No Make-Up November

This is the first year I have ever heard of "No Make-up November" (NMN). Of course I have always heard about "No SHAVE November," but that has always generally been for guys. This has me thinking. I've noticed a new trend lately - several of my friends have deleted their facebook's. How does this connect to NMN? Women are starting to actively choose not to wear makeup.

So my question is:

Why are women deciding to stop wearing make-up?

I desperately want the women who are doing this to blog because I want to know every thought that goes through their brain to give me a better picture of what society's standards of "beauty" are actually doing to women.

This morning I'm camped out in Destinations (drinking a white cafe mocha and it is delicious) beginning my research for a final project in my women's "Beauty, Feminism and Consumer Culture" and I've decided this is going to be my project topic.

I am genuinely curious if this choosing to stop or cut back drastically on make-up/beauty rituals is a passing trend where women are doing it because it's the 'cool' thing to do or if it is because they have personally decided to determine their value excluding societies opinions about where true beauty and value come from.

Did I participate in NMN? No. I'm the first to admit I'm totally impacted by societies expectations for beauty and use make-up pretty much every day. Not nearly as much as I did in high-school but there is usually at least a little bit of makeup on my face. I'm considering starting the New Year with one resolution - at midnight taking off all my make-up and going the first month of the year make-up free.

Normally I don't advocate people to comment on blogs because I like communicating with y'all in person BUT I would really like to hear what you have to say about this. Is this a trend or a genuine start of a new phase in women's beauty? What are you seeing?

No Makeup November: Rave Ministries

"Even to See Her Walk Across the Room is a Liberal Education." - C.S. Lewis

Taking a break from updating everyone on my life (I know, it was just getting to the best part!) I'm going on a tangent.

Let's talk about one of my favorite things in the world: Romance.

As I've mentioned in basically every blog post...ever...I hate cliches. It's highly possible that I'm lying and I love things that are cliche - I actually love cutesy, gross romantic things, I just happen to enjoy acting grossed out and teasing people about them even more! So on that note I was in a bad mood last night. First of all, I feel bad for everyone around me when I'm in a bad mood because I don't really try to hide it - which could be either a good or bad thing.

Why was I in a bad mood? It was a weird day, yesterday, and I don't really know why. But I ended up thinking last night after Bible study about being single and that was the beginning of a downward spiral. Let me reiterate that for the most part I enjoy being single and I'm usually pretty content in it. But sometimes if I let my mind go down that path I find myself complaining and throwing a pity party of epic proportions. That's what happened last night and before I knew it, complain, complain, complain, God - why me? It was ugly. Had anyone walked by my room last night they might have been a little freaked out because I've developed a habit of talking out-loud to God and I was going to town and being a whiny little baby. Super attractive, I know.

But because I have no problem being honest these day I let God have it until I couldn't think of anything else to complain about and THEN I pulled out my Bible. Thankfully, I serve a gracious God who can put up with my attitudes and then gently correct me and point my attitude in the right direction  So after I had whined for a solid 30 minutes or so, I pulled out my Bible and I kid you not this is what it said in the devotional I randomly opened up to:

Dependent

"Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today..." - Nehemiah 1:11

How often do we act first and then pray? We ask God to bless what we're doing already rather than seek him first for direction. Our pride and feelings of self-sufficiency keep us from prayer. We convince ourselves that we can do things on our own, independent of God. That's a terrible mistake. The wiser course of action -- the one Nehemiah chose - is to recognize how needy we are and how generous God is. Humility -- admitting that we need God's help will drive us to prayer. As the old saying goes, the best way to begin a journey is on your knees.

(If you have more time, read Nehemiah 1:1 - 11.)

Word to take with you today: Depend.

Nothing speaks romance to me more than having someone who I can tell pays attention to me and remembers things that I say. Also known as knowing me intimately. Especially because I tend to avoid telling people about myself nothing is more attractive to me than being shown that a man knows me that well and God does a superb job of that as illustrated by His intervention last night via the Bible. 

I've got this button on my backpack for Superwoman and she is all about being a strong, independent woman which I feel like I identify with. 

