With great power comes great responsibility...

This wonderful quote was the wise advice of Uncle Ben, no not the rice guy, Spiderman's uncle, before he died. He didn't even know what Spidey was about to take on, but Peter Parker knew that with his new found power he could use it or abuse it. It was the best advice he would ever hear.
We all posses power in some way but more recently I have discovered our newly strengthened power of communication. We can now communicate to whom ever, whenever, and where ever we want, all the time! We can post pictures, stories, all for everyone to see and talk about. Even better, when people comment on your pictures, stories, random thoughts, everyone gets to read those too!! But it starts to make me wonder... this internet thing has sent my voice to be heard across nations... so what am I going to say? Now I will be the first to confess, I say some of the most pointless, unnecessary crap online! From the spider that I found in my kitchen sink to the fact that my tongue hurts because I burned my mouth drinking coffee, you'll probably find a status updates from Theresa Ginn about it. Sometimes I like to think these little bits are a fun peek into my personality, sometimes I think people see these things and quickly choose the "hide" option next to my name. These kind of things can get annoying but are ultimately harmless. But when it comes to important stuff I have found more and more that I don't want to throw my pearls to swine or, for that matter, throw my junk to those I respect and cherish. I have found my self needing to think about things more before I hastily post updates and rant in my blogs. So since I have the power of this blog to share with masses of people I'm going to try to take advantage of it in the best way possible. I haven't blogged in a while so I am going to create a condensed version of all that has been on my mind and I hope to be as wise about it as possible.

Alex: I had to really trust my Lord when I found out what was going to be going on with my dear friend. I saw that my husband was being blessed with strength and peace and I know God has been using him to keep those around us sane and positive. Over the course of Alex's recovery we have been seeing God work through this situation to bring Him glory, I pray it continues. You have all heard all the updates and I don't have much more to add to them but your well wishes and encouraging words are always appreciated. Thank you all so much for your prayers!!

Babies: Most of you know that I have been diagnosed with a syndrome that makes it so I don't ovulate. I'm fine and it's a curable disease, but I know some people are concerned for me. I have really appreciated the hope and support of the women around me. I have been praying about this for some time now and God has been continually showing me that He has a plan, I just have to be patient and wait on Him. I'm not doing the vegan thing anymore and I said buh-bye to Dr. Copeland because his methods were just a little strange for me. I have had a visit with Dr. Baker and she was very encouraging and understanding and the best part is she said I don't have to be vegan! YAY! She suggested hormone therapy so we're going to explore that after I have my ultrasound in September. But just so everyone knows, I really am ok! It's not something that I let destroy me, God has really let me understand His plans and shown me that I'm not lacking in anything but to just stay focused on Him. Best of all He is giving me peace about everything. He is preparing me and it's been really great learning from what He is showing me.

Concern: Something that has been on my heart lately is seeing people in my age group really striving towards righteousness. I have had some pretty specific struggles over the past few months and God has been revealing to me what I need and just flat out don't need and that he doesn't want in my life. He's displaying to me that if I want to see righteousness in those around me that I need to seek it in my self first. Everyone hates a hypocrite, so it was time to yank the plank out of my eye and start seeing God without distractions. The last thing I want to be is a stumbling block to those around me who are on the fence about gray areas. God has helped me make some pretty extreme decisions about compromise and I'm glad... it took time but I know dropping these compromises will help God use me in a greater way. I would hope to see God pushing those around me in a similar direction. I'm excited to see where God is going to take this new found inspiration.

Well that's it, condensed Theresa soup, if you will. I hope it was informative but not too informative, you know what I mean. Take care all!!

Revelation

Sometimes I am so busy and so consumed with all of my "problems" I don't realize that God is continuously blessing me and has never stopped. From miraculous monetary surprises to a productive day at home, The Lord has shown me that He has never left even when I have been ignoring him. Different things in my life have been burdening me, so much so that I have felt desperate. As much as I know God hears my cries, there are times I feel ridiculous crying out to Him in my desperation. I feel like 'why am I coming to you now... I should have done this a long time ago. It's like this is all I do. I get to rock bottom and then ask for your help.' I feel like I will keep repeating the same cycle if I don't attempt a deeper relationship with Jesus on a more regular basis. I will keep hitting the bottom and fast... I'm going to attempt an analogy:
It's like I'm at the bottom of a ditch, I can jump up and feel like I am almost out for a moment but I'm just going to fall right back down. If I take to time to build a ladder it may take more energy but it will aide me climb and I will eventually be out of the pit....
I'm bad at those. But you get it.

