Away

Aside from the fact that I'm physically out of sorts due to illness, and I can't have my cat with me whenever, I don't particularly mind not living somewhere not where I live presently.  What I do mind is that where I'm living now is a punishment for my wicked ways un repented.

I find it extremely disconcerting that I would get counseled by two people who know very little about me or what I have put up with most of my life, or maybe just don't care, either way, try and pummel me into "not arguing" my case, to "just accept" -- just accept what?  Injustice?  Those counseling meetings would have gone a lot quicker had I just had my grief and said nothing about it except "Yes, sir"  "Yes, mam" and "Hallelujah"

The anger I feel is not caused by pride.  A person can be just as arrogant as I am and not be burning with anger.  It is possible.  Circumstances cause anger.  The horrid ways people often / sometimes deal with it is caused by "what comes from within" (I guess there's no point in examining the odd nature of that particular phrase, especially since Jesus paid for our "decision" to manufacture evil...)
I do concur that I have not been as gentle and dismissive of my pain instead praising God for the opportunity to be blessed (whatever that entails, who knows?)
I have not BEEN molded into the image of Christ.  I don't know how to mold myself into the image of Christ.  I've read Ephesians and Phillipians etc.  I don't know what beyond that I'm supposed to do.  I do know that I've been molded as children are SUPPOSED TO BE molded BY MY MOTHER, who was nowhere near gentle, was not even loving or caring in her words toward me 70% of the time, or anyone else for that matter.  My sister accepted Christ at the age of 15 or thereabouts and so she's been molded closer to Christ's image than I am.  Even she hadn't taken much less than 10 years to fully shed the ways she'd learned prior to turning 15.  And she never adopted the ways of our mom because she was always too terrified from repeated traumas of the past to stand up for herself.  I didn't cower in the corner, so I'm the bad guy, she's the "sweet lady".  I guess that's why God says to bless those who persecute you and just don't bother putting up a fight.  You can't win.

Friday - Sunday --- woah

I re-swapped my RokuTV (TCL)...mistake.  I knew it was a mistake, if I recall accurately.  I just ...idk...didn't care, I guess...then my conscience grew....I had it for...a week?  Two?  idk...  I got rid of it Friday night.  Listed it on FB Marketplce Thrs.  Rather good turnaround.  I in turn picked up a pretty basic monitor for $20.  It works, and I had $40 remaining.  Using the rest for a DVDNETFLIX subscription and bought a couple $10 CDs.  Goes fast.  Anyway....  

Then my sister got all crazy about something I had said a week or two ago...she sent me this accusatory tude laced email and then I responded without gentleness, and my brother in law spent like two hours exchanging texts with me, essentially "You're wrong and why are you thinking otherwise?"  After telling him everything I had to tell him, the last 3 or 4 texts I'd sent him basically consisted of "Quit texting me."

Then an hour after that nonesense he offered me a ride to the grocery store.  He picked me up and took me over there as if nothing was wrong.  My sister is still apparantly refusing to speak with me.  :/

And now I'm awake.  Just sitting here.  Trying to figure out what music to listen to, I guess...checking email waiting for Google to respond to a refund request for some movies I'd rented and haven't yet watched.  

I saw GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE Wednesday (finally).  I think I might have to watch it again.  I wasn't terribly impressed.  I liked it more than the 2016 reboot.  But it seems like it was missing some of the magic of the original.  Honestly, I don't think Ghostbusters is an idea that has much to it.  The comics and cartoon series are OK, but as far as a movie goes, the 1989 sequel had more of the magic of the original, albeit miniaturized.  They didn't HAVE to make a sequel, but the demand was there, so that was that.  I think my enthusiasm for Ghostbusters is pretty much gone.  Sounds really sad...it kinda is...I spent so much of my life thinking it was a part of who I am....It really sooo isn't.  

UGH The Ventilation....did I do that??!?!!!

 Ayg.  Sorry for my downcastness a few days ago.  I don't think I've ever met a single person that I can't say in some way or another is not an asshole.  Some people are less assholish than others.  But I don't think anyone is exempt from that description.  Not to my knowledge...well, I take that back....my friend who sits in during counseling I wouldn't describe that way.  I really wouldn't.  And, my pastor, and the 3 other pastors I've had while attending other churches, I would not describe as a--holes, but that's only based on what I've seen of them.  I'm sure they have their enemies.  Or, at least, I wouldn't be surprised if they do.  I've certainly caused a lot of hair raising myself.  I'm a thorn in the side of my sister and I'm a pain in the ass to my brother in law.  My mom is physically disabled, so I'm for the time being on fairly good terms with her, since she decided to be nice to me 2 or 3 months ago..  if she were able to do anything, I'd probably be driving her bokers too, asking her for help and being nitpicky like I am...

But anyway...
I really don't remember spcifically what I said in that blog post on 11.26, and I don't claim any of it was not true.  I implore anyone who thinks poorly of my example of Christianity that it is not about The Christian that you / we should be grateful and rejoicing over.  Hope and Joy do not stem from The Christian, but THE Christ!!!  HE is our hope.  HE is our calling.  We are BEING molded to fit HIS image, but we are not HAVING BEEN molded to that fit just yet.  I sure as heck haven't been

The unseen forgiveness

 I feel like I've been punished for not packing up my stuff and saying "bye" to my mom years ago, same way she did to the people who abused her for her whole childood.  She "forgives" this scumbag brother she has, but she hasn't set eyes on him in years and she's still afraid of him.

  People insist that you need to forgive people that do wrong to you, or else, as one of the elders of the church I attend puts it, Jesus doesn't even know who you are.  I sent my mom an email telling her, in common modern day English, that she was a stumbling block to me, and continues to be one and that I can't be expected to be following an example that she nor anyone else has ever provided.  GoshHELL!, I got my ass torn out good for over an hour on that.  I got accused of breaking like 9 different commandments in the New Testament.  My mom was guilty as FUK but nobody cared about that.  Nobody cared about anything except the fact that I was opinionated and felt like I deserve love.  "No", I can just hear it "Nobody deserves love or anything good!  You deserve what Jesus got!"  Which is?  3 hours of Hell?  Followed by an eternal stay in Heaven......uh....sure....yeah.  I don't even know why I'm typing all of this.  Nobody reading this cares more than the people I've encountered in real life do, I'm sure.

The f''d up case of Jack & AZZ

 ARG!!

I KEEP FLIPPING BETWEEN BEING THE EPITOME OF BLASPHEME AND BEING A HALFWAY ACCEPTABLE MEMBER OF THE BODY OF CHRIST.
I managed to go a couple days w/o sinking AS FAR as I'd been, then today, I'd been just CRAVING, mentally dripping pornographic imagery......finally am over it, mostly, but not without clawing my way into the devil's lair.  I cancelled the Accountable2You subscription.  All that service does it keep me from wasting time on porn..then some days like today I find myself mentally and physically insubordinate.  This booklet claims that sex drive isn't the issue, and I suppose if I'd have thought of it, I could have opted to take a cold shower...in the middle of winter....I'm not sure I would have.  I wasn't seeking a way out.  Wrong or right, my body feels at home in these states of appetite.  Ug....

Anyhow.  I still got a good stretch of road ahead of me.  (sigh)

I'm sorry for any discouragement I'd been in my previous posts talking about this like there's no hope or whatever.  I know there's no hope for the past.  But there is always a possibility for a brighter future.  And whatever lay ahead, Jesus is greater than anything I will ever do or abstain from doing.

Oh the wonder

 SanctusReal singer man says in his song"These Things Take Time" "why eyes when faith is how I see?"  Yeah WHY THE HECK do human beings have eyes???  Surely faith alone would keep us from stubbing toes and falling off cliffs and tripping over ramps and rocks....

discourge

 I really hope to God I did not overtly discourage anyone with my posts from a week or so ago.  I'd talked through some of this stuff with my pastor and basically realized I just need to keep eyes looking toward the Goodness of CHRIST JESUS, and quit letting doubt storm up my mind.  He didn't exactly say it that way, but I just realized how pointless it is for me to even be consumed that way, raging on and tossed about.  I do need to, for my own sake, at the very least, quit engaging with sinfulness.  I do hope forward to Jesus and The Holy Spirit enabling me to find motivation to do that.  A large part of it is I just don't feel enough.  I have a mild dose of it when I'm NOT tempted, and sometimes when I am tempted I fight it, but that's usually only because the temptation is only just beginning.  I was telling a friend from church after he brought forth some maybe kinda sorta helpful audio recordings for me to listen to, that, in conjunction with what the pastor was telling me as we were going through all of this, that I need to ASK Jesus for strength / power to fight the sin.  Because I've been noticing intermittently that it tends to build up as the day goes on.  I also believe that asking Jesus is a form of praise to Him, for the power that He gives us to TRULY be more like Him, where it actually matters.  I just need to pray also that I keep these things in my mind and that they marinate in my heart through the night so I can conquer this weekend.

 

Please Jesus, help me to keep The Beauty of Your characteristics and Your deeds, the essence of what I know about You, to be a strength to my feet, a lamp to the path before them.  Please remind me and please continue to persuade me to ask YOU for help and to PRAISE YOU for Your promise to be our help in a time of battle.
Thank You, Jesus, for the VICTORY that You've prepared for us.  AMEN.

