I am finally back at home in Franklin, TN enjoying my Christmas break after a long and hard semester. It feels amazing to be able to breathe again and to just enjoy sleeping, eating great food (we’re about to have peach muffins and banana bread for breakfast), and just doing fun and random things. I’m going to start building a coffee table today, as well as a little rustic work table for the kitchen. I’ve made a few plans and measurements, but I really don’t know how they’ll turn out until I can get into the workshop and start building. Things that I make seem to evolve and change a lot in the actual process of building them.. :)

Family tradition that I’m excited about? Roasting chesnuts on Christmas day…

I am one class away from being done with fall semester 2008 (other than finals, of course). I cannot wait to be done! So close. Today was a good day. I slept really well last night (a first in a while…), and then had my last class periods of intermediate accounting, youth ministry, and cost accounting.. :) It was definitely a good day. I handed in my last project for youth ministry, and now all I have to get past is my four finals. I’ll be studying pretty hard the next week and a half.

I’m thinking of heading over to see my Opa and Oma in a little while.. I haven’t been over there since Friday. My Opa hasn’t been doing very well the last few days. He had his 81st birthday on Saturday… the doctors didn’t think he would make it that far. I’m just enjoying the time I have with him now. Prayer for my family would be great.

I’m about to hand in a 19 page paper for my Business Research Paper class… thank the Lord, it’s done. The title for the paper is Corporate Culture and Values: Ethical Decision Making for Contemporary Management Accountants. It’s also the first half of my Senior Integration Paper (SIP) that i’ll be writing my senior year.

It’s still warm from the printer…

Rock City is so beautiful right now. They have the whole place decorated in Christmas lights, and it looks amazing. I went with a couple other friends on Friday night. We left around 8:00 p.m. and spent three hours walking around, looking at the beautiful lights, enjoying hot chocolate, and spending time together. You can see the white deer that Rock City has as well – nevermind the caves, tunnels, and rock formations that Rock City is known for. It’s definitely one of the more famous attractions of Lookout Mountain, and it is definitely worth going to. The Rock City Starbucks is right across the road too…

Picture Taken by a Friend

Ok, I think I might start a series of posts about different places on the mountain and down in Chattanooga that are great places to spend time… Lookout has some amazing places in and of itself that are definitely worth going to. To name but a few – Cloudland Canyon, Rock City, Ruby Falls, Little River Canyon, the Rock City Starbucks (I’m there all the time), the gas station on the mountain (place to be – you can get little pints of mayfield ice cream for $0.99), the park (can’t remember what it’s called), Fairyland neighborhood (just a beautiful place to go for a walk), and all sorts of other amazing places…

I’ll get on that.. and tell you more specifics about each one.

Twenty more days until Christmas. Wow. I’m excited. School is finishing up here… three more days of classes and then finals. I’m ready to be done. I’m excited for home, for homecooked food, for the warm fire in our living room, for good books, for family, for friends, for sleep (oh my goodness), for amazing food (yes, again), for music, for crazy movie nights and game nights, for starbucks coffee, for cool Christmas presents (hoping for some C.S. Lewis and Oswald Chambers books…), for Christmas lights and our Christmas tree… and everything that Christmas is going to entail this year. BRING. IT. ON.

I’m back on the Five Points for the duration of the semester. Thanksgiving break was kind of a teaser… you go home, eat amazing food, spend time with family, start the Christmas music, start putting up the Christmas decorations, and make plans for the Christmas festivities… and then BAM! You get to go back to school for a lousy two and a half more weeks. Ok, I’m not that bitter, but still. I have a week and a half more of classes, followed by two reading days, and then four days of exams. I just looked up my exam schedule, and it’s actually really nice. I have four finals, but they’re all spread out… one on every day – Monday through Thursday. Click to continue »

My sister Bets and I are reading through C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed right now. I cannot describe to you how moving it is.. I said to Bets after reading over half the book outloud – It’s like everyone has experienced what he is saying but no one has ever known how to describe it or to accurately put it into words.. C.S. Lewis very simply and beautifully describes what it’s like to experience a loss and to doubt God because of it.

One thing in particular that I identified with was how C.S. Lewis described what it’s like to have someone close to you experience a loss… We empathize with them and we pray for them, but we don’t really experience that loss as they are experiencing it. I know for me, when one of my close friend’s brother died, I hurt for her… I prayed for her and was there for her. But it seemed distant. I wasn’t the one experiencing it..

It’s the same with faith. We believe and trust in God so long as things are going well in life… only when we are tested do we find out what we really believe.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? …Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief.

Those are just a few thoughts from the book… read it. It’s short, personal, and so deep. It’s one of the best books I’ve read.

I’m home now… currently sitting in front of the fire typing away on my sister’s dinosaur of a laptop… I’ve got a book next to me that I should be reading – In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz. I’ll get to it in a little while. I haven’t been able to write in a while so I thought I would take the time to write a little update. The family is scattered around the house.. a few downstairs playing the piano, a few in the kitchen baking bread and making broccoli-cheese soup for dinner, and a few upstairs.. watching 24 no doubt.

It’s been so good to be home. Relaxing and restful… School has been busy and somewhat discouraging the last few weeks. Studying and writing papers has all but consumed my time, and yet, I don’t seem to be doing as well in my classes as I would like to be. It’s frustrating and very discouraging to spend four solid days studying for a single test.. and to scrape by with a C- (cost accounting). But i’m learning, and I guess that is what really matters… I’m trying to remind myself of that anyway. As my accounting professor has so often reminded me – failures and how you deal with them are what really determine a person’s character. Failures present the opportunity to either give up altogether or to persevere and learn from your mistakes. All that to say, it’s been a humbling and learning experience… and a character-building experience, no doubt.

A few more weeks of the semester.. and then Christmas!

I’m heading to Atlanta in a few hours to see OneRepublic! I’m excited… exams are done, papers are done, and I’m pretty much cruising until Thanksgiving break. I’m so ready to be home. It’s going to be amazing.