This is Not a Judge-Free Zone

I know quite a few people. And like I mentioned in my previous post, they are all difficult to understand sometimes. 

And for someone like me who's been raised in an almost exclusively Christian environment, it's been pretty eye-opening over the last couple years to realize that not everybody believes the same things I do.

So I came to the conclusion that not agreeing about everything is not necessarily bad. Just because we have different standards about music, dress, relationships, entertainment, etc. doesn't mean that any one of us is any holier than the other.

But that was when I was still interacting only with other Christian young people. However, as my circles have expanded more, I've started getting to know teenagers who believe all kinds of different things. And since we're all young whippersnappers and most of us are pretty proud of ourselves for figuring out what we believe (Ha.), and since naturally everyone wants to know what we think (Ha.), we share our opinions. A lot.

So I've been exposed to all sorts of new things. People I barely know have spoken freely to me about their personal lives and how various occurrences have affected their beliefs. They've asked me what I think and they've told me I'm wrong. 

And one thing I've heard from every single young person I've had this sort of discussion with is this: "I'll respect your beliefs if you'll respect mine."

I respect you. I'm sure you're a very nice person with lots of cool hobbies who is super fun to be around. But frankly, I'm not going to respect your beliefs or your attitude about your beliefs.

See, we live in a society that exalts the individual. We've been participation awarded into the belief that there is no standard of excellence. As long as you're okay with yourself, everybody else should sit down and shut up. 

Wow.

I was spanked when I was younger (a lot). I was taught that I'm a sinner by nature. I was told that I was rebelling against my authority and being disrespectful.

This was news to me.

I was definitely pretty okay with myself while I was sassing back my parents and disobeying them.

But you know what? I could have been totally okay with all that and still be sent straight to hell for eternity. 

Regardless of the mediocrity our Godless culture force-feeds us, there is a standard of excellence.

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

I don't like being at odds with other people. I would be very much happy if everybody would just love each other and put others first and all those lovely things. But that's not very realistic, is it?

I know you don't want me to judge you for what you believe. But even if I don't, God will.

Demanding a judge-free, respectful attitude from others indicates that you feel like something is wrong with what you believe. Your conscience is bearing witness that any belief that is in disagreement with the Bible is wrong, and your attitude about what you think reflects that.

Everyone will face God someday to be judged, and I don't think that "Well, I was okay with myself" is going to mean much then.

If God is okay with you, then everybody else can sit down and shut up. That's the standard that we should hold ourselves to.

Which is why it's saddening to see that increasing numbers of my peers - even in my Christian social circles - are accepting what society tells them so unquestioningly.

Don't let anybody tell you what to think (except us) - be your own person!

NO.

I'm not my own person. 

And I'm okay with that.

*FREE COOKIES*

Guys.

I'm a bad blogger.

I know you already knew that, but I still feel the need to say it (every single post).

Do you ever just feel like you're super boring? That's a terrible feeling for me as a blogger because it creates the following dilemma:

I know I have an obligation to you, my loyal followers, to provide delightfully charming and witty tidbits to brighten your day (Ha.) but at the same time I feel so indebted to you because you guys actually like my writing (unlike my first semester college English teacher) that failing to meet your expectations (aforementioned delightfully charming and witty tidbits) would be simply unthinkable.

So the simple solution is that if you all would just stop reading and liking my blog, I would feel a lot less pressured and then I might actually post.

But in reality I love you guys too much and that would be heartbreaking. Although I can always count on the random readers who pop up in obscure countries bazillions of miles away from me to stroke my ego...

NEVERTHELESS

Here I am, I am here, HERE AM I!

*waits patiently for applause, cheers, and other assorted sounds of rejoicing to die down*

Anyways. As usual, I did stuff this summer and I have stuff yet to do this summer (Even though there is less than a month of summer technically left, I plan to stuff some more stuff in because stuff is naturally meant to be stuffed in. Why would it be called "stuff" if one was not meant to stuff stuff into stuff?)