Kicking and flailing

 https://ghostbustersnews.com/2021/10/29/ghostbusters-afterlife-was-secretly-being-developed-in-2016-same-year-as-the-franchise-was-rebooted/

 

I really have to scratch my head when I hear people give apropos to the 2016 GB reboot.  The director of Ghostbusters: Afterlife seems to think Paul Feig did something monumental just by casting females as Ghostbusters.  He says Feig "broke down the door".  The sexist trolls who hated GB '16 before it was ever released are not gone because of Paul Feig.  And I do think the movie would have done better had it not been for them but I don't think it would have been a "success" per se. I think the film would have made another $100 million had sexism not been an obstacle for many people liking the movie, which on paper would be the same #s as the first Ghostbusters film.  That's more than what the OG made, but that's in 1984 dollars.  The amount of Ghostbusters grossed at the box office with inflation factored in is closer to a billion.  GB '16 would have had to make at least $500 million -- roughly half -- to even compare to the original in terms of box office performance.  It didn't make half of THAT.  GB2 made apprx $500 million which would have been enough for a sequel a lot sooner had the owners of Columbia Pictures changed.  Between Bill Murray's bitterness about GB2 and Sony not wanting to pay as much as The Coke-A-Cola Compnay had promised in the contracts that they had drawn up... it just took a really long time to happen.  If Harold Ramis were still alive, I'm not even sure GB3 would even be happening.  Jason Reitman even acknowledges that the story of GB:AFTERLIFE solidified in his mind after Harold Ramis had passed.  If a GB3 were ever going to happen, it'd have to be without Bill Murray, which is fine by me but a lot of people would probably refuse to see it based on that alone.

I'm not meaning to say that box office performance necessarily proves a movie to be good.  Certain genres of film are naturally going to have a very low performance.  A movie like BASKET CASE or HEAVENLY CREATURES is not going to plow through the records book.  At least not any significant records book  You might see some bizarre personal plea to the world such as those films were breaking records for like most tickets per screen on such and such weekend...but nothing like Top 10 of x year or whatever.  Exceptions abound, obviously....it's hard to say why a film like BEETLEJUICE can be so successful yet A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE was a box office bomb.  Surely, the subject matter of A.I. is more relatable than that of BEETLEJUICE.  ..
  And then there's just plain oddities like THE POSTMAN, which I think, being a futuristic "what if" kind of movie, is going to have naysayers because of a variety of things that people just don't see eye to eye with.  Videohound's review indicated a sense of befuddlement over the idea that a mail man could in some way be interpreted as a symbol of patriotism.  That's just one example. I could probably think of more if I looked harder.
I guess it's quite possible that GB '16 is in its own way on par with THE POSTMAN.  I just don't see it.

Brighter

 !!!! 
Had a counseling session a couple hours ago and was reminded that JESUS CHRIST paid for my sins and that my PRIMARY FOCUS SHOULD BE ON HIM!!!!!
How sweet it is.

FEAR some God, idiot me

I don't know what to do.  I feel myself constantly falling back on God's grace, being disobedient and swaying to my own inclinations and not submitting.

I'm not even sure I understand how this whole dynamic is supposed to work.  Am I supposed to FEAR God, like, "I'm gonna kill you if you don't quit this nonsense" or is sexual sin just like any other sin i.e.: you can be forgiven infinitely?
Hopefully The Lord takes this confusion in consideration before He decides on the severity of the consequence.................

gratitude at the grill

 So far, I'm aware of only ONE cure for sexual immorality --- and that is, gratitude.
I don't know if this is unforgiveable or not, but if I were being cut into pieces while alive, I would not be thanking Jesus.   I would be EXPECTING that something better than it lay beyond the horizon, in the after-life, but the pain would not be something I could FIGHT.  "You have to fight the pain!"  Paul lived exclusively for God, even before he was an apostle.  He did out of self righteousness, basically taking whatever pent up sexuality he had and replacing it with violence.  He met Jesus, and saw how beautiful He is, and his sexual desires were the last thing on his mind.  Also, Paul was not lazy.  He didn't have time to be lazy.  Between his devotion to God, and his very physically demanding life, he was able & willing to do everything it took to pursue holiness.  And I realize there are lots of other people in modern day Earth who for whatever reason love God more than I do and are eager to serve Him, regardless of the cost.  I don't understand how "The chains are gone".  Every time I hear a song that talks about that, I just go "WTH?"  Versus in The Bible that talk about that, I'm just like "Ok..", and just keep reading, because there's usually information that's at least instructive and comforting, or at least one of the two.  I'm going through counseling regarding this, and I just don't forsee this being something that talking over is going to help.  This is not a theological term paper.  This is the reality at hand and much of The Bible deals with reality secondhand.  We know that objects fall when not held by anything.  The Bible isn't a means to figure out the fabric of time and space.  The Bible isn't a means to diagnose and cure mental illness.  There is some very good instruction in there and if followed will lead to a prosperous life, overall.  But the stank of humanity, which varies from person to person, my stank being especially foul given my ungrateful brat self, JESUS CHRST DIED FOR ME TO LIVE LIFE ABUNDANTLY and I just reject it, what the foul is wrong with me???  That's how it is.  Instruction only goes so far.   And there's a little snippet somewhere in The Bible, proverbs, I think, that talks about the kind of person I am, who has instruction and it hasn't changed anything.

Ghostbusters 3

 ARRG!
Still not wrapping my mind around people who lambast a sequel for being exactly what it claims itself to be -- A SEQUEL!
GBII was a perfectly fine sequal to the 1984 film.  It did exactly what it was supposed to do -- deliver up a 2nd helping of "Ghostbusters"
GBIII obviously is not able to simply just deliver up another supernatural episode involving the comedic talents of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, etc....  The original cast are going to be appear in this new installment and they might even don the equipment they're known for, but the idea is to keep it coming and in order to do that, they need to introduce new characters.  So, that aside, GB3, in its' "placating of old fans", as some buthead on the interenet accuses the film of doing, is succeeding at being what it is -- a sequel. 
A sequel CAN of course be a completely new film independent of anything that came before it.  That is not an impossibility.  But that's not why SONY is funding a 2nd sequel to Ghostbusters.  The goal is not and never has been to start a new franchise or create an entirely new intellectual property.  Seriously, ppl!!!!

HONOR, Love and Gozer's pet rat

I don't get how how people express an interest in seeing Bill Murray's character's misguided declaration that "the franchise rights along will make rich beyond wildest dreams" come to fruition.  Dan Aykroyd's character, and Harold Ramis', were both knee deep in the study of spiritism (how am I spelling that wrong??Rr) and neither of them had high hope for the business venture that Venkman (Bill Murray) had sprung up on them.  Stantz (Aykroyd) is shaking his head in disagreement the whole time Venkman is declaring how the franchise rights will bring them great fortune.
GHOSTBUSTERS is told from the POV that ghosts do indeed exist but they are not lurking behind every other house.  The idea that theyd be able to make a decent income off of paranormal investigations and eliminations was a very long shot. 
I was thinking earlier that if GHOSTBUSTERS had been a true story, it would point to GOD (THE God, not Gozer The Gozarian) being in control despite the spiritual turmoil that was apparent in the film.  And I was thinking the presence of a gender fluid supernatural force that thinks of itself as a God and isn't declaring itself to be Satan, I was thinking "How do you insert that into any kind of narrative that is true?"  And honestly, **if** GHOSTBUSTERS had been written from factuality, I would simply have to concede it's one of many mysteries.  Bottom line is there are things that UNFOLD - IN - THE BIBLE ---- things that are not ambiguous or otherwise in need of decoding, but are plainly explained as part of a narrative ---- that people like myself and most everyone I've met simply cannot explain without at least appearing to contradict some facet of commonly understood truth.
For instance, is it still possible to summon spirits from the dead?  In the Old Testament, it was.  King Saul summoned Samuel after he'd departed this Earth.  But people suspect that OT saints were being held in kind of a vault until Jesus came.  Maybe that's more or less accurate.  Maybe only people that go to Hell are summonable by the dead. 
But that's an interesting series of questions that pertain to doing something that God flat out told His people not to do.  If you look at the passage, it's basically Saul wanting information that Samuel isn't able to offer.  Saul asks Samuel whatever it was he was wanting and Samuel says something to the effect of "Why are you bothering me about this?  I told you all of this was to come about and how to avoid it.  But you never listened to me"  That's got some larger implications.  Basically, it's one of many many MANY examples of mankind expecting to find a cure for its' ailments.  Saul wanted to be disobedient to God and hateful toward his fellow Hebrew, his successor, of all people, mostly, and still find satisfaction in life.  I can attest to this: You can't be happy in life and be disobedient to God.  You can be happy in life and not be a Christian, yes.  You can be tainted with sin, and be apathetic about it and carry on like it's 1985.  But if you are called by God, if you have accepted His call, and you haven't turned your back on it, then you can't find satisfaction, at least not fully, in seasons of disobedience.  It just doesn't work that way.  The tried and true hymm "Trust and obey" I do believe states it with utmost clarity: "There is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey". 

