Excuse me for a moment while I act like a teenager...

How else shall I say it? I'm not intending to make this a God-blog entry, though it's not far-fetched that it will indeed lean that direction. Like when I mention a divine banana.... but I digress. This time around, I just want to do something I haven't in a long while. Poetry. Rhymes. I came across some of my old melodramatic ones tonight and thought to myself, "Hmm, how long has it been since I've made one of these?" Oh, and by the way, I'll be the first to admit I'm a hopeless romantic... just setting that out there.

Aug. 30, 2007

Round and round the heart it goes,
Toyed with as a trivial matter.
Round and round till no one knows,
Is he the one, or is it a latter?

Sept. 2007

As she dreamt in sweetest grace,
His eyes caressed her placid face.
Though when her eyelids fluttered open,
Not a word he thought was spoken.

April 30, 2007

Skin caressed by water,
A face kissed by the sun.
Lips scorched by fire,
And stars reflected in her eyes.
Then came the touch of time.

The skin wilted,
The face paled.
Rosy lips faded,
And the eyes dimmed.
Then came understanding.

October 9, 2007

A broken arrow lies at her feet,
Another reminder of Cupid's defeat.
Bloodied and worried from twisting,
The hands which snapped the arrow are blist'ring.
And though the protruding end be removed,
The embedded head is not so behooved.
Swelling and oozing are not easily quelled,
When one foolish heart to another does meld.


Personally, that one might be in my five top favorites. Another in the top five was inspired by "Wuthering Heights". Just after I read the book, the feelings I'd experienced so overwhelmed me I had to describe it...

October 27, 2007

Beast without a heart,
A visage of black art,
Is he man, does he feel?
His gaze is cold as steel.
Heathcliff he's called,
Man who's never bawled.
Bitterness his companion
And Anger his minion,
Thrashing those who refute him,
Not fearing to break a limb.
Only one has the power
To topple this human tower,
And cause him to weep
For the curse of his life to keep.


To look through my journal is like freezing the time it is now to see what I was then compare it to who I am now.

May 12, 2007
Another year, gone by all too fast. They're graduated high school and now will prepare to take their first steps free from the restraints of home. No, Christian and Mary Helen are not coming back next year.

November 23, 2007
It is still up in the air, and I doubt it will work out tonight, but Christian and I want to see Enchanted. My parents are Christmas shopping and he's at his grandparents' house having a second Thanksgiving dinner. (How can one have two of those in one week??) When mom was still here, she said that if Christian did come, I should call her to say my eunuch friend had shown up. ----(Christian, if you're reading this, I love ya! ;)----

December 23, 2007
So, I've been thinking about today's definition of love: you find me attractive, I find you attractive, let's make babies! Honestly, people. Love is so much more than superficiality, more than your shallow opinions about appearances. Quote from MH, "You're going to get old and ugly. Get used to it." You'll lose your figure, your hands will have sunspots, but is that to be defined as 'ugly'? But I digress. My point being, you can't go out on a date and by madly in love with someone. Now, you may be strongly attracted to them - for whatever reason - but to love implies to know someone enough to see their flaws and accept them. For both to be able to point out weaknesses and help each other through good and bad. This isn't even the half of it, but it's late and I have no more writing room.

January 9, 2008
Is there something wrong with wanting to bite of every man's head? Please, enlighten me. I am well aware that MH and mom are majorly irritated with me for condemning each man who even looks at me wrong. The Best Buy boy who ran the register said, "You look familiar to me". As if I look desperate or something, Sandra chimed in, "Her name's Lesley", and two thoughts collided at once. First thought: "He's flirting with me! Cocky dude", and secondly, "Nice pick up line". Neither one of these phrases left the corridors of my mind.

February 24, 2008
Grandpa's funeral services took place yesterday. I felt distinctly stoic because I was the only one of my cousins who didn't cry.

April 6, 2008
Help me to love You, Lord God. I am weak and the flesh constantly falls asleep, but may You always be my first, true love, and the heartbeat of my life. May I not forget it!

