the candid files

wow what an amazing time we had last night.
All I can say is that our God is an awesome God. And I still thank God for tears, because tears are awesome. And like Sarah said, I might even miss them in heaven.

HAHA everyone Laura asked ME for a hug.

I woke up this morning with a smile on my face! That feels just…astounding!

I’ll stop gushing now.

*sigh…*

IT has happened. I have been labelled at school as the good girl. Not that that’s so bad, I wish it were more true, but ok, I’m not so otherworldly that a conversation about eyebrow shaving is foreign to me. Do I LOOK like I don’t know what makeup is? I try not to look too shocked at some of the other stuff, though…

My life is not bad at all. I keep telling myself this. Some of the stories I hear at school are incredible, mostly because people seem to think that cheating husbands, prostitute neighbours, and gunshots at night are completely normal.

Still, I’m not really happy. You know when you do something embarrassing, and you’re so annoyed with yourself that it sits in your gut for like two days? Yeah that’s me right now. And plus I haven’t got enough sleep since…school started? I can think of two occasions in the last week where I’ve actually fallen asleep in the daytime. I have never, ever been able to sleep when it’s light out! Therefore I conclude that I am overtired.

What was I going to write about.

Oh, ok: I am thankful for:

1. I am breathing
2. I am not in pain
3. I get to go to girls Bible study tonight
4. I am almost finished accounting II
5. tomorrow morning will not be monday, again
6. my man (you knew he was in here somewhere)
7. Honda Preludes (who wouldn’t be? Now that is a fine car…)
8. I have a family I don’t hate.
9. I have a van to drive to Redeemer tonight, even if I’d rather take the car.
10. music
11. love songs in particular
12. tears, laughter, and blood. (don’t ask)
13. imputed righteousness (I will never forget what “imputed” means, thanks to Rev. Bosch.)
14. strength for today.

Ok, I agree with Laura.
Uteruses suck. (I told my dad that when he asked me how my day was. I think he was a little uncomfortable.)
And I have no idea how to spell uterus in plural.

I think that a woman shouldn’t have to experience menstruation until a month or two after she’s married. When she might actually have a use for a uterus. Why must we go through such pain NOW??
I could barely get through my exam this morning…and that was with a Tylenol 3 which did nothing for me. I almost puked on the way home.

So yeah. I guess it’s a wonderful thing, a womanly tie to the stream of life or some such bullcrap. But it’s painful and nauseating, a royal pain in the ass to deal with and it’s NOT FAIR

Well ok, I guess it’s fair, in the grand scheme of things it’s beautiful, but mankind in general had better be grateful!!

It is freezing cold in November. Who the heck had the idea to go and camp out at Brian’s parents’ place this weekend?
Well actually we had fun, I don’t think there were any serious frostbite incidents. And I chickened out of the whole “let’s sleep in the barn!” thing. Tammy and I managed to snag a guestroom with a queensized bed. We were quite toasty. I even managed a shower in the morning!
After the Sunday morning service Peter took Art and I to the hospital down the street (we were in Listowel) where he’d worked for most of this last summer. It was interesting. Ugly building…I can see why they want to renovate.
We had a nice lunch at the DeVries’s, then watched Peter lose at Settlers of Catan, and then we drove the two hours home to Waterdown with Ryan. Once in the house (and of course not before) I suddenly thought to look for my wallet. (I haven’t been carrying a purse lately…complicated story but it’s because of school). Of course, I couldn’t find my wallet. After thinking really hard and getting very frantic, I realized that I had left my wallet in the hymnal rack of the front pew of Immanuel United Reformed Church – of LISTOWEL. Immediatley called Mrs. Devries, but everyone else was already gone. (she did say that somebody had brought back Ryan’s backpack that had all his stuff, that he forgot.) but anyway, my wallet had not been seen.
OK so now what? And here’s where I get to how well my Peter does take care of me: Before I’d even started to think about how to get it back, he was volunteering to drive me back up to Listowel to pick it up. We couldn’t think of any other way, so I just had to let him. Man I felt stupid. I felt even more stupid when we were halfway there and realized we had timed it just right that we’d be there for the start of the service, not the end, as we’d thought. Here’s me, in muddy jeans, a sweater that smelled like woodsmoke, and my hair the frizziest it’s been in a few weeks, sort of haphazardly pinned to the back of my head. Peter looked respectable, but still. So we drove around and around Listowel. Finally the service ended, we ran inside and there was my wallet! Being examined by some Dutch women who had already deduced it was from Sheffield.
So we turned and Peter drove me back home.
so that was our exciting weekend!

