KentuckyDucky's Xanga

I'm So Very Sorry, Dear Friend

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:32:51 GMT

Dear Xanga,

You have been a kind friend. You have held much of the last 4 years of my life. For this I am thankful. I will never get rid of you completely but...

...let's face it. It's time we broke up. Let's not think of this as the end of the story, but the beginning of a new chapter. You will still hold the thoughts/dreams/hopes/brainlessness of many, many teenage girls. But, alas, is is time for me to move on.

You can visit me at MY NEW HOME whenever you like. The door (well, browser window) is always open to you.

Sincerely,

Kentucky Ducky

On Why I Don't Vote Liberal

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:43:10 GMT

Some verses I read today that reminded (not that I necessarily needed to be reminded...) me why I'm most definitely NOT voting for someone who allows murder (abortion) & theft ("sharing the wealth").

Isaiah 59:4
No one calls for justice;
no one pleads his case with integrity.
They rely on empty arguments and
speak lies;
they conceive trouble & give birth
to evil.

59:7-8
Their feet rush into sin;
they are swift to shed innocent blood.
Their thoughts are evil thoughts;
ruin and destruction mark their ways.
The way of peace they do not know;
there is no justice in their pathes.
They have turned them into crooked
roads;
no one who walks in them will know
peace.

59:15-16
Truth is nowhere to be found,
and whoever shuns evil becomes a
prey.

The LORD looked and was displeased
that there was no justice.
He saw that there was no one,
He was appalled that there was no
one to intervene;
so His own arm worked salvation for
Him,
and His own righteousness
sustained Him.
He put on righteousness as His
breastplate,
and the helmet of salvation on His head;
He put on the garments of vengeance
and wrapped Himself in zeal as in a cloak.

59:19
From the west, men will fear the name
of the LORD,
and from the rising of the sun, they
will revere His glory.
For He will come like a pent-up flood
that the breath of the LORD drives
along.

Hebrews 13:11-14
The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore. Fo here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

And COMFORT:

13:8
Jesus Christ is the same YESTERDAY and TODAY and FOREVER.

Determined to have a Good Week!

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 02:02:12 GMT

I am praying for a good week this week. I feel like I have been kind of a slug lately. A busy slug, but a slug none-the-less. I've been very disorganized &, well, sluggish. Lazy. Sloth-like.

My hope for this week is to act like an adult.

Some specific things I'm determined to do:

1) Clean my room

2) Get my finances organized

3) Eat 3 healthy meals a day - not only that, but at the appropriate times (you know, like morning, noon, & 5ish. Not a chocolate muffin at 10, snacking on anything in site from noon-5, & then nibbling on something for dinner at 5 because I was snacking all day, then having another full meal at 9 because I'm hungry again...)

4) Help clean my house

5) Write my second blog about my Dream Dinner Party

6) Take care of my skin (Use my full skin care system in the morning & evening!)

7) Sell 15 lbs of AMY's BLEND!

8) Have a quality quiet time every day!

9) Take the next step towards Capernwray

10) Last, but NOT least, get at least 7 solid hours of sleep each night. This means going to bed at 11pm Sunday night, 9:15pm Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday, & 10:30 on Thursday. (Yes, I was a little specific there, but that was mainly for me. )

For some reason I am really pumped for this to be a good week. So I need to pray pray pray! And I would definitely appreciate it if you would send up a little prayer for me as well :o)

The England Post

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:40:44 GMT

England.

I have dreamed of it for...I don't even kn ow how long. A long time.

So many people who have been have told me,
"Go. Go now! Go before it's too late. Go before it's too late for you (or too late for England). GO!"

And I thought, I'll go someday. Someday I will go. Someday when I'm grown up but still don't have a family to take care of.

Then it hit me, the window for doing that could be very small. I'm twenty - that's sort of grown up...some people my age are already married or going to get married soon or will be married in 5-10 years. That's a small window (to me, right now, anyway).

So I prayed. Should I go? Could I go? Is it OK? Will I fair well there? What will I do there? Would it be too much money for me? Am I mature enough? Will it mature me? Will I go alone?

And all I heard back from God was what everyone else told me. But it was simple. It was one word.

"Go."

And included in that one word was the assurance that all of the details will be worked out. He will be before them, they will come fast, but not in a way that I can't handle when I have Him with me.

