The Fairy Tale

I am nineteen years old. Often, I still feel like I'm a little kid, dreaming about "when I grow up."

When you get to college it is clear that everyone is holding on to their childhood. Instead of wanting to feel grown up, college kids try to increasingly embrace all things childlike. For instance, there are disney princesses everywhere in the dorms and it is not uncommon to find a dozen girls watching an old disney movie in the lounge.


I am no different. I have a new found passion for stickers. Instead of real food I prefer to eat cereal out of those innovative bowls that have built-in straws for slurping leftover milk. I color my notes during class because I have deep appreciation for crayons. I miss swings and merry-go-rounds. Deep down inside, I still want my prince to come and rescue me from the evil dragon.

People assume that growing up means letting go of childhood dreams and facing reality. Does the hope of fairy tales end when you get to college? After you spend five years in college and realize you don't want to do anything coinciding with your major? When you have not come close to finding that prince, let alone being rescued by him? When you get a job just to pay the rent? When you find a coffee stain unexpectedly on your favorite sweater right before seeing your ex-boyfriend from high school happily married with 2.5 kids?


I believe college students have a secret fear deep inside that growing up means nothing but disappointment, boredom, and the end of the hope of a long awaited fairy tale. Therefore, they try to prolong the process by clenching on to disney princesses and swing sets.


The truth in growing up is realizing that the perfect fairy tale is not perfect as we define perfection. My favorite stories are the ones that are messy. They are full of intense peril, mindless stupidity, and the ex-boyfriend happily married with 2.5 kids. Is accepting those things giving up? By no means! Accepting those things opens up the opportunity for us to truly live in God's story, not some made up human one.


In those fairy tales we dream about in our childhood, the end is always predictable. The story ends with living happily ever after. The characters are fulfilled and the purpose, their own happiness, has reached the ultimate shining fruition. There is no end after that. The end is happiness, and that is...well...the end.


It might be a hard lesson to learn, but our happiness is not the purpose of this story. This fact actually releases all the pressure off growing up, meeting Mr. Right, working at a dream job, and having those 2.5 beautiful kids. Oh these are wonderful things, don't get me wrong. But they are not IT. They are not the end. I find it heartbreaking when people think that these goals are the end, only to be disappointed at their own discontent after marrying, working, or raising their kids.


Truth be told, I don't care if I "grow up." I will probably love stickers and cereal forever. I do care, however, that I am spiritually mature. The spiritually mature accepts that their purpose is to bring God's glory. The end lays in the perfect author's hands. Our story is not a fairy tale, but REALITY. We are characters in the grandest, most romantic, and most eloquent story of all- the story of mankind.

Ch..cha..cha... CHANGES

I AM SO HAPPY IT IS FRIDAY! I'm going to party tonight. And by party I mean the Christian College Version, you know, games with the brother unit and watching 

WALL-E! (P.S. That is one of my favorite movies of all time and CU is showing it on campus for FREE!)

The picture of the day goes to WALL-E because he deserves it.

Let us reflect upon how different Jillian is from the first day of college:

1. I make my bed every day. That was usually rare at home. The funny thing is that it takes about 3 times as much effort to make my bed at school. On the bright side, the top bunk gives me a full body workout every morning. 

2. I don't care so much about the grades I get as what I learn from the class. You know what- this system ROCKS. FREEDOM!

3. I appreciate more. Everything has become a luxury- time with my family, time with friends, coffee, healthy cereal and soy milk, silence, etc.

4. I'm healthier. I have worked out atleast 4 days of every week that I have been here. As a result, I finally feel like I have got the moderation thing down. I don't feel like I have to change, nor do I often feel like indulging in things. This is GOOD.

5. I have learned that Discipline is one of the biggest bridges to spiritual growth. This Christian life is not easy, and staying on course is also not going to be easy. God does not tell us it will be. Therefore, I have decided to strive and strive hard. At the end of my life, I will never regret how much I strived to become like Christ. The good news is, we are never alone in that striving. THANK GOD!

I'm sure there are other things that are changing... but I will let you decide when you next talk to me. :)

The Jillian List

These are things that I feel just make life a little bit better...in no specific order:

1. Lilac Tide...oh the goodness
2. Stephanie Taylor
3. Mr. Coffee
4. ANY Coffee
5. Classes that randomly get cancelled on a beautiful day as today
6. Endorphins- the Jesus approved high
7. 8 hours of sleep- no more no less
8. Deep, rich, full belly laughter...the kind that makes you feel like you just had a serious ab workout
9. Flowers
10. A handwritten letter in the mail

Every now and again I will post these. The Jillian List is composed of many more things than here and makes for a light post when I don't have the time or energy to write out my heart:)

Naked Hearts

Is it excessive to post more than one post in one day? I just have so much to write all the time. I must take advantage of the inspiration when it comes.

Imagine with me: What if all we saw was the heart of people? What if, in some miracle, for a day we saw nothing but the raw hearts of people? What if the physical realm was nonexistent and we could not hide behind pretense? All the interaction would be heart to heart. All truth of where we really are exposed to everyone around us. 

What would that change? How would we react? Would humanity be defined differently?

The Lyrics to a Brandon Heath song asks God: "Give me your eyes for just one second. Give me your eyes so I can see everything that I keep missing. Give me your love for humanity. Give me your arms for the broken hearted, the ones that are far beyond my reach. Give me your heart for the once forgotten...Well I want a second glance, so give me a second chance to 

See the way you see the people all alone"

Maybe the reason we don't see the way God does is that he is protecting us. Maybe we seriously just couldn't hack it. Our hearts are so marred by hurt and sin and corruption. Maybe it would overwhelm and depress us. 

