Church

So was just lying awake in bed and thinking and figured it was worth writing down..
I was just pondering.. I do this a a regular basis.. I haven't been to church in a while for many reasons.. Which I spose is not uncommon for me lately.
Church is never something I've really connected with.. I go because.. well.. it's expected. And the company that it provides is pretty good.
Everyone thinks that you can't be christian if you don't go to church..
but besides the occasional really good service, if anything it gives me more reason to think religion is stupid than help me grow in it. Don't get me wrong.. I know church is everything to some people and I'm not trying to take that away from them or anything it's just not how I connect. All I see is the hypocrisy, the manipulation, the crap that's just kind of appeared after millions of years of people interpreting things differently. And it's not just in my church it's in every church.. and it makes my brain hurt.
So I have decided this, I believe in God, Jesus etc. However I do not believe in church. this does not mean that I won't go.. because I do think it's important to be amongst a christian community, and Ben Chongs an alright kid too(ha snap). but sitting down and listening to someone tell me how i should be making my life better, what i should be doing more, how I should be living, what i should be saying to people, just doesn't help me..
that person who is speaking might be right..
and I might agree with what there saying, but how do I know.
I don't.
Rant over.

gtihjymb7yuv

So.. haven't posted for a while.. figure I should. you know how it is.
Well nothing much has happened lately.. I finally got a job.
Hurray for Best and Less.
I have to say it's alot easier than I thought it would be.. so far anyway...
I haven't really done much. But I did honestly think it would be a little more challanging..
which is annoying in a way because I'll probably get bored of it pretty fast..
But I guess we'll have to wait and see..
But anyway thats about it... I had some Ideas for blogs but I don't think I can be bothered thinking right now..
Oh well.

Yeah that...

Well... have had a big couple of weeks.

Mostly featuring a visit from my favourite cousin who just so happens to live in Queensland and an almost relaxing holiday in Phillip Island with the Doncaster kids, which was fantastic.. except maybe Thursday night.. that wasn't so fantastic.. but the rest was great.

Then Doncaster formal on Saturday night, they managed to raise over $1000 for Mr. Ben Chongs charity, Africa Aid. Yay.

I'd love to elaborate on those to topics but I'm not sure that I can be bothered trying to work out what to write so we'll just move on.

Got my enter score today... well... It was more than 5 which is what I expected.. 22.15. I officially fail at life.. well not really.. but I didn't pass by much.

And this Friday or Saturday or something I'm off to Phillip Island again for the weekend with Grant, Josh and Sam and 50 million of Xanders closest friends... I really do spend crazy amounts of time there.. should be fun though.

So in conclusion.. I suck at life, Phillip Island, Phillip Island, Phillip Island.

Done with School

So Haven't blogged in a while, have had a few things in my head to write about but they haven't made it to the keyboard so guess I'll chose one and get it out there.

School.
Its all over.
Almost.

I remember sitting at the end of year 12 assembly last year, watching the year 12s leave the gym and it hit me.. I only had 12 months of school left ever. Which invoked 3 significant emotions. Fear. Excitement. and Anxiety.

So now.. 12 months later its finished.. I only have 4 exams to go, an art exhibition to attend and a Graduation dinner, then I'm done.

Finished 12 years of education, finished with Scoresby Secondary College.
And I still feel the same fear, excitement and anxiety... what do I do now??

There is no point in continuing my education.. getting a Hex debt doing some course I'm not interested in and am likely to drop out of within a month seams stupid to me.

So where's that leave me... I've already established I can't do a course like YITS because you can't get financial support from centrelink or whatever and I don't have the money to pay for it myself.
I don't want to live at home because it doesn't feel like home..
So what now?
Work I guess... until I decide what I want to do. Which could take a week, a moth, a year or 10 years.
Who knows...?
Thats Life I guess ay.

I Believe

So have this list of stuff... I didn't write in myself but I like it so I'm gonna post it..

I believe-
That sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be angry, but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.

I believe-
That just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.

I believe-
that maturity has more to do with what type of experiences you've had and what you've learned from them and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.

I believe-
That it isn't always enough to be forgiven by others. Sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself.

I believe-
That no matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn't stop for your grief.

I believe-
That our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.

I believe-
That just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don't love each other. And just because they don't argue, doesn't mean they do.

I believe-
That you shouldn't be so eager to find out a secret. It could change your life forever.

I believe-
That two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.

I believe-
That your life can be changed in a matter of hours by people who don't even know you.