Oh except I should say something about Saturday. Which was Peter’s 21st birthday. I got up early and drove to his house, snuck in, and TRIED to wake him up nicely. For some reason, however, he’d locked his bedroom door and I had to pound it down and yell OPEN THE DOOR!
(Caleb wasn’t too impressed, his bedroom door was open next door and all he said was “Candice! Peter’s not the only one who sleeps down here, you know!”)
Anyway I took him out for breakfast. And shopping for some stuff he needed.
I’m in love with an older man. Is that scandalous?
NOW. I’m going to get some much needed sleep.

Wow…didn’t I just open up CNN.com and find another example of what I was saying yesterday. Scott Peterson, convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife Laci, and the second-degree murder of his unborn son. An unborn child, the victim of a murder.

I don’t know a lot about that case, but from the story I read on the sentencing, it was noted that Laci Peterson was about eight months pregnant when she went missing. The baby was a boy the couple was planning to name Connor. So an obviously pregnant wife…a baby named Connor…
I get the feeling that if she hadn’t been as pregnant and the baby wasn’t as obviously wanted, there wouldn’t have been much outcry.

The jurors knew that baby’s name. He was a person to them. But doesn’t God know every baby’s name? Didn’t He know your name before you were born? God knows the name of every child before they are even conceived. He planned for the conception of all of us, we’re in His plan. And so are the lives that sinful man wrongfully ends almost before they’ve had a chance to begin.

I don’t know why this subject is so real to me right now. Abortion just keeps popping into my head, and I dunno… I must be PMSy because I’m really emotional about everything. I was looking at really old pictures of my parents’ wedding back in 1982, and I actually got tears in my eyes. Sheesh, I’m a wreck. I think I need more sleep.

Today is Remembrance Day.
My school is situated in an office building next to Gore Park in Hamilton. Gore Park is a stretch of trees, grass, pathways, a fountain, and a war memorial on King Street. The city had the Remembrance Day service there, so most of our school took an hour long break to participate.

There was a crowd of like, oh, eight hundred maybe? An ancient man was leading the service, and it was really funny because they had loudspeakers in the tree I was standing next to. You could hear every word that you weren’t supposed to hear, like “.*mutter*…it’s damn cold” and “oh, no, leave that for the – no wait where is that – oh did you want me to say something about that?”

I thought it was sad, though. An old Reverend lead the service, and we sang Oh God our Help in Ages Past, and Abide with Me. I felt like the only one for fifty yards who knew the words. It didn’t help that this old pastor was singing very enthusiastically into the mike, which was pouring sound out of the loudspeakers in the trees. It was deafening. Especially with the brass band. Then there was a little speech by him, he read a passage from Deuteronomy, which I barely understood. I believe it was a “come to Me for cleansing from sin” passage, but I doubt anyone around me was even listening.
We sang Oh Canada. A few people remembered the words to that. Then God Save the Queen. A few less people. Then the Reverend closed with a passage from Jude:

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling
And to present you faultless
before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,
To God our Saviour, who alone is wise,
Be glory and majesty, dominion and power,
Both now and forever. Amen.