Yesterday at church Pastor preached on the flow of blessings. I couldn't repeat it to you word for word but he brought up the ever popular verse- Matthew 6:33 But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. And then preceded to speak about how we do not give to get back. And I thought... how often to I "seek the kingdom of God" just so that he'll "add to me." I say, here Lord, I have this thing so I'm going to read some verses and pray everyday so that you'll "add" the solution to this problem "unto me." so what am I doing here, I'm giving God time to get what I want. I'm not seeking His kingdom or His righteousness, I'm seeking my own gain. Granted I'm not saying it's wrong to cast your burdens on God, He is more fit to carry them after all, but I found my self just going to God, like "ugh, I'm done, just fix it" but not really doing much to connect with Him. Saturday Rachel went to the gym and I arranged for my husband to go to a friends house. I stood in the middle of my living room and just talked to Jesus, the way I talk to my husband. At one point I turned on some music and just laid on my back on in the middle of the office, the bass from the sub-woofer vibrating the floor and just soaked it up. I worshiped with my words, with music, I wrote random thoughts in my journal, some of praise some of concern. I just spent. time. with. God. It was awesome. And then I opened my eyes and saw all around me... blessings, everywhere. My nerves were calm, my head was clear, I could see God... there, and there, and here. I was like, huh, when did this all happen? Some of it did happen that very day like my spirit finally resting and having peace, and like being productive and not lazy, feeling healthy, laughing. Then I realized that we had been stressing about bills and, hmm, look, everything is working out this month, we can catch up. Awesome. Kyle's piano, where are we gonna put it? How am I gonna get the money to tune it?... oh ok the tuner will work with me on a price maybe give me payments, and look the piano fits right over there, in the middle of my living room where we have 20's group... maybe we can have worship nights. Nice.

I just had to stop asking, stop begging for a moment and just be with God, praising Him, hearing Him, talking to Him and He immediately opened my eyes and said "look, I'm here, you're good."

shifting gears

So Thursday I found out that I am hired at Pinecrest Lancaster! I will be working 9:30-6:30 as a floater, basically filling in where needed. September is still a mystery but I know I have a job and that's an awesome blessing!! I'm thankful that God has given me abundant peace through this time of work purgatory and of course I'm thankful to have a job, escpecially one so close to home! It got pretty stressful as the days kept dwindling away and July 1st was coming up fast and still no word on my future. God really worked on keeping me sane. With this new job on the horzion I am planning on making some changes in my lifestyle too. I will very likely have a later schedule so no more rolling out of bed at 4 and going to work! Now I am going to roll out of bed and go to the pool as I have decided to go swimming with my friend Kathy in the mornings at 5:30am. On top of that, I will be only a little over a mile away from my new workplace so I plan on getting a bike and riding to and from work every day. Somedays it will be tough and I know I'm going to want to kill my self when it hits 115 outside come August, but it's a short distance and on a bike it shouldn't be that bad. I played with the idea of walking at first but I knew I would never pull it off. Oh and of couse this new regiment includes Jesus time in the morning, which I desperately need. Have you ever tried waking up at 3:50 and trying to read? Not much sinks in.

Mind you these are just plans, they haven't been put into action yet and I have a knack for giving up. You guys are welcome to keep me accountable! It helps when I get a "hey, did you like riding your bike home today in the sweltering heat?" and I get chicken to say "oh, I drove to work because..." and then make some lame excuse. I figured this out the other day when Kathy asked me on Facebook (privately, which was good) "how was curves?" and I hadn't gone yet. I was embarassed to tell her I hadn't gone and was planning on skipping it, especially when I looked at the clock, realized Kyle wouldn't be home for a couple more hours and thought 'wow...I really have no reason NOT to go.' So I got up, changed my clothes, and left. I came back and posted about being proud of my self for going to the gym, it felt good. Long story long still, I will be embarassed to say I drove to work or didn't swim so if people are asking me about it all the time, I'll be more motivated to do it every day so someone doesn't catch me by surprise. I have also learned this strategy doesn't work coming from my mom though. Weird.

