Redeeming Love

I have just finished reading an incredible book with the title above by Francine Rivers.  A fantastic book, it is by far my favorite book now.  No spoilers I promise because I definitely recommend everyone read this book.  While it is only a fictional story based off of the first three chapters of Hosea, it's unbelievable how one simple story can completely change the way you view life.  For myself, this book has really forced me to take a good look at how I live my life and for what purpose do I live my life. 

I've learned an incredible amount from this book about the different levels of love and what it truly means to love your family, your spouse and above all to love God.  I guess the most unsettling thing about this book is that it took a fictional story to really motivate me to open my eyes to what God has been telling me all along in His word, the Bible.  It has been an extremely humbling experience to see parts of myself in almost every character of this book.  I am still overwhelmed by the reminders this book has about God's grace and above all his redeeming love. 

The messages of this book are still swimming largely in my head and I'm still trying to separate them out so I think I will be using this site more and more to address some of the challenges I am now trying to face.  Please PLEASE read this book, don't be fooled by the cover (I actually removed the jacket), I guarantee it will be something you won't regret. 

FLAG FOOTBALL

It has been quite a while since I've written anything but I thought I would write about my newest endeavor: playing flag football. 

I was convinced to join the Graduate ChemE women's flag football team because apparently I have the 'speed' that the team was lacking (prior to this year the team also never scored a single point).  This season we have enjoyed a one loss season and are now in the finals for the IF championship!  Pretty exciting but it has been filled with injuries for myself so far I have aquired in the following order:

1.  Pulled Quads
2.  A Foot injury which I still cannot describe
3.  Concussion
4.  Bloody Nose
5.  Black Eye

It has been an interesting season, and my injuries seem to be getting progressively worse so we'll see what injuries I gain by next week.  Championship game is this sunday and I am itching to get my hands on that shirt!

My Experiences as a TA

This semester I decided to teach the freshmen introduction to matlab for chemical engineers.  Within the first day of TAing, I was dismayed to learn that there were kids in the class that did not know how to use excel.  I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt since not every high school has a computer efficiency class.  But sadly today I got the following email (verbatim):

In our home work our we suppose to right steps like in class of right out an actually code as if we were putting it in the compter.  

I'm not even sure how many problems there are with that sentence.  These students are the ones who graduate with the 70K+ jobs at Exxonmobile, does that not scared anyone else?

called my parents yesterday to talk to them since this whole weekend was taken by the lonestar invitational ... to find out that last night was their first night together with an empty nest.  My dad seemed quite excited and also didn't seem to know what to do with himself.  How cute is that?

Anyways this weekend was slightly crazy went to my first country western dance competition.  I know you guys are probably checking the name to make sure you're reading the right blog ... nope this is Jen's blog!  I was told to compete in Just Dance for country two-step and west coast swing.  Haha and we won our two!  Ok so we were competing against like 14 year olds but I think I've made some progress this summer.  Needless to say who knew dancing could be such a workout?  So this is currently my new thing figured I would write about that to give you guys something interesting to read about =)

It's been a while since I've posted but I thought I would share my adventures last night with ya'll ...

We went swing dancing with a rather large group, which is slightly unusual but tons of fun.  I got to try some of the new tricks we learned and learn a few more new ones too.  But the most interesting part of the night happened after the dancing ... when I walked out there was a huge blockade running about 3 blocks all the way to campus.  From where I could see there were at least 6 cop cars and we could here fire trucks and ambulances on the way.  Since it was near campus, I'd figured I would check the paper this morning to read what would have happened.  This was the headline ...

All For Burnt Popcorn

kinda puts all those jokes in perspectives doesn't it?