I am a Child.

So since I’ve been home for break, I haven’t tumbled much. Which may seem odd since I have ALL THIS FREE TIME!

False.

I can never tumble because my house’s interwebs is retarded. It shuts down randomly (usually when i video chat or go on tumblr…..it hates tumblr for some reason). So it’s real frustrating. So this is a small post saying that I am sorry. Especially for those of you who look forward to my blogs. *cough-jess-chelsea-cough*.

So I’m sincerely apologetic. And I will try my best to keep on postin’.

I love you guys.

And Merry Christmas Eve!!!

I apologize to those of you who look forward to my blogs. I have been a slacker. Lazy. Bum. Whatever you wanna call it. For this, I am sorry.

Now, time for business….

I am in the process of writing and adding to my highly anticipated “Selfishness” blog.

BUT…

I’m not nearly finished yet. Sooooooooooo here’s a little somethin somethin for yall.

I am home.

Yes! I returned home from a very very long first semester of college. I needed this break. More than you know.

Just a list of things that make me love (and occasionally get upset with) my family:

-None of them were home when I arrived here yesterday. hahaha.

-Nic and I had a very scruffy man hug and scruff fight. He hasn’t shaved since November 1st and I haven’t shaved since December 2nd(ish). Needless to say, I still won, and I’m catching up to his length quickly already. And he is 4 years older than me. Love it.

-I love looking at Jason and thinking it’s a mirror. So many people have called me him this semester anyways. Might as well accept it.

-My mother and I started slow dancing to no music in our kitchen last night. Then it quickly became a waltz/tango thing while I was singing a random Christmas song. I love love love love my mom. She’s the best.

-My dad had me go to the car place today to get my mom’s van’s tail brake light to get fixed. My dad before I left, and I quote, “Oh, it should only take them a few minutes for that type of thing”. Hmmmmm, I knew he was wrong. But not 3 and a half HOURS wrong! Yes, I sat in the waiting room for 3+ hours. I think I will never be that bored ever again in my life. Anything less than that will be cake for me now haha. He apologized for that chunk of my life disappearing. It was funny after the fact. But I was very angry while waiting. (Could this be God giving me a life metaphor to learn patience??? Hmmmm.)

-My mom loves games. Dominoes, board games, card games, you name it. She loves it. So she was reading directions to a new game she bought. She said, “It looks really fun!”. I said, “Mom, just the word ‘game’ is fun to you”. She laughed at me. Funny thing…..the name of the game? “Funglish”  Bahahahahahaha!

This is just a few things that have happened since break started.

I LOVE my family.

I am truly blessed.

Why do memories that you try to forget always seem to magnify themselves in your mind?

I’ve been trying to concentrate on finals and God alot this past week. And I’ve been failing miserably.

The more I try to get my mind off of things and focus, the more my thought life becomes a hectic blur of some of my favorite memories.

Memories that are now painful.

I feel as though my entire first semester here at college has been wasted on one thing. And that one thing has now been taken from me. Not by my own will. Actually completely by my own will.

Have you ever noticed some things in your everyday life trigger past memories? It could be a saying, phrase, word, place, scent, person, or even a beverage.

Everything reminds me of her.

And I don’t know how to make it stop.

FIGHT!!! FIGHT!! FIGHT! FIGHT. Fight. Fight…..fight……..fight……………….fight…………..fi—

I have been fighting…….

my heart.

I don’t know what to do anymore. My heart hurts. Not for myself. But for someone else. I have done non-repairable things to another human being. I have crushed their soul. I don’t know what’s worse….

…getting your heart broken by the one you love…

…or breaking someone else’s heart you never wanted to break.

Right now I think the latter is more painful. Or not. I don’t know. But I feel like I have failed.

I got out of bed at about 11 o’clock today. I got in the shower. And I collapsed. I fell to the ground of my disgusting shower (compliments of my roommate) and didn’t care. I was on my hands and knees before God. For thirty minutes. I laid at the bottom of the pit I had dug for myself over the past few months. I sat and soaked in the shame, the guilt, the pain, the hurt, the doubt, the insecurity, the hatred….

Multiple times today I felt like dropping everything and running. I don’t even know where. Anywhere. I just wanted to run run run run run run run run run run! Away from my problems. Away from the school I love. Away from the friends I love. Away from the one(s) I hurt. Away from everything.

The only that stayed constant in my mind this whole day was God.

And He has made all the difference in my life. In this day. In this moment. I can’t thank Him enough for the comfort He has provided for me. Through my friends. (Oh my goodness I wouldn’t have been able to live through the day if it weren’t for them praying for me).

I love people. I always have. But I didn’t realize how much I love people until today. I killed the heart of someone I love and care for deeply. I took it in it’s fragile state, and I smashed it into a wall. I beat it up with rejection. Rejection of love. I never thought I would say no to love. I have always dreamed of being in love ever since I was about 8 years old. I always dreamed of someone else loving me for all that I am. For every part of me. Good and Bad. I had that. I had it! Someone loved me like that. They wanted to be by my side the rest of my life. And I said ‘no’.

