lent: day one - the ashiest wednesday of them all

so today is ash wednesday and for lent i've decided to give up sleeping in. the plan is to wake up no later than 9am (that's the absolute latest) on weekdays and 10am on weekends. originally i was aiming for 8:30-8:45ish but i've decided to push back my "absolute latest time to get up" by 30mins. sadly, this morning i kinda got off to a rocky start, and i ended up getting out of bed 10mins late.

i'm sorry Father.

tomorrow is a new day. i'll try harder. promise.

**an afterthought (12:12am): after tonight's lccf program i was rethinking this whole sleeping in thing. i'm not sure if i'm gonna do it anymore. it just doesn't seem like...the right thing for me. it's kinda hard to explain...ah well. back to the drawing board for ideas. reveal what you want me to give up for these next 40 days Father.

let the games begin...

(by games i mean school. heh.) :P

reading week is "dead and over". can't believe that it sped by so quickly.

highlights:
- lccf retreat: good times guys!
- being home: nothing can beat showering in bare feet. (my new motto. AND it rhymes.)
- seeing liz again: yay!! *he is a barney/oh where oh where oh where...* (bahaha) :D
- being with my family: i love my family. it was so nice to be altogether again. :)

hope y'all had a good one, and to those of us who have your weeks one week behind, have a great one!

think outside that box, sharon.

an already hard thing to do just became all that much harder. i need some of God's lovin.

more later? maybe. but for now...gotta get back to studying for my music history.

*and for the record...MUSIC IS NOT EASY!!!!!!* you try it. what's that? no? exactly. hmmmmph. :)

because of Him, I am free.

Because of what Jesus Christ did, I am set free. i am set free to be me - the real me...the one God has made me to be. but my freedom came with a price, the death of Jesus Christ.

sometimes we look at the cross too casually. we know what happened 2004 years ago, but we don't know. we remember it, but we don't remember. you know what i mean? it's pretty sad...

so where did these thoughts come from? at church on sunday (CFC in up here in loo) they showed the trailer to the new movie the Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson (which is set to premiere on Feb. 25th). in it they showed bits and pieces of the crucifixion and it really hit me. and i'm thankful for the much needed reminder. i only saw like, a little tidbit of the movie but yah. it just seemed so real. it WAS so real. i could feel the tears starting to form in my eyes. my Jesus...our Jesus Christ, going through all that pain and agony for, me. and you. it was really moving.

let us not look at the cross casually, or nonchalantly. instead, let us look at the cross with utmost respect and remember the sacrifice, the pain, the suffering, and the love that kept Him there until it was done.

The Crucifixion

What is crucifixion? A medical doctor provides a physical description: The cross is placed on the ground and the exhausted man is quickly thrown backwards with his shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of the wrist. He drives a heavy, square wrought-iron nail through the wrist deep into the wood. Quickly he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flex and movement. The cross is then lifted into place. The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed.

The victim is now crucified.

As he slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain - the nails in the wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As he pushes himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, he places the full weight on the nail through his feet. Again he feels the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of his feet. As the arms fatigue, cramps sweep through his muscles, knotting them deep relentless, and throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push himself upward to breathe. Air can be drawn into the lungs but not exhaled. He fights to raise himself in order to get even one small breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subsided. Spasmodically, he is able to push himself upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen. Hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-renting cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from his lacerated back as he moves up and down against rough timber.

Then another agony begins: a deep, crushing pain deep in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart. It is now almost over. The loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical level. The compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues. The tortured lungs are making frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. He can feel the chill of death creeping through his tissues.

Finally, he allows his body to die.

so long, friendster.

well, my friendster account (the one that i didn't even sign up for myself *ahem eugene*) has officially gone down the toilet. i flushed the little booger down just moments ago. good grief. even to this day i still don't really understand the point of friendster. but maybe it's just me. oh, how i miss the days of the pen and paper. and actually meeting people in person, instead of this crazy "6 degrees of separation" garbage. (what the heck is a degree of separation? you either know a person or you don't. don't give me this "i know you through my friend's brother's relative's cousin's neice's sister's friend" stuff. why not? well, 1) because it's way too confusing, and 2) at the end of it all, we still don't know each other (i mean c'mon, let's be honest here)...

oh well, as i said before - maybe it's just me. :)

in any case the friendster and sharon connection has been terminated. *say it like arnold would. it sounds cooler that way.* :P

thank you :)

so my jazz concert was yesterday - thanks to everyone who came out, it really meant a lot to have you guys there. :) even though i might not have looked it, i was pretty stressed out on the inside. guess all those performances for yamaha when i was younger paid off after all. :P when performing, it's all about looking calm and confident, even when you feel like you wanna barf. ;)

*side note: those guys upstairs are really loud. they keep on falling down. tonight alone i must have heard at least 3 big thuds. they really need to be more careful...oh. i think that they just fell down again. :P