that phenomenon I mentioned, it's called Synesthesia. And really an explanation of it in my own words is when your listening to music or certain sounds then something in your brain is "triggered" and you somehow see colors. You may of heard of this but if not I'll start off by telling you that I do have Synesthesia, and I guess I didn't know that it was an actual thing, that it was just something that only I had. But I found out that all sorts of other people have it and that this Synesthesia can apparently have other triggers too, like words, numbers, or even feelings. But specifically the sound one is called Chromesthesia, and apparently it's different for everyone who has it. For me it's specifically music and it's rushes of color that can be faded at times or extremely bold where I can barely see or consecrate at times. I play in band and when everyone is warming up and playing everything at once it's really hard to control it, but over the years I've found that I can know that I'm in tune based off of the colors I see. Really the more and more I learn about it the more fascinating it becomes, and to think that I have it kinda weirds me out. But I do encourage you to do your own research on it since there's also books based on people's experiences with it and really it's just plain cool to hear about. I hope this gave you a burst of knowledge and got you thinking a bit. Have a great weekend everyone! And don't forget to check out Nikki Albert's blog called Brainless Blogger at the address below!!!
http://brainlessblogger.blogspot.com/ I want to start out by saying I obviously haven't been posting every Monday and Wednesday and have decided to just post at my leisure. I know this of course will go against every blogger on earth and will get my very little views, but I feel that this is the only way for me to continue my blog at all. Today I've decided to talk about control. Lately I've been leaning about the Protestant Reformation as well as other religious historical things that ended up turning into more of a political debate rather than a religious one. It all comes down to who has power, in some cases it's the king, others it's the pope, the people, or really anything else you wanted to fill up that blank with. And really all of those things couldn't be farther from the truth. Whether it's control over land, money, people, or our everyday lives; most of us think we can have control over it all. For example, when planning to go the movies with your friends after work. It started by having a welly thought out plan. This is the point in the story where everything in the world is right with the character and birds are chirping.... Then disaster strikes... there's changes in schedules or there's an argument, a cancellation, a miscommunication... and before you know it the entire thing is cancelled, and all the control you thought you had over the situations is...... gone. This is a very mild example, but you get my point. Ultimately I think that we have no control over what may happen. Yes we may prevent things from happening, or make plans, or do what ever it is that can create control. But really we cannot fully control other humans' thoughts or actions, this then makes us unable to be in complete control. Now, this isn't the time to be freaking out and hiding in your zombie apocalypse safe house, because there is someone who is in control. Proverbs 19:21 says, "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand". This says that while we all may have plans, God's plans are the ones that will be in complete and utter dominance. Hopefully this is a relief to you, that we don't have to worry about what may happen and just put our trust in the Lord. I'll leave off with this: Psalm 46:10- "Be still and know that I am God". We can be stress-free and live our lives without complete control in knowing those 7 simple words. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, please comment with anything you want to say or any prayer requests. God Bless!
This past week I've came down with a cold, which is like kicking me when I'm already down (because if you didn't know I just had a knee surgery around 4 ish weeks ago). But when I first felt the symptoms my parents where out of town, and I love spending time with my family, so when they weren't there to take care of me when I was sick, made it all the worse. Eventually they came back into town and my health immediately improved. This got me to thinking about missing people. Why do we miss people? Is it bad for us to miss someone? And this is how I think it works based off some research I did. That as we get to know someone we begin to create memories and whenever we're with that person our brain releases a chemical called Oxytocin, which is released when we have closeness to other people. And when we are away from those people we reminisce or remember those memories we had with them and start to crave that Oxytocin that we had created when being with that person. This craving is what we consider to be missing someone. And don't take this too literally since most of this is based off of theories of others that I've added on to. And whether or not it's bad to miss someone is really just up to opinion. I believe that it's okay to miss someone, but if they are truly gone or deceased then eventually at a certain point in time one needs to continue on with life. I'm not saying to forget about the person, but to know that there's nothing you could possibly do about it now. This is somewhat a relief and yet it's also a burden. And this burden can lead to serious depression or other dangerous things. If someone is dealing with the loss of a loved one, one needs a support system whether that's a family, friends, or a counselor. I personally have my family as well as God. Psalm 34:18 says, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit". God can heal any wound no matter how deep, He is the only one who can take away ALL of our burdens and make us alive after death. And all we have to do is believe that He is the Lord and give our lives up to Him. I will leave off with Psalm 147:3, "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds". Just know that God will never fail you, and that He is the ultimate option for dealing with anything. I will be praying this week for those dealing with losses and I will also be praying for those people to seek solace in God. And I hope others will pray with me to. Have a great rest of your week, God Bless!