At this time, God is the only man I trust enough to allow close enough to me to know me that intimately. He is the only person I know right now that I've completely allowed myself to fully trust and to fully know me and consequently, He is the only one who manages to romance me so completely. He is my Superman. Who, also consequently, has been my favorite Superhero since I was a little kid. Minus Jedi, but those don't count in the scheme of Superheros.

So if you're a single lady and even if you aren't - embrace the concept of Romance in a new way today. God created You to be His love - let it happen.

Happy Friday, everyone. :)

Personal

If you finished reading "Even in Adversity" you are ready to read this.

Before starting I would like to apologize for the horrible run-on sentences and poor grammar in the last couple posts. I just got a little caught up and went to town. Also, in the spirit of November and giving thanks, I would like to thank everyone for reading - I'm less than 50 views away from hitting 1,000 which has been a personal goal. The odds are that I've touched at least one life out of a thousand and touching one life makes every single blog worth it to me. :) Thank you for reading!

Where were we? Ah, yes. Getting frustrated and angry. As previously discussed I like to be in charge of my life and know what is going on, where I'm going, and how I am going to get there. As counseling progressed and we started uncovering some issues, I gradually started noticing that I was stalking around campus being very angry without really knowing why. I brought this up to Gary (the counselor) and expressed that I was "angry about everything."

What I figured out was that I was angry about two specific areas. The first was that I was still constantly walking around being angry at the darned ex-boyfriend and because I didn't know how to get rid of that (Lord knows I wanted to - that was two years ago!) it was driving me in angry, vindictive circles. The second was that I was angry about my job and angry about not knowing what I was doing with my life (future-career-wise).

(Not me, but how I felt. :))

Call me crazy, but Gary re-framed anger in a way that completely changed my outlook on feelings. Here is what he said to me:

"Anger is a secondary emotion. If you're angry, you are probably feeling fearful, hurt or frustrated but it is coming out as anger."

Gary, that made so much sense! Immediately I could re-frame what I was feeling in a way that made it easier to figure out what was going on.

"I'm angry at ________________ because I'm constantly scared that every man I meet will be like he was and eventually not want me or not want me for my heart but for my body. I'm hurt by __________ because I felt like I wasn't valuable because of the way he treated me and I'm frustrated because I want to be over this whole mess and stop having to deal with it every day!"

That made so much more sense to me than - "I'm so mad at ______________!"

Anywho that was the bridge that put me on the road to forgiveness - step one for me was figuring out more specifics about why I was angry. We also had to talk a lot about false guilt - I false guilt myself all the time. I'm also really hard on myself. I can extend grace to other people but don't allow myself any and that makes me constantly feel guilty. So I had to start recognizing negative thought patterns (ANTS - Automatic Negative ThoughtS) when I thought about _________ and how that affected my life and stop blaming myself for things that are in the past and out of my control and also aren't even true.

At this same time God was pushing me to get involved more at Berean, where I've attended the college-aged service pretty much since second semester of my freshman year. For a social butterfly like myself it made absolutely no sense that I had yet to make friends within the church. So I went by myself the second week of Real Time (the college group weekly Bible study) which was really scary because I knew no one. God put me in the perfect small group. I was deathly afraid I was going to wind up in a group of freshman giggly girls when all I craved were women my own age with similar struggles that I could identify with. And God gave me that in Abby's small group.

To tie that in with the third devotional: "Personal."

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
Psalm 139:1

"God knows your thoughts, when you sit, when you rise and when you lie down. God knows you through and through, in and out, and loves you in more ways than you can ever know. God wants you to believe that he loves you! And though he doesn't put conditions on his love, he does ask that you respond to his love. Talk to him. Trust him for what you need. Believe that you are his unique and beloved creation. Let him search you and know you. God loves you with the strongest love imaginable - a love worth dying for." - devotional

That God knows me so intimately that he could match me so perfectly with the girls he put in my group and had lined me up with the exact person I needed at the exact right time was more romantic and meaningful to me than if He had instantly "cured" all my problems when I complained about them. I don't think in the Bible it ever says God will "fix" all my problems. But, like a husband, He promises to provide for my needs. God did that in such a masterful and beautiful way throughout this whole painful situation for me. Sometimes I still have to sit and be in awe at the way God put so many little pieces together in such a perfect and wonderful picture. That He never once left my side and always provided for me gave me such a feeling of being loved, valued, and being secure that I haven't felt the same about my relationship with God since.

