Things on my mind:

I want a baby

I need to brush my teeth

I love my roommates

I need to cut my toenails

I want a dishwasher

The apartment is a mess

I wish I was more articulate

I know this a pretty controversial topic but today in my Parenting class we were talking about spanking. Now, me personally, I think it's okay to spank your kids OCCASIONALLY, and with GOOD REASON, and ABSOLUTELY NOT while you are still very angry... calm down for a while first. I was spanked and I don't hate my parents for it and I am not an agressive person. However, I don't think that I will ever spank my kids. But anyway... we watched a video about these parents who spanked their kids, a lot. They had maybe 5 kids and they would spank them constantly. She slapped her 3 year old daughter like 5 times in a row on the wrist for playing with her food. She did the same thing to her maybe 18-month old for picking her nose. She smacked the butt of her 2 year old for, get this, soiling her TRAINING PANTS. THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE FOR!!!! One of her daughters was maybe 4 or 5 and she pulled her sister's hair and so her mom yanked on her ponytail. And these weren't just a tug of the hair and light slaps, these looked they would hurt me if I were the one being spanked that way, and I'm 21 years old. They justified it by saying that nothing else they've tried (which it didn't seem like they had tried anything else anyway) worked, but obviously the spanking wasn't working anyway. IT PISSES ME OFF that there are parents out there like that. I wanted to jump into the overhead screen, take those kids and bring them home with me.

Tonight while rushing we were all in a conga line type thing, blindfolded and walked through a field. It was weird, b/c when you're blindfolded you feel like you're about to walk right into something, but then I realized that's not logical because obviously the person in front of me would run into it first. It made me think about how we walk through life constantly (or at least sometimes) thinking that we're going to mess up and make a big mistake, but God is there in front of us all the time.

Is there anything more precious than more than 2,000 voices singing out in beautiful unison, "It is well with my soul!"

I pray that God will show me what areas of my life I have yet to sacrifice to Him. A painful plea, though I know it will result in great joy.

So the other day my roommate (DeeDee) borrowed my computer b/c her's can't get onto the school's network yet, and she looked up some racist hate group websites for a class, and then some porno pop-ups kept getting on my computer. Then later I used my computer for the same reason (I'm in the same class) and I got porn pop-ups also. Then later that night I shut my computer down. The next morning I turned it on... and it wouldn't start up... so... my computer doesn't work. So now I am using my other roommate's computer. Other than that fiasco... things are going pretty well so far this year. We still have a messy, unorganized apartment, but we're working on it. I just realized how busy I'm going to be this semester. First, there's classes until 2pm every day (3pm on Friday). Then Monday nights I'll have Lami meetings (a social group, AU's version of sorority [or however you spell it] but you don't live together, I'm going to Rush it this year), then Tuesday nights I'll have a study group for one of my classes, Wednesday afternoons I have my internship, and then I also want to do a campus ministry where upperclassmen mentor underclassmen, and then I'm going to do AUCME again, and we'll have practice at least once a week, and we'll go away on weekends. And on top of all that I would like to get some sort of job, preferably on campus... Speaking of busy, I'm off to one of three meetings tonight... later!

My main prayer for this semester is that I can get to know my friends on a deeper, more spiritual level (AU friends and SJ friends) and that I will be more open to people and be more willing to share of myself even if they don't share back. I pray that God will really use me, speak through me. I pray that I can fall so in love with Him that it will radiate through my entire being into my whole surrounding.

I'm officially going to be interning at Triple L Youth Ranch for one of my classes. No it's not paid and it's 2 hours a week, 10 weeks. It's a place where at risk teens go and stay there for 6-9 months. I'm not ENTIRELY sure yet what I'll be doing but I'm excited to see how God will use me in the lives of those kids. I'll keep you posted.