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Ever notice how its really hard to be intense in a place without intensity?

I'm intense without even trying to be sometimes. This is what makes it really hard to be real sometimes. Because here I am, operating on a level of intensity, and it's almost as if I have to switch gears completely and tone it down because people just don't seem to relate. Gah, it's like sticking out without even trying. Living without intensity feels like I'm drifting through life; like i'm existing rather than actually LIVING. I don't want to be intimidating, but at the same time, I can't stand not expressing stuff I believe in.

I hate the routine. I'm bothered by the immaturity. I cringe when I see how tired and lifeless people are sometimes. Man, I gotta stop caring about what other people think, and just operate on the level of intensity that God's called me to be on.

Afraid of Failure? No. I can't live that way. It'll suck the life out of me.

So tonight I feel like dwelling on the topic of my little Christian school....

......again.

The realization of the fact that my school only has 450 students is starting to hit me smack in the middle of my forehead. It's not that I didn't know that before, but right now it's just seeming like a much more important detail that I never really thought had much significance before. But it does.

Sometimes I feel like my school has the ability to take inspiration away. It takes the passion that I have for something and grabs it out of my hands. I'm going strong for a few days, and then after the initial excitement has worn off it's as if any energy I had previously for it has completely gone down the drain, and my inspiration is... well...put on the shelf.

Sometimes it feels like there's not enough intensity, or passion, or sense of direction at my school. Instead it just makes me feel tired.

I have to go do my math homework.

Shallowness

lack of understanding lack of communication
lack of a desire for expanding education
lack of inspiration lack of innovation
the fact you can't respect another mans creation
lack of motiviation lack of restoration
the fact we lack unity and enjoy separation
lack of destination because you know what I feel
I feel that humans lack the ability to be real

-John Reuban

I really don't have anything to say right now. Oh well.

Promise.
I'll Catch you.
Trust me.

A lot of people associate the winter with tragedy, or death, or end. It's cold, it's dark, the trees are bare, animals and humans hide away.
But I find that the best way to describe the silent cold of winter is with the word promise. The promise of Spring. The promise of tomorrow. The promise of a savior.

Genesis 28:15

I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

There you have it.

Tomorrow's assembly

Realize it's not about the song.
Realize it's not about how I sing.
Realize it's not about how much you clap.
Realize it's not about me.

Realize it's about Him. That's my focus. It's gotta be, or else all if for nothing.
Here's to His love.
Thank you.
I'd be lost without it.

Well, life certainly was changed up a bit today.
It's a snow day, and I got to sleep in this morning.
Man, I love direct answers to prayer.

Slow Down

I always seem to be hurrying. Rushing through the day, trying to get everything done as fast as possible. My year is marked by months, marked by weeks, marked by days, marked by hours, marked by minutes. Even with the books I read I find myself meticulously counting the pages. Books in my mind are split up in Chapters, which are further split up into 100's, 50's, 20's, 10's of pages until we get down to page by page.

Time seems to go by so fast. The weekdays blend into one, and the weekends are definitely not long enough. I enjoy life. Each day is appreciated. But sometimes I wish that I had more than 5 minutes in between my classes, so that I could take my time and maybe talk to somebody in the hallway. I wish that I had longer than 26 minutes at lunch time to eat and converse with friends. I wish that the days didn't just mesh into one. Instead of each day being invidivual it turns into this (I hate to say) routine of Get up, Go to school, Go home, Do homework, Eat, Read, Bed. Now obviously that's a slight exaggeration seeing as my days are filled with many more things than those seven I just listed, but that's what it feels like.

I want to teach myself to walk slower, talk slower, eat slower, and ultimately breath slower.
But I just don't have the time. Ironic, isn't it.

Tomorrow, I'll try to slow down a bit. Change things up a bit.
Kirstyn

Recording

Notice:

I will be recording my songs two weeks from now on a Sunday afternoon. Now don't get worked up, it's nothing professional or anything. It's just Garage Band on my dad's Mac. However, I find that it is time that I set up a Myspace so that I can put my music up and people who are always asking to hear my songs finally can. But before I do that, I must get busy recording.
I plan on doing "All for Love" (My latest song), "Who I want to be/Just a girl", and finally "Don't Flatter Me".