This past week has been strange. PMS symptoms (2 months over due) combined with heightened stress surrounding my husband has equaled a tough week. And I'm not gonna lie, I have hesitated to seek God about it. No particular reason, I think I am just avoiding the emotional outpouring that is likely to take place. I need to find a place to have Jesus time too, my house isn't the easiest place to have personal time in. That's the glory of my new schedule. I will be getting home from swimming at about 10 till 7 and that just happens to be when everyone is asleep and/or at the gym. *sigh* It's going to be great, just getting out of the shower, all clean, fresh cup of coffee. I'm very excited about my new routine, I'll keep you guys updated on how it goes.

save the drama for your mama

I understand that people have drama. I understand that it will likely never go away. I understand that people like to talk to others about what's bothering/hurting/burdening them. I also understand that people will talk about people, regardless of it's right or wrong.

What I don't understand is why, now that I am almost 25 years old, do people still spread drama around like the common cold? Why, when we are "communicating" with those involved, do we push the blame on others? Don't we see that bringing more and more people into explanations just involves them in the problem?

So now here you are. You have an issue, you have talked to everyone and their mom about it and what has it really done? You have vocalized a negative feeling a hundred times over and now you have given it power to run rampant in your life and those around you. People have now had to choose sides and where there was once peace now there is strife.

People spend so much energy turning mole hills into mountains when they could be taking that energy to give their burdens to Christ and ask Him for help, for healing. Instead people want to sit in their stuff and splash it around, getting as many people as they can to back them up so they can feel justified.

I'm freaking sick of it. Take your drama and keep it in a safe place. Give it to God, no one else can fix it, in fact everyone else will screw it up more.

Strategicon and busted pipes

So this weekend started off slow. On the way out of town I realized I forgot our pillows, I BIG oops considering both of us have a hard enough time sleeping in hotels much less on their crappy pillows. I also forgot my bathing suit which didn't end up mattering but I thought it would and it made me upset. I really wanted to go out to Pho before we went to the con but Kyle wanted to go to Fuddruckers and that was more convenient. All of this made me cranky for the whole ride there, the trip didn't seem promising. We knew we didn't have much money to spend there but we've backed out of Strategicon the past 3 or 4 conventions and we committed to sharing a hotel so we knew we just had to do it.



There were a couple of things we were looking forward to. Tournaments for this newer board game, Dominion, a Smash Bros. Brawl tourney and a Rock Band Tournament, all spread out across the whole weekend. Our plan was to leave Sunday afternoon. We were misinformed about the Dominion game so we missed it. Kyle lost in the first round of Smash and the Rock Band tournament.... oooooooh Rock Band. Ok, so, we are good at Rock Band. The 4 of us can average 5 stars on most songs and usually score in the 90%s but this tournament was not judged on score alone, it was mostly based on "style." This meant being a ham on stage a whooping up the crowd. The equipment wasn't the standard rock band controllers, there was a full electronic drum kit, real guitars made into controllers for the game, a real mic and tambourine, etc. It was fun but kept bugging out and they complicated game play more than anything. Well, we're not 16 anymore and we mostly wanted to play because it's something we're good at, but at home I don't dance around with the mic and try to get an applause. We used our band name that we have on our game at home: "Killing You Guys." It's an old inside joke (homestar runner, if anyone cares) but the name put people off. Then there were 2 bands with cute kids in them, both with their cute daughters on vocals making the small crowd of 10 or so laugh, ooh and aww. There was one band of people our age but they had similar equipment at home so they were more familiar plus it seemed like they knew the people that were doing the event. Needless to say we lost, but it was over all very discouraging. The contest wasn't judged objectively and our scores had hardly anything to do with it. The cute kids got their awards and the popular kids got theirs. We weren't the crowd favorite so we got booted even though we were the only band to crack 4 stars on hard in the 2nd round. It just put a bad taste in our mouth for the whole con because that was one of the things we were really looking forward to competing in and we lost because we weren't cool enough and our talent wasn't even a factor. Totally lame.