I believe-
That even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you you will find the strength to help.

I believe-
That credentials on the wall do not make you a decent human being.

I believe-
That the people you care about most in life are taken from you too soon.

The end.

Sick Sick Sick

Hmmm.... ok. so. don't really have a lot to blog about considering I have barley left my house in the last three weeks...

I had I think the flu or something similar which sucked but it was kinda getting better then it got worse again like over night or something, I don't really remember and it doesn't really matter...
I ended up in the emergency department of The Angles hospital on Friday night.. and just so you know.. if you ever need urgent medical assistance.. do not go to the emergency department.. we sat in the waiting room for like an hour..

Wasn't to bad cos Jamie Oliver was on TV and we all know how much I love Jamie.
would have been better if he wasn't cooking food considering I had been deprived of food for the past 4 days due to me lacking the ability to swallow.. hence the reason I was in hospital.
Then a nurse person calls my name and I'm like "sweet, shortest wait ever".
So yeah she showed us to a cubical thing you know with a bed and all that hospital stuff.. takes my temperature asks all the usual questions.. then leaves us there..
for another TWO hours, with no TV, no nothing! Stupid, stupid, stupid!
So after waiting for like my entire life the doctor comes, and he is like not a day over 18.. and he asks another million questions most of which the nurse had already asked while I sit there and try work out how old he must actually be to be a doctor and answer his questions at the same time, 25 minimum. Crazy.

So this doctor who like couldn't even get into a night club is like "ok so I think we should take some blood and get you tested for glandular fever because you either have that or tonsillitis and an IV with a litre of water because you'll be dehydrated and some antibiotics, alright?" and thinks that's gonna be ok because he has a Scottish accent.. but anyway to cut a long story short I ended up letting him stab me with his needles...
and in return he laughed at me!
I'm like about to cry with fear and hes sitting there getting all his little bits and pieces ready smiling to himself trying not to laugh..
then when he takes my blood he's like "oh why is it green?"
the kid thinks he's funny.

So I sit there for like an hour with a freaking needle in my arm and the nurse is like going of on tangents about not kissing people or sharing drinks because you can get glandular fever and then about hep A, B and C and blah blah blah... whatever

Then 'Mr.-I-don't-even-call-myself -'doctor'-cos-no one-believes-me-when-I-do' came back and told me with of course, a smile, that I have glandular fever and I'm not aloud to do anything for at least a month and I'll feel like crap for a whole lot longer than that.
I told him we weren't friends for 5 minutes.
He told me I couldn't go to surf camp either.
So there you have it. my life is over...
oh and I might fail year 12 this being the week that like everything is due and all.
that's all from me for now
say hi to your mum for me
peace.

Youth Vision Camps

Youth Vision Camps
The saviour of my soul... quit literally.
It's what made me the person I am today.
They taught me how to be me...
and how to have fun doing it.
The showed me how to be real.

I don't think I have ever appreciated those camps and those leaders more than I do now that there are no more.
And it makes me so sad knowing that people who are just like how I was won't get the opportunity that I did to spend time with such an amazing group of people.
I miss them,
I miss the lack of rules that looking back should probably have been there,
I miss leaders who know where 'the line' was, how to balance along it and how far they could step over before they got themselves into trouble,
I miss the simple things like sitting around chatting with people and meal times,
I miss having a morning song,
I miss leaders who knew how to "lead by example and only if necessary use words",
I miss messy games,
I miss finding bits of blue cornflower inside my ear 6 months after camp and knowing where it was from,
I miss giant homemade water slides,
I miss dancing down the main street of halls gap,
I miss the aim for some games being to make as many campers chuck up as possible,
I miss camp inside jokes.. anyone remember Piablo Fernandez? or IG is BIG,
I miss the atmosphere you could only find on a youth vision camp,
I miss the acceptance and unconditional love,
I miss "Big Day Out", drive in movies on a bus and the indoor playground,
I miss camp directors not knowing what was meant to be happening
I miss study groups
I miss the swap at halls gap
I miss wrapping leaders in glad wrap and chucking them in the swap
I miss leaders going "missing" and stuff getting "stolen" *cough* and then it turning into a party or a joke,
I miss going to bed with the most painful stomach ache ever from laughing so much,
but most of all I miss the feeling that I got weeks before camp whenever anyone mentioned or I thought about camp and my stomach would quite literally pull itself apart and by the time you got to the bus or the bottom the the stairs at Monbulk you wanted to scream as load as you could cos you were finally there.
And I love that even now when I'm reminded of camps I get that feeling in my stomach.