So I am going. I will be attending a Bible school in England called the Capernwray Missionary Fellowship of Torchbearers:

One of my closest friends will be going as well. We both decided this separately, only finding out the other was pondering this (England) through a mutual friend. This was part of that "Go" I was talking about.

It's not for another 212 days & some hours (April 18th is the day), & it only goes to June 12th. For some people that may be nothing, but for me it is something. It is a big something for me to leave home for longer than, oh, a weekend. It's a big deal for me to change my "routine" so drastically.

But it's time.

Go.

I will.

"If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village she must seek them abroad." - Northanger Abbey

Here Come the Quotes!

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 03:57:05 GMT

"Those who tell their own story you know must be listened to with caution." - Sanditon

"If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village she must seek them abroad." - Northanger Abbey

"I do not want people to be very agreable [sic], as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal." - a letter to her sister Cassandra

"And now may I dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion; to a pillow strewed with thorns & wet with tears. And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night's rest in the course of the next three monthes." - Northanger Abbey

"Mary wished to say something sensible, but knew not how." - Pride & Prejudice

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment." - Mr Darcy, Pride & Prejudice

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love." - Pride & Prejudice

"I suppose there may be a hundred different ways of being in love." - Emma

"The unpleasantness of appearing fickle is certainly great--but if you think you want Punishment for past Illusions, there it is--and nothing can compare to the misery of being bound without Love, bound to one, & preferring another. That is a Punishment which you do not deserve." - letter to her niece Fanny Knight

"I am at present more impressed with the possible Evil that may arise to You from engaging yourself to him--in word or mind--than with anything else. When I consider how few young Men you have yet seen much of--how capable you are (yes, I do still think you very capable) of being really in love--and how full of temptation the next 6 or 7 years of your Life will probably be--(it is the very period of Life for the strongest attachments to be formed)--I cannot wish you with your present very cool feelings to devote yourself in honour to him." - letter to her niece Fanny Knight

"Wisdom is better than Wit, & in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side." - letter to her niece, Fanny Knight

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." - Pride & Prejudice

"There was not one lord in the neighborhood; no -- not even a baronet. There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door -- not one young man whose origin was unknown. Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children.

But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way." - Of Catherine Morland, our would-be heroine
Northanger Abbey

"I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible." - Catherine to Henry, Northanger Abbey

"You should never fret about trifles." - Catherine's mother, Northanger Abbey

" . . . if it be true, as a celebrated writer has maintained, that no young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is known to have dreamt of her." - Henry Tilney, Northanger Abbey

"Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?" - Captain Wentworth, Persuasion

"'I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.'" - Darcy, answering Lizzy's question about how he ever began to fall in love with her in the first place, Pride & Prejudice

"'Those who do not complain are never pitied.'" - Mrs. Bennet, Pride & Prejudice

"I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, & how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know." - letter to Cassandra, on Pride & Prejudice's Elizabeth Bennet

“'Brandon is just the kind of man,’ said Willoughby one day when they were talking of him together, 'whom everybody speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to.’” - HORRID Mr Willoughby, Sense & Sensibility

"I am never too busy to think of S&S. I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her suckling child..." - Jane on Sense & Sensibility

" . . . I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together." - Jane to her sister Cassandra, in a letter of January 9, 1796, about flirting with Tom Lefroy at the ball the night before

And, finally, a quote about Miss Jane Austen:

"She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her, & it is as if I had lost a part of myself." - Cassandra, after Jane's death

My Dream Dinner Party: Guest # 1, Miss Jane Austen

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:45:44 GMT

I thought it would be fun to do a series of posts about who I would want to have at my "dream dinner party". I have no idea how long this list will be, so I will just start with 1 & see when/if I stop!

Obviously, Jane Austen has been a new obsession of mine the last year & a half; & this obsession in rapidly growing.

Jane was born on December 16th, 1777 at Steventon rectory. Her parents were George (1731-1805) & Cassandra (1730-1827) Austen. She had six brothers: James (1765–1819), George (1766–1838), Edward (1767–1852), Henry Thomas (1771–1850), Francis William (Frank) (1774-1865), Charles John (1779–1852), & one dear sister: Cassandra Elizabeth (1773–1845) - who, like Jane, never married. Out of all of her brothers, Jane was closest to Henry.