We played other board game tournaments, Agricola, which all 4 of us lost. The rest of the time Jess and Avery and her brothers played other tournaments for games me and Kyle didn't know so we had to entertain our selves all the while being a little bitter about the Rock band thing. But when our plumbing problems trapped us there for another day we had more time to find things to enjoy and ended up having a really good time. Jess and Avery bought this psycho game, Twilight Imperium, one of those 6 hour games that consume your life. It took us 3 hours to set up and read the rules and then over and hour to go through 1 round, but we finally learned how to play. And Kyle and I played a demo of a small card game which was way fun and bought that. All things considered, it was a fun trip.



We went out to PF Chang's on Saturday and got a text from Rachel asking us why there was no water. Turns out our water main cracked at a joint just under our front yard garden. It had flooded to the street and a couple walking their dog saw the rushing waters in the gutter and came to investigate. No one was home so they talked to our neighbors who (thank the LORD) turned off our water for us. When Rachel got home she didn't see the note, panicked, and then talked to the neighbors and figured out the situation. We just had a lot of plumbing work done last September which should still be under warranty, so we called those guys to come check it out. They said that our "galvanized steel main line" had a crack and that we could do a simple patch or replace the whole thing either way it would cost us tons, OH and it wasn't their fault, that the leak wasn't near their work area. Bull. We had Kent come check it out and the um PVC! main line was snapped because it was stressed near the joint. It looked like they had taken a pipe that was straight but needed to be on a slight angle and just make it bend a little and then filled the hole and called it a day. Yeah. So eventually the pipe just cracked at the joint and, glug glug glug, flooded my front yard. So when we called again to tell them the deal they we finally realized that they DID mess with that line but it wasn't recorded so it wasn't under their warranty. Which ended up being a good thing because Kent fixed the pipe and if he had done that and it WAS under warranty, our work would have voided it. Good news is we have water again. Bad news is the pipe being open and off for so long got dirt in the line and it clogged out kitchen sink tap, showers, and toilets. Kent is again fixing those things one by one, we should be back to normal by the end of the week. *sigh*

On top of it all we're flat broke. I'm telling you, guys, being a grown up sucks sometimes. What I'm really hating is that under all this stress I really don't want to think about eating right. I Should work out, it would probably help alleviate some stress, but I've been so exhausted from worrying all day that when I get home I just want to sleep. I didn't reach my goal of losing weight by Ashley's wedding which is in a couple weeks. I set the goal last a couple months ago and just never committed all the way.

I need to take a second and really give these things to God, not just saying I will. I know the world will be less daunting when I do. I wonder if I know how sometimes. I mean, how do you stop worrying about the things you give up? It all still keeps streaming through my mind and I don't feel any peace about anything while it's still in the air. Ay! I can't get a grip on all of this.

Hello All

I don't even know how many people will be interested in ever reading this but I have just had a lot on my heart that I want to share. After participating in Kathy's blog for a couple of weeks I have realized that I like being able to communicate my successes and struggles with my girl friends and since I don't always have time to talk with everyone, this is a good way.

This past week has been one of the hardest of my life. God has really had to crush me so that He can set my bones straight again. In the mean time I have felt broken and weak as I heal. At times I feel like I'm being to dramatic about things. I know people who are going through much more and are taking it much better. But God has never tested me like this before and I know it's because He's needing me to change. My world is going to be very different very soon.

In 42 days I will no longer work for Pinecrest Schools in Palmdale. I have no idea if I will be working at Pinecrest Lancaster, I also don't know if I will have a job at all or if I do where that next job will be. I am also trying to get pregnant. My body won't let me right now but I am also working to change that. The medication I am taking and the lifestyle changes have been shown to work is less than a year. To me this says: In less than a year, I could be a mother. Kyle is now leading worship much more often at the church as well, the extent of his responsibility is yet to to seen but it looks like... a bit more than he has now. Our financial situation is shaken and the prospect of Kyle changing careers is looking more and more probable.

My world is changing before me rapidly. God needed me to change rapidly, so He broke me so that I couldn't keep running away. I know now that I have not only Him to cast my burdens on but also my husband who has whole heartedly offered to take them and give them to God when I can't seem to. Well, i have known all along but now I am willing to give up my self, a favor God asked me for many years ago which I was hesitant to give.

I started this blog to share with others as I stretch and (hopefully) grow. So... let's see how everything turns out :)