Samuel did right by God in telling his brethren, including Saul, what God wanted them to know.  Samuel was dedicated by his mother for the purpose of hearing God speak to him and proclaiming what he'd heard.  That is a good example for all of us to follow, to not hold back in speaking of our beloved savior, the precious gift of salvation He has given freely to all who trust Him.  But the story of his after-life presence, although it does have questions that I'm sure more than just me would prefer to have the answer to, it is above all a tale of a man desperately caught up in disobedience to God Almighty thinking he can find a way out.  There is no way out.  This life will always have a promise of greener greens, higher highs and greater greats.  Sometimes those promises have something of a hint of value to them, but there is nothing of equal value that one can trade for peace of mind.  And chasing anything, be it information, stuff, whatever it may be, is counter-productive to any receiving of peace.  I can attest to this as well.  I mean, there are things worth chasing obviously.  Pandora internet radio isn't going to just happen.  Someone had to toil at mass producing computers and then lobbying to free the internet, and then of course someone had to start Pandora internet radio and keep at it until technology caught up with everyone including Pandora.  As for myself, I do have to enter it into a "search" bar or type the whole thing into the address bar and hope I don't mis-spell it and walk into a virus...which does indeed happen to me sometimes.....But I would much rather just chill out and listen to Pandora than constantly be sifting through full length albums trying to determine if any of them are worth buying individually and figuring out why they aren't and trying to excuse myself from things I don't like about either myself or my lot in life or the nature of commerce in general.  Truth be told, only a handful of artists made money pre-Spotify.  Now, they all make money, but most of them are lucky to make enough to live off of.  However, it is more equitable so really my main issue is my asinine persistence in buying music CDs instead of just chipping in a reasonable amount to the music I truly like.  So many ways to do things better.  And it's worth it, IMO.  Staying in the same tarpit through life is just abysmal.  It's one thing to make it shore and then fall into another tar pit.  A guest preacher noted that there's a fundamental wrongness in the children's Sunday school song about climbing Jacob's ladder.  And I agree with him, the idea is not to sneak into Heaven.  The idea is, trying to be accurate here, I might be falling on my face ---- the idea is HONOR.  I've been reading Romans chapter 13 a few times over the last couple days.  We should honor those who are worthy of honor, those who have taken on the challenge of resisting temptation and are 8 to 10 or more, coming along victorious.  We should honor government.  We should honor the governments' clerical workers.  But we should LOVE one another.  Bros & sis' in Christ should love each other, as Christ Himself loved us.  We should love everyone else as well, as one of the other places in The Bible the pastor pointed out a couple weeks ago, it's not the same depth of love that we have for each other as the bridegroom but it's more akin to honor; rather than debase them or belittle them or humiliate them, we should respect them for the potential that is within them and their inherent value as imagebearers of God, and we should communicate what we can about God to them when opportunities arise to do so, but we should not have inward affection toward them the way we do toward other members of The Body.

Anyway........that wasn't a very strong closing sentence, but I'm kinda half needing to go to bed and I'm out of things to say at the moment......

SLAPPED

 

RED MARK for feeling bitter

RED MARK for seeing a correlation to my sin and other’s preceding behavior

RED MARK for taking an interest in & action on my continual accumulation of red marks

RED MARK for thinking there was a way to be an acceptable human before God’s people and have these red marks on my face.

cursed

 My hands are behind my back and over my head
I have no gun.  I have dropped my sword
Do with me what you will.  Accuse me.  Condemn me.  Throw me aside forever.
Nobody will care.  Nobody ever has.  

I have tried to reason with.  I have tried to contend with.  I have used my pen as a sword, and I have even used my tongue as such, in lieu of friends or allies to commiserate with.  My lack of ability to forgive is exposed.  I have made myself a target for attempting to gain sympathy, for not settling into condemnation, for hoping to be accepted and loved.

I wish I were dead.  I wish I were never born.  Someone, maybe many, have been blessed by my hands and speech.  I am cursed.

Thy is Dead, so is "The End"

 Found this book called A SERMON FOR THE WORST MAN ON EARTH by Charles Spurgeon, who lived and died roughly the same time as the dinosaurs and William Shakespeare.

The DESCRIPTION of the book says Spurgeon shows that, among other things, "a sense of sinnership confers no right to mercy."
First of all, does ANYTHING confer a right to mercy?  Secondly, if it DOESN'T confer a right to mercy, how is that relevant?  Does it confer a withdrawal of mercy?  If not, then what the hell is the point in making such an observation????

Ug.

the pain cont'd

 RRRB
This accountability software being de-'d has made it feel easier to delve into filth.  Go figure.
I really wish I hadn't done that.  Arb.

Got to thinking about all the times I took communion over the years and how few if any of them I was taking it an unfit manner.....or however it's said...idk...  I don't even understand the word "communion".  I don't feel closer to God eating the church appointed wafer than I do not eating it...I don't feel the weight of Christ bearing my sin more then than I do any other time.  Ug x indefnt..............................:/

it's a pain

My pastor suggested that sexual imoorality / lust was one element of greed.  I don't know if I agree with that.  When a person gets the urge to have sex, trying to satisfy that desire is not greedy.  It's wrong, duh, God says so....it just doesn't resonate with me.  I've been trying for the past couple months -- not consecutively or successfully -- to live by that rule of thumb and I had an accountability software installed for that purpose to help be reminded to keep my mind off that facet of reality so that I wouldn't get hot'n'bothered and go searching for t'n'a.
I just sunk again, if that's not already obvious.  I don't really have a legitimate reason except I'M TIRED OF THIS!  Obviously I shouldn't be.  Any emotional or intellectual opposition I have to keeping off sex until/unless I get married is just me not submitting to God.  There's no excuse for that.  I feel like me being born evil and not being completely stripped of my evil nature serves as a sort of excuse, but it isn't.  

Ug.

Deed End

God resists the proud.

I am insanely arrogant.  I don't know if I'll ever be humble.  I think I have faced such stagnation in my spiritual growth -- and hence doubt and fear etc -- because of that.  Regardless, God has not abandoned me.  I have made progress as slow going as it is.  I think God is making a grand statement here.

God hardens who He wants to.

I think God has hardened me in response to my pride and other detestable behavior.  I need to keep seeking God's counsel.  I need to increase my worship to Him.

I don't believe anyone is beyond saving.  I do think continual sin makes it less likely that salvation will arrive.  I could be mistaken about that.  But at the moment it seems like a solid enough theory.

Jesus did day He will return and that upon His arrival the world will be judged according to its deeds. He also says that Sodom will be judged less harshly than the unbelieving Jews.  I don't think our good conduct is forgotten by Him.  My bad conduct far outweighs my good conduct but I have made an attempt throughout my life to do what is right even though I also do what is wrong and I also don't do enough of what is right.  I think maybe my silver lining of goodness is what at least partly compels God to not completely forsake me.  Like I said, maybe I'm totally mistaken.

It's all too political

 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-social-media-censorship-bill-law-governor-abbott/

 

I haven't read the actual bill/law, so I have no basis to complain about it, but the paraphrasing on this article is somewhat troubling, although, from what I can tell based on the details provided, it does sound like they put together a thoughtful bill to put into law.  It really is false advertising to allow users to post content and then not tell them WHAT their content can't consist of or "shouldn't" consist of.  I personally haven't had any issues with conservatives I know having their stuff being removed, but then again, I don't keep track of their posts like they themselves quite possibly do.  I just know I see a lot of conservative political stuff from the people I go to church with that have friended me on Facebook, and the only person I know who has any complaints about his stuff being removed is my biological father who posts some rather dumb stuff.  I wouldn't be surprised if he unknowingly posted a few outright lies and saw that they were removed.
Donald Trump loyalty aside, the conservative party has done a good job at stabilizing this country.  A lot of their policies are based on the promotion of the "freedom" to be selfish and encouraging wealthy people to be as wealthy as humanly possible (on the pretense of "rewarding" them as if taxation has anything to do with reward vs punishment) and I think some people in the party are just downright callous, and worse.  The liberals / Democrats are, like most people, a bunch of spoiled brats.  The difference between a liberal and a conservative is that conservatives use the idea of "Freedom" to justify and protect their greed and selfishness, because the only thing they want that they don't have is power.  Of course, that's the politicians.  The voters who elect these people are not all rich.  Many of them are hopeful that someday they will be rich and many of them are just voting them in merely because they advocate for the unborn.  It doesn't matter what their policies for the already born are.

 

I do think this whole concept of Medicaid for all and free college tuition is just feeding on the spoiled bratness of humanity.  Granted, there are places where the predominant cultures are still determined not to let their children grow up arrogant and selfish, but in the US, that is not the case.  There is good reason to vote conservatives in congress.  It's not because their policies are better.  It's because their policies are just as absurd but shaped differently.  Two political parties in office that can't agree on anything are not going to screw anything up.  Generally speaking, anyway...

But the idea of not discriminating against someone based on their political views is rather short sighted.  In some nations, cannibalism is legal.  Although it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere, there was, for about a month or so, a "political" movement to allow child sex.  ANYTHING, regardless of how despicable it is, how grotesque or just **wrong**, it can be justified by attaching the word "politics" or "political"

with strength....

 

https://activated.org/en/foundations/the-word-of-god/bible-studies/depending-on-god-vs-self-effort/

I thinkI finally figured out what all this "not in your own strength" actually means.

Nothing is done by "our own" strength.  God enables everything to be.  There are things that any human being can do on any given day, and some of those things are necessary when trying to do what is right.  Most of the work involving fighting sin and putting off the old self etc. is not God supernaturally leaning in and saving the moment.  Except for the fact that God holds all things together.  Inasmuch as I can walk toward a sin, I can fight the temptation to do so, but without humility that leads to faith, why would I even bother?  If I have no humility, I have no faith.  If I have no faith, then all this talk about "right vs wrong" is moot.

I guess there's a loophole in that somewhere and that's where the phrase "not in your own strength" comes from.  I don't know how to "depend" on God.  I spend my entire life in dependence.   I know I am not entitled to have this computer, or the house I live in.  I know it's a matter of politics as to when or if it gets taken away, and politics is always changing.

