I am laid low in the dust;
preserve my life according to your word.

I recounted my ways and you answered me;
teach me your decrees.

Let me understand the teaching of your precepts;
then I will meditate on your wonders.

My soul is weary with sorrow;
strengthen me according to your word.

Keep me from deceitful ways;
be gracious to me through your law.

I have chosen the way of truth;
I have set my heart on your laws.

I hold fast to your statutes, O LORD;
do not let me be put to shame.

I run in the path of your commands,
for you have set my heart free.

Psalm 119:25-32

finally updating the blog...

so:

i'm into week 4 of semester 2! we've done lots of endocrine stuff so far in med, mission week is coming up next week (already!) and life is generally busy

currently compounded by this apparent mass in my throat, which is also preventing me from sleeping. really hope it isn't anything major :( tho a week of sleepness nights and difficulty swallowing speaks for itself, i guess... it's actually getting quite annoying :(

well it's 1:30 am hopefully i'm sufficiently tired to fall asleep.. despite the throat thing. hmm. we'll see what happens tomorrow i guess...

back in tamworth and still -_- zzz

went to brisbane this weekend came back, left my cello bow up there hope it gets fixed mitten socks are warm and cute and my random thought are very along the lines of zzzz need to work in 10 hours should go to bed now i guess...

"'You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,' said Aslan. 'And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth.'" - C.S. Lewis

Catchy song of the night: Linkin Park - What I've done

In this new song from the old band that was always "the one that screams" is a strangely U2 -like experience - lots of war, environment, poverty, etc. in the film clip - the song is all about forgiveness, mercy, a clean slate and moving on (which is, indeed, odd for this band :P)

One phrase stands out to me:

So let mercy come,
And wash away
What I’ve Done

In the song, it's all about forgiving yourself

For what I’ve done,
I start again,
And whatever pain may come,
Today this ends,
I’m forgiving what I’ve done

But even Linkin Park acknowledges that self-forgiveness doesn't mean that everyone else forgives you too:

While, I’ve cleaned this slate,
With the hands,
Of uncertainty,

Which made me think of the incredible certainty of God's forgiveness for what I've done - as Paul exclaims in Romans:

"So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me... What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

The clean slate I have isn't something that i've uncertainly cleaned myself - it's been fully cleaned by Jesus in his mercy, and it's not even something I have done or could do myself! So I can confidently say as Paul says "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" - How awesome is that!

btw: What I've Done is an incredibly catchy song. not recommended for pre-exam listening. or you'll have the song going around and around and around and around in your head. ditto for Ponytail Parades by Emery (that was today's exam song...) give it a listen or watch the vid on youtube it's pretty cool. :)

1 more day!!!

random statement of the day: irish mythology is very interesting. you should wikipedia it sometime

my quote for the semester: 'compliance is whether your lung is behaving like a paper bag, a balloon or a brick'

--

I left my heart and buried it too deep.. under the iron sea..

Okay I lied. One more song - Cat Empire this time, one of the most interesting songs i've heard in a while:

Do you ever look around
turn your ear to the ground
show your face to the sky
on a night when the skies echoe sounds
from inside of your mind
on the stage that you shone
where the sun did become you
and move with your thoughts
through the sighs and the scenes
of the worlds you have seen
and the sights that have been
your reflection in shadows and dreams?
- your reflection in shadows and dreams

Did you ever see a man
who did walk down the street
white robe with no shoes on his feet
and on top of his head place a box with two slits
and the sign from his neck said
‘I do not exist’
or a woman who could not remember her name
did stutter and stutter
again and again
and saw you and called you her son
her eyes said
‘my being is gone
but still I’m not dead’?

Miserere....

Have you ever seen a sound
have you listened to an image
have you ever touched a thought
have you ever tasted nothing
have you ever told a lie
that was true more than truth
because truth it had lied
all its life when it spoke to you?
And what did it say
it is that it is this
this goes here here is there
it is not yes it is
it was dulling your senses
your eyes they were bound
have you ever my friends
been looking around?

And the other replies
with a wave of a hand
I am already here
in this promised land
but not by a god and not by a king
and not by a spirit
deep from within
I am here
because a miracle’s a whim
it’s a flash of glory
it’s an empty tin
and maybe might lets you in
not to save you
but to keep on looking-

Miserere…

Have you ever
been so happy that you’re sad?
that the lights turn to stars
and the stars become eyes
and hello’s are goodbye’s
and the laughs are the sigh’s
and the show disappears with the note
‘until next time’

Long live living
if living can be this

Long live living
if living can be this

Long live living
if living can be this

Long live living
if living can be this

Do you ever look around
turn your ear to the ground
show your face to the sky
on a night when the skies echo
sounds from inside of your mind
on the stage that you shone
where the sun did become you
and move with your thoughts
through the sighs and the scenes
of the worlds you have seen
and the sights that have been
your reflection in shadows and dreams
Do you ever look around
and find what is yet to be found?