We devote so much energy to remembering our forefathers, but no one teaches their children what those forefathers believed, what they fought for. It wasn’t just freedom. Freedom is nothing. Freedom to DO something is what they fought for. They fought for freedom to believe. To believe in the One who was their great Commander. I’m sure they were not all strong Christians. In fact I’m sure most of them weren’t. But they knew about it. They had respect for it. And even if they didn’t believe it so much themselves, they knew it was important enough to fight and die for.

But don’t remember that part. Just don’t. It’s not politically correct.

So on my way home from school today I stopped at Harvey’s to eat my fries and read my book in peace. The story of my lack of discipline there is not a subject I wish to dwell on here, however.
As I was putting my tray on the counter above the garbage bin, my eye was caught by an article on that horrible tragedy in Smithville the other night.

A mother and seven children.

Can you imagine? I read all the articles…and on my way home I cried, just thinking about that man, a husband and father of a thriving family…suddenly alone. All I wanted to do was hug my loved ones. I wanted to hold my future children right then…the very thought of those little ones, whether they be boys or girls, good or bad, smart or slow…it didn’t matter. I have no idea what they’ll be like, but they exist as an idea in my head, as those I know I want to meet someday, and almost as if there’s a corner of my heart already to love them.
I cried for Mr. Woerel, who had seven of them – and #8 on the way – and lost them all.

I was struck by another thought, though. All the articles I read stressed that Mrs. Woerel was pregnant. Nobody came out and said it, but along with the seven children in the home at the time of the fire, the opinion seems to be that there were eight little ones killed in that fire.
Why is it that when the death of the unborn child is an accident, they treat it as a tragedy…but when that child is killed on purpose, it wasn’t even a child to begin with?
This is an example of our screwed up society.
The same thing happened last year when a car accident around the corner from Peter’s place claimed the life of a young pregnant woman. All the newspapers mentioned her and the fact that she’d been pregnant.
At risk of sounding callous, why would they even mention that she was pregnant? Who cares? …that is, if it really was just a blob of tissue.
I don’t know the situation around that young lady’s life when that truck put an end to it. But here’s a theory. She was only 19-20 years old. The vast majority, I’d say, of pregnancies at that age (at least in the last decade or so) are accidental. There was no mention of a husband or even of the father of the child in any of the articles I read. That girl may not have planned on being pregnant. She may not have wanted to be pregnant. And if that’s the case, then I’m so proud of her for sticking with that child. But what if she hadn’t? What if she’d had an abortion a few months earlier? There definitely wouldn’t have been any newspaper articles on the tragedy of that child’s death THEN. There wouldn’t even have been a death notice in the paper, or any cards sent to his or her mother.
It makes me sick at heart. Honestly. That my children could someday be exposed to this kind of double thinking and lack of a concrete respect for life just hurts.
Pray for Mr. Woerel. He’s a Christian, (obviously, he had almost eight kids!) pray that his faith in God will only be strengthened through this, not shaken. And pray that the fact that children were so valuable to him will speak to others who might not know that ALL children are highly valued. Even the ones unborn.

so school.
yeah really.
I think I have the Wednesday blahs. I went to school today, it was fine enough. Just school. Now I’m home and I have to say I’m bored. Yes I do have homework but it’s only 1 o’clock, don’t rush me.
Accounting is like um….grocery shopping. no, wait, grocery shopping is kinda fun. it’s kind of like cleaning the bathroom. You know you have to do it…and you have to learn how to do it, so you can…but it’s so boring it’s hard to care.
Except it’s about ten times more complicated than cleaning.
It’s not that I can’t get it. If I work at it, I can get it just fine, and get great marks, even at the accerelerated pace of this program. It’s just that it’s SO BORING. Who really CARES about where the invoice is recorded, posted, and balances summarized? As long as the stuff gets paid, that’s all I care about.
So much of life is like that. You just want to get through it without putting in the work. I mean, without accounting, there’s no way the bills would get paid. So it’s a necessary evil. I am totally in awe of the way some people can actually plan their careers around accounting though, really. I can’t look at numbers that long.
To thou who art about to *spend forty years tracking money* I salute thee!