![]() Today was the first day of college for people here. I don't go to college, but I decided to make it a productive day and work on my sister & brother-in-laws wedding scrapbook for most of it - a project that's proving to take much longer than first intended. Now, I usually can't scrapbook without some sort of background noise going on. So I decided that today would also be a Disney Day. Which, let's be real, made the day significantly better. It probably wasn't the best for the sake of productivity, since at nearly every song I stopped ![]() what I was doing and sang along enthusiastically while making wild interpretive dance gestures. Between scrapbooking and busting out into a one woman musical, I learned some things while watching these Disney movies today. ![]() 1) I know WAY more lines from these movies than I thought I did. Movies I haven't seen in years. In each one I recited about half of the lines along with the characters. Which I would say is a bit disturbing and/or obsessive, if I didn't think it was such a beautiful thing. 2) Ariel is 16. Which, they tell you that in the movie, but I never really thought about it until now. It just seems strange to me . . . ![]() 3) Time wise, the Beast would have had to be 11 years old when the enchantress cast a spell over him and the castle. They make him seem older during that part though . . . granted, the only form you see him in at that age is stained glass form. And who knows, he might have been one of those lads who just matured REALLY early on in life. But still, he always seemed older growing up . . . Also, that makes Belle around my age. Which is weird. 4) The more I really think about it, I don't really identify with any main characters in Disney. I share some traits with a few of them, but I can't really look at any of them and be like, "Dude, that's totally me". HOWEVER, I can do this with most of the characters pets. Philippe (Belle's horse), Jolly (Esmeralda's goat), Achilles (Phoebus' horse), Maximus (the guards horse in Tangled), Pascal (Rapunzel's chameleon), Cri-Kee (Mulan's lucky cricket), Hugo (Quasimoto's gargoyle friend), etc. 5) I know almost every song in these 4 movies word for word. 6) I become a different person when I sing Disney. 7) There's one song (or, at least part of it) in these 4 movies that I would legitimately like someone to be able to sing/lipsync to me some day. 8) The Hunchback of Notre Dame has a lot more mature elements that you would never pick up as a kid. I mean, there are all of those things that Disney slips in for the parents' sake that the kids don't get, but seriously . . . wow. Let's put bigotry, damnation, verbal/emotional abuse, lust, and genocide into a children's movie. Don't get me wrong, I love that movie. But . . .what? and 9) Out of all the guys in Disney, if they were real, and I had to choose one, I'd probably go for Quasimoto. Posssssssibly Phoebus. Maybe. And there you have it. The things you can learn from watching Disney with a spastic little 20 year old.
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June of 2009.
I decided that I wanted to get a group of friends together and watch all 6 Star Wars movies in a row. So we made it happen! Ish. Some of my friends came over and we began this glorious day of sci-fi excellence. It was all going fine and dandy until around the end of the 1st or 2nd movie. Let's back up for a second so you can get some context. About 3 months earlier was when I started eating gluten free. Also I happen to have Celiac Disease and am what's known as a "silent Celiac", meaning that I didn't show symptoms. However, once you go off of gluten and then go back on, or accidently get a hold of some, THEN your body has a reaction because your body has gotten used to not having it there and has started the healing process. Anyways, now that you have that information, let's get back to the story. So I'm sitting there, watching Star Wars with the guys, when all of a sudden I'm like, "Oh. uh . . . I need to go to the bathroom". So I scurried off to the bathroom, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. I had never known what a gluten reaction felt like, and I wasn't too stoked about it. Little did I know that that would be one of the mildest reactions I would ever have. Not to go into any graphic detail, the gist of that first reaction involved an upset/rumbly stomach (and all that entails), dizziness, hot sweats, and exhaustion. Emphasis on the exhaustion. I ended up being so exhausted from my little bout, that I fell asleep. On the toilet. I woke up a little while later, still exhausted. And then I realized . . . I had been in the bathroom for about half an hour, and there was a bunch of guys still watching Star Wars in my living room. Awkward. I managed to get enough energy up to leave the bathroom and plop back down on the couch, right after which my friend looked at me and was like, "Lew . . . are you okay? We started the next movie while you were gone." Oh yeah, you know, just felt like taking a nap on the can . . . I experienced the most beautiful thing ever tonight. Standing in my kitchen, having a spiritual attack, first time in a while that I felt like something was really coming on me. So I unclinched my hand and held it out, asking Jesus to hold it. And He did. I could feel His hand wrapped around mine. He walked along side of me as I went to turn off my music, which the loudness of was stimulating anxiety. Instead of turning the music off completely, however, I turned it to one of my favorite songs : Can't Get Over You by Anthem Lights (you really should listen to it below). Call me cray, but as I did so I felt Him leading me, by the hand, into the living room. He started dancing with me. I could feel the Holy Spirit dancing with me; leading me, spins and all. He knows how to calm my heart. And how to fill it with joy! I must have looked ridiculous spinning around my living room with an invisible lead, smiling and giggling like a fool. But I don't really mind much. I love that He's a personal God who doesn't just give cookie cutter remedies for things, but He knows our hearts, and He responds to each one uniquely, completely personalized for that person. He knows that my heart is in love with dancing, and that it's my outlet for so many things, so He danced with me. How beautiful is that? Also, in that moment, the enemy and demonic beings that were sent my way were silenced. They were gone. I realize that all of this might sound completely crazy, but it's one of those things that I just can't keep to myself. What a beautiful gesture. What a beautiful moment. What a beautiful image that Jesus gave. It really is a divine romance with Christ. He is madly in love with us. And He desires us. No matter how crappy we may feel. He wants to dance with us, and hold our hands, and comfort us, and walk with us, and wants the absolute best for us. That's a better romance than any person could ever give us. And that's one reason why I love Jesus <3 So I had this cat. He was my first cat, and his name was Kelcey. All black, calico/tabby mix. He was the cat who would play with our 90 pound boxer and be equally matched with him. He was a boss cat. I received him for Christmas when I was in preschool. Sadly, when he grew up he decided that he was going to mark his territory in multiple spots around the house, multiple times. So he then became an outdoor kitty.
