memories of 07

mom likes to watch the twilight zone...as do my brother and i. with the introduction of tvland and the scifi channel, the twilight zone is the new law and order....ever so often. this weekend there is a 48 hour marathon of the twilight zone. i've been able to catch a couple. kenley and i watched one about a man who was able to stop time with the click of a stop watch. he was able to continue interacting in and out of time while everyone else was frozen in one moment.

as the end of the year approaches i can see moments when i would have loved to have been able to stop time, for just a moment. there are weeks, months, days, hours that i would replay over and and over...and there are some that i would maybe fast forward through. but that's not how life works...fortunately. at the end of the twilight zone episode the guy ends up breaking the stopwatch...and that's never fun, time has stopped and no one can interact with you.

so i'm very thankful that i've been able to journey through life with you all. it would not have been fun without you.

here's to a great year and a great 08.

- nomad lounge with sarah kim
- body attack with the front row divas
- the record number of times seeing kenley in omaha and new york
- welcoming jason to omaha for a moment
- saying goodbye and welcome back to the htz
- spending time with my family
- reading lots of good books
- weight watchers
- meeting new friends
- sushi
- running
- radiator heat
- my neighbor
- watching daphne and caleb fall more in love
- tights
- uncontrollable giggles while doing pushups with kenley
- letters, lots of letters
- feeling the warm embrace of friends around the world
- finally rooming with stephanie at the staff retreat
- booty zoom, need i say more
- webcam - feel the noise
- pomegranates
- cass street roommates
- togetherness tuesdays/thursdays
- finally spending new years with kenley
- being able to navigate myself to nyc on my own
- random phone calls
- omaha friends ahhh
- dtw jrc - sushi and starbucks
- brent and the yellow arrow
- snowmaha
- laughing
- crying
- dreaming

timber

so. in youth group i had to come up with an embarrassing story...from there the youth group would pick out a nick name to go along with the story.

if you know me, you know that i'm, you know, not super graceful. there have been plenty of times when i've been standing completely still and fallen on the ground...or i've walked up the stairs and fallen up them, too.

so tonight. i fell up the stairs.

and my mom said. timber.

oh snap.

more later. i'm at my kentucky home. and i'm happy.

january prayer letter!

Hello friends and family!

The ball has dropped. The last words of “Auld Lang Syne” have faded away. The ashes from the fireworks have settled. And it’s 2008. We begin using our new calendars. We laugh a little bit when we still sign something 2007. We even make some resolutions. With a simple movement of a clock’s secondhand, the entire world is swept into a fresh, new year.

A new year marks a new beginning. And when I think of that, I get a bit of a knot in my stomach, it’s a mixture of intimidation and exhilaration. As I approach 2008, I hesitate and then gingerly approach the first contact of the new year with my words, my thoughts, my actions, my prayers.

So, with both intimidation and exhilaration here’s my first prayer letter of the year. Writing this letter is like looking at the first pages of a new, empty journal. I begin wondering what the tone should be and deliberate about what I should include.

If I look back at my prayer letters from last year I’m not sure I would be able to identify a consistent tone or story that I conveyed. My letters were a bit scattered. They outlined a bit of a crisis with my financial support. And in the midst of that, I would give hurried reflections and updates of my life in Omaha. Thank you for reading through my letters and finding the heart of what I was communicating. Thank you even more for accompanying me through last year. Your support and prayers encouraged me and sustained me through 2007.

This year my desire for my prayer letters is that they are able to have somewhat of a natural flow to them, telling a story of my vocation, struggles, celebrations and life in Omaha. I want my letters to paint an accurate picture of who I am in Omaha and at Word Made Flesh. If I made a portrait of myself based on last year’s prayer letters, I think that there would be broad strokes of crises, fluster, worry and growth. Instead, I want to have a portrait with broad strokes of God’s grace, sustenance, mercy, love, joy, justice, freedom and salvation. I want these strokes to be the foundation of not only my life but of these prayer letters.