(pictured about: the Austen family crest)

A little about her early life & education (from Wikipedia, of course!):

"Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon rectory. After a few months at home, her mother placed Austen with a woman living in a nearby village who wetnursed and raised Austen for a year or eighteen months. Following this, Austen was educated at home, largely by her father, until leaving for boarding school with her sister Cassandra early in 1783. The school curriculum probably included some French, spelling, needlework, dancing and music and, perhaps, drama. By December 1786, Jane and Cassandra had returned home. Austen acquired the remainder of her education by reading books, guided by her father and her brothers James and Henry. George Austen apparently gave his daughters unfettered access to his large and varied library, was tolerant of Austen's sometimes risqué experiments in writing, and provided both sisters with expensive paper and other materials for their writing and drawing. According to Park Honan, a biographer of Austen, life in the Austen home was lived in "an open, amused, easy intellectual atmosphere" where the ideas of those with whom the Austens might disagree politically or socially were considered and discussed."

I love Jane Austen because she had so much knowledge about everything that a young woman goes through & feels. She knew what every young woman thought & why she thought it. She knew through experience what it was like to be a single woman in the world, & somehow knew of true romance & what love between a man & a woman should be. So many times since I have begun reading her stories & quotes I have wished wholeheartedly that God could beam her back down to earth so that I could get some advice on my life & where my focus should be. I suppose that's one of the main reasons I would want her at my dinner party: to advise me! She was also a very dear figure in her niece's & nephew's eyes. They went to her (as her sister & brothers did) for counsel & wisdom about the little things in life (& the big things.)

My first real introduction (not counting the "captivating" performance of Pride & Prejudice on the television show Wishbone when I was about 8) was in January of 2006, when I watched the version of Pride & Prejudice directed by Joe Wright. Besides the incredible scenery & beautiful & artistic camera work (& color scheme & acting & general handsomeness of the cast...) the story gripped my heart. I always thought Pride & Prejudice was this boring stuck up story with no emotion; I don't know why, that's just what I always thought (perhaps I should blame that Wishbone version!). At the end of the movie I thought to myself, "That, THAT is true love." I'd never seen it captured like that before. Selfless love, that wasn't obtained until the main characters conquer their pride & selfishness. Selfish love showed through a idiotic sister & villonous man & the outcome of such an attachment. I HAD to read it. Even BETTER!

I then went on the read Northanger Abbey & loved that even more - probably because I relate to Catherine Morland & her naïve nature &...well, stupidity when it comes to making good impressions & saying the right thing. Unfortunately that's all I've read of Jane's work (I am in the middle of Sense & Sensibility now, & I plan on finishing all of them within the next year), but I am VERY familiar with all the movie adaptations. I own at least one of every adaptation. They are all truly amazing!

I also own the movie Becoming Jane. When I saw that my heart absolutely broke & I never knew her life was like that. Of course I looked up her real story to find that it had been dramatized quite a bit (obviously!); but there was some definite truth to her attachment to Tom LeFroy, & from what I have read of what little she said about Tom LeFroy, he compares to no other man she had an interest in. See, they could not marry because he had so little money & she had nothing to give. LeFroy had 11 brothers & sisters who needed to be taken care of by him - not to mention his parents. He came from a poor family & it is thought that he & Jane had to be separated only on account of, well, her account. Sound like anything she may have written about...?

Jane wrote this to her sister Cassandra of her last meeting with Tom:

"At length the Day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, & when you receive this it will be over--My tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea." (January 15, 1796)

It is my personal opinion that her last novel, Persuasion, was her own fictionalized autobiography - how she would have liked her story to end, how she wished she would have found a way.

BUT, enough of the heartbreak! Let's talk about her faith. The movies & most secular biographers rarely mention Jane's Christianity. Her father was the rector of an estate & I know at least one of her brothers became a clergyman. I'm reading the book A Walk with Jane Austen by Lori Smith right now, & she quotes an evening prayer that Jane penned:

"Look with Mercy on the Sins we have this day committed, and in Mercy make us feel them deeply, that our Repentance may be sincere, & our resolutions stedfast of endeavouring against the commission of such in future. Teach us to understand the sinfulness of our own Hearts, and bring to our knowledge every fault of Temper and every evil Habit in which we have indulged to the discomfort of our fellow-creatures, and the danger of our own Souls. May we now, and on each return of night, consider how the past day has been spent by us, what have been our prevailing Thoughts, Words, and Actions during it, and how far we can acquit ourselves of Evil. Have we thought irreverently of Thee, have we disobeyed Thy commandments, have we neglected any known duty, or willingly given pain to any human being? Incline us to ask our Hearts these questions Oh! God, and save us from deceiving ourselves by Pride or Vanity." - Evening Prayer One

I can't read that I then say that she wasn't a Believer. Obviously I do not know the state of her soul, but she knew who God was & what the Cross meant.

