I just have a lot of feelings...what a sappy title

I am in the middle of a small crisis. It seems like a crisis to me at least, probably not to anyone else, but I tend to get overly upset/annoyed with things. It's a bad habit, I know. 

So let me outline my problem for you: (Not that you necessarily want to hear about my problem...haha but lucky you, you get to!) 

So there's a group of people that I'm going to be doing a project with, and we can say that I am...less than happy with it. The group I mean. The people in the group aren't bad or mean or anything. In fact, they happen to be great people! The only problem is, I have tried on many occasions to get to know a few of them and I've been treated with...not as much friendliness as I would hope for. Like I go up and say hi in a very friendly way and they kind of just say hi and then avoid all additional eye contact with me-like I had "loser" tattooed on my forehead. I mean, that might be a slight exaggeration, but the basic message is that they absolutely made no effort to make me feel comfortable. I really did try to connect with these individuals many times because I didn't want to go away thinking I didn't try hard enough to be friendly or "win their friendship". (Not that winning friendships is necessarily the right thing to do or whatever, that's just the expression I chose to use for lack of a better one.) In essence, I felt very uncomfortable talking to them whenever I did.

What is my point in telling you all this? Haha I'm not really sure yet but it'll come eventually. 

 and we wait

 and we wait

Okay now I think I have something. I actually had this before in my brain somewhere but I lost it in the abyss. I like to call my brain the abyss because...well I just do.

So this is what I'm thinking: What do you do when people don't like you? I've struggled with this for as long as I can remember and I'm just coming to a few realizations about it. I came up with a few verses and points that i'm going to outline and comment on to kindof explain it.

2 Corinthians 12:19 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 

God's grace should be sufficient for us. We don't need affirmation from  friends. 

1 Peter 5:7 Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

God gets it. He has had more rejection than probably any of us. He totally cares for us and He can be the best friend that we wish someone else would be, and we don't have to be anxious about who likes us and who doesn't, because He will always like us. 

Philippians 4:19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

All of our needs are met in Christ and we can feel comfortable about ourselves because we have our identity in Jesus, not other people. 

1. When you're having a bad day and you're tempted to feel that God is not good-God is good
2. When you feel ugly or fat-I am fearfully and wonderfully made
3. When you feel rejected-i am accepted in Christ
4. When you feel anxious-God can be trusted
5. When you feel like you can't handle a problem that you're facing-God's grace is enough for me
6. When you feel like you'll never be able to overcome a sinful habit-The cross of Christ is sufficient to conquer my sinful flesh
7. When you feel like your potential is limited by your past-my past does not have to control my future
8. When you feel like you don't know where to turn for help and advice-God's work is sufficient to lead me, teach me, and heal me
9. When you want to blame others for your responses-I am responsible before God for my behavior, responses, and choices.
10. When you don't understand a difficult situation-It is impossible to be godly without suffering
11. When you want things to go your way-It's not all about me, it's all about Him!

These are points from the book Beautiful in God's Eyes by Elizabeth George that I posted about a few days ago. Not all of them apply to this exact topic but some of them do, and I wrote them all out because regardless of whether they fit this topic or not, they're very important things to remember. Write them out so you can remember them!

Read number 3 again. Now read number 10. Now read number 11. Do you see what I'm getting at here? It is totally a good feeling to be accepted and liked by everyone and I feel the urge to make friends with every single person I come in contact with. It doesn't always work though, does it. I think that God wants us to shine His light to everyone and that could just translate as being friendly to people and being genuine Christians who live out their faith. I don't think that God expects us to get along perfectly with everyone and yes, there will be some people who totally reject your attempts at friendship, but that doesn't mean you have to stop trying. 

Unless you feel like this:

Which I feel like quite a bit actually. Okay that's enough from me for now...........

XO Charlotte

*a little behind-the-scenes...I almost always type ZO by accident. haha I guess my fingers like the Z better than the X*

Epicness in one Eyebrow (because that sounds so cool for a title!)

It has been forever. Not really, but I haven't posted in kind-of a long time so I really need to today. I HAVE ALMOST 1000 PAGE VIEWS and I am so excited to reach that monumental goal! I would be so grateful if you would share this blog with anyone you know who might want to read it. Another thing you could do is leave comments for topics that you would like me to cover! I am always open to ideas because my mind is usually quite blank. Right now I'm just buying time because I haven't thought of an exact topic yet...so here's where my mind is as of this minute:

 Oh, hello Zac Efron...thank you for stopping by <3

This one had to be bigger so you could experience the incredible cuteness in larger scale

Robert please stop. I can't even. Oh yeah...here...