Our lives are fairly busy. There's school, jobs, dates, family, and tons of other things that occupy our time. And our downtime is filled up with TV shows, video games, social media, and above all the internet. This busyness leads to craving this downtime or laziness. It also takes up the time we have to satisfy our needs, one being food, which is why there's fast food places. Now you probably already know where I going with this, but let's be honest, people are becoming overweight due to these circumstances. Most of you probably already know the statistics, but if you didn't: according to The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases more than two out of three adults are considered overweight or obese, as well as one third of children and adolescence are also considered overweight or obese. But there are sooooo many exercises that don't require hours of your time and are sooooo easy to do since they only require your own body. Let's start out with arm exercises, there's the obvious one, the push up. But little did you know that there's other ways to increase the intensity of a push up. One is what Self Magazine calls the Full Circle. This is where your in a push up position and instead of going down and putting your weight on both of your arms you can instead put all of your weight on one arm as you go down and switch as you go up. Let's move on the core. The core are the muscles of your torso, these include your lower back and abdominal area. One exercise that is one of my favorites is the plank. To amp this exercise up you can lift a leg or an arm, but don't forget to keep your back straight. Another great exercise are leg lifts, these work your core and get your quads firing. I've been doing these frequently since my surgery and here are some tips to get the most out of the exercise. Take it slow, the slower you go the more you have to work. And for extra back support put your hands under your lower back, or if you're doing just one leg at a time then have the non involved leg bent. Now while these exercises can be pretty fast and somewhat convenient, you have to remember that it's not going to effect you dramatically. Mayo Clinic and the American Heart Association recommend 75 hours of vigorous aerobic activity (or cardio activity) or 150 of moderate aerobic activity per week. This can be hard to manage, but by doing little exercises like these throughout the day can help get those minutes knocked out.
Do you know any non-equipment exercises? Leave yours in the comments below, I'd love to hear your ideas!!! Well I'm going to first off start with saying that I'm sorry for not posting on Wednesday and then not on Thursday when on my Google + account I said I would. Just know that I will do my very best to post twice a week and on the dates that I scheduled. :)
We've all heard of or even been the little girls who dressed up in sheets and their mom's shoes, who pretend to walk down the aisle and hum the wedding song. It's pretty cute actually. When my sister and I where little she and I would play Barbies, where my girly little sister dressed up Barbie and played nicely. Of course if it was my choice on what we where playing it would be shooting Hot Wheels off a track. But I did play Ken on the occasion. Well on one particular time when my sister and I where playing we had Ken and Barbie getting married. I don't really remember it, but my mom tells us the story that she happened to walk in on the wedding and instead of us humming the traditional wedding song, we where humming the Star Wars imperial march. Aren't kids the best? Any who, I wanted to talk about relationships and really just how kids view them as well as adults. Let's start out with Elementary School kids; one boy said in response to when someone should date someone else, "I'm going to get me a girl when I get out of Kindergarten". This is also very cute, and a tad bit concerning. That even little kids are jumping on the idea of dating. I think this is mainly because of our culture, of wanting to do things as soon as possible. For example, one main thing people don't wait for is their first kiss. It's mainly because in media we see people who have their first kiss as early as the 4th or 5th grade! And really kissing is just the beginning to all the other things people can't wait for. And when people don't wait for certain things it can really hurt them in the end. And one of these things is sex before marriage. All of these things are very fresh in my mind since I just went to a Relationship Retreat this weekend for my church. Which is what inspired me to write this. And the main point I'm trying to make is to wait. Waiting for things makes things so much better. One story I'm going to tell was told to me at this retreat. It was one of a boy who always had to open his Christmas presents before Christmas. He would open all of them, play with them, and sometimes even break them. Which