Is this comic...ominous....?

Because it is most certainly unexplained. One thing is for sure though. My mom's kind of a creeper, especially with her corn bread recipes! :-)

On leaving…

For those of you who FaceBook stalk me and saw my status, you may have noticed that I’m not exactly happy to be leaving Houghton. I don’t look forward to breaks. I wish I could spend break in Houghton, living in my dorm, chilling with my friends. But that’s not really possible. Harry Potter and I have much in common, we both would rather live at school. I don’t really have a “home” anyplace on Earth. Nowhere really feels like “home” to me. In fact I never remember having a “home”. But at the moment I have given Houghton College, Rothenbuhler Hall, room 216, the name “home”. And it is home for me. It’s the closest I have. Estonia is home also, but at the moment Houghton is home. I’m tired of leaving “home”. Not only do I not have a home, but when I designate a place as “home” I end up leaving it, even if it is just for break. So I’m sad to be leaving Houghton. My ideal break would be all my friends staying here with me and us just having fun together. But I know that can’t be. But I’m still sad…

But I decided rather than getting sad, I’d get mad! I mean, glad! I mean, PUMPED!! So, I’ve pulled out my NightWish collection and am rocking out. NightWish is my traveling music, and so I’m laying on a little Wanderlust, getting myself to stop thinking about anything but the thrill and excitement of travel. What would I do without NightWish? Thank God I have them getting me so pumped for this so I can travel happily. I’ll enjoy this break. It’ll be a chance to do some writing. In fact, there’s a writing contest I’m excited to be writing for. Yay! Anyway, I must go to bed now. College is like jet lag, and so I need to get over it. Anyway, goodnight!

Grace

What is grace? This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. Grace. It’s a beautiful thing. The other day my roommate, Derek, put on his FaceBook status that he was in love with Grace, which of course caused quite a stir as people assumed that Grace was some girl that he was intent on marrying. Derek was actually referring to GRACE, the Houghton library’s online catalog, which he’d been using quite a lot and was growing quite fond of. But at the moment I’m not talking about that GRACE or a girl (so much), I’m talking about grace. I couldn’t find any definitions I liked, so I’m making my own, and feel free to suggest anything that should be added to this definition. Grace is the giving of love, acceptance, and forgiveness to one who doesn’t deserve it. Grace is what God shows us. We have all sinned, and yet he still loves us, accepts us, and forgives us. Why would he do that? Why would God show us grace? Doesn’t that just blow your mind? But God is perfect, and God is love. So maybe that could explain why he shows us his wonderful grace, but humans? Us insignificant, selfish, sinful people, we are also capable of showing grace. And it’s simply astounding. God loves us and shows us his grace, and in it shows his power to love, accept, and forgive. But lately I’ve just been struck by how grace is shown even to me. God knows my sin. God knows my struggles. God knows what a pathetic and worthless human being I really am. I have rebelled against the ruler and creator of the universe time and time again, and still he shows me grace. Beautiful grace. What love is this that can show grace to a sinner like me? What love is this that could love, accept, and forgive me? A love that is divine. The love of God. And that fact that we humans have the ability to show this divine love is amazing. For one human to turn to another and love them, accept them, and forgive them when they’ve done nothing to deserve it, and much to not deserve it is a wondrous thing. I thank God for grace. I thank God for his awe inspiring grace, and I think him for creating us with grace built in us. I thank him for giving us the ability to show grace to one another. And I thank God for all the grace that has been shown to me.

I was lying in bed, about to go to sleep when I started thinking about grace, and I knew I needed to write about it before I forgot. But now I must sleep, good night!

In memory...The Chronicles of Chris blog description, March 3rd, 2005-December 9th, 2008

My blog description served me well for 3 years, telling the world who I am, and how awesome I am. But now it's time for change! A new description is needed for my new life! One including...girls? Maybe. Rambling? Probably. I haven't decided what it will say yet, I just know it will include an epic Tolstoy quote and will be a great description. But now here will lie my former blog description, may it rest in peace.

Blog Description-"The name says it all. This blog chronicles the life of the one and only Chris Clark, soldier in The Salvation Army and missionary kid. I am a missionary in Tallinn, Estonia. I say I'm a missionary because I am, I'm just in charge of youth. Well read the blog to find out more, Cya."

About Me-"I'm an American living in Estonia. My parents are the "official" missionaries, but I'm the one who does the real work. I'm eighteen and like 6 feet tall. You should read my blog for several reasons: A. I'm cool B. my blog's cool C. if you read my blog then you'll be cool too."