Olivia thank you for that fantastic video which is my new favorite currently.

Alrightie now that I've wasted about 15 minutes I should get down to the meat of this. I don't know if that expression works but I heard it and I looked it up and I thought it sounded cool...so yeah. 

Books. Christian Books. I haven't read nearly as many books as probably most of you have, and not all of them were good. But there are a choice few that I would absolutely recommend to anyone. Actually not really anyone, more like teen girls. Wow, that really narrowed it down. 

The first book I want to talk about is called, What Is He Thinking?? What Guys Want Us to Know About Dating, Love, and Marriage by singer/songwriter Rebecca St. James.

The basis of the book is Rebecca asking guys of all types (from single 20-somethings-to older mentors and even her father) to share their thoughts about a wide variety of topics, like how women can respect themselves and the men in their lives, modesty, purity, taking it slow, friendship, letting guys lead, and more. The guys on the panel answer the questions candidly and they pretty much take the opportunity to tell us girls everything they think we should know about guys and relationships. Some of the questions taken from the book are:

• What is the most attractive quality to you in a woman? 
• Is modesty truly attractive?
•  Is neediness a turn-off? 
• What do you find beautiful? 
• How can we be dependent on God for our identity, not on you? 
• How can we help you with boundaries physically?

I loved this book because it really helped me in understanding how we (females) should act around guys and it gave me a window into how they think so I can be mindful of the effects of what I say and do. 

The next book I want to talk about is Emotional Purity by Heather Arnel Paulsen.

I won this book at a one-day convention and I didn't read it until several months later. At first I was like "I totally have all this stuff down. I don't need to read a boring book about it!" Guess what? I didn't have it all down and I DID need to read a (non-boring) book about it. Here's a brief synopsis of the book:

"Have you ever given your heart to someone who didn't love you in return? Have you had your heart broken over and over? Everyone's heard teaching on physical purity, but probably little about emotional purity. Often times Christians become emotionally intimate with male-female "friendships" but with no commitment to pursuing marriage. Many people have more than one of these relationships and consider themselves pure, but do they realize that they have given a piece of their hearts to each person that should been reserved for their spouse? Emotional Purity will show you how to set boundaries in your relationships so you can learn how to guard your heart and keep it emotionally pure." 

This is something that I had never really given thought too. Like everyone knows that you aren't supposed to be physically intimate before marriage, but emotionally intimate? As I followed the characters in the story I slowly realized that I had been giving my heart away little pieces at a time and not even realizing it! 
The last book I want to recommend is Beautiful in God's Eyes for Young Women: Looking good from the inside out.

 This book by Elizabeth George is a study of Proverbs 31-the Proverbs 31 woman. It is very in-depth and there are so many ideas and thoughts that are presented that i've never heard before even though I've studied this before. Throughout the study you find purpose and confidence and you start to feel really beautiful in God's eyes. The most recent thing I've realized as i've been going through is that I need to work on taking compliments. Often times we feel like we aren't very talented and the things we know how to do are insignificant because other people can surely do them better than we can, but it totally isn't like that! God gives us the abilities that we have so when someone compliments us on something we should thank God instead of saying "oh I'm not really that good at such-and-such."

That's all the typing I can really do cuz my fingers hurt...for whatever reason...so I would love it if you would check some of those books out!

XO Charlotte

Imma crawl under a rock

Please don't hurt me! I know it's been sooooo long since I posted last and believe me, I feel really bad about it. I think it's been the post-vacation slump. And yes, I have been back from vacation for like 2 weeks. I pretty much just trashed my own excuse...

 So there actually is one thing I want to talk about today. Facebook. I think all of my friends know where I stand about Facebook, but I should recap. I have never liked the idea of Facebook because I see it as a time-wasting machine that sucks people in and they never again see the light of day. Just the light of their computer screen. So I never wanted to have Facebook because I knew I would waste all my time on it. I kind of just didn't keep in touch with some people that I met because I didn't have a way of doing it.  Buuuuuut...

 

Yeah i'm on Facebook now. Imagine that. Charlotte has finally joined the 21st century! 

That last gif didn't really make sense but I loved it.

So back to what I was saying...I have has Facebook for literally 3 days and I've already been spending way too much time on it. This is what I was afraid of in the first place. I guess I just have to make sure I limit my time and actually do some useful stuff in my life. 

 Every single one of you knows you were just thinking that.

But seriously. "keeping in touch" is not the same as spending every second on the computer. Do something with your life. 

                              XO Charlotte

Oh and the first thing you can do with your life is download this album for free...It's really good.

http://comeandlive.com/albums/self-titled-3