all of this really ruined the excitement of Christmas and when he opened up his presents that he had re-wrapped that morning it wasn't as meaningful as it could of been. This is the same thing for sex, that if we save it for that special person it's going to be so much better. And this is really for a lot of other things to. Like the saying says "Good things come to those who wait". Of course people have made mistakes and have done things they regret. But I'm not quite finished with the story... One particular Christmas the boy's mother had known that he had opened up his main present and broken it. So without him knowing she had bought him a brand spanking new one and gave it to him for Christmas, when he really didn't deserve it. And in our lives this "mother" is actually our "Father", God. All we have to do is ask for forgiveness and we can be pure again, even though we don't deserve it. And he does this because he loves us, in Exodus 34:6 it says, And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness". So with it being the day after 9-11, there's been a lot of thinking going on about our world. More specifically all of the terrible things going on in it, now I don't want to be a downer but it's true that our earth is pretty messed up, maybe even falling apart. And if you don't agree with me, at least realize that there's some pretty terrible things that have happen and are happening. And really these thoughts lead to a whole ton of questions like, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" or more personally "Why do bad things always happen to me?". But for me it wasn't necessarily these things but really "Why hasn't these types of problems been stopped?" or "Why doesn't someone do something?". And all of these types of thoughts lead ultimately to doubt, self doubt, doubt in the world, doubt in people, doubt in God. Now yesterday was probably my main point where all of these things just came together in my mind and I just felt really doubtful in everything, but as the day went on though church service and youth group later on, my mind began to switch over and really I felt different. I'm going to start off my main point of this with a quote, "I always wondered why somebody didn't do something about that, then I realized I am somebody" -Lily Tomlin. This quote is so true that we are all so hypocritical, that we think that people should be trying and yet we do nothing ourselves. Now you can take what I'm saying in really any way you want to, that you should try to change the world, do something simple, or just plain realize that we're all hypocrites. But I'm just going to go deeper into the subject of doing something for God. And Christians are so hypocritical, we really are, but it just means we have to strive to not be. That as Christians we need to put away our doubts and realize that we can live a way better life for God without them. And we can make excuses that it's not the right time for us, or that we just don't matter, or really my "favorite" I'm too young. But when is there a best time? When are we good enough? When are we old enough? I have lately been listening to a bunch of Christian music and one song that really just shows what I'm trying to say is Do Something by Matthew West. One of the lines is, "If it's not know then when, will we see an end, to all this pain. It's not enough to do nothing, it's time for us to do something". And really there's no better way to put it. That if there's a time to act it's now. Another song by Matthew West is Day One, and one of the lines in it is, "See my hourglass is upside down, my someday soon is here and now. The clock is tickin' and I'm so sick and tired of missing out". And really if we don't start realizing that we are so not perfect and that God will forgive us, we can put aside our own issues and start doing something. When we start doing something we can really live for God and what he wants us to do. Saying it is way harder than actually doing it though, putting away your doubts can be really scary. Joshua 1:9 says, "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." Now that I've given you all of this information and what I hope is encouragement, I'm going to end with another verse of the Do Something song. "So I shook my fist at Heaven. Said, 'God, why don't You do something?' He said, 'I did, I created you' ". I urge you to live your life as if you had no doubts, whether it's doubts in yourself, your family or friends, or God. Start doing something to change the world you're in. And in the end, you can really start living life to the fullest. Why miss out? Why wait? It's time for all of us to do something.
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AuthorChloe Miller is an athletic girl who loves running and Nordic skiing. She also enjoys playing Uno and hanging out with her family. Archives
December 2016
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