...Plain Upon Tablets

I received some news today. The stage was set for it three weeks ago, and today confirmed it. I have diabetes. Out of all illnesses you can get, diabetes has been #1 on my Please, Dear God, not that  list my whole life. I've had great aunts and uncles that had it and saw some of the more extreme effects of it, and wanted nothing to do with it, ever. Three weeks ago, blood work results came back. Sugar was pretty high. My doctor decided to schedule more blood work within a two to three-week span of time. I had that done this past Friday. Today, after smiling and talking with my bestie about my good talk with my dissertation chair, after declaring the completion of my dissertation, after excitedly telling bestie of new writing project; the call came. About the norm in a roller coaster life in which at 1:59 you can be on Cloudy Infinity and at 1:59:10, you can hear the thud and the crack of bones as you fall back to earth. Doctor told me the number was lower, but that...

Last week, I talked about the Forward March . This "movement" is a bit different. This one is about the movement that keeps your body at its optimal level, that keeps your feeling good, that keeps your healthier. Before I came to Lubbock in August '09, I was on the road to better movement. I exercised three, four times a week. I drank less coffee. I drank less soda. I drank more water. I cut a lot of fast food, fried foods from my diet. And it showed. Not only was my cholesterol levels getting back to normal, but I was also losing weight. Was even able to purchase jeans two sizes smaller than the ones I had worn in what felt like forever. And then I moved. Have you ever heard of the Freshman 10? Freshman 15 (probably now the Freshman 20!)? It's the theory (very loose theory) that when a freshman goes off to college, he or she (usually she) will probably gain about 10, 15 pounds. Well, I'm here to tell you that not only is this theory true (for me anyway), but it a...

Happy New Year, Everyone! I've been on (and still am on) vacay, so I was away from the blog, but I plan to get back into the swing of things - especially with me going back to Lubbock at the end of the week and with school starting next week. If you follow me on any of the social watering holes like Twitter {I'm HERE }, Facebook {and HERE }, and MySpace {and HERE , too!}, you know that the semester ended pretty well for me. Despite my issues and wishes to flee Lubbock for Lake Charles, I finished the semester with great grades and even a few papers that sparked me into General Dissertation Thoughts. Always a good thing. The biggest thing I learned over this semester was if I could succeed when I felt so overwhelmed, so unstructured, so unprepared, so un-everything, then with more organization and preparation (and heavy, heavy doses of God and prayers), I can shoot for beyond the stars. I'm nervous and excited about the new semester. Why? Well, though I'm happy to be tak...

It's been awhile, and there's a reason for that: I've been busy, tired, and borderline depressed. The week leading up to the 4th of July, I was with a girlfriend who had surgery and needed someone to stay with her. The time away put me behind on work, but the conversations we had about relationships, faith, self-love, etc. will play out in several posts here and probably in a story or two. Once I got home, I spent the next week sleepy, tired, and trying to get back on track. Spent a few days helping the mother of the same friend from above with her book, and I also spent time on the tele, on the text, and on IM with girlfriends I hadn't spent time with. Also found a lot of new women coming to me, wanting to talk, share issues, and seek some kind of thoughts on their issues. During this time of giving to others, I definitely was not giving to myself and this distressed me. This depressed me. Greatly. The lack of sleep (I had been staying up 'til 6 a.m. some day...

Doubt is that ex-girlfriend of Joy that refuses to go away. Like the devil, it used to be angelic, which is why Joy (like God) loved it, but then negativity and evil began to fester within Doubt, and Joy had to kick it to the curb...much like God did the devil. And like the devil, Doubt likes to rear its ugly head, especially when things seem to be going well and you're, dare I say...happy. This is me today. My brain, for most of my life, has been trained to accept defeat. This is worse than crying and being hurt over it. At least the latter shows emotion. When you're trained to accept defeat, all you do is shrug, say, "Figures," and keep on keeping on. Reconnecting with God in a major way a few years ago and being baptized on August 20, 2007, brought Doubt to my life in a major way because now I had faith, now I had expectancy; I expected great things to happen because I had faith, because I moved in that faith. And the devil hated it. And so did Doubt. Today, f...

Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision And make it plain on tablets, That he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; Because it will surely come, It will not tarry. Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him; But the just shall live by his faith. Habakkuk 2:2-4 Throughout the course of a lifetime, we go on many journeys. I know I have. Not enough fingers and toes to list every journey that makes up my life. These journeys cause us to question every action, to make choices, to follow paths, to make mistakes, to accomplish goals, to - inevitably - be changed as a result of each journey. In less than two months, I will begin a journey, a new phase in my life, and the preparation for it began a little over a year ago, at a time when I was tired and done with a lot of things in my life; I was sure my life was placed on serious hold. I wanted to be a published ...