Lew, as nice as that is, no one cares about your first cat and his urinal issues. This happens to be pivotal for the setup up of my story. It's also a very short story, so adding all of that in makes it seem a little longer. I'm a thinker. Anyways, one day we discovered that Kelcey was well in touch with his primal instincts. He killed a bird. Now, my dad didn't really care, I doubt my sister did either, my mum was a little upset because I think it was a chickadee (let's be real, those things are cute), and I was gutted. I couldn't believe that my sweet cat Kelcey could murder another creature like that. So what did my little kindergarten self do? I took it upon myself to write an apology letter to the other birds on my cats behalf. It was a very stirring and well thought out letter at that. I do believe it was something along the lines of, "sOR ry f oR Yor dEt h". It was written on a 5x3 pink piece of paper. I asked my daddy to get the strongest stapler (wood stapler) and put it on the apple tree where the birds could see it. Such a good dad, he did so. And it stayed there for at least a year, until it was all rain-washed & faded, barely even readable. I like to think that I appeased the birds on that day, and hopefully, made amends for the loss of their dear little birdie brother. Or sister. How DO you tell the gender of a bird? http://givenbreath.com/2013/09/03/fyi-if-youre-a-teenage-girl/ So this post has been spreading around FB quite a bit, and while I shared it, I feel as though I should clarify something. I like where this mother's heart is in what she’s saying, and I definitely agree with what she’s saying, too. As girls, we need to be aware of how our attire and poses, etc. can affect a guy’s thoughts. If a dude see’s you posing in a skimpy outfit, it’s probably not that hard for him to picture you naked. I struggle with that, and I’m a girl. And honestly, even though we’re of the same gender, I don’t want to picture that. Ever. It’s really not appealing to me. But it is appealing to a lot of guys, but for all the wrong reasons, ladies. BUT here’s the thing that I didn’t clarify when I reposted this article (I blame my “I just woke up” brain for this): it’s a two-way street. It’s not all on the girls. Yes, we need to take responsibility for our attire and poses, and be aware of the messages we’re sending with them and the effect it can have. However, I believe it’s also the guys’ job to be in charge of his own mind, and learn to be diligent in keeping it pure – bouncing his eyes when he see’s something that is tempting or causes him to stumble, refocusing his thoughts when an inappropriate image appears, removing anything that could cause that stumbling (music, movies, events, photos, etc), etc. Really, it’s a two-way street. Guys aren’t exempt from being the ones that cause the stumbling (One word : Speedos), and they're not the only ones who need to be in charge of their own minds when it comes to keeping oneself from stumbling I’m a really visual person, and found that I needed to stop listening to most secular music because of where my mind was going because of it; all the images it was conjuring up. The same goes for movies and TV. There were scenes in some of the movies & TV shows that just didn’t need in my mind. And some were just straight up, “Why on earth am I watching this?” - whether it was the actual scene, or the dialogue in the scene. (Thankfully, there’s IMDB, which has a Content Advisory for most of the movies on there) And like I said, I struggle when I see girls wearing skimpy clothes: low cut shirts, short shorts or skirts/dresses, low backs, bikinis, etc. It’s really easy for my mind to go places that it shouldn’t, and I hate that. Reason being, if I see someone half-naked, that's just what happens. Thankfully, God’s taught me how to bounce my eyes and refocus my thoughts on something else if any of those images come into my brain. I still stumble, obviously, but I’m taking charge of my mind and doing what I can to keep from stumbling. I gave these things to God, and He pointed out which things were safe, and which things were a stumbling block, and the actions to take to guard myself against them. Each person is different. Some girls stumble if a guy is shirtless, others don’t. Some guys stumble if a girl is wearing a tank top, some don’t. Whatever the case, we need to take responsibility for our own minds & hearts, and our own actions. I'm going to echo myself, but again, we need to be aware of how what we're doing or posting can affect someone. "One day Jesus said to His disciples, "There will always be temptations to sin, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting! It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin. So watch yourselves!" - Luke 17:1-3a NLT
Does that mean we should kill ourselves if we cause someone to stumble? NO! That would be ridiculous and utterly foolish, and it's definitely not what this verse is saying. But I think we need to realize that it is a big deal. Would you want images of you naked floating around in some dudes (or girls) mind? "The greatest thing a man can do for a woman is to lead her closer to God than to himself." ^ It goes for women too. What a great way to do that, by helping them remain pure and doing your part to keep them from stumbling. It's a two-way street. |
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