goodbye, fall..
..and hellooo winter. man talk about the fastest semester ever. is it just me, or did this past semester seem like 2 months long? ah well i guess i'm not complaining. so you want an update? emm..what can i feel safe sharing, even to some would-be stalkers..

well. school was pretty difficult, to say the least. first semester of ppa turned out to be quite an adjustment, but all in all, my grades weren't too shabby and my gpa didn't suffer too bad a drop. God's been good, teaching me a whole lot of crap about myself that i didn't even realize. one thing that i'm gonna need to work on is consistency. check up on me with that. i think aside from the whole humbling aspect of this semester, God revealed to me the absolute wonder of His grace. it's something that i always just kinda took for granted, but man, grace is the most beautiful thing ever. just the concept of it can really blow you away.

i guess that's enough about fall 2005. in the back of my mind, it is still the "beginning" of the year, so i'm gonna treat the spring semester as the rest of the year, where i try to do everything i didn't really have time to do 1st semester. but woah now, that's enough thinking ahead for now. i can't believe i just mentioned next semester already.

anyhow, i'm leaving for california tomorrow evening. we're gonna fly there and then drive around in a 12-passenger van, with a total of 11 passengers! yipeee this is gonna be cozy. not really sure what we're gonna be doing there, or even where exactly in cali we're going, but i think i'm gonna try snowboarding. i guess more than anything i feel like i just need a break from..everything. a break from texas, a break from home. hopefully i'm not too tempted to just stay over there in the OC or something. actually that doesn't sound so bad right now. so i'll be back somewhere between 11 days of never.

so in the spirit of "christmas cheer," i'd like to share this song. i've been playing it on repeat for the past day and a half, so i think i'll declare this the official christmas song of 2005! yahooo!

I Celebrate The Day
- relient k
And with this Christmas wish is missed
The point I could convey
If only I could find the words to say to let You know how much You've touched my life
Because here is where You're finding me, in the exact same place as New Year's eve
And from a lack of my persistency
We're less than half as close as I want to be

And the first time
That You opened Your eyes did You realize that You would be my Savior
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever

And so this Christmas I'll compare the things I felt in prior years
To what this midnight made so clear
That You have come to meet me here

To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me
In the hope that what You did
That you were born so I might live
To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me

And I, I celebrate the day
That You were born to die
So I could one day pray for You to save my life

merry christmas, happy new year, and all the typical stuff everyone says this time of year.

(oh and for the illiterate, aka "i-visit-blogs-just-to-see-pictures" people, here is a picture so i can fulfill my quota:


if you don't get it, sorry. just chuckle a little bit to pretend like you do.)

later chumps

i'm a foolish boy. whenever stuff really goes wrong, i tend to doubt God's goodness. i don't mean to, but it just happens. i mean everybody loves a scapegoat, right? well it's not that i really blame Him, i just sorta question His wisdom. yeah i know it sounds silly just saying it. me? questioning God's wisdom? that's as crazy as it gets, but that's how it ends up playing out. more or less, i ask Him, "are You doing Your job up there?" then He teaches me something absolutely amazing through the hardship that could not have been possible beforehand. sometimes it's something about myself that i never saw before. sometimes it's a new side of Him that i've never even considered. most of the time it's a combination of both. then i question why i ever doubt His goodness at all. i'm a foolish boy.