Finally, something to celebrate

As you may have noticed from my more whiny emo post I haven’t had the greatest semester as far as academics go. I’ve been averaging a C, which pretty much sucks. C for crap. C for crud. C for Chris-can’t-you-do-any-better? Well, apparently I can! I wrote a Bib. Lit. paper which I got %100 on because I basically rock. If every assignment at college was writing I’d have a total 4.0 GPA. Writing is what I do well, not test taking. And another cool thing happened, since I was doing better in Bib. Lit. my friend Jenny painted my nails black! Isn’t awesome? And then I had something totally amazing happen! Yes, more amazing than black nails! I had a psychology group project on homelessness and schizophrenia that I’d been worrying about forever. My group wasn’t the best. I’ll leave it at that, because more than enough people have heard me whine about this project. Communication was bad, and our presentation was supposed to be twenty minutes long. When we got together on the day of the presentation and ran through it we found that all the stuff that the other four people in the group had prepared came to a grand total of…six minutes. The presentation was supposed to be twenty. I had made my own PowerPoint presentation with a kind of case study about a homeless schizophrenic women we’d known when my parents were stationed in Chester, PA. that was supposed to last about five minutes. I figured that with five peoples and twenty minutes if we each contributed four minutes we’d be good. But no, all four of them together had six minutes, including a video and a skit. Wow, crappy situation. So my five minute thing became an eleven minute long presentation of awesomeness, covering a bunch of the information that should have been covered in the PowerPoint the other guy made. So I made our presentation work, thank God. I had been stressed out about it for so long. And then best part came at the end. The part I am now celebrating! Our group got an E-mail from our professor saying, “I thought Chris’s case study at the end of the presentation was the most well thought out and thorough aspect of your presentation. It actually did the most to clarify how schizophrenia might lead to homelessness – especially one with paranoid schizophrenia. This material was delivered “knowingly” and well. It helped to have the slides up there as Chris was talking us through it.” which made me so totally happy! I’m so glad he liked my awesomeness! And the best part came when I went on Synapse to check my grade and saw something amazing…I, who average a C…got a NINETY-FIVE!!! Wow! Yay! I’m thrilled and greatly encouraged. I’m not an idiot! I’m not a failure! This is just about the most exciting thing ever! Life just seems to be going so well at the moment. And I’m so full of hope and happiness. This is perfect.

Now, as I mentioned, I now have black nails. And last night I was considering dying my hair black. Why would I do these things? And why now? Am I emo? Am I depressed? (Sorry, redundant) Am I on drugs? None of the above really. I’ve just always wanted black hair and black nails! And now I can. But why am I now? Well, because I just want to. And other than that what I’m using for my excuse is college. College is a time when most guys experiment with girls. I think you know what I mean. But anyway, because I’m not into experimenting like that, instead I’m dying my hair and painting my nails! With girls! So that’s how I experiment with girls here at college. And I enjoy it a lot. Black nails are excellent. And when I grow my hair out some more just imagine how awesome it will be black! Yeah! I’m convinced this will be awesome!

But anyway, as you may have noticed I’m totally enjoying college. I feel like such a college student at the moment, and me explain my surroundings so you’ll understand why. I’m sitting in a car with my friend and neighbor Joe, my blog buddy and fellow hopeless romantic Dave, and Derek, my epic roommate. We’re on the way to church right now, but yesterday we did the same thing up to Olean to go shopping and we were playing Rihanna and rocking out and dancing. It was great! So, writing in a car while rocking out to Rihanna. It’s great. And now I’m writing on the way to church while listening to Vanessa Carlton’s, “A Thousand Miles”. It’s great. Again! Yeah! I’m loving college life. And now I’m both enjoying the fun bits and doing better academically. Life is good all the way around. And Christmas is coming up. I am quite happy. But now I should go, but aren’t you glad I blogged again? And aren’t you glad it’s happy?

Awesomely excellent article!

Couple practise what they preach: wait for 1st kiss until wedding

CHICAGO - Won't kiss on the first date? How about waiting until marriage?

Chicagoans Melody LaLuz and Claudaniel Fabien shared their first kiss Saturday at the altar.

The two teach abstinence at the city's public schools and practised what they preached to their teenage students.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the couple had never kissed and that they had never been alone together in a house.

A friend of LaLuz says wedding guests cheered and stomped during the two-minute smooch between the 28-year-old bride and the 30-year-old groom.

LaLuz and Fabien say they have no worries about how they will spend their honeymoon in the Bahamas.

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/081129/K112904AU.html


I find it funny that this article is under, "oddities". I guess I am rather odd. But I like this idea! I just read this article and thought I'd share it, because I think it's pretty excellent. Oh yeah!