Her brother Henry (if I am not mistaken) put this on her grave:

"In Memory of
JANE AUSTEN,
youngest daughter of the late
Revd GEORGE AUSTEN,
formerly Rector of Steventon in this County She departed this Life on the 18th of July, 1817, aged 41, after a long illness supported with the patience and hopes of a Christian.

The benevolence of her heart,
the sweetness of her temper, and
the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her and the warmest love of her intimate connections.

Their grief is in proportion to their affection they know their loss to be irreparable,
but in their deepest affliction they are consoled by a firm though humble hope that her charity, devotion, faith and purity have rendered
her soul acceptable in the sight of her
REDEEMER."

NEXT POST: Some of my favorite Austen quotes!

Bad Blogger. Or...Xylaphone Xanga-er...

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:16:31 GMT

    I have not written here for a long time. In fact I haven't visited my Xanga for a while because of all those flippin' pictures of my once-clean-&-tidy room. You see all of those before pictures? It's worse than that now.

    I would like to write something here. Some great thought out post or poem or song or dance or video. But I have nothing. My life has become rather redundant & boring, & like a good and flawed little human being I counter-act that with more sitting around & sleeping & staring at the wall wishing I was doing something greater.

    Gosh that sounds so depressing! I promise that's not all that goes through my head. I dream a lot - a LOT. About what I could/will/should be doing. I read, I watch movies, I fellowship & enjoy the outdoors...

    This post is going absolutely no where. I think I am going to leave you with a taste of the study I am doing right now. It's from "Don't Waste Your Life" by, who else? John Piper.

"All heroes are shadows of Christ." (Hopefully I can do I whole post soon on how I heartily agree with that statement!)

"God loves us by liberating us from the bondage of self so that we may enjoy knowing & admiring Him forever." (Oh how I long to be free from myself!)

"God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving act. Anyone else who exalts himself distracts us from what we need, namely, God. But if God exalts Himself, He calls attention to the very thing we need most for our joy. If great paintings could talk, and they saw you walking through the gallery staring at the floor, they would cry out, 'Look! Look at me. I am the reason you are here.' And when you look and exult in the beauty of the paintings with those around you, your joy would be full. You would not complain that the paintings should have kept quiet. They rescued you from wasting your visit. In the same way no child complains, 'I am being used' when his father delights to make the child happy in his own presence." (Every once in a great while I find a sentence, paragraph, song, Psalm, person, story, etc. that displays the reason I am a follower of Jesus better than I ever could have imagined - that quote definitely falls into that category.)

Crisis Averted! Disaster Area Cleared!

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:33:23 GMT

So today I finally decided to be a grown-up & clean my own room! I really want to stop being a slobby/lazy not-still-a-teenager-but-still-not-a-twentysomething. And lucky for you I have before & after pictures!

Before:

After:

Before:
(I don't know why it's upside-down, but you get it)

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:
(It's not the same part of the shelf, but I did get my jewlery organized!)

Before:

After:

And I was feeling a little scrubby after a hard afternoon's cleaning, so I took a before & after of myself.

Icky-icky-poo:

Still looking scrubby, but feeling squeeky clean:

The Truth

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:22:11 GMT

"The truth ain't like puppies all running around and you pick your favorite. There's one truth." - Emerson from Pushing Daisies

I love this show!

Late-late Night Thoughts.

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 06:08:00 GMT

It's really late. And I can't get to sleep because I have a cold. Yes. A cold. Isn't it supposed to be Spring? I don't want a cold in the Spring. Cold's are for Winter when it's cold. Not for Spring when it's supposed to be warm.

Anywho, to occupy my sleepless hours I am watching a new favorite of mine: Pushing Daisies. It's a little to difficult to explain the premise of this show, so you can just Google it if you would like. It's one of those shows that is somewhere in between a TV show & a movie. Sort of like Lost. I really like it! It's got a pop up story book feel...if that makes sense.