Okay one more Keane song and I'm going to go back and study... :P

--

A tell tale sign
You don't know where to draw the line

And why'd you say
It's just another day, nothing in my way
I don't wanna go, I don't wanna stay
So there's nothing left to say
And why'd you lie
When you wanna die, when you hurt inside
Don't know what you lie for anyway
Now there's nothing left to say

Well for a lonely soul, you're having such a nice time
For a lonely soul, you're having such a nice time
For a lonely soul, it seems to me that you're having such a nice time
You're having such a nice time....

Have I ever said before I (l) Keane? : November '06 - Ironically enough it was at stuvac last year too :P

Must be a stuvac bug :P I love their lyrics! and you can sing along without thinking because it's so simple hence you can study at the same time :P

--

Sometimes it's hard to know where I stand
It's hard to know where I am
Or maybe it's a puzzle I don't understand
Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm stranded in the wrong time
Where love is just a lyric in children's rhyme, a soundbite

Oh but you try
Is it any wonder that I'm tired?
Is it any wonder that I feel uptight?
Is it any wonder I don't know what's right

1 down. 3 to go.


-- Now playing - Bad Dream - Keane

I wake up, it's a bad dream, no one on my side

I was fighting but I just feel too tired

To be fighting, guess I'm not the fighting kind

Wouldn't mind it if you were by my side

But you're long gone, yeah you're long gone now....

Where do we go?

I don't even know my strange old face

And I'm thinking about those days...

The breath before the plunge ;) (or, to put it in more obscure metaphorical language, the sleep before the first exam). that is what i'm going to do. now. hehe

--
I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me - Ps 3:5

YAY i finished revising all the stuff that i need to revise - now to do gap-filling and past-paper cramming ...

facebook is evil. Pam, I hope you're reading this.

maybe i'll sleep now and get up early tomorrow to study.. it's a plan!


-- Now Playing: Sky Blue and Black - Jackson Browne

I hear the sound of the world where we played
And the far too simple beauty
Of the promises we made

Mid-stuvac post!

Well i'm still alive and studying... cleaning up my webspaces and then going to study some more

Sorry i killed the shoutbox - it wasn't being used that much anyway and yeah i couldn't make it work again after i cleaned it up :( oh well

Today's like being inside an automatic carwash except the house is the car and there's leaves flying in the windows instead of soapsuds... at least there's a beautiful fresh breeze coming into my room (even if it's a bit wet :P)

if anyone wants my notes so far: http://gilvala.free-site-host.com/index.html

and that was my short post - i'm still alive, look! :D

monthly posts, huh...

despite my efforts to keep blogging it seems like it has died.. ugh i'm off to bible study already!! see what procrastination brings you... :P

But oh so sore...

Bleh it's that time of the year where joyce gets chronically ill again. *coughs* - need more sleeeep...

LOTS OF BIRTHDAY! happy birthday to the huge one, the one with the emo party and the newcastle to UNSW med defector :P (teehee)

umm yeah i'm going to have breakfast and head to lectures.

I'm back and still going!

On the weekend I went away with NCS (Newcastle Christian Students) - on the "getting to know you" camp ("Bond 007") - where we basically got to know each other better! Had a couple of great talks on the incarnation (why Jesus had to be both 100% God and 100% man at the same time) and studies in small groups - it was awesome just to get to know new people, get to know "not-new" people better and meet 100 other people that God has worked so wonderfully in!

Other highlights of the weekend - staying up to 1:30 every night playing 500, winning a game on open misere (with a dodgy hand) at 1:15 in the morning, the phosphorescent lake, playing Go with proper stones... hehe so good

Of course this meant that I had to do all PBL on sunday night and monday (thankfully my tute is only at 3:30) which meant a tired little girl collapsed into bed last night and slept in today :)

tomorrow is a day off!! YAY! (day off = study all day and hopefully finish pbl tomorrow)

-- Now playing: Rejoice - Garage Hymnal

And we rejoice for we hold our hope in the
promise of the Lord
We rejoice in Jesus Christ our Saving King
So raise your voice
To the Lord who is good
to those who hold Him dear
Hallelujah

** i'd like to point out from these lyrics : context : God is good to EVERYONE - the sun rises on everyone in the world. the rain falls. even people who don't think that God exists are still alive. but if you are one that "holds God dear", he is GOOD - he sent Jesus to die for you so that your sins could be forgiven, he's adopted you as his child and you can call him Father, you are looking to an eternity in heaven with him, you have meaning and hope in life - God has been and continues to be GOOD to you (so let's not forget it or take it for granted)! - so, in his mercy, God is good to everyone, but GOOD to those who hold him dear!