The biggest hurdle I have in my walk against sin and toward God is that I just don't "get" it.  I know that, in a sense, oggling a beautiful woman is lecherous and akin to bottom feeding, which is a life for pigs that people plan to eat.  God wants a better life for us, one where we have our OWN wife, our OWN happiness, and we don't have to step on toes or cut throats to have it.  I know that's the ideal.  But then some people end up homeless, unwillingly.  Some people have no wife (me included).  I've never even had a girlfriend.  Heck, I've never felt close to anyone, although since I've been going to church, there's people I feel as close as I think I'll ever feel to anyone.  I just don't feel a connection to other people.  Someone was asking me if I missed someone who was attending church but had since deceased, and I was telling her that my mom is the closest I've ever felt toward another human being and if I moved to another state and settled there and got some semblance of a normal life, I would not miss my mom.  If I moved to another state and remained isolated for 95% of the time like I do now, I would probably feel lonely.  That's not because I miss any body in particular, that's just what happens when one is isolated for long enough.  My response to this would be to pick one: be a Eunich for the Kingdom of God or keep responding to wood by grabbing it and pulling it out.  That just seems counter intuitive.  That feeling in and of itself is basically a God given urge to commit sin UNLESS I'm married, which is not a God given event.  Which brings me back to my initial point of confusion --- I, for one, have far more strength than I am accustomed to dispensing.  It is strength that I HAVE.  Inasmuch as ANYONE's strength is possessed by the person who exerts it or reserves it.  God could be at any moment adding strength to this vessel, but I have no reason to assume he's not taking strength away.  Paul kept asking God for help with something or other and God told him "My strength is made perfect in weakness".  So God literally does provide a shortage of strength.  Of course, Paul was just about the most selfless human being in the world for much of its history.  He did things that I highly doubt I would ever do, although Paul was in a different position than I'm.  Paul literally MET Jesus.  He didn't reach out in fatih to Jesus and receive The Holy Spirit.  He MET Jesus and THEN received The Holy Spirit.  And Paul was raised in the strict guidance of Judiaism.  And he took it to heart.  He wasn't pretending to worship God for his own appearances.  He was literally a mis guided Jewish man.  His love and devotion for God was real.  He was simply missing the fact that JESUS IS THE MESSIAH!  I, of course, read about this, and remember it being read about, and it's pretty cool stuff, but it's not the same treatment I have received from God.  I'm not dare saying I deserve that.  It took apprx 30 years to give consideration to the possibility of laying my life to what The Bible says.  The first step is kind of like "well, duh"  It goes like this: "I don't determine what is true"  I think abou that and I'm like "How could someone be so stupid to think anything else?"  And I knew that, to an extent, but then I had another thought:  "If Hell is real, I have been warned and cannot feign ignorance".  At that point, God revealed Himself to be a lot more kind and genlte than I'd given Him credit for.  And when I say "Revealed", i mean that, through a combination of thought and reading, I was able to see past the blood and guts and see that God has given instructions and guidance for life FOR OUR BENEFIT, and that, despite our constant tendency to try to re write physics, He offers forgiveness and continues to offer forgiveness for our trespasses.

"Shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound even more?  May it never be!"  There's a part of me that I can see having that wicked tendency to give into sin because I know it's paid for.  I don't know if it's exactly what Paul was describing.  I do try to limit the severity of my sins, the duration and the qty.  I've probably been doing that more so since I had begun receiving counsel from a young man at the church i've been going to for the past year or so.  For a ridiculously large chunk of my walk with Christ I was spending probably 6 hours weekly online looking at filth.  These days, I try to avoid looking at outright garbage, but a couple times over the past month I found myself severely relapsing.  The first time, maybe slightly over a month ago, it lasted almost a month, maybe closer to 2 weeks, way too long.  The 2nd relapse only lasted a day, maybe not even that long.  So I do see the fruit of that man's counseling taking shape, even though I'm not determined enough for his liking for him to see a benefit in continuing to counsel me.  But I honestly think he did all he personally could.  So it works out.

The End

Preacher asks "What IS! the chief end of man?"  like everyone already knows the answer.  The END of man is disbelief.  If I weren't watching a recording of it I'd be tempted to...say something....not entirely sure what but I'd probably be too sheepish to actually say anything audibly....idk.

He's talking about social media.  He compares it to a screwdriver.  The internet is basically a means of transport.  Instead of driving to your friends' house you can interact with multiple friends in a variety of places simultaneously.  You can purchase whatever you want and have it w.o necessarily needing to transport via automobile.  You used to have to buy each chunk of music etched on a physical substance and go a store to buy it.  The internet--- it'll take you places.  (It may already have.)

wrong, was I--I was

 I went way overboard with my blogpost from a few(?) days ago.  Please forgive me, to anyone I soured emotionally with it.  Forgiveness is required of me and the person God put in my life certainly deserves that even if there were exceptions to the command to forgive.

a tangled web of evil

My mother will always think her life is more valuable than mine.  She will always despise and snoot over me because of the "murder" I "commit" and the arrogance (bullshittedly referred to as "pride" as if I have a damn thing to be P R O U D ***OF*****) I embody and my overactive impatience, and, above all else, the fact that I 

treat her in accordance with and don't reward her for
her embodiment of those very same things.

When she commits theft and / or fraud, she wails in condemnation against NO ONE except the person who has enough backbone to TELL HER SHE'S WRONG.  She accuses me of "You just like to argue" and then condemns people for stating any opinion that she didn't pre - approve, even when the opinion she's arguing with is very similar to one she not long ago pre approved.

I know I don't deserve to be treated as if justice is a concept that matters to anyone.  Jesus endured THE MOST injustice and did not scold or condemn those who orchestrated and enacted it.  I don't see myself in that.  As an elder of the church once said, that should be a dead give away that Jesus does not know me and that I will be cast away from Him.  I have no desire to "seek Him in His word".  I have read The Bible.  I've read many section of if various qtys of times.  I don't LIKE reading.  "Well, then do it even when you don't want to"  WTF kind of bullshit?  Who does something that they DONT' WANT to do????  Is God a kind and understanding father or is he "provoke children" to negativity like He commands His underlings NOT TO??

oBVIOUSLY all this thick smoke I'm choking on is me repeating what i sow.  Beyond that, I don't feel as gung ho about committing to the notion that "I don't know Christ" as other people do.

How can it be?

It really saddens me that THE BIBLE gets lumped in with every other religious propagation and then make a career out of  their passion against it.  People like Dawkins and Sagan... I know The Bible cannot be scientifically proven to be accurate.  Much of The Bible is basically The One True (allegedly) God telling His people what He thinks they should do.  Some of it is examples of people who do what He thinks they should be doing.  There's a few pages of poetry giving hope of insight into the condition of a person who wants to live as The One True (alleged) God calls mankind to live.  There's very little, if anything, in The Bible that stands alone in its sufficiency.  The Bible, as we who are Christians read it, does not have a section of cliffnotes.  The closest thing to that is Paul's letter to the churches in Rome titled ROMANS.  God didn't lay it out like that from page 1 onward, because the JOURNEY, no matter which routes we take, we're going to encounter dead ends and breakdowns.  The Bible is meant to serve as a guide to that journey.  Some days you may pick up The Bible and turn to some random spot that seems out of context.  So first it helps to read the whole thing, and if you have sucky memory, you might need to read it several times back to back, but after you've read it once or twice, generally, the whole thing applies to itself.  You can read one passage that mostly talks about a situation that doesn't necessarily apply to you in your everyday life, but one or two sentences speak directly to your heart.
Buddhism and Hindu ism or whatever it's called, and even Islam, and many other religions all have some truth to impart to those who are learning how to live, but, to my knowledge, no religious text other than The Bible really addresses all facets of life.  Our relationships with each other, our preparation for life with God, even our relationship with animals and how we shouldn't hang too close to our feces (even though He didn't say why like "It's got germs on it!"), ya know, EVERYTHING! about HOW to live is included in The Bible.
I guess there's no point in saying much else.  I probably won't change anyone's mind........

"I can MAKE THAT 8!"

 (shaking dice)

SHA-WIIING!
Assuming I wake up and go about tomorrow without any drastic changes in ability, I will have spent apprx 8 hours this week volunteering.
THANK God for the work He's done.  WE ARE the hands and feet of The King.  Such a sweet privilege

the confusing layers

still  failing to FIGHT against sin.  I'm still finding myself not really wanting to.  I hope and continually ask God for a different reality.  Maybe I'm too quick to "change the subject" after doing so.  Maybe I have too much doubt.  Maybe I move on too quickly to some other activity and fail to soak in the GOODNESS of His willingness to help me.
Ug.  Well...to the best of my knowledge there is tomorrow..........where I'll be trying to serve God and PLEASE GOD, ACCEPT MY SERVICE AS UNTO YOU AND INFUSE ME WITH YOUR SPIRIT SO THAT I MAY BE A GOOD STEWARD OF THIS VESSEL YOU'VE BESTOWED UPON ME.

Commute

 Well....my second Biblical counselor, it seems, has washed his hands of me.

 

 

I ended up with two Biblical counselors because one guy in the church was getting ready to graduate from college and he needed test subjects, basically
So.. ya.  He told me I had to be committed and...I'm not.  So...the end.

I do need to be more intentional about Bible reading.  I intend to write out my thoughts on what I read.  I'm intending it to be daily. I don't feel in control of what I end up doing.  I'll just leave it there.  I don't feel like trying to convince anybody of what and who I am.

3 steps forward, 2 steps back....daz how IB rollE'n

 well.....I managed to keep from gazing into the depths of sin 2 days out of the 5 days of this week (so far).  I sunk Sunday afternoon, Monday night and again very early Wednesday morning.  Gosh.  Talk about making up for lost time :////

Alrighty.  God still has 1 point over Satan.  Not a very wide margin of victory, not the kind He deserves.  I should be more faithful to Him.  I hope.

bluetooth keyboard

 typing this trying out my bluetooth keyboard.

so far so good.  still can benefit from getting used to.

hopefully i'll be able and willing to type using this if I feel inclined to say something that I don't feel at ease enough typing with touchscreen.

