Just great.

It's Monday and I feel fairly certain that I'm sick with what may very well be flu-like symptoms. I hope more than anything that I'm wrong. My insurance at work has yet to kick in, so I'm not really feeling a pay-out-of-my-pocket visit to the doctor.

Also, this morning as I was getting ready for work and realizing how miserable I felt, it finally dawned on me that the age of irresponsibility is over. I wanted so badly to climb back in bed and spend the day whining in front of the tv with a glass of sprite and a breakfast burrito - just like the college days....

Although I hate being sick, being sick in college was something I kind of came to enjoy. I stayed in my cozy little dorm all day and my roommate was exceptional at taking care of me. The tv never went off and I dozed in and out of consciousness all day long - waking up only long enough to eat or take meds. Sure, I felt miserable. But honestly, being sick is sometimes a great excuse to be lazy and just give in. It didn't matter what class I had when I felt ill in college - I would take days off without a care in the world and all the episodes of Golden Girls I could muster....

Now here I am in 2010. Out of college, married, and actually having a career working 40 hours a week. I realized this morning as I fought back whiny "I don't feel good" tears that I can't just play dead anymore. I'm responsible to be at work. No work = no pay. No more transitioning from bed naps to couch naps to bed naps all day again. No breakfast burritos and Golden Girls. Just the ill-satisfying "comfort" of a space heater and work assignments to fight off the miserable state I'm in.

I tell our youth all the time to "STAY IN COLLEGE AS LONG AS YOU CAN." Sometimes it's more of a joke, but as the days wear on I realize how good I had it in college.

So, yes children, go to college. Change you major 57 times. If you graduate, get another bachelors degree -- not a master's, because Masters students are expected to gain experience through some sort of job. Mooch off of your parents, if they'll have you. Go to Taco Bell at 2 am and stuff your face and skip your 8:00 class the next morning. If you get the sniffles, skip class again. Take it easy and enjoy the ride because before you know it -- you're sitting in an office, running low-grade fevers, staring at your computer screen asking how the heck you got there.

Holy Granola.

Look, discipline has never really been my thing. Just yesterday, I thought to myself after seeing some friends vlogs and blogs, "I really wanna do that too!" -- And then I remember I DO HAVE A BLOG.

Forgive my inconsistent posting. It's all for good reasons though. Life is just so grand right now that we've been rather busy. On top of that, working 40 hours a week makes it hard to fit smaller things into my schedule.

To bring you up to speed, Brian is officially the youth minister at a church in Brighton - about 25 miles north of Memphis. So, we're in the process of trying to move there and find a house. Yeah. That's a pretty big step for two very naive and clueless kids. But we love the area, adore the kids, and are just ready to plant our lives in a community that we can invest in and minister to.

I have a couple of things I'd like to blog about, but seeing as that I *am* on work time right now, I'm going to put that off. However, I'm putting it off with a promise to actually return to write it!

In the meantime, some thing for you to chew on:

"Ultimately, Jesus was calling them to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation. In a world that prizes promoting oneself, they were following a teacher who told them to crucify themselves. And history tells us the result. Almost all of them would lose their lives because they responded to his invitation." - excerpt from Chapter 1 of Radical by David Platt

Brian and I were discussing this the other night on our way home. Do we ever stop to realize or think about the first Christians? The ones who were so radically abandoned to Christ that they stopped at nothing to tell the world about what He had done for each and every one of them? Even if it cost them their LIVES!

Friends, that's why America has fallen to the pitiful spiritual state she is in today. We are all about a comfortable Christianity: the kind where we go sit in our cushioned pew for an hour a week, robotically sing a few lyrics without giving a thought to their meaning, and listen to some man say something about the Bible. Then we leave and assume we've "done our Holy deed" for the week. We spend the rest of time working to make money to spend on worthless "treasures" that have no eternal significance. Instead of asking the lady in front of us at the store if she knows Christ, we judge her by what she wears/says. We don't associate with the lowly because we are from another class. We watch movies that are in direct opposition to everything scripture teaches us (this is a biggie for me), and then we partake in our fleshly desires without concern.

What a twisted image of following Christ. I don't wonder why life (as a whole) is the way it is. God certainly cannot want to look down and see "His people" living the way we are, without giving one thought to accountability among the brethren. It has to pain his heart to see that we are so concerned with accumulating big houses, fancy cars, nice clothes, etc and only give a passing thought to the millions of people who die each day from STARVATION. We don't want to live a radical Christian life because, well, perhaps we don't really believe what we say we do.

If you haven't picked up Radical, I challenge you to do so. But beware, David Platt will step on your toes and make you very uncomfortable. But everything he presents is biblical. He does a great job in opening the reader's eyes to the truth that "The American Dream" isn't a biblical idea at all. It certainly broke me of my selfish ways and allowed me to take a hard look at the way I lived and the goals I was going after.

Okay, see, now I've gone on too long. :) Back to work.