During a period where I didn't even feel like I knew myself, God knew me so closely and intimately that He knew everything I needed. It still blows my mind. Well, if you've stuck with me through these last three, the next one is going to be about forgiveness and REACH retreat (where my background picture is from!) and the neat things that happened there. We are getting close to present day again!

But before I go, the word that went with this devotional is one that I think speaks to the core of both men and women. It's a word that we all crave. The word to take with you is: known.

You are known.

Even in Adversity

If you finished reading 'Hidden in His Presence' you are ready to read this post. :)

So after being a cripple and acknowledging my need of assistance from other people combined with the persistence of my parents and my mentor (who I met at the end-ish of the Summer) and God's persistent nudging I decided it was time to get some more help. I started seeing a counselor. That was so hard! I'm a psychology major for crying out loud, shouldn't I just be able to analyze myself out and be okay? Guess not.

Anyway, I wish I had a videotape of my first session with Gary (the counselor) and the last one we had together (this Monday). The first one I pretty much sat in a little huddle on a chair in his office and cried hated my life and was just a hot mess. Hadn't showered, I'm pretty sure I looked as bad as I felt because he gave me his number and said I should call if I was ever in a bad spot. Anyway, every week I went to see him and every week it was hard to admit to myself that I needed to go because I couldn't solve everything myself. And every week the 20 minutes there and the 20 minutes back were growing experiences where I alternated between yelling at God and praising Him for being gracious to me. 

After I finally caved and started seeing Gary (a couple weeks into school) I finally threw up my hands and was like - "screw it" - and just decided to go all out. If I was going to do this counseling thing, I was going to do it right and stop trying to pull myself together on my own and just keep admitting that I was a mess and needed help and let God have His way and do whatever He was doing because at this point I had no clue what I was supposed to do about literally anything in my life. 

About a month into school and I believe my second week of counseling I had an awful, horrible panic attack in the middle of a lab for my capstone psychology course (meaning the biggest and most important class psych majors have to take). I got up in the middle of the lab and walked out. I had to drop two classes and also tell teachers I needed extensions because I just couldn't get assignments, even easy ones, done on time. That was also really hard because it was like I had to constantly admit to so many people that I couldn't do something. I don't know where I got this idea (just kidding, it's from Satan) that people wouldn't love me and would condemn and reject me if I failed at things and that not being able to do something made me a failure, but that's how I felt every time. It was awful! I also stopped eating because I wasn't hungry, I was always ready to sleep even when I wasn't tired, and life just felt like a constant discouragement.

So. Scheduled a doctor's appointment at the persistence of my mentor, parents, and Gary. And the doctor was like - "Let's try some drugs." I don't like taking medications. But by this time I was willing to finally admit that it was possible I couldn't pull myself out of this slump by myself. Sometimes I think that your body really does just freak out and do it's own thing and I guess I admitted that maybe a prescription something-or-other would help. So no I'm on anti-anxiety/depression stuff and we are into the second month and it definitely helps. It regulates my moods so I don't feel everything in super over the top extreme high feelings or downwards spiral my life is over feelings, either. I'm not planning to be on them forever - maybe just a couple months. But every day I have a very physical reminder in the shape of a pill that I'm not doing anything on my own. And every day God, my husband, stands with me while I take that pill and says "I still love you, no less than I did without that pill."

Here's where I'll relate all this back to another devotional, titled "Even in Adversity."

