Friendship

The greatest thing I miss, since moving back to Tuscaloosa, is having friends. Close friends. Friends I can count on when I'm going through an emotional or spiritual struggle. Friends I can talk to about my bad, or good, day. Friends I can laugh with.

Wanna hear something really depressing? I haven't really laughed while in Tuscaloosa. I used to laugh myself to tears every single day in RamCorps rehearsals while in Mobile. I laugh like that whenever I visit Mobile and Birmingham, but not in Tuscaloosa.

I miss talking to people. Me! The recluse. I miss talking. Crazy.

I've been trying to get involved in a church here called "New Beginnings," but nothing seems to stick. I love this church for their freedom in worship and honest, exciting truth in preaching. I get so tired of dead corporate worship with sugary preaching (I just wanna yell outloud "wake up people! this is our GOD we're singing about!!!), and the atmosphere at New Beginnings is just contagious. These people worship with their minds AND their emotions, and I just want to be around them all the time! Only, I keep going there and I still feel like a complete outsider. I'm going to the young women's retreat next weekend, so hopefully once I meet some girls there things will change.

I just...I don't know. I miss friendship.

Drunk guy says what?!?

Let's talk about Genesis 9.

Verses 18-27, to be precise. I'll summarize...the LKV (Leah Kathryn Version), if you will.

Post-flood Noah decides to grow a vineyard. He makes wine. He gets drunk off said wine. Totally plastered. He passes out naked inside his tent. I'm getting a Peter Griffin image right about now (Drunk Peter: "Hey, where's that Peter Griffin guy? He said he'd give me 50 bucks to take off all my clothes off!"). I mean, this is NOAH! The only righteous man on the face of the earth! His son, Ham, happens across the sight of his father passed out naked, then goes outside and tells his brothers about this. The brothers, Shem and Japheth, decide to walk into the tent backwards so that they don't see Noah naked and they lay a garment over him.

If it wasn't crazy yet, this is where I get totally confused.

Noah wakes up, sees this garment over him, and somehow figures out that Ham saw him naked. He says:

"Cursed be Canaan (Ham's son)! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers."
He also said, "Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japeth; May Japeth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave."

I have a few questions:
What does this even mean?
Just because Ham accidently saw his father naked, he and his line are cursed?
Why are Canaan and his children cursed when it was the father that made a mistake?
And why are Shem and Japeth blessed?
Why is this in the Bible?
Are these just the ravings and overreactions of an ashamed, hungover dude?
Is Noah just blowing off steam, or is this an actual prayer?
And if it's a prayer, does God approve of this prayer?
Would God actually answer this prayer? DID HE answer this prayer?

I don't know the answer to any of these. I just ran across this passage this morning and was perplexed.

Psalm 126

So, I did this Beth Moore bible study about this time last year on the Psalms of Ascent (i think 120-136), when I was going through that dreadful worry period of "What comes next?" right before my college graduation. When I got to Psalm 126, the Holy Spirit really spoke to me and got me excited, not worried, about my future. Beth made us draw a graph representing the psalm. I'll try to put a picture of it on here eventually, but it was basically "Blessings Abundant: being at UM" at the top of the hill, then it went downhill to "Yearning for what I once had," then back up the hill to "What is to come: My future!"

At that time in my life, I was thinking that the 2nd peak of the graph was maybe september or october of 2008. Boy, was I wrong. All this time I've been thinking that either I'm doing something wrong, or I'm out of God's will, or God has forgotten his promise for my future. But, God isn't late. He knows exactly what he's doing. I just don't have a concept of his timing. Never have, probably never will.

I'm redoing this bible study, because I've read through Psalms over the year and now I'm back to the psalms of ascent. Looking over that graph again, I realized that I'm not off the chart, but right in the middle. In other words, right where I'm supposed to be. Did I expect that downward slope to only be about 2 months long, when the 1st peak was 3 years long? (Ok, this will make more sense when I upload a picture of this graph).

I have something to fill in the middle valley. The first peak was "Being at UM", the 2nd peak is "My future", and the middle valley is "Transitional; Job searching".

Not ground-breaking, I know, but I was blessed this morning.

Psalm 126 (The Message)
1.A pilgrim song
It seemed like a dream, too good to be true, when God returned Zion's exiles.
2.We laughed, we sang, we couldn't believe our good fortune. We were the talk of the nations--"God was wonderful to them!"
3.God was wonderful to us; we are one happy people.
4.And now, God, do it again--bring rains to our drought-stricken lives
5.So those who planted their crops in despair will shout hurrahs at the harvest,
6.So those who went off with heavy hearts will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.

ummm

So, today was my 1st full day at the house. It was fun, actually! I watched gilmore girls, did yoga from the FitTV channel, did my bible study on the back porch, made my first batch of coffee EVER (I seriously have never made my own coffee before), did some grocery shopping, and took advantage of the amazing dvd sale at Target. So many awesome dvd's on sale, so little money. But I did splurge and buy season 1 of Gilmore Girls for only $15!!! I think it's regularly $39.99. Amazing.

Tonight I cranked up the "What Women Want" cd on the surround sound (a lot of crooners like Frank, Nat, Natalie, etc), made an amazing italian dinner of whole wheat spaghetti w/ plain sauce, chicken stuffed with cheese and brocolli, salad, garlic bread, & water w/ fresh lime. And when the cd got to Meredith Brooks' "Bitch," I sang it at the top of my lungs. What an awesome song.

Then I watched the new episode of LOST and am now uploading some great cd's from the Myers cd collection. Oh the joys of house-sitting.