Just thought I'd inform you. For anyone who cares.

Kirstyn

I've gone downtown about 3 times in the past week with my brother, and my friends to have coffee or to go to church. I love going downtown Toronto, but lately I've just realized the need for healing in that area. As I walk down the dirty sidewalk of Yonge Street, past Dundas Square I'm bombarded with constant advertisements, or people handing out pamphlets on Islam. I walk past the Church of Scientology, and the Strip bars, and the Gay bars. I look into the eyes of the people passing me and my heart breaks. I won't deny the sense of fear that rises up in my spirit as I walk down that Strip of Yonge. But once that feeling of anxiousness has dissipated the knowledge of the need for Jesus in downtown Toronto practically hits me in the face like that of the biting wind on a cold November night. I don't have any answers. I just know is that my heart starts crying when I see all of these hurting people. And I have no idea what to do about it.

During worship tonight at central, I saw God stamp "MINE" on my heart. That stamp represents His protection, His favour, and His love.

He's been showing me his love these past few weeks and during that time I've been asking Him to give me the strength to love people like they love them. And I know that when my heart cries out for these people that I see, It's God saying: "I love the guy that's sitting on that street corner begging for change. I love the group of people that you just walked past who are laughing and having a good time. I love the man that stands at the same street corner everyday and asks people the time. I love the guy who's talking to himself on the subway. I love the woman that works at the Strip bar. I love the people of downtown Toronto, and I haven't forgotten about them. I love them just as much as I love you.

Kirstyn

Our words have power

I spent the day being very aware of the words that were coming out of my mouth, and what words were coming out of the mouth's of others. At the beginning of the day my goal was only to avoid the pointless conversation outlined in my previous post. I slipped up a few times today, either catching myself in the act of saying "Fine" to the response of "How are you?", or realizing that I had right afterwards.

But, along with trying to say something other than "Nothing much" when somebody asked "What's up", I also tried to ask interesting questions. It started off in History class this morning. I stole the idea from my Brother's blog and started asking some of my close friends to say something inspirational. And before I new it, all of my friends were in on it. Some of them were listing off favourite quotes that they loved, and some of them were saying something completely ridiculous, but hilarious all the same. We had a good laugh, and it made people think. There was only one person in the group who did not come up with a substantial answer.

I asked a few more of my friends the same question at lunch time, and one person in particular told me to give them a minute to think about it, and sure enough came back with something quite profound and worth while. This friend isn't someone I generally have lengthy conversations with, but once I had invested some time into asking them a question, they all of the sudden started telling me this funny story about something that had happened on the weekend, and I was drawn into a new conversation.

After everybody had said their words of inspiration I asked another question: "What is the one of the most exciting things you've ever done?" We went around the circle and all of my friends shared something about a vacation they had, or some other experience they had enjoyed. A few people said they had not had something exciting happen to them, or that they didn't know, but sure enough when they saw everybody sharing and joining in on the conversation, they did as well; adding their two cents worth of exciting events. This may not seem like an amazing thing to you as you read this, but the intelligence, and thought put into the conversation today was on a completely different level than it usually is. A higher lever. The usual meaningless banter at my school lunch table was not present today. Instead I learned something new about the people I spend so much of my time with. It's a shame we don't actually know eachother.

I plan on keeping this up. Everyday a new question.
Let's be aware of what were saying.
Let's be intelligent with our words.
Our words have power.

Until later,

Kirstyn

"Hi."
"Hey."
"How are you?"
"Fine. You?"
"Good."
"Cool."
"Yeap."
"Alright, well see you later."
"Bye."

Or in other words, we've just had a 10 second conversation
that accomplished absolutely nothing. I'm so tired of it.
I'm going to try my very best to not have this conversation this week.
So there.
Stick it to the man.

Kirstyn.

Satirical

I'm spending time reading other people's blogs and it seems to me that everybody's down about something. Either that or they're writing like they're depressed. And that is sort of depressing in and of itself. Makes me wonder if I should start writing the woe's of Kirstyn. Actually no, it really doesn't make me wonder that. Not at all actually. Although, it does make me want to write something satirical. Maybe next time. I'm too busy right now, having a life.