It's MOVEMENT!!!! HE'S ON THE MOVE! YEA!

WARNING - kinda gross.  I'm not the emobidment of holiness I should be.  My mind goes waaaay off the straight and narrow path onto some pretty dark and sometimes just downright obscence places and sometimes for too long a time.

The good news is I went SIX DAYS without indulging into them "gratifying the desires of my flesh" (I'm using "flesh" in a literal sense here, not the ambiguous manner of speaking that you might be prone to interpret that in if you find out "Well, the Greek word used actually means...")

SIX 

I know, I know. Like "Seriously?  I haven't done that ____" in decades!!  You're just now at the SIX DAY mark?  Dude, you've been going to church for 10 years now and you're STILL  a pathetic sonofaflugga"

Ok, so I'm still growing.  LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS of room for improvement.  

But compared to before I acknowledged God --- every day --- AT LEAST 7 days a week (usually)
After I came to recognize God, I think maybe it went down to 6 days a week max.
After I got more burdened to be more proactive against this sinfulness, it was like 4 times a week.

Since I've been getting counseling from a young man whose more mature in the faith than I can expect to be,
---- it's been down to like 3 x a week.  The previous week that ended slightly over a week ago (today is a Monday), it was down to TWICE(!)

I did succumb to the temptation yesterday.  THAT I am by no means proud of or exclaiming.  The fact is I went SIX DAYS without doing so.
My aim is to make it AT LEAST 9.  Hopefully I can stretch it to 10 or 11.  YO!

GOD IS ON THE MOVE!!!

"destroooooy!"

 

I personally don't think Michael Jackson's 1991 album DANGEROUS was worth a #1 spot on any music chart.  It was a good album.  It was perhaps even a GREAT album.  It did a good job at giving Mr. Jackson a singer/songwriter kind of outlet while at the same time being bombastic and flashy enough to be commercially viable while also being in line with the then-current musical trends, perhaps more so than it should've.  

However, it is LIGHT years ahead of the album that people look to as the PRIME - example of music consumers change in taste.  The album that "famously"/"infamously" knocked Michael Jackson's DANGEROUS off of the #1 spot on the Billboard album chart.

I can't say the changing musical tide was necessarily a bad thing.  Lots of good music was being successfully well marketed alongside Nirvana's 1991 breakthrough album NEVERMIND.  Sponge's 1994 album ROTTING PINATA, Soul Asylum's GRAVE DANCERS' UNION (1992), the first 4 albums by Counting Crows, and then of course the countless seminal emo albums, many of which gave me a small sense of belonging back in my final year of high school and the years i would've traditionally been in college, before I turned my attention to God, years later.

Most of the music I like probably would have existed in some fashion or another with or without Nirvana.  HOWEVER, with Nirvana, and more importantly, the FAME OF Nirvana, music that I probably would never have known existed became very difficult to ignore.  Green Day's 1995 album INSOMNIAC probably would have been a cassette only release available only in record shops nearby where the band is from, wherever that is (I may or may not look that up later).  Green Day took the plunge into major label recording because of Nirvana's example.  I mean, it's not like I would have been destitute had I not heard Sponge's "Plowed" or Live's 'All Over You", or Bush's "Swallowed", but then again; when I get to thinking about it --- I saw a movie, well, most of it, from 1986 titled RIVER'S EDGE.  It was about a bunch of misfit kids whose loyalties become divided when some of them start wrestling with their conscience, considering what course of action to take when one of their friends ends up killing his girlfriend.  Those kids LIVED OUT the destructive lifestyle that is common in bands like Nirvana and Green Day.  Not only did they do things that were harmful to their health, but their whole mentality was on the cusp of being sunk forever.  Some of them had already reached that point and the characters in that film ranged from 11 to 19 years in age (apprx).  I'm 37 and I have, statistically speaking if you just go by health data from recent history, another 50 years in my life.  My head is not forever sunk, at least too far to be recovered, I don't think.  Yes, I have some bad habits in my thinking patterns and my ideals are a bit warped, even though I have an opposing ideology to contend with which intellectually I find to be far superior, but I do have an ever present sense of optimism that has kept me on guard toward the possibilities and the promise of what life can be and should be.  I can't and often don't do anything to make justice in this world, but I do believe it is not impossible for people in the positions of power to do so and I truly am flabbergasted that they don't, but in the end it all comes down to habits.  One mild vice can be an encouragement for others to take that vice to an extreme yet uncharted.  I stand guilty.  My point is if i did not have an outlet to safely explore "the wild side", I don't think I would have been safe.  I think I would have been lonely and desperate to find a sense of "real"ness in the company of people such as those in RIVER'S EDGE.  It's also possible that I would have simply been disassociated from everything I know, more so than I am already as it is.  A lot of melodious pretty songs came out in the 1980s, but most of it was ultimately stuff that I don't resonate with personally.  I hear stuff like "Always Something There To Remind Me" by Naked Eyes or "Shattered Dreams" by Johnny Hates Jazz, and I don't connect with it emotionally.  It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, but songs from when I was in my late teens/early 20s, stuff like DREAM TO MAKE BELIEVE by Armor For Sleep and THE FORGOTTEN ARM by Aimee Mann (who has had a tough as nails time getting the recognition she should even with the alt rock tide of the 1990s), stuff that really struck a chord with me and actually caused a WHOOM to my psyche, rather than just a ringing of ear candy, probably would have been a lot harder to discover had it not been for the crescendo of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that got the world talking about alternative rock.

Really? NOTHING??

 There's a number of Christian songs that have lyric(s) such as "This world has nothing for me"...I really wish people would quit presenting those as worship songs.  I know God is not in the wind or the waves, nor is He limited to the charactaeristics of gold, cows, or cow-shaped gold and we should do whatever it takes, individually, to avoid cherry picking God's characteristics when we worship Him.  To not do so, one is at risk of violating the 2nd commandment.  True, we should also help others with their spirit-centered endeavors, but to idealize a complete disregard for all that God has given us is almost as blasphemous as idolatry.  The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the music we knowingly hear, the people who warm our hearts, the epic tales we read about, it all is a gift from God.  Yes, they are all stained by sin.  If God justifies us, the ones who are responsible for this sin stain that effects everything in the world, why does anyone choose to reject what God has given TO US???  Yes, we need to keep in mind that this world is fading away and regardless of when that finally happens, we are not going to be here for a very long time at all.  Life seems long because of impatience.  If you look down the road past a point where you can't see and aren't focused on the view in between, you are at risk of colliding with oncoming traffic.  I honestly don't think there's anything fatal about being apathetic about God's Earthly creations.  Salvation awaits anyone who loves God, but I do find lyrics such as "This world has nothing for me" better suited for private listening.  There are verses in scripture that do make it seem like Jesus wanted us to forsake everything about the world except our neighbors and The Holy Spirit, but it can also be interpreted that Jesus wanted us to pay attention to Him.  People walked up to the Almighty Savior and started marveling TO HIM AT the beautiful buildings in Jerusalem.  Jesus wasn't arguing that the buildings were NOT beautiful.  He was making a contrast about the buildings and the person being spoken to about the buildings.  He could have been self exalting and said "Hey, doofus!  THIS IS THE SON OF GOD ALMIGHTY YOU'RE TALKING TO!  I'M ALWAYS GOING TO BE HERE!  THESE STONES AREN'T!"  He took a gentler approach, which I find admirable, even though I've been known to be more like Rush Limbaugh in the way I talk (thanks to my mom, I'm not arrogant enough to accept a weekly paycheck for doing so although I once was, thanks be to God that I no longer believe I would do something like that...except maybe if that were the ONLY other way to have any income.....but even then...idk....the heart IS exceedingly wicked and also deceptively so.  People often think better of their character than they have any business doing and I try to avoid making bold claims such as "Id never___"   )

Aaaanyway.
Kind of a small topic especially considering my absence.

...sry :/

HOMEWORK (book2) Galatians 5: 16 - 24

 

May 26

Scott's counseling on this passage was quite illuminating.
The Apostle Paul was basically saying that if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law, but you will be better off and so will everyone else if you follow the leading of the spirit.  Obedience is not required, but it is EXTREMELY beneficial and nonetheless destructive.  I think people who are not saved are less likely to become acquainted with Jesus if we ignore the spirit's leading.  I mean, I know most people are just going to fall blindly into a pit because they simply don't care, at least not in a good way.  A lot of people do care, but they care in a scornful and disdaining manner, so as to resist God's will for their life and run to the arms of death.  That's unfortunately how things are.  We are therefore to pray for our enemies and bless those who persecute us.  It won't work with everyone and sometimes they'll need to witness the miracle of Christ at work in His people over and over to really appreciate it or even recognize it.  We must submit.

But it really is amazing that our acts of vileness, our moments of searing anger, our sexual folly, our moments of gluttony, do not cancel out the LOVE that Christ Jesus allows God The Father to have for us by His constant intercession on our behalves.

THANK YOU LORD!

