Final Finals

We're getting down to the end of our time here at Rockhurst. It's crazy. I've been freaking out about this for awhile now. Where did the time go?! I've honestly been scared. What am I going to do next?

Now that we're here though...I am so ready. Rockhurst has been amazing, but it is definitely time to move on with life. I think I'm ready for whatever it is God has in store for me next.

I've been spending a lot of time in the library this finals week. I think it's kind of funny because I don't think I've really been in there once this whole year. It was kind of fun though. I did get A LOT of work done, but Gabe was in there with me most days so we goofed off a fair amount too. Our friend Ken joined us one day too and we found the amazing-ness and dangers of GoogleTranslate. It's awesome but be careful, before you know it, it's the only way you're communicating. It also seems you lose your filter when using it so watch out...it can ruin relationships:)

Anyway, good luck to everyone....I can't believe this is the last time I'll be taking exams. This is it.

Love and Prayers

I'm a tomato...

Well, first sunburn of the year. It had to happen eventually. I spent the afternoon at the Rockhurst baseball game yesterday before heading to the Royals game and unfortunately, contray to what I thought, I have no sunscreen! My arms and back are in such pain, and my legs look ridiculous...you know that knee burn you get at baseball games, yeah, it's pretty. I was going to post a picture to show how bad it is, but that'd be weird just to have a picture of my skin up here. Anyway, it was a fun day of baseball, and a great night of Arrested Development games with Gabe and his friend Caleb. Gabe announces at the Rockhurst games which everyone understandably enjoys and it was the first Royals game I've gone to that they won so that was pretty exciting:)

I hope you've been ablet o get out and enjoy the sunshine and warmth this weekend...but protected skin so it doesn't look like my poor skin

Love and prayers

Revenge is a dish best served cold...

As the world has found out, Usama Bin Laden is dead. When I heard this news I couldn't help but think "I'm glad we got him...at least he didn't die of a heart attack or something." This was a dish that could never be cold. There was too much feeling, too much passion, too much pain on our side to ever let it go cold. It was and is on fire.

Immediately after I had this thought though I felt a twinge of guilt. Was it provoked by a sense of justice or vengeance?

Such a thin line exists between the two. It's so terribly easy to cross over from justice to vengeance. Justice implies a fair and equal punishment for a wrong commited, whereas vengeance is punishment to an excessive or unreasonable degree. It's difficult to say that any punishment could be enough to equal what Usama did to our nation and others. If I were to deal out justice here I'd probably lock him in a room in which homevideos from all of the people who died because of him were playing 24/7. Wedding videos, videos from birthday parties and Christmas mornings, graduations...thousands of lifetimes before his eyes of lives he ended, destroyed, and hurt. From the limited knowledge I have it doesn't seem like capture was much of an option, and as much as I hate the taking of any life, in this circumstance, death was the only way to save us from any further autrocities at his hand. There may be revenge, but at least some sort of justice was done.

What I've seen happen since the news broke the other night, however, has made me question what is in the hearts of so many people. Everyone it seems has been celebrating. Parties and chanting in the streets. We're safe from the man behind 9/11...is that not reason to celebrate? In a way, yeah, I guess it is. People my age and younger have grown up with this monster under the bed and he's finally gone. It's difficult to know what to do. Personally I could never celebrate any death. Is this not the perfect time rather to be grateful justice has been done and remember those who have died or lost someone they loved in terrorist attacks of the past decade. I've heard things said and seen reactions that I've found appaling, but I understand that everyone has just been trying to process everything that's happened, not just in the past days or weeks, but the past 10 years in the best way they can. Vengeance is a dark thing. I just pray that all those people, including the throng of people that were in the Rockroom here at Rockhurst chanting and cheering when the news broke, have been able to keep life in perspective.

There's plenty to say about the political implications of all of this, but I think this is a good place to leave it for now.

Love and prayers