Karissa's Kacophony

Hello faithful readers!

As always after my month-long hiatuses, there's probably only 2 or 3 of you still reading the blog. And that's ok. As you can see, I've made some changes. In a few days, the site name (or whatever it's called) will change, too. So everybody change your sites from www.karissaexplainsitall.blogspot.com to www.karissaskacophony.blogspot.com. I'd been feeling the need for the change for awhile now, just because of some life changes and to get rid of my feeling of monotony.

So welcome to Karissa's Kacophony! And why did you change to this name, you might ask. Well. As most of you know; I love music. I study music. I play and perform music. But sometimes my life itself is far from melodious. It's a cacophony of stress, harsh words, poor sleep, lots of homework, friends, and numerous other things. But God chooses to make my life a symphony in his own time. For completely unfathomable reasons, he chooses to refine me and love me, eventually smoothing out the edges and making me his. And I wanted this blog to reflect that.

I should warn you that from now til March, most of my posts will be about Spring Sing. As uninteresting as this might seem, some day I want to be able to look back on the chaos that will be the next 2 months and laugh. Or cry. Depending on the outcome. Ha.

So keep stopping by and in 2 or 3 days, stop by my new site. And leave comments. Hope you all have a great week!

Remodeling

As should be obvious by the unfinished look of this blog, I am in the process of remodeling. And I can't for the life of me figure out how to add text and pictures to my header. If anyone knows, help would be GREATLY appreciated. I'm also soon changing the name (you might already be able to see it, I don't know) and location of my blog so stay tuned for that. Oh yes, and blogging. That will happen soon, too. As for now, it's lunchtime.

Maybe it's that the semester is almost over. Maybe it's that it just hit me this week that these girls will be graduating in the spring and next December. Maybe it's that I'm pretty sleep-deprived which makes me even more emotional. Whatever it is, I am feeling overwhelmingly thankful for these people right now and just wanted to share with you why.

So here is the list I have composed over why these girls are amazing friends.

Amazing friends...

• Stay up with you til all hours of the night to have dance parties to Miley Cyrus.
• Cry with you when you don't really know why you're crying.
• Sit in a hot tub with you for 30 minutes to talk about life, boys, and God's plans.
• Take pictures of the boy you like (bear with me on this one) then email them to you because he's dressed up that day and you won't get to see him.
• Know exactly what's bothering you even when no one else does.
• Stay awake til 4 in the morning making cupcakes over spring break.
• Are okay when you happen to know their secret before they've told you.
• Forgive you when you say "I think I know what you're going to say" and really you had NO idea.
• Help you fix the car window of the borrowed car you drove to Sonic and accidentally broke so that the owner of the car will never know.
• Call you when a certain person is at a certain party so that you can happen to be there, too.

Amazing friends...

• Put off doing homework so you can all pray together.
• Talk seriously about how to become more Godly people.
• Encourage each other daily over tests, homework, relationships, and everything else.
• Really care about what's happening to everyone else in the group.
• Love you no matter what you've done or said.

So I do apologize for the sappiness of this post. But I thank God almost every day for blessing me with such a wonderful group of friends. We have our ups and downs as any group does, but this is a group of people I know I could go to for absolutely anything and I feel so blessed to call them my friends.

Abigail, Kaylee, Lisa, Bailey, Laura, and Kayla, I really don't know what I would do without you.

All-Nighter

This is it, folks. My first all-nighter. I have a paper due tomorrow and two tests on Tuesday. So why in the world are you blogging? Great question. And one that I don't know the answer to. But here I am. One of my roommates just informed me that on a Grey's episode a woman that didn't have a voice let her blog ruin her relationship with her husband. It might have been her way of telling me to stop blogging when I have so much to do. Point taken, Roomie. Good idea.

Now let me just drink this liquid energy and eat my ever-so-small Special K bar and I'll be ready to go.

Get excited about my post after my paper. Isaiah 54 is a phenomenal chapter (also what my paper's over.)

Idabel Weekend

Well it's definitely been awhile. This is usually the busiest time of fall semester for me because all the professors think they are helping us by having things due before Thanksgiving. They just don't realize that they ALL do it, so it does not help us.