May 31
Well...haven't been doing my homework as instructed, obviously...
The first segment of Gal5:16-24 is kind of confusing.  It says "walk by the spirit".  Egh.  I don't know.  I keep getting confused by these instructions.  Jesus paid for all of our sin yet the New Testament adds instructions galore.  I've heard people talk about disobeying God's commandments like you're not a Christian if you sin.  Saying things like "Well, you don't even have a God if you're just doing whatever you want"  Like....surre.....Why does God say that He will give you the desires of your heart if "whatever I want" is so damning?  Yes, I understand sin is evil and God hates it.  I also understand that I am not God and I never will be God and I will never live to the standard of Christ so long as I live.  Physically, I am capable of that.  If I took God's commands and I adhered to them as if He IS God, MY God, my commander in chief and everything beyond and along it, like a 20star general who isn't secretly a traitor, yes, I would never sin.  If I did, it would be like once every 5 years or less often.  You can't dish out criticism like that and take yourself seriously without being downright dishonest.  Ok, so maybe Charles Stanley has reached this point in his life where sin (not just sexually immoral acts, which apparently sometimes gets abbreviated to "sin" so that it doesn't sound so ...pornographic, I guess?) is so appalling that he just never engages in it.  As for 99.9999% of the world, I don't see that playing out.  Yes, the Christian's fruit will grow as he goes, but there is no indication in The Bible of what the extent and frequency of that growth is to be.
AAAnyway.......talking with this guy from church has really been helpful at getting that rhetoric off my heart.  I don't see much improvement this week compared to last.  Maybe a 2% upward tick in goodness, but I don't know if it's even that much.  It might be like 7% worse than it was the week before.  idk.  I haven't been watching X rated hardcore stuff, but I've been dabbling in movies about people that meet and go wild over each other for x period of time until whenever.....idk.  I'm not proud of this by any means, but I don't see a way out that I would consider amicable.  I know sex isn't everything, but it really seems like the more I resist, the more it burns into my heart.  ug.  I do need to rejoice in the distance I've created between me & hardcore smut, because I was simply engaging way too much with that and it was time consuming and also drawing out the temptation to physically carry out some of the stuff I was watching, which is not something I am in a position to be messing with, unless I were to concede to the "pro-choice" movement that abortion isn't that big of a thing......of course, "that big" is a relative term.  Christ will forgive any sin.  Murder isn't any worse than a host of other sins.  Murder is basically the absence of a person from this Earth.  A baby is just a person who hasn't accomplished anything, good or bad.  If two non believers have a one night stand and conceive a child, and all the big hearted Christians, who have asked in faith and received abundantly The Holy Spirit, are being called to deal with things other than this baby whose life probably hangs in the balance, the world would probably not be at much of a loss if that baby was aborted.  I am not saying God wouldn't care, but I'm saying if people will bad choices that will have huge ramifications against humanity, that means one of two things 1) The End is near 2) God stopped it from happening.  There's also maybe a third possibility that might be too complicated to even begin writing about.  I'm not even sure I'm getting what I'm saying effectively communicated as it is.  And this is all just speculation.  The Old Testament when it talks about the penalty for murder, and how to distinguish a murderer from someone who was just being a tad careless, it does insinuate something along the lines of the hypothetical scenario I described, but society is a very complicated web of words actions thoughts and feelings and many of them intersect in ways that we can't fully understand in the present tense, much less try to predict.  The example I gave is a very bare bones basic example that probably isn't even accurate because of the extent of how bare the bones are, to continue the metaphor, but the idea that things are happening and are going to happen that God knows about, and can manipulate IF THEY ARE WILLING.  Obviously, God doesn't need to get express consent from His people, and we, usually not having the slightest clue how our present circumstances advance God's kingdom (or not), we can't say we would say "No" if we knew what was really going on and how it makes perfect sense when it's all over.  But there are many people who just don't care.  Their hearts are hardened and they have no willingness to get to know God or even OF God, and have nothing to give to this decaying world except more decay.  If there's 1,000 Christians (extremely low number, just an example,k?) who are spread over 2 large counties in a medium sized state in the USA, and there's 9,000 people who are just blindly walking off the cliffs, and there's 7,000 people who want to hear the word but might not even know they want to hear it because they have no knowledge of their ignorance (?!) --- those 1,000 people all need to be ON FIRE for God, absolutely committed to serving and laying down their life at any opportunity in order for all 7,000 people who are ambiguously pro-Christ to be saved by the hands of men.  God might intervene on their behalf regardless, but we have no reason to assume that just based on what The Bible says.  Jesus does say that we will be judged according to our deeds.  So if anyone out there is doing what they "know" to be right and not just flaking it, then, I hypothesize that God will step in and rescue them, but again, we as Christians cannot rely on that scenario.  We must step up!  I must step up.  I'm not much good to anyone at this point tho.  I have sinned.  I still need to request forgiveness from My Heavenly Father.  I'm sorry, Lord Jesus.

JUNE 1
My evil desires got the best of me and I broke out into total savagery.  Not sure if the Ever Accountable software picked up that, but I'll have to wait and see what becomes of that.  I need to quit this nonsense.
I wanted to take a nap but my dang rib is loose or something.  I almost went to the emergency room, but my mom and my sister talked it over and decided it's PROBABLY not an **emergency** but it's something a doctor should probably look at and see what can be done if anything.  If it's a broken rib, from what I know, there's not MUCH they can do...but maybe they can help me keep from furthering the damage so that someday it'll heal.  I fell the other day just basically walking on this sidewalkless Earth......can't even be safe just taking a freakin' walk.  I don't even know what caused it  I think I basically just tripped over my feet but I don't know if there was a semi-halfway decent reason for that, like I was trying to avoid moving toward a car or if I was just so lost in my thoughts that I just wasn't paying enough attention to where my feet were....idk..
One good thing for sure tho, I definitely won't want to have sex in this state.  One point for celibacy, one point for THE UNBORN, and point for...endurance or whatever the motto "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is referred to as in The Bible...maybe it's not referred to in The Bible...idk.

Anyway......
ffmm
Uh...yeah.  I suck.  What else is new?  idk.....
I feel like a fake for saying further, like "I'm sorry".  I don't feel uplifted.  Saying "Thank you Jesus" just feels robotic.  They're both true, but those coexisting statements don't really run over well out loud individually.  As far as I know, there's no phrase that encompasses both.  "Please, Lord, may this sin be put to death"  I guess that's one way of wording it.  Idk.  I actually prayed for forgiveness etc. before I started writing this.
hmmmmmmmmmm.......idk.  I guess that's it.  I should probably talk about other life stuff in a separate blog post.

JUNE 6TH

Up until Friday, and again, this afternoon, I was doing rather well with my mental celibacy.  I'd gone all day Wednesday, Thursday and most of Friday....not a huge improvement over the norm, but still....eh...
I really hope I can keep from sinking again on Tuesday.  If I could go Monday Tues Wed AND Thrs, that'd be soupppppur.  But if I can at least go MT&W, that'd be...something....ish...
Idk.

JUNE 8TH

Failed again.
RRRR..........and I'd just been doing rather well, reading two chapters of Isiah, getting all in the spirit of it..........but I guess that was like 6 hours ago....or 4...not sure what time that was...
I really have no idea what to make of Paul's sympathetic statement about doing what he doesn't want and not doing what he wants etc.....based on how vehement he is about sexual sin, it seems hard to imagine he's talking about that....but on the other hand WHAT Is he talking about?  Is he saying he feels hate when he wants to be all about love or that he doubts God's goodness when he wants to trust God with all his heart?  (sigh)  I know those are things I should be more concerned about.......still feel like I got a lightyear to go.  I really would be surprised if I live to be 70.  I hope I can at least get to a point where I care more about that than I currently do about things such as this greedy desire......(s).........

Weekly recap Friday 21st

 Uyyy
I don't know how to mark my improvement.  Maybe things are slightly better than the week before.  Maybe.  It seems like I did go 2.5 days if not longer without delving into porn, but then I was rummaging through Amazon Prime trying to get the dark corners to the surface....since they don't make it very easy to find the kind of stuff that is audacious enough to really capture my attn.
eeg.  I'm sinking, obviously.  I wonder if I'm just a black sheep, destined to not follow His Voice.

I know I'm not showing the hallmarks of Godly sorrow for I have not been zealous and active in repenting.  I don't know what I'm missing.  I think I understand as much as I "need" to understand...maybe it's a lack of faith.  Maybe I'm just too lazy.  Regardless, I might not make it.  I don't know.

Shut Up & get to work

I seriously need to quit talking.  Nobody wants to know what I'm thinking or feeling.  I need to "prefer others" as "think of others as more important" than myself.  If I'm not acting on God's behalf, nothing I say matters.  I need to quit burdering my family with texts and emails.  Nobody cares.  They don't have to.  They got a whole universe beyond me to think about.  I need to just make do with what I have and quit asking for rides, asking for help acquiring this or that. 

sick venal ...all the animals at night

 eeeikg

Fudd'd up again today, and I knew what I needed to do to avoid it but I was an awful distraction of determined and lazy....determined to stay on course and too lazy to pick up the crap I'd left on my bed.  At some point not long after the climactic finale of my immorality, I finally did have to pick up the small assortment of things that were on my bed and move them so I could take a 3 hour nap  ug.