I’m sure any of you reading this are like, “Why the @#$^ did you say no to a love like that?”

That I can’t really discuss. Not right now. It wasn’t because I didn’t want it. I did. At least I did a couple weeks ago. But now I, being the completely new man I never knew existed, say ‘no’ to such a thing. Because it wasn’t right. I can’t say why it wasn’t right. It just wasn’t, trust me. Sure, it seemed right. It seemed really right.

But anything God wants is more right.

More right than anything I can fathom as right.

…..and as I laid there in my shower……with all those emotions and feelings…….and I prayed. I prayed for the solid 30 minutes. I gave all that I felt, all that I wanted, all that I thought of……to God.

I couldn’t hold it up any longer. Yes, as stated in my previous blogs, I gave all my wants and desires to God and said that I was going to want God. Yeah, well I didn’t think He would turn the furnace back on so soon. And much hotter this time, too. God allowed this to happen to see if I would truly give up my wants or not. And it took so much out of me. He knows it. I know it. My best friends know it.

I can proudly say that I passed the test. This is one test that I’m going to wonder if I really wanted to pass or not. At least for a while. Until I am 100% positive that this was the absolute best thing. And I am almost there already. I know it was right. It just doesn’t feel right all the time. That’s just my emotions getting to me. I won’t let my emotions control or dictate the choices I make. Most people do. But I refuse.

One of my best friends looked at me today and said that I must be mentally exhausted.

She was right.

I am mentally exhausted.

That being said, I will attempt to go to sleep now. I don’t expect much. But I don’t care. Sleep is sleep. Regardless of how much.

I only expect a handful of people to understand this blog. So for those of you who don’t, I apologize. I wouldn’t expect or want you to understand. It’s too much for even me and friends to handle.

All I can ask for now is prayers and Love.

Not the love I thought I once felt, or the love this person is suffering so much for.

But the Love of Christ.

I was walking on the sidewalk of the beautiful Liberty campus today, when I random movie quote popped into my head.

“As the great Colonel Sanders once said, ‘I’m too drunk to taste this chicken’”.

Bahaahhahahahahahahahahaahahhaahahha.

Yup. I laughed…..Out loud……By myself……In public.

Lame much?

Anyways, it was really funny. It made me realize that laughter is a vital part of life. I honestly can’t remember a day in the last few years that I didn’t laugh at least once in a day.

When is the last time you laughed?

Proverbs 17:22 says, “A joyful heart is a good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”

Basically the Bible is saying that without Laughter and Joy in our lives, then we will die! Haha, I’m just kidding. But if you think about it, Jesus probably laughed all the time. Imagine when He spat in the mud and put it on the blind man’s eyes. I can picture Him laughing when He did it because everyone watching were probably like, “What the freak!?!?! Did Jesus really just put loogie-mud in that guys eye?”. Their facial expression was probably hilarious to Jesus.

And what about the time when Jesus was walking on water. I’m pretty sure He was giggling to Himself when he knew how freaked out His disciples would be when they saw Him.

I’m sure there were other times when Jesus laughed and cracked jokes and made funny noises with His armpit as a kid. Come on, God has a sense of humor. The best humor actually. I mean He created the platypus (which I love), the moose, and the poodle. These things are real funny to me, and I’m sure God created them with laughter in mind. It’s funny.

God is funny.

People are funny.

Animals are funny.

Movies are funny.

You are funny.

So start acting like it. God wants you to enjoy life, not suck the life out if it. He gave you life. Don’t disrespect it by being so serial all the time.

God likes to do work on us.

He creates us in His perfect image.

We add our own image to that.

God takes away some of our image. Our flesh. Just us.

We scream and cower and pull away. We are content having more of ourselves in our lives than having more of God in them.

God again tries to take away more of our junk.

We flinch and make excuses that we’re fine without His help.

God wants to see you as His son.

You want to see your self, but all you see is an ugly, distorted monster.

God mourns for your ignorance and selfishness (I really need to do the blog about selfishness).

The Vision team that I am part of at Liberty does a skit that generally describes this story above of sorts. But, a good friend of mine (Ben) put it into a new perspective than this. He had a brilliant analogy to explain this concept.

If we as Christians are a substance….such as gold. God uses what is called the “refining process”. Basically what He does is He puts us under intense, concentrated heat (like in a furnace).

And we melt.

We become so hot and withstand such high temperatures that the impurities in the gold float to the top. And God scrapes all that junk off. Then He turns up the heat some more. And we burn and we scorch and we undergo the hottest and most painful thing we’ve ever experienced. And even more impurities float to the top. God scrapes off even more junk. This time it’s worse junk because it’s the stuff that’s hard to get out. That’s why the heat has to be so high. God will continue to do this until we become so pure and clean that when God looks into the liquid gold, He sees His own reflection.

How you like them apples???

God wants to get us to a place where there is nothing else left but Him. That when people talk, see, interact with us…that they aren’t interacting with Harrison Peaks. They are interacting with Jesus Christ. We are to be empty vessels for Christ to live in. Not bricks (think about it…think about it).