And as always, when I do stuff, I learned stuff. So here's the stuff I learned this summer.

1. If you're tired enough, anywhere is a very good place to take a nap.
2. People are odd creatures, ranging from very lame to very cool, and sometimes going very quickly from one to the other. As soon as you think you understand one, they remind you that you very much don't. I personally find this irritating.
3. I am not a tolerant person.

By the way - I actually thought about blogging a lot while I was doing various non-blogging activities this summer, mostly about how I wasn't blogging and how I felt bad about not blogging. Just FYI. (Did you think about me at all?)

4. Detroit (like Nineveh) is not a very nice place.
5. How to spell Nineveh.
6. Piano teachers are very scary people.
7. Telling someone "no" will not be the end of the world. I have a really hard time with telling people no or talking back to them at all, but I learned more or less out of necessity that it is not impossible, even for someone like me who is afraid of confrontation (and people).
8. Urban Dictionary is not helpful when you want to know accurate information about anything except maybe the term "subtweet."
9. When your diet is suddenly switched to nothing but cafeteria food, Hot Pockets, and ice cream, there is one thing that will become vitally necessary. Once you discover the magic of this thing, you will never go back to your boring life beforehand because this thing will give your imagination the boost it needs to convince yourself that every plate of cafeteria food is your mom's cooking. Or maybe it just hides the cafeteria food so you can't see it... Either way, this thing is gravy.
10. Little things make a big difference. Something that may be little or no inconvenience to you could totally change someone's day.

For instance, if you're casually driving eighty-five miles an hour down I-65 and you throw a gummy bear out your car window just for fun, it may stick on the windshield of an eighteen-wheeler carrying a lifetime supply of Hot Pockets and cherry Coke, causing that eighteen-wheeler to careen out of control over a cliff, plummeting into my backyard and thusly making my day better by a factor of approximately sixty-two. (We won't think about the truck driver because who needs that kind of negativity in their life?)

Are you convinced?

I'm going to stop now because ten is a nice, even number.

Like...wow. Look how even that number is.

Just a heads-up for you guys, there's a good chance that my life is going to become suddenly interesting sometime in the hopefully near future, so I will either be blogging a lot or blogging less than my current rate (so whatever is less than never) depending on what kind of interesting it turns out to be.

Isn't life so fun? You never know what's going to happen. Every day is full of surprises.

I hope the vast majority of your surprises are pleasant and that the unpleasant ones are not more unpleasant than necessary.

If you're still reading at this point, here's a virtual cookie and a free self-esteem boost: You're awesome.

In Which I Connect With Nature

I went outside last night, guys.

It was awful.

I think our part of Florida is quite possibly the most humidity-prone area of the entire world (except for like maybe the Amazon rainforest or Mars or something). So that combined with temperatures that rival the torrid surface of the Sun can cause slight discomfort to the brave few who choose to venture outdoors in summer.

AND I AM VERY BRAVE.

So there I was, walking around downtown Pensacola, outside in the summer.

I've never tried swimming in a giant bowl of steaming hot clam chowder before, but I imagine it feels about like walking around downtown Pensacola, outside in the summer.

So there I was, walking and walking and walking and walking and walking, and sweating even more than I was walking, when suddenly my whole evening was brightened by a factor of twelve.

I made a friend.

Everyone, this is Shellton. He's kind of quiet and very shy, but I'm sure he's doing his best to say hello to you all.

In the short time I spent with Shellton last night, I feel like we got to know each other pretty well. He's obviously adorable and sensitive. He was a great listener, too.

In fact, come to think of it, he didn't say a word all night....

And that's the one thing about Shellton that's not so great.

He's dead. And he kind of stinks. A lot.

But true friendship knows no bounds. I was just a girl looking to connect with nature, and he was just...well, a dead crab. We were a perfect match, and I enjoyed a wonderful time with my new - albeit odoriferous - friend.

Sadly, I ended up having to ditch him in the grass because I really think he was kinda into me and as a general rule I don't date crustaceans, so that was the end of my short friendship with Shellton the Dead Crab, and also probably the last time I try to connect with nature.