May 2, 2008
10:15 I will be able to move... it's 9:45 now. After much harranguing about, "can I"/"can I not?", I sit here in the bathroom with hair streaked in red paste. That's right: I'm highlighting my hair pink!

June 17, 2008
I really experienced the power of God tonight at Pastor Rene's church, almost as if the Holy Spirit ran in my veins and out of my mouth. Erin asked me to give my testimony, while we were already in the van, and that it should happen after our "In the Light" drama. I can't deny, but at first I felt nervous and dizzy. But I realized that it wouldn't be me, but the Holy Spirit through me, who would enable me to speak. How many times had God reminded me of the story of Moses, and when Moses said, "No, I can't" and God just said, "I gave man his mouth, who are you to tell me you cannot speak?"

June 18, 2008
I really just want to cry when I think about leaving Christina, Maria, Alexis, Innani, Pastor Rafael and his wife and all those I've built relationships with, even in spite of the language barrier.

June 19, 2008 (from eight-year-old Christina in my journal)
What The lesli love Cristina the lesli mi sister no amigo ni broder my sister what you do love Love Love Love

June 20, 2008
A choking sensation constricted my throat last night as I climbed into the van. I couldn't find Christina. I don't know if she went home or if I just wasn't able to find her in the crowd, but I didn't get to say goodbye.

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I'm going to stop there. Mexico changed my life. To see how the tone of my life has changed... it's hard for me to fully register that that was indeed me last year. How could I have been so hopeless, so selfish, so.... godless? All I was concerned about were boys, school, drama and useless junk. God has revealed Himself to me so clearly, I saw it written on the believers' faces in Acuna. There was joy. I was an American, I had TV, a laptop, a good solid home, clean clothes, working toilets... I had so much, but they had so much more. They knew real joy, and for me to find that in such a desolate wasteland in houses that were mere slabs of wood and metal roofing and cardboard awoke me from my state of slumber.

I saw the power of God. I felt it. He was in me, and nothing can make me disbelieve that. How often I stray. I only pray that the Lord will keep me close to Him so that my human nature may not tempt me.

See? It did turn into a God-blog. :)

Part of the Learning

Not much has made so huge an impression in my life as Mexico. Mexico this, Mexico that, I feel sort of silly telling those who weren't there about the revelations I had. But it plucked a heartstring, and God continued to teach me through the summer and show me more about Himself, over and over.

But somehow I find myself fighting for it.

During the summer, it was easier for me to focus on positives, friends were home from college, and the expectation of the big SENIOR YEAR was a novelty. July became August, and August turned September, and October eventually rolled around. To graduate, I only needed three credits, but took five anyway. Then the negativity sets in, when I wake up and realize that this is life, and I have to do homework, get up at an ungodly hour, work for more hours at my job, and try to balance a social life when I'm not buried in a text book. Add in the arguments over college and ACT's, a severe spiritual drought, and some unencouraging and negative comments directed at me, and there I was. I felt like a plant set in a windowsill, but no one came to water me, and the sun was scorching.

I'm still fighting. I am a daughter of the King, and His joy is my joy. Or so it should be, I fall on the pessimistic side of things generally.

Yet though I get frustrated, I feel dry, I have faith. I believe in the Lord's presence, even when I don't "feel" Him there. That is all. He is the reason for my life and the God of my heart, and I need to bow down in humility, because I can't make it alone.

The Lord is so good, even as I sit here, flipping through to find some other passage, He gave me one... the only red text on the page, which is what caught my eye.

"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'"-2 Cor. 12:8,9

Lord,
You are my God, my rock, the guardian of my soul. Please take every thought I have and make it obedient to you, help me be positive when nothing would make me want to be, except that I remember that is what you would want of me.

It is a struggle I'm going through, I do not have this perfected, I cannot say that I've reached the other side. But this is the sanctifying process. I thank the Lord that He is loving and patient and guiding, for I would be dead without Him.

I want to dance, like I did in Mexico, to let the whole world fall away except that I am holding the hands of my brothers and sisters and proclaiming my Lord, from every corner, in every language. There are no boundaries in Christ, and one day I hope to hold that little brown hand again, whether in this life or the next.

"Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in my weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." -2 Cor. 12:9,10