"I feel like a pancake,"

said the girl with the yellow Taylor shirt sitting in the Union, alone among 39 people.

She had been cracked open, sifted, stirred, beaten, poured out. And after it all she lay in a frying pan, sizzling with anxiety, flattened by cares, prepared for consumption.

And thus, after only 5 pages of reading, Hannah took a break from homework.

I was reading the chapter on Creation in A Faith for All Seasons for my Historic Christian Belief class tomorrow and came upon this phrase that made me think. I'll put it in context for you.

Here Edwards distinguished between what has been called God's necessary work and God's free work. It is necessary for God the Father to beget the Son and exist on the high order of Trinity in order to delight in himself. Otherwise God would not be God. But God needs nothing outside of himself in order to be completely happy with who he is.

Can you guess the sentence? "But God needs nothing outside of himself in order to be completely happy with who he is." Can you guess what phrase? To be happy. 

I guess I really never thought of God being happy before. God seems like he would be glad, or appreciative, or admiring. But happy? God seems more dignified than that.

Then I remember verses like Zephaniah 3:17, which, come to think of it, is our room verse.

The Lord your God is in your midst,

A mighty one who will save;

He will rejoice over you with gladness;

He will quiet you with his love;

He will exult over you with loud singing.

God is glad, yes, but not a dignified sort of glad. He rejoices - a verb that implies excitement. And then look at that last phrase, my favorite. Loud singing!

When you think of God, put away the refined picture in your head. Paint a new one, a God who sings loudly, rejoices, and is happy.

Fear.

My Psych final was today. We didn't have an exam, just a final paper dealing with a psychological model explaining the Self in light of the fall. One of the main conclusions in this model was the fact that the False Self (fallen away from what God created) lives in fear.

Part of the paper was to integrate ourselves into the model, to show how the model works by giving examples of our own lives. That was hard. To write an academic paper about true fears you are struggling with, things you hardly tell anyone.

The root problems are fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, and fear of humiliation. But out of this, I've found

I'm afraid of friendship

I'm afraid of leading worship

I'm afraid of speaking up in class

I'm afraid of conversation

I'm afraid of acceptance

I'm afraid of arguments with my boyfriend

I'm afraid to start or continue music lessons

I'm afraid to audition for anything

And as I remembered today, I'm afraid to confront someone who I know has deeply hurt someone else in my life, so I just content myself with glaring at the back of their heads.

not my favorite Wednesday.

That was yesterday - staying up until 3:20, potentially getting up only 4 hours later, a huge project, homework due, 2 tests and a quiz. Looking toward the Wednesday, I was not pleased and rather stressed.

But then, writing a letter to my mom in Astronomy class last night, I realized that I had made it through the day unscathed. All of the things I thought were going to squash me actually turned out to be all right.

Interesting how my perspective on this changed how I felt about it entirely. In the span of 24 hours, I was feeling completely different about this Wednesday.

Hm. Just for thinking.

I Am From

For my Interpersonal Communication class, I was assigned to write a 10-12 line poem describing where I Am From. Not particularly the city or state, but what has formed who I am today.

This assignment minded me of the epic poem I wrote in 8th grade. Not at all because of the length, but because it's one of those assignments I actually enjoyed doing, would do for fun, and completed early - in the case of the epic poem, 3 weeks early. What a cute little nerd.

I Am From Narnia

I Am From a missionary family

I Am From the open skies and barefoot fields

I Am From a deep desire for justice and peace

I Am From recycling and dark chocolate and Crayola crayons

I Am From finding motivation for loving, for living, for learning

I Am From a love of organized chaos, especially Frederic Chopin

I Am From loving a group of friends both recent and from the ancient past

I Am From a struggle of finding God and this world and myself and fitting them all together

I Am From a love of the green mountains, fascinating people, and intricate culture of Ireland

this is NOT smart of me

It's been a while since I've posted, but this is not a good time to catch up. I have three classes tomorrow, two of which I have homework yet to do, and I still have yet to pack for our floor retreat tomorrow.