Within the body of my prayer letter, I want to include how God’s grace, sustenance, mercy, love, joy and other characteristics are playing out in my life and in the lives of those in my community. And I will also include the times of suffering, loneliness, desperation that I’ve seen in my life and in the lives of those in my community and those whom they serve among. But I want those to be seen through the lens of God’s character.

At the end of my letters, I want you to have a sense of how I’m doing: spiritually, emotionally, physically, financially, vocationally, relationally…you get my drift. Hopefully at the end of these letters you will not only have a clear idea of how you can pray for me and/or support me, but you will also have a clear sense of the invitation I want to continue extending to you: partner with me in what God is doing around the world with Word Made Flesh.

You all have made 2007 a sweet year. From phone calls, emails to letters, you all have invited me into your lives, and I love it. I’ve been able to celebrate the anticipation of a new grandbaby. I’ve been able to share in the excitement of new jobs. I’ve been able to be inspired by visits from friends. I’ve been able to observe selfless love of families in Omaha. I would not be where I am without the unique ways you have linked arms with me in my life. You all have carried me when I’ve been exhausted. You all have prayed for me when you thought of me. You all have sent money by faith to support the ministry of Word Made Flesh. You all are some of the most beautiful expressions of God’s goodness and grace in my life. Thank you for allowing me to observe that.

Here’s to an exciting year together,
Love you,
jara

interesting article about women, weight and body image

Maybe our New Year's resolution should be to love ourselves enough to be the healthiest we can be, instead of constantly beating ourselves up that we're not a real size 2. That's something to think about as we squeeze into our dress jeans and head for the holiday buffet.

A few months back Pat accidentally tried on a pair of size 2 jeans at an outlet store and was astounded to discover that they fit. Of course, she bought them; she had never had a pair of size 2 pants in her closet—ever. But she couldn't resist asking the clerk why a woman who normally wears a size 8 would fit into a pair of size 2 jeans. The saleswoman laughed and said this clothing line's sizes seemed to fluctuate with the designer's own weight. "No matter how much she gains or loses," the saleswoman said, "we think she always wants to wear the same size."

That story came to mind as we were reading the results of a recent Cornell University study published in the journal Eating Behaviors, which examined how people's perceptions of their size and shape motivated them to lose weight. The authors assumed that the further someone was from a healthy weight, the more dissatisfied they would be with their body and the more pounds they would want to lose to achieve an ideal weight (as defined by a Body Mass Index between 18.5 and 24.9. The BMI is a ratio of height to weight. To check yours, click here). But the results didn't turn out quite as the researchers had expected, which always makes a study more interesting to us.

Although overweight and obese women expressed the greatest dissatisfaction with their bodies, the amount of weight they said they would "ideally" like to lose was so low that they would still be categorized as overweight, the researchers found. "We thought they would choose a weight that was within the 'normal' category," says Lori Neighbors, one of the study's authors who is now an assistant professor of nutrition at the University of Wisconsin. Meanwhile, "normal" weight women said they wanted to lose only a few pounds, rejecting the very thin images that we see glorified in fashion magazines, which also surprised the researchers. "We found that encouraging," says Neighbors, "because by not idealizing that extremely light-for-height weight, they are less likely to get into the kinds of weight-management behaviors that put women into a dieting tailspin and encourage them to use extreme methods."

The same might not be said for the underweight women, who told researchers they believed they were at their ideal weight. "They didn't seem to understand the health risks associated with being underweight," she says. "We think that maybe once you get to be a member of this very thin group you get the kind of social messages that keep you there."

Still, the larger health concern is with those who are overweight. Two-thirds of adult American women fall into the overweight or obese category, according to their BMIs. Just last week a report from the Centers for Disease Control found that the prevalence of obesity among U.S. adults doubled between 1980 and 2004 and has since stabilized at an alarmingly high level. Compared to women of a generation ago, we're 24 pounds heavier on average, and there's been an especially alarming increase in those at the upper end of the scale (not just obese, defined as a BMI of 30 or higher, but significantly obese, with a BMI above 35).

