chia pet love

This is totally a spin-off of the blog from ccf and the actual immersion last night. but it has really hit a spot with me for some reason! we talked about love. and not the mushy or sexy kind of love that hallmark tends to run toward this time of year (btw...anyone paid attention to how many valentine's cards are geared toward sex this year?! it would be safe to say about 1/3 of all the cards i looked at were!) .

anyway, last night Ed talked about love in comparison to a garden. he said that the kind of love that is the mushy hallmark-y type can be best compared to a chia pet. Chia pets, as we all know, are an idiot-proof plant that is basically kill-proof. But! They don't have roots...they're just pretty to look at. Love relationships like that (and i'm not talking just boyfriend/girlfriend, i'm saying friends, parents, everyone!) are based in "nothing." you may talk or have common interests, but you never really SHARE with each other. Relationships like that are like a chia pet...no roots...no real foundation and prone to wash away when the rains come.

but love as a garden (more specifically i will use a dandelion becuase we know how stubborn they are to get rid of in the yard), is deep-rooted. in the case of the dandelion, the grass and dirt must make way for the deep roots and yellow flower or breezy white top of the dandelion. they must "SHARE" the space they have been given. let me just go on a tangent here and say that i am not saying that in a deep-rooted love, you should be the kind of dandelion that takes over the entire yard and chokes all the grass out...i hope you get the connection there. lol. what i am saying is that we, like the dandelions, must share with each other in order to have a deep relationship. we can share about how we feel about certain subjects (political, spiritual, emotional, family, personal) and i don't just mean TALK about them...i mean share excatly how we feel about things. The idea is to get personal...to feel intamacy with someone.

something else that has been getting to me is the sense of family that we should be embracing as Christians in our communities. I am specifically talking about Christian to Christian love here, becuase i feel that as a non-Christian it is very difficult to grasp this concept (i know, i lived without understanding it until not quite a year ago myself, and i WAS/am a Christian). now i have a boyfriend (Ronnie), and i love him very much...in a romantic kind of way. our love is like chia growth and dandelions intertwined...we "love", but we share so much of our lives with each other. sometimes i struggle with what i am about to say because i'm not sure that Ronnie totally "gets" the concept...he understands it, but it is easy to not get. It's not that he's ignorant-he has simply not had much of a chance to experience it himself, and it is something that has to be experienced to understand. But my point! I have always grasped (well for as long as i can remember) that my girlfriends are my sisters. i have treated them all as my sisters and loved them as such. but brothers, oh brothers! they have given me a fit. maybe it was just being too young to see boys/men as only someone who was cute or i would like to date or, if i were dating someone, boys were the ones i was supposed to stay away from! and i have felt that very much up until even this past semester.

This past semester however, we had a day on the fall retreat when the speaker sat us all down at long tables with loaves of bread and large cups of grape juice. he told us to eat and drink and talk with one another as if we were a family having dinner b/c in fact, that was pretty much what we were doing! It hit home with me that guys could show brotherly love to a girl when Charles reached over and put his arm around me and prayed over me. i was in such shock (stupidly) that i couldn't even pray for him back! lol. i don't know why it surprised me so much but it did. he truly cared for me as a sister. and although i have felt that before with one of my best guy friends, Rickey, i was too young to really get it. and then after that, i was hugging everyone-i hugged all the girls i think and a couple of the guys (i still didn't know a lot of them too well). And now, every Tuesday night, i look forward to seeing my family. i look forward to hugging and chatting with all of my sisters, even ones i don't know! and i look forward to hugging my usual brothers, Charles and Josh, and to seeing who will hug me next! haha...i have really grown to like this love because it makes me feel that i am appreciated and cared about by someone other than my sweetheart and my biological family.

i don't mean to embarrass anyone by mentioning names, but i though it was important. and again, this is no way de-valuing the love of my biological family or the constant loves i get from Ronnie, it is simply a new experience. it makes me want to say to all of my friends "i love you because you are my friend and thank you." so i hope you know who you are :-)

*hugs* -r.

oh, grrrrr!!!!!!!!!

Grrr!!! i am so angry right now. So as you probably know, i am a social work major. in about a year, i will have a BSW and will be working as a social worker. but right now i am very upset that I, Randi Morrison, am a victim of our Medicaid system. on april 27, 2009, i will turn 21 years old. i have been on medicaid for as long as i can remember becuase of my mama. however, even though i am a college student, even though i am unemployed, and am declared "independent," i cannot receive any help from the government after i turn 21! All i can get is "family planning"...aka: birth control. i can't go see a regular doctor, i can't go to the hospital, i can't have surgeries, etc b/c i will not long be on medicaid. i will be one of the millions of uninsured people in the US! I am VERY upset over this. i can't even tell you how screwed up our medicaid system is! first of all, if you're over 21, you have to have a child in the house or be pregnant. or you can be 65 or older or disabled. that is the ONLY way to get medicaid as an "adult." and something else...it's like my caseworker said...either you have the ppl that are sitting at home unemployed doing their own thing all day and they receive medicaid OR you have those who are out trying to work and support their family, and they make $2 too much to receive assistance! I just don't understand why our system is so screwed up. maybe that's what i'll pour my life's work into as a social worker.

now let me say that after talking with a friend, i fould out that i could get insurance through ASU, but it's still $257/quarter! that's not a whole lot, but there are also co-pays, etc. and remember...i am unemployed. i mean, i'm sure that i could budget my financial aid to cover it, but i basically have no savings anymore and i've already got all of my aid budgeted until september. and i hate to ask my grandparents to pay for it b/c their own insurance is ridiculously expensive. this drives me crazy...you'd never believe yesterday was one of the best days in a really really long time would you?! but it was, and my mood is still very "up" even though i am slightly upset over this whole thing. i will keep you updated.

God is good all the time.

-r.

strawberry mushroom casserole

my title has nothing to do with my blog. i just thought of it. so i have decided that i want to be a hippy. people have said that i am, but i know i'm not. however, i do like a few things that i said earlier to a friend while on facebook chat and they really reflect who i am now. for one, i was SO excited that i got my Ronnie something for Valentine's Day...and it's not anything you would typically get anyone. i'm not saying on here b/c i might ruin it for him, but i was so excited that the gift is totally organic and made from eucalyptus wood...lol...genuinely excited bout that. and i now use "green" bags (you know, the reusable ones). i also told Tiff that i am boycotting valentine's day b/c 1. the cards are stupid this year, and 2. the holiday is too commercial and i believe that you should show love ALL year round, not just one day. now i know that these things are not that big of a deal, but i feel like i'm finding myself in a strange place. i love the earth (but not enough to like, buy a prius or something) and i think that one person can change the world and that love is all we need. as i said before, i'm not a qualified hippy, but if someone had to categorize me, i'd ask to be placed in this category. who knows...maybe i'll get dreads or try hookah next (NOT!!!) but anways...i do rock the Jesus sandals and long skirts :-p life is leading me down a different path right now that i have never before been on, and i think it's going to be a fun journey-i just wish life didn't change so much all the time...that i would always know exactly who i am and what i am here for, but i guess these are predicaments of the human condition. somebody leave me something philosophical to to ponder please...:-) peace love and chicken grease,
-r.