"I'm going to marry a girl from Chapel Hill," or "Guys are all the same"

the urban sophisticates have a fun song that has a few lyrics.  one of said lyrics goes as follows: "i'm going to marry a girl from Chapel Hill/before i go on tour/and then i'm gonna call her from the road/just so she can sing me to sleep."

oh, lovely; i think i just heard my roommate having sex with her quebecois boyfriend. lovely. further underlines my conviction to move out. he comes every monday through wednesday. i have friends here a lot too, but they're here on the WEEKEND. not a work night. and she doesn't do her dishes.

anyway, back to the topic at hand.  boys are (almost) all the same.  they see one or two good qualities and decide i'm worth investigating further.  then they decide the cons outweigh the pros. or i make it clear they're wasting their time because as far as i'm concerned, they're not my prince charming.

not that i need the One Prince Charming. i need A prince charming. there are many, from what i hear.  everyone can be one if they would just try.  i know i can be a good girlfriend.  if i am happy, i can make him happy, whoever 'he' is. if i'm not happy, we shouldn't be together. i feel like i have to make somebody see that i'm worth whatever it takes. but that's not my job. it's not the job of a treasure to be found; it's the job of the pirate.  where's my pirate?

but i'm happy to be single. i can make my own decisions and live my own life without thinking of anyone else. i have a lot of freedom right now.  incredibly, i've been single now for just over 11 months... 'jason-less janel' is an interesting person to get to know.  i definitely like her more than i liked 'janel, jason's girlfriend.'  that's who i was for 3 years. some of her was good and some of her was bad. but for better or worse, i need to always be simply janel, without consideration or regard for a man.

i suppose identity is intensely personal, until marriage.  we are identified with communities, but only i have a particular amalgamation of communities in my identity.  our family, our work, our graduating class, our roommates, our past all combine to create a community-ful but individual identity.

so i can be janel-- a blanchard, a follower of Jesus, a member of the950 and of ourfriends, blake/wayzata/east class of 03, carolina class of 07, (current) employee of TransPerfect, (current) resident of DC, native of mebane/plymouth/chapel hill, traveller to Cuba, and sundry other identities-- but if you notice, i did not mention one person... except Jesus.

one day i'll hopefully mention another person in such a list.  but until then, i'm just simply me.

You make everything glorious

What is glory?

Christians and sports fans throw that word around... I think the sport fans are the ones that know what they're talking about. (Winning the national championship in 2005 was glorious... a good football game/battle of the gridiron-- that's glorious.) Christians are only trying to have a word for God. We call him glorious; we talk about living for his glory; we "see God's glory" in creation. Well, how do I know whether or not I'm thinking of creation's glory while I'm referring to God's glory? Because I don't know what the heck his glory is. It's too big; too broad of a concept for my brain.

I think about light and shiny castles and thrones and jewels. But is that beauty and not glory? Are they the same? Do I equate the two? Can something ugly or boring also be glorious?

Donald Miller writes in Searching for God Knows What that our economies of beauty and money and power are man-made... that that's not what God considers glorious, or worthy. Maybe "worthy" is a better word for the concept I'm trying to talk about. That we as humans try to validate ourselves by comparisons against others in invalid currencies.

So why does my heart leap at beauty? Why do I desire power and influence? Why do I care how others perceive me?

Are these things still part of 'glory'? God has been praised for his beauty... but "there was nothing in His appearance that we should desire him." Jesus was not goodlooking!

More later.

Where am i now?

well, i have been without a computer for 5 months.  for those that know me, this is astounding.  (be it known that i have had internet access for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week at work, however.) maybe i can start e-journalling in addition to my trad-journalling.

so now i have been blessed with a new laptop to keep me entertained and relatively technologically content for the foreseeable future (that is not saying much, since i can't see even cloudily past Christmas...).

my life has been so full since i moved to DC.  i've made amazing friends, reconnected with people from my past, and met awesome people (kelley, lyz, emilee, lindsay short, the small group girls, kari at frontline; lindsey, allison, carrie at work; jessica skinner, jessica ciotti, annie, jenny, amy, kat, aditi from various backgrounds.)

i have had visits from some of my favorite people of all time-- mary, becca, nick, jruss, kate, katie z, ellen, my immediate family, stephanie.  amy lived here for a few months.  i have had every step paved, every need met, every bill paid.  praise to my God and Dad in heaven.  he really does look out for me.

i'm learning that the fact "life is good" does not mean "God is good"... if it did, then when life changed from good to bad, God would also change from good to bad.  and the bible says "he does not change like shifting shadows" and we all know very well that life changes from minute to minute.  so instead, i'm going to start with "God is good" and then what follows from that is "sometimes life is good and sometimes it sucks ass."

i'm reading "mudhouse sabbath" by lauren winner.  the book is about the tenets of Judaism that Christians do not follow but can learn a lot about God by observing and perhaps following in a more peculiarly Christian way.  it's v interesting, b/c i've been confused as to why we no longer consider the sabbath holy beyond a token trip to church. (and even now, i go to church after my long Monday.)  i agree with todd philips--it doesn't have to be sunday; that's man's cultural and ecclesiastical decision that makes perfect sense.  but when do i celebrate and honor the sabbath?  i'm looking forward to going to church on sundays in the future, just for convenience's sake, if i'm going to live a whole 24hrs devoted to my Savior and the people around me.

big things are a-brewing in my life... more to come.