A few thoughts

Oh my word! Posts two days in a row... completely out of character.

Apartments are wonderful places to live in. The snow is plowed, the lawn is mowed, the only bills you have to worry about is rent, electric, phone; depending on where you live, of course. Don't get me wrong. I love it. Having my own space, not living at home anymore. But I want a house. Why? So I can a have a garden with an outrageous amount of flowers. Roses, cyclamen, lavender, delphiniums, peonies, lilacs, hyacinths, grape hyacinths..... The list goes on. And a vegetable, fruit, and herb garden. Peppers, potatoes, corn, carrots, basil, rosemary, lettuce, berries, tomatoes.... Ah, me. It would also be amazing to have a (sunny) room just for my books. Shelves and shelves of books with a couple of overstuffed chairs and maybe a painting or two. I have a list of the books I own and currently the number is around 280. Somehow, though, I don't think that is a lot. Especially as a fair number of them are less than mediocre. There are so many more to obtain too! Madame Bovary, more Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayer, Margaret Atwood, E.M. Forster, C.S. Lewis, Eudora Welty. Again, an endless list. Oh, that there were more time in a day to read all the amazing books in the world.

Speaking of which... I have been buying books lately. Lots of books. Okay, really lately only means within the past week. But I find the best deals, I promise! A thrift store in my hometown sells used paperback books for fifty cents each! I got nine. Nine books for less than five dollars. If any one of you passed that opportunity by, I would slap you right in the face. A few of the titles? The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Friday Night Knitting Club, Heidi, Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, The Fires of Heaven. I got a coupon in my email for fifteen percent off one item at a bookstore so I used it. And today, I went to one of the bookstores in town. They have a rather large used section. Four books for eleven dollars. Not bad. Total? Fourteen books, twenty four dollars.

Now a couple more serious topics.

Just a thought. Never tell a person who is depressed they should wake up and tell themselves to be happy, it will be okay, etc. A depressed someone cannot do this. At least, not unless they have a really... nope. I've been there before, many times. The reason I bring it up is because someone once told me I needed to wake up and decide to be happy. (Incidentally, the same person said a couple of months later: when on her cycle and depressed, not something she can snap out of.) This statement is no doubt meant to be kind and helpful, but it isn't. It is instead slightly hurtful, and may make the depressed person feel like they aren't doing enough/ what they should be to get back to normal.

A couple of months ago, one of the girls in my Bible study said that it annoys her when people say Satan is tempting them. She believes people give too much credit to the devil. In her eyes, it is the culture we live in that is telling us lies and tempting us, etc. Apparently there are only so many demons and they can't be everywhere at once. While I agree with her about the so many demons aspect, the rest, I question. (Clarifying statement- I think there are only so many demons, but since it is impossible to know exactly how many, it's probably best to err on the side of wrong and assume they are everywhere.) It scares me, because I don't think she is giving the devil enough credit if that is possible. After all, isn't Satan the one behind the destruction of all morals, and therefore a skewed culture? In the NIV, Matthew 6:13 says "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one." Thus equating temptation with Satan. And in Ephesians 6, when Paul is talking about the armor of God, he says, "In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith,with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one." To me, that seems pretty clear cut. The culture is not an entity out to grab your soul. It can be used as a means to hurt it, but ultimately, Satan is the one trying to get you to stray.

I had a thought last night. What if people I know read this chatter? The dashboard of this blog hosting site has two little boxes: one that tells you how many people have visited your blog and another that tells you if anyone subscribes to your blog. The site stats box, as it is called, also shows what websites referred the viewer to your page, if any. Currently no one subscribes to my blog, but every once in a while someone will visit it that isn't referred by some random website. (If this is you, please don't be totally creeped out, these are just some random musings.) The reason I wonder if I know said person(s?) is because once in  awhile I'll follow those links and they lead to weird websites. (So really, a computer is probably just looking at these words.) And sometimes the viewer goes straight to the homepage. But in order to do that don't they need to know the url? And I've told no one in my life the name of this blog. Also I used to subscribe to a couple of people's blogs that I knew. And I'm not sure exactly when wordpress put that little box down in the corner telling you who is stalking your writing. Wow. Did not think this would turn into such a long paragraph....