last night a friend of mine treated myself and my fiance to dinner and then we travelled over to our place to watch a movie of his choice, which he warned me i might hate in the first 5 minutes. the movie was called "the last tempation of christ" and it was based on the novel. william defoe plays jesus...and i don't know about anyone else, but after he played the hobgoblin in spiderman i was pretty skeptical he could play such an opposite character.

had i seen this movie about a year and a half ago, i would have likely condemned both that friend and my fiance, as they both really enjoy the movie. these days, though, i am much more open-minded than i used to be as far as religious points-of-view are concerned. for example, i used to attend a charismatic church about a year and a half ago that spend a good chunk of time and money training it's young people to recognize, condemn and cast out demons. they love the book "they shall expel demons" and work hard at purifying themselves so as to be able to separate themselves and the demonic. i got into it because i thought i was being haunted by some strange demonic forces and it was keeping me awake at night for years. i thought since the "regular" ways of getting rid of some scary demonic forces (praying and the like) weren't working, that maybe i should take more drasic measures. i participated in some of these sessions in which there were prophecies and i even took part in the casting out of demons.

today, i rarely go to church (i don't really like the churches around here) and i am rather mellow compared to those days where i focused on fire and brimstone, hell and the war against it and so forth. i believed we fought a spiritual war every day and i prepared myself on a daily basis to fight this war. i honestly believe that the only real war i was fighting was the war between my head and my heart. now that my head and heart are in agreement, it seems things have settled down immensely. i'm not really sure what i believe about demons but i can honestly say that i don't think having college-age kids cast demons out of each other sounds very cult-like. the more i think about it, the more i am convinced that it was more of a cult than a denomination. the church consisted of 20s-30s singles and a few married couples also of that age. besides the 3 children, there were no other age groups represented and it seemed that they never socialized with anyone else excepting each other (which apparently is all still true).

we ended up in a very interesting conversation after the movie last night about jesus's miracles and how we are to know this was a miracle or just strange acts in front of uneducated people. at any rate, it just got me thinking about how different my life is now as opposed to a year ago.

every action, every choice, has a consequence.

when i was a child, i thought that consequences were bad things. i though that a consequence was something that happened to a person when they did something wrong. as i got older, i came to understand that there were good consequences as well as bad consequences. i came to learn that one action or choice can have more than one consequence as well. it became so complicated at times that i just started making choices without considering the consequences just because it would take too long.

today, i find myself doing that still. i don't like to really think too long about making a choice. sometimes it makes me wonder if i am making a rash choice simply because i don't care to wait or if i actually know what it is that i want. i knew, just over a year ago today, that i would have to make a very serious choice...that i was going to have to pull myself together emotionally and weigh the pros and cons. i had a massively complicated situation involving an airman and a potter. i had to make a choice between the two of them and i was so emotionally attached to the first one that i thought i was going to wither away into nothing if i didn't have him in my life. i gave my entire self to him for two years...my thoughts, my body, my existence was all orbiting the thought of this man and myself making vows of forever to each other and proceeding to live our lives that way.

i weighed all of the emotion, time and thought spent on this man against the true situation that i came to find myself in at the beginning of october 2008. i was in such pain. i was in such despair. i lived every day like some sort of martyr, some kind of victim who had survived or was surviving a war or some deadly illness. i took pride in my choice to stay at his side and support him no matter what. i took pride in my resiliance to the dying relationship and i took pride in my ability to administer as much cpr as possible to this fading paint job. i saw myself as my mother, digging through the crap to find the diamond in the rough. my diamond was the bi-monthly call i got from him, lasting no more than an hour each time, discussing nothing relating to myself but every part of the airforce and radar systems and whatnot. my heart was screaming so loudly my brain could hear it, which is unusual for me. i had never been so conflicted, my heart telling me one thing and my brain telling me another. i knew i simply couldn't convince my heart that this situation was good for me so i manipulated my own brain into justifying my stupidity by simply stating that this was preparing me for a life as a military wife.

i love my sister. i haven't had a lot of time to spend with her over the last 5 years or so due to college being 4.5 hours away. thankfully i am blessed with a car that works well so i can pop down to the area where she lives on occasion. she is the only sibling of mine who is currently married and it's great that she can advise me so well. i'm not sure what exactly it is i need to start with in wedding planning (did i mention the potter and i are getting married??) so she whipped up a list and gave me a guestbook she just had lying around...it's great.

my sister is a conservative person. she is also conservative in a political sense. she is very traditional and she is also very convinced that she is right and anything that contradicts her views on politics as well as religion is wrong and needs some fixing. and the goofiest thing is that these views really are her husband's views...therefore hers. i am not at all saying that husbands and wives should think separately on these matters (really, they shouldn't in my opinion...my recently-divored parents are good enough proof for me on that one), but i am saying that i truly believe both husband and wife should have similar opinions coming from out of themselves and intertwining in their marriage. my sister adopted her husband's beliefs and is completely satisfied with knowing only what he knows and getting all of her information from him. she has no need for education, proof or exposure. she is completely satisfied in her box (and she told me that!).

one of the things brought up last night is the political views of the potter's family...they are liberals. she says to me, "are they really earth-conscious? isn't that like what they're focused on right now?" now, to be fair, it is a huge issue with liberals because if this earth dies, we do too! i can't fault that logic. my sister, though, believes we should be paying attention to saving babies (she is very pro-life and anti-abortion as well). i made a statement that i'm pretty proud of...i said, "yes, but if we spend all our time saving the babies, they won't have a planet to live on!" which, like i said, before, is a very logical worry. i think we should do both. i am not in support of abortion. i am pro life. i am also in support of my country, which was founded on, among other concepts, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. this can be used both in support of abortion as well as against it. i believe that human life is incredibly blessed simply by existance. i also believe that our humanism is why we have a government. and honestly, i can't deny someone who lifes in this country these rights. i cannot be in support of denying rights.

ohhhh my stars.

i miss my fiance.