While it's been a CRAZY few weeks, I've been really blessed by a lot of things recently. Mostly stuff with friends. Last weekend, one of my friends took our group of friends to her hometown for the weekend where her parents rented us a cabin. Oh. My. Goodness. I needed that so much! It was such a great weekend!! So I just wanted to show you a few pictures from it.

Aaron, Abigail, and Will. Just an example of one of the beds. (DON'T WORRY! Boys and girls slept in separate rooms.)

The kitchen! Kaylee's mom cooked for us all weekend and it was wonderful!!

An example of absolutely beautiful Oklahoma scenery.
And of course the Wil(l)'s had to fight in the big, manly stream.

Ok, Summer. I give you full permission to use the next two pictures for whatever blackmail you need. (Also, it's ROOT beer. Haha, still funny, though.)
Above is Ben drinking some Okie root beer. Below is Wil imitating the museum artwork.

I got to play with puppies!!!! They were absolutely precious!!
And then there was this stupid turkey that kept scaring me. Will is slightly terrifying here, too.
Some mascot or something? Oh! We went to a folk festival which is where all these pictures were taken.

Me, Laura, and Aaron listening to some classic folk music.
I'm not sure the chicken and duck liked Aaron too much.
Abigail, me, Kaylee, Lisa, Bailey, Laura, and Kayla. Wow wow wow. I really don't know what I would do without these amazing women. They are wonderful.

Me and Kaylee, our hostess for the weekend!
Beautiful Oklahoma sunset!!!
Eating dinner trying not to mess up the all-important puzzle.
Our cabin!! The Cowboy Cabin. I would go back right now if I could.
Abigail, Kayla, and Laura at lunch on Sunday.
That's Kaylee's grandpa's house. All of it was so beautiful!!

Kaylee, thank you so much for taking us!!! It could not have been a better weekend!

Pure Exhaustion

Apparently, Homecoming will do that to you. Homecoming and teaching and working and learning and everything else that I choose to clutter my life with. I'm having stress pains today in places that I didn't even know could hurt because of stress. Tell me, is it normal for your jaw to feel like it's about to go numb? Yeah, I didn't think so, either.

A couple more lyrics for you tonight (what can I say, music just speaks to me in ways other things can't):

This song entitled "For Freedom" is by Jimmy Needham. I just chose the most meaningful verses to me for tonight:

It is for freedom He set us free.

But Simon says to fill your void

With toy after toy after girl after boy

After all isn't that what we were meant for?

Please believe me when I say

It is for freedom He set us free.

I am not living a free life. Most people I know are not living free lives. We choose to enslave ourselves with things that don't really matter. I choose to fill my void with so many things that aren't the one thing I should fill it with. I found myself today filling my void with things that I know won't work because I've tried them so many times before. Yet there I went and here I go again.

And now I find myself asking the Lord as I have so many times before, "Will you please free me? Will you show me your freedom again? Will you speak your freedom and love to me in tangible ways?"

And He always answers yes. Eventually. Or immediately. You know, God's timing.

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Galatians 5:1

Tonight will hopefully be a short post. (Keep your fingers crossed.)

I really just wanted to share a couple of quotes from my Bible class today. We were talking about Jeremiah's decision to remain in Jerusalem in Jeremiah 40:1-6 and the Remnant's decision to go to Egypt in Jeremiah 42:10-12. We were really just discussing decision making in general based on these two scenarios as guides to Godly decision-making. Jeremiah, for whatever reason, decided to stay in Jerusalem even though it would be harder and much more burdensome than going to Babylon. The Remnant of Israel decided to "take the easy way out" and go to Egypt rather than staying in their burnt, destroyed city.

The thing that my teacher said that left me speechless was, "Most people would rather live in Egypt than live by faith. Faith has a lot of ambiguities, but not a lot of monuments. Egypt has a lot of monuments and very few ambiguities."

It's basically just a twist on the old "Walk by faith, not by sight" phrase, but a twist that opened my eyes to how important and difficult it is to live by faith.