But I can't concentrate. It's 71 Fahrenheit outside, it has just rained, the fan is blowing, and I'm listening to George Winston and Chopin. I don't even have anything in particular to write about. Besides the fact that I am not a fan of homework at the moment. Anything, I suppose, to keep me from reading sentences such as, "If your intentions are positive, accurate, and reciprocated by the people with whom you are interacting, your intercultural competence will likely be enhanced."

Aha! This is what prompted the post. I just returned (well, around 11) from my small group meeting. I'm so glad I got to be in the same small group as last semester. I love it. I am reminded once again why I love being here. We spent 2 1/2 hours just ... talking. Talking about our summers, the not so fun spots, the frustrating times, but also the laughs and the joy.

This is what I love about Taylor. Just being. And knowing that there are people I can tell about Me, the real, nasty, gritty, failing, human Me. I can't think of a way to continue here without sounding cliche. I don't want to be. It's not. Or, on the other hand, maybe phrases like "loving me for who I really am" are cliche for a reason. Because they're used so much. And they're true.

Anyway, this random babbling and rambling signifies that I must leave you and return to the depth which is homework. I leave you with another inspiring line from my Intercultural Competence book: "By appropriate we mean those behaviors that are regarded as proper and suitable given the expectations generated by a given culture, the constraints of the specific situation, and the nature of the relationship between the interactants."

Goodnight.

stream of consciousness

In 11th grade, my English teacher assigned a stream of consciousness essay. Basically, she told us all to sit down for a half hour or so and just write down what we were thinking, hearing, feeling, smelling, and so on. I just happened to find mine, and it amused me quite a bit. Most of it was questions I had, and some parts were actually intriguing and thought provoking. Instead of keeping this tidbit to myself, I have decided that here, for your reading (and thinking / hearing / feeling / smelling) pleasure, is a snippet of Hannah Chupp, 2 1/2 years ago. [and yes, I wrote it during another class. ha.]

Stream of Consciousness: Chemistry Class, April 12, 2006, 2:00-2:25 p.m.

There will be a paper coming out of my head, says Sarah. This room is so hot! Why won't the air turn on? I had no idea he took chemistry yesterday. Never mind. The table is messed up. Sarah sounds like a squirrel and Jessica says she's hyperventilating. What would be the eventual result of continual hyperventilation? I wonder if the rate of hyperventilation would change with change in temperature. Or atmospheric pressure. Or if there would be any kind of equilibrium between the air in our body and the air outside.

Can there ever be complete trust? Even if we have no logical reason not to trust someone, will we develop trust issues for no reasons? Praise the Lord for lack of essay. A chem essay on the final would be disgusting. Who decides the meanings of words? And how do they change through the years? Who decides? How did we delegate that authority and why? We talk about lost freedoms to the government, but what about lost freedoms to the general public? Every decision someone makes is a freedom lost to someone else.

What is sound? Seriously. And why did God create things we'll never see or hear? For his own pleasure? Anything he created on a worldly scale will never compare to what Heaven is like, so it's obviously not for his benefit. But then comes the question, are other galaxies fallen? When sin came into the world, did it also go to, say, the moon, or Jupiter? They're obviously not perfect, not what is the best possible result, but how did sin get there?

How do people get popular? What is the definition of popular, meaning, is popular inclusive of everything (all people like you), or can you be "popular" and still a geek? Am I a geek? Do people hate me? I wonder. They haven't told me yet, at least. What if everyone I thought was a close friend was really plotting to kill me when I turned 45? Don't worry, I'm not that paranoid. It's just an odd thought. But what if, in my doubt of paranoia, I was really paranoid? Of being paranoid? What if what I thought was not really thought, meaning that my brain was tricking me into thinking what weren't really my thoughts.

Wow, this is a lot deeper than I thought it was going to be. If I go into anymore, I will probably get you and myself depressed, and scare us both. Therefore, I have ended. No I haven't, this assignment has. No it hasn't, it's still continuing. So it will end. But then it's always in the future, so will it really ever end?