But I can't help but wanting the same thing as Brandon Heath. In my humanness, skin is way too big of an issue. Our physical bodies are supposed to be used for God's glory, not as a way to hide what is inside or to be the focus in and of itself. 

This concept challenges me. What am I really looking at when I see a person? Do I really look for their heart? If you flip the challenge, how do I appear to others? Do they see my heart? Am I vulnerable enough? 

Is my skin a means to protect my pride?

1 John 3:16-24:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and see his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

This passage smacks it down on the table for me. Our hearts are not okay. How do we set our hearts at rest? We LOVE! This love is deeper than our skin. This love is about how we act and not about what we have or look like. This love is about laying down our lives for those around us... in other words... to care for someone's heart with no inhibitions from our pride or selfish nature. How? Simply: God. God is greater. He allows us the capacity to love. And this love conquers all. 

"Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin"

I am so impressed with Doctor Martin Luther King Junior.

Big surprise ay? But seriously...have you read his stuff? I had to read a letter he wrote for one of my classes. We are studying the vice anger and the opposite virtues: meekness and peacemaking. The main concept is loving your enemies.

As a girl who has been in the Christian world her whole life, I have heard this concept so many times. Loving your enemy is obvious in thought but not so obvious in real life. Truly...how many times do you encounter someone truly loving someone else who has wronged them? 

Two misconceptions: 1. Loving your enemy is weak. 2.By loving your neighbor you are somehow saying whatever they did/are doing is okay. 

Really? Loving your enemy is weak? I'm pretty sure Jesus loved his enemies so much he died for them. Would you call him weak for dying on the cross for us? Also, think how much harder it is for one to restrain their rage and act out of love for someone who has wronged them? That is impressive. That is revolutionary. THAT is love. I feel like whenever this happens, Jesus shouts, "SHABAM!!! They finally have it!"

In response to giving an "okay" to wrong by loving enemies: Love does not avoid the wrong. Love looks straight at the wrong and recognizes the fallen nature of the individual. After all, God sees us in our entirety, even the worst parts of us. He never excuses our sin, never says simply that it is okay, but loves us despite it all. 

What is the alternative? Hating those who are hateful? That just adds more hate. Nothing is solved. No peace can come from the human response to hate. 

Martin Luther King had this concept mastered. His resolve to be loving to those who were so cruel to him amazes me. His cry was to hate segregation but to love those who fight to segregate. This concept is summarized in the saying "Love the sinner, hate the sin." 

Can we really get this down? Can I really get this down?

Truth be told, I don't feel like I have many enemies. But I have to ask the question: If I was in Dr. King Jr.'s position, how would I react? I don't know. I hope that I would be able to react in such a Christlike way as Dr. King. 

What would the world look like if we took this principle into practice? This world would be so unrecognizable to our eyes. Will it ever happen? Probably not anytime soon. Yet I am convinced that our generation can be a good start. I can be a good start. 

~For those who wish to discover this concept further, I recommend the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, Luke 6, Romans 12, and Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. 

"I Can Handle It"

Sometimes I wonder, "Did that really just happen? Am I in real life?" Then I laugh and write about it. 

For instance, today I had a ceremony for the reunion of Mr. Coffee and me. Mr. Coffee is my espresso machine that I have been without for a month. I did not realize that I could bring Mr. Coffee to school (Cedarville University). For you to understand the significance of this, you must first understand two things: I have an unhealthy addiction to coffee and I have a love passion for coffee. The first description is how my friends describe it...the second is how I prefer to describe it. To my chagrin, I lived without Mr. Coffee for a month and drank coffee from Chuck's (our cafeteria) and random espresso drinks from Vecinos (our cafe). 

Finally, Mr. Coffee and I were reunited and I brought him back with me after a visit home.  In my excitement to drink my espresso, I released the pressure too quick. This resulted in the lid catapulting to the ceiling from the steam, releasing a thunderous sound akin to a bomb exploding. Besides making all my unit mates pee their pants (myself included), everything was surprisingly okay. I recovered by curling up in a ball for about ten minutes in the fullest belly laughter imaginable. 

In my class (which I was late to thanks to the Mr. Coffee incident), my prof mentioned just how many times we assume, "Oh I can handle it."  I think God chuckles a bit whenever we say that. Like, "Here we go again, Jillian thinks she has this life thing down." We forget that we have a fallen human nature. We forget that we are created to be in relation with God and with others. If we simply think we can handle things by ourselves, we inevitably... well... blow up like Mr. Coffee. 

There builds up so much pressure in oneself if they bear things alone. The truth of the matter is, I like when things blow up, because sometimes that is what it takes for me to realize I need adjusting. Yet blowing up is not always the best way to come to this realization. There is always signs of the steam building up too much pressure beforehand. 

My ultimate goal is to stop before I blow up. I am Mr. Coffee. I need to let God handle the pressure and let others see me in my weak times. Otherwise, I will eventually self destruct. 

I think I am going to go give Mr. Coffee a second try now. And a word of advice: don't try to do this life thing by yourself. Let God release the pressure and give you a life better than the best Grande Nonfat Latte around.

And Jillian said, "Let there be blog! And it was good"

I would just like the world to know that Jillian Pierce now has a blog. This is my reasoning:

1. I love to write.

2. I love to write about what I learn in my daily life.

3. I love when people like my writing about what I learn in my daily life.

4. Why not? (as my Dove Dark Chocolate wrapper told me this morning)

So here goes....