I want to be at that point. Where there is none of me, and all of Him. The Bible says, “I must decrease, and He must increase”.

My  My

reflection reflection

will  will

not not

be be

my my

own. own.

npeaks:

4 Things to ponder:

1) Does anyone else find it interesting that people are making a bigger deal about Tiger Woods’ affair(s) than Bill Clinton’s?

2) One is a professional athelete.  One was the leader of the free world.

3) They both messed up, and they are both horrible jerks for what they did to their families. But don’t think for one minute that you (and I) aren’t capable of the same failures.

4) It’s easier to join the lynch mob when it’s someone you do not like. But just remember point number 3.

I love my brother for this reason…..He’s brilliant. And most of the time, right.

ohhhchelsea:

…i wanted to blog something.
but then i forgot what it was.
it was good though, real good.

But now for a story

An Ode To Beards
By Chelsea Barnes and Harrison Peaks

MAN GROWS BEARD

MAN GET WOMEN

MAN CUTS BEARD

WOMAN IS PISSED AT MAN 

MAN SLEEPS ON COUCH
(hypothetically)

MAN TELLS WOMAN HE LOVES HER

WOMAN SAYS IF YOU DID YOU WOULDN’T HAVE CUT YOUR BEARD

MAN SIGHS

WOMAN SAY, “GET THE BEARD BACK.”

The End… :D

Relationships are hard.

This is nothing you haven’t heard before. But I think that people sometimes just don’t get it. Why do you think there is such a high rate of divorce these days? (The core of this issue is selfishness, but I’m saving that blog for a day where I have like 4 hours to write). It’s because people don’t want to work! Humans are lazy creatures. I know that in the back of most people’s minds, they are subconsciously thinking, “Why would I want to work to obtain a relationship? Having friends should be easy and fun.”. Now I understand this is blatant, but it sums up how most of us feel about relationships and friends. Some people avoid getting close to others because they are scared that what people discover and learn about them will drive them away. It’s a fear of getting hurt, or spat in the face, or rejected.

No one wants to be rejected.

As I learned from my awesome COMS textbook today, this fear and seemingly ‘emotional detachment’ is what describes an “underpersonal” person. An excerpt on this observation from the book:

Underpersonal people avoid emotional commitments or involvement with others. If we examine these individuals, we often find that they are hiding their true selves because they fear that others will not like them as they are. These people, like all other human beings, have a need for affection, but they have learned to cover it by not letting others get too close to them.

Do you know anyone who is like this? What do you think are some reasons for this type of behavior?

Basically, these types of people don’t trust others worth a dime. I can completely see where they are coming from. I mean…humans are evil. We were born into sin. We have a sin nature. A sin nature that makes us hurt people. So I don’t blame these “underpersonal” individuals. But there’s just one problem…

God

resides

in

everyone.

Christ is the center of all human existence. He created it. He died for it. And in the future, He will destroy it (at least the earth, and our fleshly, human bodies, not our spirits). So if Christ lives in all of us, then wouldn’t you say that shutting yourself off from relationships is just the same as shutting yourself off from God?

My brilliant brother, Jason, would put it much more delicately and elaborately since this concept was brought to my brain by him. Now I kind of already had this idea in my head, but I really like the way he put it.

The majority of Christians will say that you need to have a good ‘vertical’ relationship before you can have good ‘horizontal’ relationships. (For slow ones like myself, vertical means with God and horizontal means with people). This is incorrect. You must have both simultaneously. And the idea of separating them into ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ is flawed as well. I (remember I give all the credit to Jason Ray Peaks for this paragraph) like to think of it all as a sphere. Everyone is connected to one another and God. God is at the core. And everyone else is around Him. Now if one of our relationships is wrong then that relationship will affect our relationship with God. Because just as I am connected to you, I am connected to God, and so are you connected to God but separately. See what I mean? And if your relationship with God isn’t right, then that affects basically every one your relationships here on earth. Make sense?

Anyways, I won’t go any further with that. Now back to my main point…

If you are an underpersonal person……………………………stop shutting relationships off! God wants you to have open, close relationships with people. I understand that you’re scared of trusting others, and that you don’t want to get hurt or rejected. But just know that you will never be able to fully connect with God on a deeper level if you continue in that mindset. I encourage you to start trusting some people. It doesn’t have to be everyone. Just one or two people for right now is fine. Sure, you might get rejected or hurt or scarred, but that’s a part of life. As a good friend of mine always says, “What’s life without taking risks? Let’s rejoice in risk-taking and learning from those risks!”. I know that I have been hurt many a time from trusting people too much. But I’m alive. I’ll live. And I’ve also learned from those situations. So, it’s good.

Also you have to think…. Jesus trusted His disciples. All of them. Including Judas. So don’t think that you’re too good or too fragile or too scared to trust and be vulnerable with others. Because Jesus did.

And He got spat in the face

.

.

….literally.