I mainly came to this URL to note something I've noticed about my brain, but I figured I'd confess my failures too..........not entirely sure why, I just don't feel like it'd be truthful to continue without acknowledging that.  I guess one benefit is if you want to avoid "immoral men like Esau", you have more information to help you decide about reading any further...

aaaNyway,
I've noticed my memories of the past few years have been kind of blurring together.  Like, it seriously seems like I ordered Elevation Worship's HERE AS IN HEAVEN while I was living in Loganville (Georgia), but according to the order history on Amazon, I was actually living in Lawrenceville.  Like, I remember sitting against that white stone wall that I had in my basement at my desk asking the seller to cancel that order and reading their response, but that email is apparently a combination of multiple memories.  I don't know how they got mixed up as they did, but that's apparently what happened.
I reckon my memory will only get worse over the next 5 years :/

Glorified coasts

This book I'd been kinda half heartidly "studying" observes that "Nothing coasts toward order".  Yet I coast.  I don't know any other way, really.  I don't feel the strength to pull up straps and walk boldly forward.  It seems like the answer is always "Ask God" but of course I'm writing this instead.................Made to sound so stupid simple, yet it's nothing of the sort.  Jesus half brother James said you cannot have any doubt when asking God for something.  Yet I have no reason to believe things, individually or collectively, will be this way or that way.  Yes, I know we as human beings are to blame for that.  What else is new?  Nothing.  Jesus came and elevated many sects of society, one of which I grew up in, and nothing has changed.  I live in a society that has had Jesus well before I was born.  Jesus didn't change the United States.  He changed the nation of Rome and continues to push on through the world but nothing in my life has changed.  I have to ask, but what kind of jerk asks for something EXPECTING to receive it?  Does The Bible not say "God resists the proud"?  And that's GREATER grace(!).  It would be just plain murdering Jesus for me to expect that my prideful self will receive anything I ask of God.  So what?  I ask God for humility?  How?  "Humbly"?  How does someone as arrogant as I "humbly" do anything???  If I'm not temporarily transported to another vessel, how do I void myself of pride so that my prayers are not resisted?
My go to Pastor these days talks about when The Trinity looks at me He doesn't see all the mistakes I've made but sees Jesus.  Well, how does He know I'm a sinner if He doesn't see my sin?  I'm guessing what he means by that is he doesn't count my sin against me but instead imputes Jesus' righteousness to me.  In fact, I think we've had that conversation before, but the intended meaning doesn't come through when I hear it said the way he typically says it and he's constantly using that exact explanation, as if to say God is blind or willfully ignorant or something...neither notion seeming Biblical to me, at least, although specific scripture indicating such escapes my mind at the moment unless you refer to Old Testament scripture, where things get a bit vague, as there are VERY few people in The OT that God even suggests went to Heaven.  If you merely go by the text, it'd seem as if Adam & Eve went to Hell.  I personally can't say if they did or not.  It doesn't seem to me like they did, but who am I to conclude such a thing without any doubt?

Hi Lites and Lo Lites

 Well.....................................................................
My determination is still kinda "meh".  I don't know if I'd call myself complacent or what......just..idk.
About ... 2 weeks?   Maybe a little less 

ago

I signed up for this site that enables people to connect for casual sex.  I really don't forsee it happening any other way.  But anyway.  Yesterday I deleted that account.  I was arguing against doing it in my head because I had paid $15.00 for 3 months access and after I continued thinking about it, I decided it's money out, it's wasted, and if it's not wasted, it's even worse.  That means I've been using my money AND My time and the temple that God has allowed me to be for evil purposes and I've already dishonored God with all 3 of those, but....as far as masturbation goes, at least I can kinda claim ignorance since The Bible doesn't say anything against masturbation.  As far as lust goes, that could be considered a defiling of the body, but I don't think lust defiles the body anymoreso than the body already is defiled by the presence of sin that is already within every human being.  Yes, looking at erotic cinema and pornography films is definitely not a good idea.  I consider that a dishonoring use of my time and money.  And the "self abuse" that goes along with it......ya....that's dishonoring to God but I don't think it's AS dishonoring.  Paul refers to becoming one flesh with a prostitute.  I fail to see how masturbation accomplishes the same thing.

AAAAAAAANyway.
I've been doing better than I was the week before last, but I'm still not where i should be, physically and mentally.  It's a long crawl out of the gutter.

HOMEWORK APR 29 (ongoing)

I missed yesterday.

2nd Corinthians CH7 vs. 9-11

 

It seems like he's basically expounding on what it says somewhere else in The Bible about coming to God with a clean conscience, basically saying that your regret should keep you from continuing the same manner of life that led to those/that feeling(S) of regret.  This passage refers to "sorrow", but is not so much about the feeling but about the consequences of it.  If it bothers you, either the problem is you or it.  If it's it, either deal with it or get rid of it.  In this case, it's kind of a matter of both.  We can't get rid of sin's temptations and presence but we don't need to walk up to it.  I need to do a much better job at not greeting sin with a kiss like I sometimes do.

PtII Sunday May 2nd

I apparently didn't have enough Godly sorrow...succame to temptation.  Had managed to keep myself together for roughly 72 hrs.  I noticed after I finished my plummeting behavior that I was rather sleepy.  I didn't get very much sleep last night.  I'm about to go to bed now but felt I should complete today's entry.  I did ask God for His forgiveness, acknowledging a lack of due respect for His presence and all it entails.  I asked that He instill a healthier dose of that consideration and that I have the strength to continue this week without the same or similar episode.  

I really do want to rise above this.  Of course, I say that now.........Only God truly knows my heart.  I seriously don't know who I am.

 

 PtIII Monday May 3rd

I must say; I haven't felt particularly tempted.  Well, ok, ok.....a little tempted.  Just a little.  Nothing significant.
I slept a good sleep last night.  I went to bed kind of early and woke up kind of late.  Granted, I did wake up briefly a couple times, but still .... I must've got AT LEAST 9 hours of sleep when the norm for me, when you subtract half an hour for each burst of wakefulness that occurs during most nights, is about 7 hours.
I haven't been especially mindful of God.  It's not like my mind has been void of Him, but most of my day has not been devoted to Him or things that would have an obvious stamp of God's approval.  I haven't been singing praises to God or serving up meals to the homeless or talking up God to a non believer or anything of the sort.  I've just been pretty much doing what I can to enjoy the day without delving into sin.
I thought about going for a walk a couple times.  It's weird living with strangers.  On one hand, I don't feel it's fair to them to show distrust to them by locking my door but on the other hand, if I get robbed, it's my own damn fault and I don't even know who else to include in the blame or to hold responsible.  When I head downstairs, I typically don't even include my keys & wallet.  Oops...

Anyway.  Ok, ok...so; Godly sorrow---- I don't know what to say about it.  Seriously, my brain is coming up empty.

PT IV - MAY 5
Ug.  Missed TWO (out of 7) days.
Um...well.........I obviously don't have enough Godly sorrow.  I still struggle to find the sense in this whole business.  I don't fully understand the severity of my sins.  I know some corners of the pornography industry are involved in human trafficking/kidnapping etc., but you could say the same thing about THE UNITED STATES....and you could say similar things about the fashion industry, and sports......there's always a dark side to everything.  The thing that many Christians focus on is marital brokenness, and really, I don't plan to get married.  I don't think I would be a good husband.  I'm not saying God is wrong.  I'm just saying it's really difficult to take Him at His word when the people he spoke with were largely coerced or forced into marriage by their parents and community.  They didn't have to consider "Gee, how do I get to know this woman so I can maybe have sex with her (after I marry her of course)".  Marriage was a done deal not long after puberty hit.  I realize there's probably more to it than that, a lot more.  I think the fact that we won't even have gender identities in Heaven is one of the reasons God commands us to lay aside our sexual appetites.  It's a difficult series of notions to latch onto when they're so at odds with my feelings and the logic of it is so "eeh..."
Hmm.  As for Godly sorrow and how to develop it more.....idk.  I know I failed today.  I need to go further into my walk with God and be more IN His Word, like reading it, taking a small break to maybe have some water, go back read some more, and just do that until something worthwhile comes up.  I really don't do much through most of my days.
........sounds kind of ridiculous that I haven't been doing that already.  What am I stupid or something??(!!!!)

The big bad ......

Just when I think it's safe...........I get comfortable and slip soooooooo
I need to DO MORE BETTER!!!!!!!!!  I don't think this is what Paul was talking about when he said "the thing that I want to avoid I end up doing anyway" (paraphrasing)  It would be easy for me to think that's what he was referring to, just by my own experience but then he curses everyone who even considers this type of shik.

:(

Feeling a little more Jesus-y

 THANK JESUS for a new day, a new opportunity to rise above life's challenges.
It's still a bumpy ride.  I haven't been great at avoiding lust etc. today but compared to yesterday and the day before, I'm a champion.  I actually listened to some Praise/Worship music on Pandora radio for about 20 or 30 minutes.  Still need to try to read some of HIS WORD.  Seriously, for real.  And yet i'm here writing this bs
Anyway.
Life truly is better when one's mind is on The LORD JESUS CHRIST.  Even things that don't seem all that great are better through JESUS.

ayyg

(huff)
DAMN THIS SIN!  I feel like a two-faced liar.  I keep wanting to fight this, but then I let myself give in like I've been doing for the past couple days.  I need to stop this.  I know I should.  I know it's right.  But I forget.........and I end up being pulled into it.  And then I stick around like gum on a shoe.
ggg

so much waste

 I keep thinking "I need to quit wasting time!" but then I'm shot with the sad reality that everything I perceive as "good" ultimately IS a waste of time and anything that ISN'T a waste of time, while I agree is good, is either far too cumbersome to carry out or is not attainable either due to material resources that I lack or simply a lack of knowledge.
Daily Bible reading is a little bit of a challenge, but more so than that is the KEEPING HIS WORD in my heart, which requires multiple trips into His Word.  Most people have a reasonable excuse for not being in His Word throughout the day, but I am literally doing nothing except an occasional good deed (like this afternoon for instance I'm helping distribute food to the poor) or blissing out to music or outright sinning (see yesterday's entry) or reading His Word.  Then there's a huge chunk of time I spend trying to either bliss out or sin, and I end up doing a little bit of both, and compound the matter of waste into all the worse.

Ug.

no closer to

 Still just coasting along, hoping something will change.
I went for a walk.  Came home.  Ate lunch.  Couldn't think of anything to do that I wanted to do except have sex and watch porn.  I failed at both.  And I don't even really care, honestly.  I'm glad in a way, even though it makes no real difference in terms of my scorecard.  I'm still a detestable creature in God's sight.  Maybe it'll be enough ammo to keep away from this stuff for at least the remainder of the week.  idk.