Because high BMIs are associated with increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, some cancers and heart problems, there's a lot of public health interest in turning this situation around. One way to do it may be to better understand the psychology of weight loss. Neighbors said it's possible that the overweight women in her study aimed for such modest diet goals because lower numbers on the scale seemed unattainable to them. "If you're five-foot-two and 200 pounds, maybe it seems like a pipe dream that your weight could be 120 pounds," she says. Still, that may just mean that women who are very overweight might need to achieve small weight loss goals before they can envision larger losses and change their eating and exercise behaviors accordingly.

But the Cornell study also seems to indicate that underweight women are much more influenced by media imagery than overweight women are. There's some evidence that heavier women are more likely to take their cues from the people they see around them instead. That theory was bolstered recently when a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that having overweight friends makes people much more likely to carry extra pounds themselves. "If more of their friends are overweight, maybe that changes their perception of what it means to be overweight," Neighbors says. They may simply see being fat as the new normal.

That may not be quite as bad as it sounds, if it makes women feel better about their bodies. A recent University of Minnesota study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health examined the relationship between body satisfaction and BMI five years later among a group of overweight teen girls. Researchers Patricia van den Berg and Dianne Neumark-Sztainer found that overweight girls who were more comfortable with their bodies were less likely to gain weight as they entered young adulthood. The Minnesota research suggests that girls who felt good about themselves were more likely to be physically active and pay more attention to what they ate. They didn't lose much weight, but they made healthy lifestyle changes that at least prevented them from gaining more weight. Meanwhile, the researchers found that the girls who were the most dissatisfied with their size tended to become more sedentary over time and paid less attention to maintaining a healthy diet. Those who were unhappy with their bodies were, in fact, more likely to gain more weight. If the same holds true on a larger scale, then encouraging women to love and care for their bodies—even when they don't match the Hollywood ideal—may be one way to reverse or at least slow the progression of the obesity epidemic.

Maybe our New Year's resolution should be to love ourselves enough to be the healthiest we can be, instead of constantly beating ourselves up that we're not a real size 2. That's something to think about as we squeeze into our dress jeans and head for the holiday buffet.

article can be found here

exhausted

I’m not sure how it happened, but it did. I felt the weight and speed of the past year catch up with me in one swift moment. i should’ve been prepared for it. I had an inkling it was about to happen. My nights have been more restless. My thoughts have been more scattered. and my days seem to only know how to drag on, slowly. My prayers have been short and desperate.

And that’s how I come to you. I am incredibly thankful for how you’ve surrounded me with your prayers and support throughout my life. if that’s through being one of my first best friends in high school…or a roommate in college…or a camp mate at some point…or a friend whom I’ve met along the way. Each of you have been an essential part of my life.

So, here I am - as transparent as I can be via the world wide web internet (I had to throw some humor in there).

This past year I made a decision to dig my heels in deep in raising my support with word made flesh. I’ve dedicated a large chunk of my time every Friday to write letters to friends and family members. I treasure the somewhat uninterrupted time of slowing down and writing old-school letters. through my letters I attempt to catch people up on what I’m doing in wmf, how I’m doing in Omaha and I also try to invite them to partner with me in the ministry of wmf. If I’m not writing, I’m trying to figure out how raising support should work.

And let’s be honest. It’s exhausting and it doesn’t feel sustainable now. And right now, my prayer is that I can go one day without thinking about raising support – basically, my salary. We’re going on 548 + days.

I don’t want to have to find new and creative ways to ask for support. I don’t want to wordsmith my way into your hearts and prayers. I don’t want to bold numbers…or italicize words. I don’t want to treat you like that. I just want to be me and ask for your prayers. I need help.

This pace has been hard. Really hard. And I need a miracle. Really, I need someone to carry me for awhile because this has become really heavy.

So. I’m asking for prayers. Prayers for miracles. Prayers for sustainability. Prayers for hope. Prayers for some people to carry me for just a little bit…well, maybe a bit longer than a little bit, what about a lot a bit. Thank you.