For I am convinced that either death not life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height or depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

"The apostle Paul suffered all sorts of hardship and persecution and still knew that nothing could separate him from God's love. Nothing has changed. Hardship and heartache are our lot in life. We don't know what God is orchestrating "behind the scenes" in our lives, but we can be assured of his love. We don't know the reasons for the things that happen to us, but we can remember God has our best in mind. When trouble comes, will we come to grips with the fact that God is present, working behind the scenes with his big-picture purpose in mind?" - devotional

During this process of counseling and what-not, God had this sneaky plan all along to get me where I'm at now. Nothing that whole time separated me from the super-intimate love He feels for me! Not a pill, not counseling, not dropping a class, not hating my life, NOTHING. Not one darn thing. Granted, it sounds great that I figured it out but that was a total process and I didn't understand or feel that the whole time. But God had to put me through those things or I wouldn't have understood that nothing separates me from His love! And the next blog focuses on me during the point where I got really super frustrated and angry because I didn't know what the point of my life was and desperately wanted God to let me in on the whole "behind the scenes" whatever it was He was doing! I just had to totally trust that God did have my best in mind this whole time. So all I had was blind trust. And it was super hard. Trusting blindly is and probably always will be hard! And as I've mentioned I have some trust issues with men so viewing God as my husband and all is still hard to accept because I'm so insecure about getting left!

Anyway. More later. But the word to take with you from that devotional is: NEAR.

God is NEAR.

Hidden in His Presence

Whoops - basically skipped over most of this semester when it came to blogging! So much to fill everyone in on.

First of all, as you all know I love, love, love coffee (I've got a fresh cup next to me here at Destinations). This being said, this summer I bought a new Bible and graduated from my childhood one! I'm a big kid now (which reminds me, I need to renew my license...). I purchased the 'Coffeehouse Bible.' I share this with you because the devotions in it that I've read have interacted so perfectly with my life since I bought it that I wanted to share some of those things with all of you. In fact, I was thinking about how I was going to put all the things that have happened into a blog post in a way that made sense and was reading through some things I've really been clinging to in my Bible and came across four devotional's that focus on God's love.

God's love is something I have been learning a lot about. In my Bible study and at church we are wrapping up a study of Hosea. I have always been a fan of Hosea ever since I read Francine River's book 'Redeeming Love.' I strongly recommend that book to everyone, both man and woman. Honestly, when I read that book it completely changed my outlook on love and changed my mind because when I read it I was really struggling with doubting that marriage was a good thing and that I wasn't really interested in that anymore. Anyway, reading through Hosea and the study we are doing focuses on a bunch of different aspects of God. Hopefully I'll write some more blogs that look at those more in-depth soon. But the one aspect that really speaks to me is God as my husband. Because one of my biggest struggles in life is focused around a troubled relationship I had once upon a time and a lot of problems that have stemmed from having parents with a rough marriage growing up, this has been a problem for me. It has been really hard to think of God as someone who looks at me as a wife and loves me unconditionally. Because I felt like when I was growing up that my parents marriage revolved very much around conditional love as did their love for me, and then when I dated someone seriously and told me after about a year - "Well, sometimes I know I love you, and then other times I just don't know" - it has been nearly impossible for me to grasp that God isn't going to walk away from me.

Oh dear, I'm starting to ramble, aren't I? I'm going to try and catch y'all up and post a couple times today with some mass updates. So I'll just dive in.

Let's start with the devotional titled: Hidden in His Presence.

In the shelter of your presence you hide them from all human intrigues; you keep them safe in your dwelling from accusing tongues.
Psalm 31:20

"We long to be hidden in the presence of God. Life happens and we feel overwhelmed. Following Christ can be a lonely journey in a hostile world. Many of us sit in silent agony at meetings as colleagues ridicule some aspect of our faith. Many of us know feelings of isolation. God wants us to learn an important lesson from these seasons of loneliness: our true citizenship is in heaven (see Phillipians 3:20). When you feel like an outsider, remember that heavenly house awaits you (see 2 Corinthians 5:1). God promises to be your sanctuary on earth (see Ezra 9:8)."