 

ug.

 

 

"nobody does it that way"

I find it interesting that so many people exist, yet so few of them seem to own any one particular album.  Ok, ok -- let's just forget for a moment that "owning" music is a worthless pursuit.  Back when music was being sold without questions of utility or morality, you could often hear about a small handful of albums most years that sell 5++ million copies.  For example -- the 3rd highest selling album of 2002 was Avril Lavigne's LET GO, a nostalgic one for me personally.  It has sold - all together - 16 million copies throughout the world.  Let's look at US domestic sales and suppose sales of used copies are included in that.  Let's say 20 million.  

According to the US Census beer-o's website, the US population (nobody wants to do a citizen count...), as of 2019, was well over 300 million.  Let's say there was a bit of a population jump between 2004 and 2019.

250 million sound like a fair estimate?  I think it was more than that.  But let's just suppose....

20 million people (give or take) bought LET GO by Avril Lavigne.  That is less than 10% of the entire US population.
You might say "well, she was only the 3rd best selling.  Two other artists far surpassed that"  Ok, so let's say 20 million copies of whatever bile the Backstreet Boys churned out that year sold 50 million.  100 million people bought the album because used copies don't count.

How do people who criticize boy bands escape being assassinated by lynching?  You'd think of that 50% someone would be not only vapid in their appreciation of art, but arrogant & crazy enough to do something like that.

Anyway.
So basically, every GOOD piece of music that sells is bought by weirdos.

I keep hearing people talk about other people as if they know the personal lives of each and every other human being.  "Nobody looks at the nutrition facts"  "Nobody listens to that"  "Nobody says that"  "Nobody buys that"  My mom swore up and down that a camera lens for a SONY camera would sit in my Amazon storefront inventory for years and years because "nobody buys cameras anymore"  Yes, an increasingly small % of people have reason or want to buy a camera.  That does not mean that NOBODY buys cameras.  In fact, I'd suggest that the only reason MOST people HAVE cameras is because cell phones come with them.  Before cell phones, camcorders were not something that everybody had.
And people keep saying CDs are not worth buying because "nobody buys CDs"  Yes, they have shrunk in their usage.  They may or may not continue to do so.  They have year after year for over a decade shrunk in usage.  Cassette tapes were the same way.  Guess what?  They're making a comeback.  So is vinyl.  CDs are like rich people.  Everyone on the planet can be rich, but most of them will only be so temporarily.  It is only a very small -- but nonetheless existent -- % of people who will stay rich throughout their duration of stay on Earth.  That analogy is very abstract but the truth of it is quite evident when you dig into it.
anyway.
...
Just writing this down because I was envisioning a possible argument with someone who tends to think about things that way.   rrr

"Is it reeeeeeally that bad?"

3PM on Friday afternoon --- Not my brightest moment.
I got finished with a counseling session yesterday at 4:30PM discussing how downright evil sexual sin truly is.
I got to admit, I'd shook off temptation multiple times from then to roughly 3PM.  (it's now 3:30 ish).
I concocted a logic that most would probably disagree with and I'm not sure how convinced I am of it;

A) The Bible does not forbid sex on film
B) Sex on film depicting extra-marital sex or sex between people who should not be married (same sex-marriages, incestuous marriages, animal/human unions...) is a record of wrong and should not be applauded, in either body or spirit, for the body is where The Holy Spirit dwells and works within Christ's children.

So..........
Hmm.
I didn't exactly follow that logic completely.  I did watch a married couple, but the husband I think was unable to fully satisfy his wife, so he hired a more capable man to give her a more thorough satisfaction. 

Anyway.
I didn't even go a whole day :(
I'm not even entirely sure when I had last ventured into that sort of thing.  It seems like it's been 3 days +/-, but it probably hasn't.  The days go by so slooooooooow...

Alrighty.  Time to wrap up this shame piece and go crawling.
Oh, also -- I seriously did not get enough sleep when I FIRST woke up, but I did go back to bed and get another couple hours of sleep.  I'm not sure why I'm so tired  I did turn on my overhead fan earlier because for some weird reason it felt really warm in here a couple hours ago.  I probably should not have it on.  ..........I may be weird in this regard also, but fans just make me sleepy.

"punishment" vs. "discipline"

People talk about the difference between a punishment and discipline.
Just get this -- when I say PUN ISH MENT --  I mean PAIN!
Yes, you're doing it "out of love" if it's a discipline.  So what?  Does the pain feel different then?
PRISON is pain.  SPANKS are pain.  THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT will be painful (probably more so)
HELL is is also painful and cannot be made comparison to because nobody who is around can testify about it.  The Bible doesn't talk much about it except to say it's a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, which is also what Earth is, depending on who you talk to and when you're talking to them.

 "God disciplines his children" (paraph) ---- It is good to know the reason why God hurts us, and someone who is loaded with love for everyone and everything can totally ignore the first hand matter of pain but that's not me.  I cannot say that I am void of "what's in it for me?"  I think anyone who says they are and directs others to be likewise is a complete liar and a hypocrite.
Yes, we should be willing to sacrifice (at least) some of our time for the greater good.  And when I say "Our time", I don't mean "We created it"; I mean "WE OWN IT".  Gifts are not owned by their givers.  Any such gift I don't even want.  If it's not mine to freely determine what to do with, then keep it! A "gift that you might want back someday" is not a gift.  It's a loan.
God does technically loan us what we have.  But that's only because everything in this planet we live in is tainted by the same sin that dwells wildly within us.  Anything we could possibly want and more is waiting for us in Heaven.  The best music, the best sculptures and paintings.  It's all there.  My collection of Ghostbusters (TM) toys are nothing compared to what God can fashion.  Of course, The Bible doesn't say that's the reason everything on Earth will be taken from us and destroyed at some point............

Day 5 of my new living arrangements

 Hmm.  I'm kinda getting in the swing of things.
Haven't been on my best behavior.  Been rather unwise in regards to sexual purity.  I seriously need to get a grip on myself.  RRrrr.  It just seems so impractical.  Jesus spoke His words when people had wives just handed to them.  Nobody had even the slightest excuse to forgo marriage and just philander.  I don't view myself as the kind of person who can serve as a husband.  I don't say the right things.  I don't do the right things, even when it's possible for me to do them, which is not often.  People keep trying to tell me that it's stupid to not have a job and to not drive.  I agree.  But that's how it is.  I realize psychology as a study tends to be interspersed with philosophy, but if you go about it as a science, there's nothing un-Biblical about it.  Granted, some psychologists tend to spend more time dwelling on certain specifics elements and sometimes a full understanding of psychology can get muddled by these super - psychologists who take it upon themselves to write a book.
People assume that God created everyone with the same ability to carry out His word.  The Bible acknowledges hunchbacks and people with speech impediments and even says they are not to perform the sacred duties of His temple.
The root truth of The Bible hasn't changed.  Mankind is evil and God wants us to be in closer proximity to Him than we are because our proximity to Him is presently stunted by our sinful nature.  Jesus makes a way for that to happen.
I'm not saying that God will allow me to draw close despite my impurity just because I have more obstacles before me.  I'm not boasting about my obstacles or rejoicing in them.  I just hope that He can take into account how difficult this whole thing is on the Day Of Judgement.

As if I needed to tell you...

I'm settled into my new place.  It's definitely a lot quieter than my old room.  No kids.  No one to talk to.  There's roommates here, but they're in their rooms, each keeping to themselves.
Probably should get some water to drink.  I haven't had ANYThing to drink for several hours now.
Man.  Coffee sounds good too.  Not as good as water, tho  Hmm.

 

Well...that's about it.  I don't everything unpacked quite, because I didn't quite bring everything with me.  There was a bin / box - thingy that had a bunch of my CDs and DVDs.  totally forgot about.  It didn't take long really.

Pretty cool tho.  Room is kind of small but it works.

:)

Hopefully I'll be back in with my sister and my broNlaw before too long.  Just kind of depends.
The hardest part about all of this is my cat.  I couldn't bring her with me and I could tell she was just sad.  I did tell about a week ago when everything was being initiated that I would be leaving and unable to take her with me.  I think she understood me.  She had changed owners twice before, so I think she knows the drill.  It really just sickens me almost to think of it.  Anyway...I'll just have to see how she gets along with the other people.  I'm hoping my mom can foster / adopt her, but that ultimately depends on how she gets along with Bill, the household dog.  Shes almost scared of him because he's so intensely annoying.  She's just like "I really want to get out of here!".  So I open the safety gate (installed for the kiddos) and she rushes upstairs.  I don't think she's really afraid of him any more so than I am of technology not working like it's supposed to.  I think a housecat probably has a little bit of panic when they encounter situations they don't like because they don't know if they'll be able to respond appropriately and if they don't, what could happen?  Sophie doesn't want to attack the kids (the oldest one being almost 5 now), because things simply would not go well for her if she did.  But she doesn't know if she can hide either.  So she *tries* to hide.  But sometimes that's not possible before she gets cornered and instinctually does something that she knows intellectually that she shouldn't do.  As far as the dog goes, I think she might be a little afraid of him, just because she doesn't know how he would react to her getting violent with him or how I would react to her getting violent with him or how the dogs' owners would react.  And then there's a little bit of that "I just wanna go home!", I say "home", because the dog is usually on the main floor and Sophie is upstairs in my room.  They don't generally see each other a lot.  I think once Bill gets used to Sophie, Sophie will get used to Bill and Bill will get even more used to Sophie.  I hope.  Really hoping someone's head doesn't get bitten off.....
Anyway.
I guess that's about it.............day 1.  hehe.