worry not

So in the midst of our market slowly but surely going to crap and having to take out more loans for school, yesterday at church we were reminded of a verse that put everything in perspective for me. I have heard this verse probably 30 times before, but now it's literally applying to a situation that I think everyone can relate to.

"So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

It's so easy for us to worry about how we are going to pay off college debt, or whether we will have money there for us when we retire, or whether we will be able to support a family in the future or the job market or so many other things. Well guess what? As long as you put your trust in God for the future, you will be fine. There are so many more things going on today, why worry about what will happen tomorrow? Yes, we should be good stewards of the money that God has provided, and planning can be a great thing. But let's not obsess about it, or make it our sole worry in life. Yes, there will be hard times, I can guarantee you that. But God is always there if you just seek him out. He won't leave you. The times where you feel the most lonely and separated from God, and feel like he completely abandoned you, those are the times when He wants you to reach out to him the most. I don't know whether or not I'm going to have a job right out of school, or how I will pay off school, or pretty much everything else about my future, but when I reach my lowest of low, there isn't a single person on this planet that can help me get through all of it, and I most certainly can't get through it on my own strength.

With all of that being said, I hope and pray that I can seek first His kingdom and His plan before my own desires.

This is probably the most random post I've ever had, considering I have two tests and a lab tomorrow and I just spent 25 minutes typing that out.

Silver Lining

So this post is just some stuff I have been thinking about over the past couple weeks.

It's always interesting to me when we can know and understand something so clearly, but so blatantly ignore it. We can say all we want, we can pretend that we are going to change, but it seems to be a rare thing when we actually change our ways. I've found myself in this constant cycle of realizing something, then ignoring it. It's like I know what I need to do in order for things to be in a better place, yet I let myself fall back into the same patterns/thought processes that make me someone I don't want to be. Why do i do this? I have no idea. When I realize what I need to do, it seems so obvious to me, but how come it is so hard to just do it? I guess I just get frustrated with the fact that I can't stay consistent, and when I feel like God is speaking to me about something, I just end up doing my own thing anyways. Right now I guess I'm in the process of trying to seek what God wants for me in my life, but that's kind of hard when I don't act on what I need to do.

There is this new Relient K song that has been out for a while called "The Lining Is Silver". It's a pretty simple song, not much too it, but I love the chorus. It says, "Isn't it nice to know, that the lining is silver?" I honestly didn't know what the phrase "silver lining" meant, so after doing some research, I found that it is referring to an old proverb that says "every cloud has a silver lining". It basically means that every bad situation has a good side to it, or being optimistic about what can happen. This is kind of an elementary idea, because I think that most people tend to want to make the best out of bad times, but I just love the simplicity of the idea. Yeah, crap happens, but it is nice to know that the lining is silver. That's the beauty of life, you can decide that you are going to focus on the negative side of stuff, or you can try and look at ways to make every situation positive. It reminds me of the fact that God has a reason for everything and every situation. There have been so many times in my life where I think everything is going wrong, questioning why God is letting things happen, but it always turns out to have happened for some reason, or to show me something. And that's the only thing you can do, because no matter how much you think you know what is best, God always knows(he even knows you better than you know yourself), and everything that happens to us happens for a reason.

"You know it's nothing new
Bad news never had good timing
But then the circle of your friends
Will defend the silver lining"

The Heart of Life- John Mayer

Viva La Vida

wow, what a long weekend. I am just about sick of driving. I decided to calculate how much driving I did in the past four days, and it came out to around ~700 miles. yeah, and I have to drive to work all week, then I'm going home again this weekend. oh well, that's the way it is i guess.

Anyways, this weekend was pretty fun. I went home thursday after work because I had friday off, and stayed at andy's house on thursday, because that's what I do whenever I go home. on friday I went up to Canton with Jacob, my youngest brother, to visit Jordan and Jess. Jake stayed the night, but I left after dinner to head to Spisak's house for a couple days to chill with a bunch of sweet people.

We were supposed to go boating on saturday, but didn't end up going because the weather was supposed to be really bad. so we just hung out and played some soccer, pool basketball, and regular basketball, and grilled out for lunch and dinner, because the weather ended up being really nice. after that we just chilled for the rest of the night. 

On sunday, they decided to go boating in the morning, but I was going to my brothers church back in Canton so i could pick up jacob/go out to lunch for his birthday. it was cool. It's so weird that my youngest brother is now 13 years old. It's funny because he's still in that semi-awkward stage of his life(middle school), and i tend to forget that I was probably just like him. anyways, I had to drive back to cincinnati after that, which is just a really boring drive overall. I stopped in columbus to drop jake off, but didn't stay very long because I just wanted to get back.

So that was my weekend, and I am beat right now. I really should be in bed at this moment, but decided an update to the blog was in order. I am really excited for this next weekend because of fireworks/birthday celebrations, etc.. I think a more thought provoking update will happen later this week. I really would like to express some thoughts right now, but it's hard enough to just talk about this weekend while I'm this tired.

aaron

"Cause it's a breakdown, where do we go from here?"

So the first week of work is over, and it was pretty good I guess. Things are pretty much the same as when I left, so it wasn't like I was being introduced to anything new. But I am excited because I guess they're going to give me a lot more work this quarter, which should keep me busy, instead of browsing the internet for the majority of the day. 

Anyways, I'm sitting in Rohs Street watching the Red Sox game because our internet isn't working right now, and yes it is a friday night, but pretty much everyone is out of town, so there wasn't much else for me to do besides watch a movie or something, but I would rather watch the Sox. They're wearing the green uniforms tonight in honor of the Celtics winning the NBA title, which is pretty sweet. Speaking of the Red Sox, they were in town this past weekend, and I got to see all three games, which was just awesome after a long week of exams. We lost the first game, but won the next two, and it what made it even more special is that my dad came down for Saturdays game, and we had a great time. It was really cool to get to spend that time with him, since I'm pretty much not going to be home for more than a couple weeks at a time for at least the next couple years. Also, Caleb and Alicia were at Sunday's game which was pretty fun too.

So I don't really have much to say for this post. Usually I have some kind of idea that I want to write about when I make a new post, but there isn't really anything that sticks out to me. Maybe I'll write something sometime soon, but I'm just not feeling it right now.

I hope everyone had a great school year, and are looking forward to your summer. If you're ever in clifton and want to hang out, hit me up, because I probably won't be doing anything. keep it real folks

much love

aaron