Oh, you know...

You know how there's that one thing that someone says to you that means the world to you it never gets old? It's almost like it found a special place in your heart in which no other words could fit. Well...I found that word...


To Adore: to regard with the utmost esteem, love, and respect; honor.


Yup. It's winner. "I adore you" tops them all.

Language of Intelligence

I've never considered myself to be book smart. I've never read quickly, never received consistent A's on my tests, never been able to write a paper over night. No, not this girl. I've always got to do it the long way. I have to start my papers and studying a week in advance and start my reading way before it even dawns on anyone that it's an assignment. Sometimes I feel quite mediocre to be honest. I do well in school, but not exceptional. I participate in a plethora (I'm in college so I get to use awesome words like that) of sports, but don't excel at any. And it sometimes bothers me so much how some people can just do so well with papers or tests with so little effort and dedicated work. Typically athletics are different and people usually have to work pretty hard to do exceptional, so...no excuse there. But it just gets at me some times. How come I have to spend so much time and effort and energy in a project when the person sitting next to me can whip it out in 8 hours the night before. Well...here comes the over-rated and over-used statement: it's not fair.

 However, this last spring semester at Simpson, I began the process of overcoming that frustration. I began realizing that those people may not learn and retain as much as I would (Not in any way am I putting myself above them for this). And guess what else I realized...I love to learn. Classes like Hermeneutics with Dr. Lyons and Ethics with Paul Stonehouse, I discovered, were shaping my way of doing things, my belief system, but most of all my relationship with the Lord. I actually wanted to read these books, I wanted to participate in every class, and I wanted to put forth effort into projects that were assigned. Along with finding this new passion to learn, I found my relationship with God had never been so stretched. How I prayed, what I prayed for, how I saw the church, how i viewed God's love for me, who I thought God was...it all dramatically changed. And it was a good change. I've definitely come to the conclusion that, at least for this season, my relationship is greatly growing with God through learning, through thinking, through intelligence.

This summer, I'm reading. As much as I can. I'm currently reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and I'm so glad I waited until now to read it. He is brilliant and forms the perfect analogies and metaphors for the subject he's trying to explain. It truly does change your life if you let it. Come school time I'll be pouring over his book called Present Concerns. My wonderful SRD, Marissa, gave that too with some of her own notes in it already. I'm quite excited to start that.

And so, maybe I'm a lot more closer to being book smart than I thought I was. Maybe being book smart isn't just being able to repeat what the teacher told you and get A's on a test. Maybe being book smart is actually learning what is being taught and finding its significance in your life on your own time. Maybe being book smart and street smart go hand in hand.