Lets see... I'm still alive!

This week is the "8am" class week - monday was ok at 3:30, tuesday was ok at 11 (my half of the tute doesn't have to do the 8:30 hospital thing until a couple more weeks) - wednesday 8:30, thursday 8am and friday 8am!! augh! :(

i wanna sleep, methinks.

chicken soup is nice, and the weather has cooled down significantly.

okay now i'm just rambling...

Thanks to God for keeping the world together (because i can't hold myself together, let alone the world around me, let alone the whole world) and for the cool weather today :)

Trying to study cardio, but my heart's just not in it!

It's been storming all today and really cloudy - this is bad because it was very dark when i got up this morning... i was planning to get up at 10 and study again, but i woke up blearily, looked out the window and thought "it's so dark it can't possibly be time to get up yet" and ended up waking up at 11....

aaagh it's all going in one eye and out the other!! time to bluff my way through another closing tute and get some proper study done... sometime...

I wanna holidays already..... lol i'm so lazy.

Well here's part 2 of the Forsythe house art exhibition (this post should probably be called "Joyce goes Asian-like":

A couple of goldfish


Plum blossoms in flower

probably my only fully original piece yet...

okay so i might have photoshopped the fish and the flowers a bit.. but only to fix up the colour!! (I blame the camera phone ;p) More to come - not all of the pics are on the computer yet!!

Incidentally there's a spectacular lightning storm just outside my window with its own sound fx from the thunder and the ominously crackling speakers... okay i think it's time to turn off the computer!!!

I can paint! So yeh it's been like - i'm so addicted to painting! heheeee

I took up painting 5 days ago and i'm churning at a scarily prolific pace (considering that i'm supposed to be studying..) so here's a post devoted to some of the earlier of my works (if you can call it "earlier" :P)

this one's the first one I ever did: squiggles on canvas just to see what would happen


This one was for Chara my housemate - her favourite colour's blue so i painted something blue! (not too bad for the second ever thing I've done on canvas with paint! ;) )

This one was a prototype of the one that i did for Alyssa's birthday (happy birthday again btw Lyss - ur old!) :P - the real one ended up being done on canvas painted black! Still haven't quite decided what the painting's of - some abstract thing I'm sure! (hey it's versatile - it doesn't really have a defined "right way up" and it's got red, blue and yellow and green so it doesn't matter what your favourite colour is!)


and to end off this segment for tonight, a pic inspired by Diablo 2 (Tyrael has some majorly awesome wings! impractical, but sooo cool!) - so far the only paint I have is acrylic, so that's what everything's painted in! and there you go.

Off to study for meeeeee *sighs*

I finally got blogger fixed up on this silly computer!

YAY!

okay so a quick summary of the last 3 months:

relaxing times at home, challenging and rewarding times on mission telling people about Jesus, fun times hanging out with friends!

Late november sometime: back home to tamworth for a couple of weeks before..

Dec 2-12 : NTE!!! National Training Event in Canberra, run with Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students - i.e. heaps of Christian students from all over Australia meet in Canberra for a 5 day conference and then mission after that (Newcastle went to Orange, Bathurst, Molong and Blayney - I went to Orange and it was AWESOME) - awesome talks, awesome workshops, doing walk-up evangelism on the main street of Orange was challenging and also awesome ;)

Dec 13-15: Avoca, Central Coast: Stayed up at Jeram's for a few days and hung out with his cool family

Dec 15-17: If memory serves me right, Jeram came up to Tamworth for a few days here...

The next few weeks were hectic with Christmas stuff and relaxed with just about nothing else going on

Dec 30-Jan 6, 2007AD: SUMMERFEST!!! "Beachless mission" in Tamworth with Trinity Church, with the newly formed "Extremites" (or extremities :P) group (year 5 and 6) - kid's program in the morning, doorknocking some afternoons, stuff at night, hanging out with the team it was a really great mission this year :)

The next few weeks involved working, getting my Ps and a first aid certificate... until..

Feb 11: Moved back to Newcastle for O Week, after that back to work!

So now I'm getting back into the rhythm of work and balancing uni with NCS and church and hanging out and stuff - nothing particularly exciting really... well there is heaps but it would take all night to type it out, so suffice it to say - I'm alive, at uni and having an awesome time! :D

Living in a shared townhouse (still on campus) with 3 other lovely Christian female med students and today the 5th member moved into the "empty room" downstairs (being the only guy... and non-med student in the house... poor thing :P)