Nature smells bad, so while I am happy to enjoy it in moderation, you'll not find me living off the land. Give me my iced coffee, puh-leeezz.

The moral of this story is: Every night can be an adventure when you go barefoot and make friends with dead crabs, but don't feel bad if you end up deciding that you're better suited for living off an iced latte than living off the land.

And that's what happens when Meredith goes outside.

On Sincerity

"If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all." 

A common enough aphorism, I'm sure. I know I've heard this one more times than I can say I always appreciated.

But as usual, it took me a long time to realize the full measure of wisdom in this saying (and chances are I still haven't got it all). Not only did it take a long time, it actually took some divine intervention.

As stated in previous posts, I am a girl. And as I am well aware, girls are very odd and often irrational creatures. And I'm about to tell you one of our greatest secrets.

We all hate each other.

Oh, sure, you may be my best friend, but you have nicer hair than me. You may be my sister, but WHY do you have such gorgeous eyes? 

We can't stand not having all the beauty, talent, intelligence, humor, charm, and wit when obviously every other girl does.

We hate you.

Nevertheless, we will rain down compliments on you like nobody's business at every possible opportunity.

Because we hate you.

"Ohhhhh my gooooodnessss girlll!!!! I loooooveee your hairrr!!!"

"DEM EYES DOE"

"Can you just not? Please? Like...just no. Stop. Ugh."

*shudder*

Sadly, I think I'm guilty of all of those examples and more.

Now don't get me wrong - girls can compliment sincerely. But in general, we don't think through what we're saying enough to even be completely sure that we mean it.

I've been thinking a lot about sincerity lately and trying to be more careful about not paying compliments that I don't honestly mean.

So this brings me back to the original thought. Compliments are always good, yes? So what's the harm in paying a few not-entirely-sincere compliments?

I was reading through Psalms earlier (because I really think it would be very hard to read too many Psalms - they're good for my heart and mind) and I came across these verses:

Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men. They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things. (Ps. 12)

See that line that I put in bold? Does that sound familiar at all?

Well, I don't know about you, but it sounds an awful lot like those insincere compliments I told you about. And it doesn't sound like God deals very kindly with people who do that.

Don't be insincere with your words.

Not only does that passage in Psalms tell us what we should not do, it gives us something to aim for (I love when the Bible is this clear).

The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.

This is the standard that we should hold ourselves to. So perhaps it's time we rephrase those wise words from earlier now that the Bible has shed some light on the situation.

"If you don't have anything good, true, and sincere to say, don't say anything at all."

On Housekeeping

The family reunion is over for another year!

We traveled without event and vacationed very much with event. Which is good. I know that none of you thought about anything other than me for the last week, so I am happy to announce that you can rest easy that my vacation was a success.

Just a leetle housekeeping today. (It always used to confuse me when people would say "just a few housekeeping things" because I was like, "Wait. Are we cleaning stuff today?")

Meredith's annoying housekeeping items supplemented with Sherlock GIFs because they help the medicine go down:

1. For those of you who noticed that I changed the appearance of my blog yet again:

2. For those of you who like the changes:

3. For those of you who don't:

4. I'm finding it a little difficult to blog because my Pandora is going constantly and whenever I have a stroke of blogging genius, HERE COMES MY JAAAAAMMMMMM and I'm like

And then I forget whatever it was and I'm like

And naturally that makes blogging a little difficult.

That's all the housekeeping stuff.

Finally, I just want to communicate that I'm very proud of myself for not going like eight months without blogging. Keep in mind that this will be me every time I see this post, this post that I posted less than twenty-four hours after getting home from an exhausting vacation that normally would have hindered me from posting posty posts like this post.

And I'm really going to try to think deep, bloggy thoughts so I'll have stuff to talk to you about over the summer months without having to use Sherlock again.

And with that, I leave you with these summer wishes: May your tan never fade, may your ice cubes never melt, and may your shorts never ride up in the middle.