Going into RA training at the start of this semester I was very, very lonely. I was struggling pretty seriously with feelings of depression and for those of you who identify with that (I know you are out there, I've met a lot of you), also with some pretty rule suicide ideation. Sorry if this is a little heavy for anyone, but I think God uses my honesty to touch others. So coming into training I didn't want to be there, I didn't want to spend any time around people even my friends. All I wanted was to be alone and hide in God. I felt very much like a little kid hiding in my room and crawling into God's lap over and over and over again. I felt very overwhelmed. I'll talk about counseling later, but one of the causes we pin-pointed as possible cause was that as an RA last year I was very emotional involved with a lot of my girl residents. While I loved that, it takes a toll. There was also a case where a dear friend of mine attempted suicide and I found her and that profoundly impacted me although I didn't realize it at the moment. Anyway, I was feeling overwhelmed to the point where I didn't want to come out of my room. Everything about me that I held to be true - being joyful, happy, kind, gentle, loving, social, outgoing, serving, being a confidante, mentor, ambitious - all those things had gone a complete 180. I was the opposite of everything I had ever thought I was and was worried those aspects of me were gone forever and I was going to be a cowering, scared little puppy-dog that felt like I was getting kicked in the gutter every day for the rest of my life.

God was teaching me some lessons that are going to stick with me for the rest of my life while I was in that season of loneliness.

Lesson 1: I met a nice boy. (Because we all know, I LOVE BOYS).
While that didn't end up working out what it showed me was that there were still problems from my last relationship that I wouldn't work out and let go, that I actually wanted to date again (it's been two years since I've dated anyone seriously), and that I was filling up my time with a lot of 'stuff' to avoid getting attached to anyone.

Lesson 2: I fell off the bed. That absolutely sucked. It happened during the first week of RA training - I jumped off my non-lofted bed, landed on a rain-boot and rolled my ankle so hard I had to go to the ER at 1 in the morning. Nothing is harder for me than giving up my independence and relying on others. Suddenly I had to rely on EVERYONE to do EVERYTHING from going down the hallway, attending meetings, getting in and out of doors and cars, carrying my food and carrying my backpack. EVERYTHING. And it SUCKED. But what I didn't realize was that God was using me being a cripple on crutches for a couple weeks as a baby step to teach me to let go of my pride and be able to ask for help.

Shout out of gratitude to Kyja (left) and Katie (right) who wheeled me down the hall in a laundry cart instead of letting me crawl, which I tried to do. You guys are wonderful :)

Thank-you to Chris B. for being my knight in shining armor and being my best friend and hero - calling my parents at 1 in the morning, driving me to the hospital, braving the maternity ward to find a nurse when we couldn't find the ER, putting up with me in the ER for an hour and a half, carrying my back-pack, driving me to Walgreens and buying me a lot of Advil and ice right after they were robbed, and chauffeuring me around during training. I love you, so much. True bestie. :)

Shout out to my FP Ben for doing basically all the prep work on our floor and helping me with literally everything I needed. I wouldn't have survived with-out you and you are my hero with a fro. Ben also washes my dishes for me sometimes - even when they are covered with mold. Can't wait for my "I <3 Ben" v-neck.

Also I would like to shout out to my girl Sash-Fierce for being a crip with me during training after falling down the steps whilst texting. Glad we could drive around together while both crippled. And another scream of gratitude to S. Banks for being a doll and bringing me coffee and hanging out in the PRC with me in the PRC while my life sucked during train. :)

So. Those two lessons are pivotal. God provided me the safety and comfort I needed in the season of loneliness where I didn't feel like I was strong enough to even talk to people or even leave my room. But while I was busy hiding in God's presence, God knew the time would come for me to come out of that comfortable spot of being miserable alone with Him and push myself to ask for help and address the issues I was going through. 

This is where Hannah stops taking little baby steps and has to start taking giant leaps out of her comfort zone.

Hopefully if you stuck with this post to the bitter end there was something in there that brought a smile to your face, a chuckle to your heart, or assurance that it's okay if you identify with being in that spot of suck and loneliness.

Also: The word to take with you from that devotion was Sanctuary.

God is my Sanctuary.