There is so much more I could add to that list but then I would be here for like ever any yeah no.
But yeah... I'm so glad I have the memories I do, and hopefully one day I'll be as gooder leader as the people who lead me..

So these holidays I'll be off on another CYC camp... which is kinda weird because I was only ever able to do 8 youth vision camps.. just cos that's how many anyone can do.
And because I lead at CYC I can do as many as I want, so I have done 7 since last September.. this next one these holidays will be my 8th.. and I have to say, I love CYC camps they are fantastic, but with youth vision my heart will always be.

So really that's all from me today... hopefully reading my memories of camp have made your tummy turn just like mine always does when I think about these things.
Peace out.

Inspired

I've been inspired... by Jono's blog.. yup yup. I have decided to do a 25 list, Of things I will not miss when I leave school.. and being in year 12 and all that is only about 29 days away. scary huh.
So here we go...

1. The fact that more than half the walls at my school are painted bright yellow
2. Getting up early so sit and look at bright yellow walls for 6 hours
3. Having to pretend that I like people that I don't to keep my world at peace
4. Listening to people bitch (especially when both people bitch to me about each other)
5. Teachers yelling.
6. Teachers being "disappointed"
7. Teachers talking to my mum
8. Teachers who don't like me cos I'm bad at school and that makes then look bad
9. Pretty much just teachers in general
10. The huge canteen line
11. Being cold for 7 hours straight and not being able to fix it
12. Blowing a fews in the VCE center because we are using to many appliances to cook our lunches
13. The fact that the Senior school coordinators office is right next the the VCE center
14. Needing a doctors certificate when I'm away even though I know whats wrong with me and I know a doctor can't do anything to fix it
15. Mess.. everywhere
16. Having to do work
17. Having to pretend I care about something I don't
18. Varnishing wood in a small room=Bad
19. Watching them spend $1200 on getting the gum that's older than God of the ground and yet knowing a classmates not aloud to use a piece of thread because it costs money and she didn't pay for it.
20. Interactive whiteboards
21. Slow computers
22. Year 7's who haven't come to the realisation that they are back at the bottom of the food chain
23. Stupid rules
24. how short girls wear there skirts
25. Being forced to be "just like everyone else"

Rant over.
Peace out

boredom

Well... I don't really have much interesting news to report. but I'm updating anyway.
Went on a leaders weekend at CYC last weekend which was pretty interesting.
The main speaker was pretty rubbish.. well he wasn't rubbish, what he was talking about was rubbish... not wrong or bad just boring.
but other than that it was pretty good.
met a few new people. and two of the other 3 speakers I listened to were good, Adam Kelly and MJ, both of which I have met before. Adam was the study leader on teen in April and MJ the same but in July... didn't really learn a whole lot of new and exciting things but did re-affirm what I already knew and alliterated it which was good cos I'm not very good at alliterating things in my head.

On a completely different topic there is only like 44 days left of school or something like that which is fantastic. I'm so over it now I just want it to be done with the least amount of effort possible... I know I'll regret not working harder later... when i get an enter score of like 7, but meh.
Anyways... nothing more to say except that Josh Scott pretty much won $91,000 on 1vs100 this week so YAY.
peace.

Quenching Bens thirst for Kirst haha

hmm...
so..
I have a problem..
I have alot of stuff I could write about..
that I've thought of since I made this blog thing a few days ago.. but I don't know how to articulate my thoughts or have forgotten what I was gonna write.
Fustration.
There's this thing I've been looking into and thinking about alot lately.
It's called To Write Love On Her Arms and if I knew how to attach a link to those words I would would but I don't so I can't.. but it's pretty much a foundation/brand/guy who got angry at suicide.. (website is www.twloha.com and www.myspace.com/towriteloveonherarms)
which I think is pretty cool.. having known so many people who have cut or been depressed or whatever and having also been there myself, as I suppose almost every teenager has at some point it time, I guess I can empathise
It Has a pretty cool story too..

TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS by Jamie Tworkowski

Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.

Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.

She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.

On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.

Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.

After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.

She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.

As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."

I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.

I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.

I just like how the story is told, and the fact that Renee is portrayed as a normal person who has just been hurt by the world instead of a dirty emo. And how they use God as part of there mission things but they are in not way a religious organisation.
So yeah thats pretty much all I have to say right now...
Bed time
Peace out.