[insert your life here]

I have been telling myself for days to just sit down and write. It's been weeks since I sat down to enjoy a poem or create my own and I miss it terribly. There have also come up subject after subject during the course of a day where I say to myself, "write this down so we can discuss it later," and promptly I ignore the impulse and move on. Do you ever feel like you are cheating yourself? Or robbing yourself of enjoying some gift that has been given to you? I guess that's nearly how I feel right now.

Pot holes: There was a time this past year when I took a gift for granted, not using it for its proper purpose. A middle-aged man was sitting in front of me in a junior high gym during the worship service of North Langley Vineyard. At the conclusion of the service we got ready to leave and he turned around and complemented me on my singing. I said thank you and have since never seen the man. His comment stuck with me and engrained deep in my head. I have a tendency to replay certain moments again and again in my head, and this was one that always came back to my head when I would sing. During times of worship I would listen to myself singing the words; I wasn't focusing on God or praising him with the words. I was disgusted with myself and my lack of focus. I knew something had to change in my heart because I was not using God's gift properly.. I was using it to fill a selfish hole in my own heart not to worship or bless my heavenly father. For some time I just didn't sing--but then I remembered a time in highschool when I stopped singing for wholy selfish reasons and I lost the gift alltogether. I had to build my voice back up--not singing was also the improper use of God's gift. So I prayed about it and asked God to change my heart: to make the sounds that ripple from my chords pleasing only to him, and that I would use them only to bring him honor and praise. And when I saught after his desires he filled that void I had tried to fill on my own. But it is like the pot hole at the head of 185th street: every so often someone comes along to fill the pot holes, and the corner his whole for sometime, but days and months of wear and tear and the pot holes resurface. Days and months of wear and tear and I fall on my knees again pleading for forgiveness, wholeness, and a broken spirit. And the pot holes are filled again.

"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." 1 Peter 1:6-7

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In other news: A praise! I am the official "landscaper" of a lovely Bellevue home with a view. I am quite excited for this job.

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Daily Media Review
Media news highlights: Monday, 06/02/03

Further Media Consolidation is 'Probably Inevitable'
Despite last-minute protests, lawsuit threats and a doomsday op-ed piece by Ted Turner, the FCC today is expected to approve a dramatic deregulation of American media, said the Chicago Tribune.
FCC chairman Michael Powell said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that he has "no doubt" that the media ownership rule changes will go through on Monday, reported CNN.com.
Further consolidation "is probably inevitable," noted a Washington Post editorial Sunday, "and reflexive opposition might be tilting at windmills."
Republican FCC commissioner Kevin Martin is expected to provide the margin in a 3-2 vote along party lines, according to Bloomberg News.
In spite of all the controversy, the media-ownership debate "has really had the inevitability of a James Bond movie," said Blair Levin, a former FCC official and now analyst at Legg Mason, quoted by Bloomberg News. "You know from the start that 007 is going to get the girl." (continued...)