:)

Twenty years from now
you will be more disappointed
by the things you didn't do
than by the ones you did.
So throw off the bowlines,
sail away from the safe harbour.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore,
Dream.

-Mark Twain

Grade 2 Theory is SO incredibly frustrating. I finished my Gr. 8 royal conservatory practical exam last June and scored an 82% which I was really happy with, but now I am stuck here doing Theory; figuring out how many Major, Minor, Diminished, Augmented or Perfect intervals fit into any number of Major, Minor, Natural or Harmonic scales. It's brutal. My mom was my piano teacher for just over 10 years, and she is also currently teaching me the theory that I am so incredibly fed-up with at the moment. We had to go over the same lesson like 4 times, because I didn't understand it. Generally I find Theory pretty easy to comprehend, but this specific section I just could not figure out. I just finished the lesson with my mom, and thankfully I don't have to worry about theory again until next Wednesday. I don't actually mind it that much, but I feel like ranting a bit, so let me be. (Just in case you read this mom, I am thankful for all you do to teach me piano and theory, this is nothing against you).

I think I'm due for a good cry sometime soon. This may sound strange to you, but people gotta cry every once in a while. I'm convinced that its a healthy thing to do.
Anyways, enough of me boring you out of your minds.

Kirstyn

What amazes me is how certain events in our life are remembered forever, and others are forgotten almost instantaneously. Memories are powerful.
What also amazes me is the fact that dreams seem so real sometimes. Did you know that if we didn't dream, we would die? So, even if you don't think that you dream, you do. You just don't remember them.

I'm struggling here, trying to figure out just how much I should say...

When I first started this post I was going to say, "Lucky you, blog reader, you get an inside peek on the mind of Kirstyn today." But man, I don't even feel free to be completely open here! I'm so frustrated. Life would be way easier if we didn't have to hide what we were really thinking all the time.

I'd like to go through a day just hearing the subtext. Yeah...

End of post.

Life for me right now can be summed up in one word: BUSY!

I've been doing homework all night long this whole week. I am outrageously tired. I shouldn't even be talking to you right now. I should be in bed; sleeping; dreaming in fact. Goodbye!

So, it's like this.

The High Priest in the old testament was a representative for all the people of the nation or land. He had to be completely holy. Everything about him had to be clean, and free from sin. Every year he would go into the Holy of Holies, which was in the temple. The Holy spirit, and presence of God resided in the Holy of Holies. At this point the people were still separated from God, and the only way to get to God was through the law. So every year the High Priest would sanctify himself and enter the Holy of Holies to sacrifice a spotless lamb in order to bring bounty to the people for that year. If the High Priest had any sin in him, he would be immediately struck dead because the power of God was so heavy in that place.

If the High Priest did not die, and was found righteous before God, then all the people in the nation were found righteous as well, and they would be blessed that year. However, if the Priest was not righteous and died in the Holy of Holies because of it, that would reflect back to the people as being full of sin as well. It's sort of like the Governor General reporting to the Queen as a representative for all of Canada.

The amazing thing about Grace is that Jesus is our representative. He is the High Priest of every single person who was, is, and will be living on this earth. Therefore, when we, as Christians come before the Throne of God. God doesn't see us, and the imperfections we've made, and the sins we've committed, but instead he sees Jesus standing before us as our representative, perfect in every way. God then says, "Hello my beloved, you are perfect, spotless. Please enter my kingdom. I love you."

This blows my mind; I don't have to do ANYTHING to receive this gift other than believing that Jesus did in fact pay the price for me. I don't have to work for it, I don't have to pay for it. It's completely and utterly a gift. If your best friend gave you a gift for Christmas and you told her you would pay her back for it, your friend would say, "No. I gave this gift to you, it wouldn't be a gift if you had to do something to earn it. I love you, that's why I'm giving it to you." It's the same thing with Jesus.

I'm writing this down more for me, than for you probably because this was the message I heard tonight at church and I want to remember it. It made me see a completely different perspective on so many things. If it helps you, awesome. Have a grace filled week.

Kirstyn

I need a break.