My summer so far

First of all let me say MN has giving both heartaches and joys, but right now I want to leave it forever and ever because it's soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo HOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Today it hit 100 degrees!!!!!!!! Sometimes I wonder why I live here. So here is a summary of life here this summer.

1 Job lost
1 Better job gained
2 Epiphanies
3 Trips outside of MN: Everett, San Francisco, WI
7 Visits from out-of-town friends/family (Kelsie, Jones, Holtzingers, Shannon, Parents, Millers, and Millers)
1 First sail boat trip
3 Artistic experiences
1 Baby Shower

A Blessing and a Curse

I think I had my last cry yesterday about work. It was only a few tears, but a cry still the same. (Sometimes being a girl is so difficult.) The last week I've been decompressing my "issues" from my last as job. I don't take full responsibility for losing my job, but about 70% (to many boring details to explain). My roomie, Katie Pridgeon, decided to call it my Superhero Complex: The need to impact every person that crosses my path. The problem comes down to, as Katie says, "Intentions have to be interpreted and you have no control how people interpret them." (Katie is a very insightful person and I quote her a lot.) She is right and it frustrates me. I am frustrated because I'm not going to stop trying to impact people. If we don't impact people, I believe, our time on this earth has been wasted. This I know though, I need to stop allowing my natural tendencies to motivate my actions, or the way I try to impact people, and let the Holy Spirit motivate them instead.

Holidays

My first job was at McDonald's. In the summer I worked a lot of lunch hours there and I remember wondering what all these people were doing that day that allowed them to stop in at a McDs and buy lunch. It use to frustrate me because I wanted out in the world and I was aggravated that I was stuck in a small building for eights hours. Of course I was only 16 and didn'’t realize that most "“grown-up" jobs give you a lunch hour and half the people I was serving were probably just on that break.

The great thing about holidays is that just a handful of days a year the odds are most the people around you are doing the same thing you are, celebrating. Yesterday was only the 4^th of July, but at least in America millions of people were celebrating all at the same time. Going to the grocery store is more fun because everyone else is buying the same things like hot dog buns and cases of pop and red, white, and blue decorations. You don'’t feel so solitary in the day'’s doings. It'’s those few days that people tend to forget the issues of their lives and just enjoy their lives.

So other than yesterday being the 4th I have no motivation for posting this, but it'’s a favorite and one of the few things I actually enjoyed memorizing.

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"