Thoughts Drifting

To say that things have been crazy lately would definitely be an understatement. After things finally slowed down with all the traveling and weddings, I realized summer was nearly over.

And I had no idea what I was doing.

No idea what was happening with my life.

No idea where I would be living.

Six months ago I thought that I had made these big decisions, that I knew what I would be doing and where I would be going. However, I have learned that things don't work out like we want them to. Nor do they happen as we expect them to. It has been emotional and frustrating, disappointing and a time where I have questioned myself more times then I could count. In all of it, one thing has become perfectly clear:

I have no plans.

My plans have failed.

For awhile I thought that these things that I believed to be failures, this areas where my plans have not come through, to mean that I was a failure. That is truly what I thought, I believed that I was a failure and that these were defining who I was as a person. It was like my own scarlet letter mocking me daily, for others to see. However, it took a friend, a newer yet wonderful friend, to tell me that no matter what I do, that does not define me. Therefore, what I was not doing, did not define me either.  Through it, I had parents standing by me, dealing with my emotions, listening to me fight myself, trying to bring clarity to my confusion and assuring me that I was not a failure and they were not disappointed in me. 

What a sweet gift that is.

You would think that I want not need this, that I would be smart enough to differentiate between who I am and what I do (or at least I thought I was smart enough). Yet, after living in this world or near isolation, aside from my parents, since February, I needed someone to come beside me and reassure me. Because sometimes is it so easy to let your circumstances dictate who you are.

Or rather, who you think you are. 

So a new, albeit temporary, plan has been set into motion. I am going back to where I went to college. Going back to a town I dislike with people I adore.  Granted, it is not the city I love, the city I was going to with two amazing friends, but hopefully that is still something that I will be able to obtain in the near future. So maybe this wasn't in my plans, maybe it wasn't even on the map, but at least I know where I am going. Without much cohesion, this is where my mind goes, back to the unknown. 

And it scares the crap out of me.

I feel like I have lived in a false sense of reality. For some reason I believed that life would be loads easier then this. Instead, I have learned, once again, that life is not fair and thats the way it is. i can't change it, but I also cannot compare myself to others.  So this is where I stand.

At the crossroads without a map.

But hopefully soon I will know. Until then I will remember that what I do does not define me, that my life cannot be compared to others successes, that things don't always come together in my timing but they do come together. 

So, I will wait

I Need A Honeymoon.

In the past 3 months I have...

been in 3 weddings

          in 3 different cities

          in 2 different states

had 3 vacations (sort of)

spent at least 1 night in 8 different cities

worn 3 different bridesmaid dresses

given 2 different speeches at 2 different receptions

taken 3 different flights

been with 2 different friends when they got married

been with all 3 sister when 1 got married

applied for loads of jobs

          not gotten 1 of the loads of jobs

missed people 1 too many times

read quite a few books

          including 1 series i said i would not read

i have watched 3 couple leave for honeymoons

decided....

I need a honeymoon.

Toeing the Line

In all my spare time, I nanny 3 1/2 year old twin boys. That is, when I am not doing homework, working for my parents, reading, driving my little sisters around, traveling for wedding and wedding showers, helping plan my sister's wedding, and all the other little things... that is when I nanny.

So, these boys are hilarious and also a trip all rolled up into two twin tenacious tornadoes. They say some of the funniest things that result in me sending at least one quote filled text, each time I nanny, to family and friends. This family lives on a busy street and as such the boys are not allowed to go past a certain lamppost on the driveway (I am not talking about a Narnia inspired lamppost, just a normal one). Part of their backyard backs up to woods and as such, their parents have requested that they not venture into the woods because they are uncertain as to whether or not there is poison ivy in said woods. However, from day 1 (of my time being there), the boys have liked to toe the line.

They will get as close to the line they are not allowed to cross, without actually crossing the line.

Today, they would stand at the lamppost and ask me if they could go past, knowing full well the answer to that question. In the woods they would stand so that their feet were as close to the woods as physically possible without actually being in the woods.

In some ways, it was completely frustrating.

I wasn't trying to keep them out of the woods or out of the road to prohibit them from having fun. Their parents were not trying to put crazy restrictions on their play. Rather they were trying to protect them. I was asking the boys to stay out of the woods, away from the end of the driveway because I knew what lay on the other side of the lamppost; I knew what was past the grass line. And we wanted to protect them. Protect them from what they could not see and what they did not know but what we could see and what we knew.

As I was driving home this afternoon it sort of hit me: God is the way.

Sometimes it is so easy to think that God is trying to prohibit me from having fun or somehow that my thoughts and plans are better than His. But the whole time it is my way of thinking that is jaded. It is almost as if God is saying: "My child, can't you see? I am trying to protect you. I have seen what is past the lamppost; I have seen what is in the woods. I am not trying to limit you, I am trying to protect you."

But just like the boys had a choice on whether or not to listen to me, so I have a choice with God. That doesn't mean that I always make the right choice, but at the end of the day I get to decide whether to venture past the lamppost (again, not a Narnia reference). Maybe I will learn to listen more to God, with a renewed understanding of the difference between protection and prohibiting.

But just like the boys, sometimes I just like to toe the line to see how far I can get without actually getting too far.

Rain

I was awoken this morning to my mom telling me it was beautiful outside and that perhaps I should consider waking up to go outside and work. However, I don't focus very well when I first wake up, so I ended up falling back asleep. When I did venture outside to begin working the sun was shining and the sky was gorgeous shades of blue. So for three hours I was shoveling and digging, dumping and spreading dirt, listening to my iPod the whole time. Slowly but surely the clouds began to roll in and the sky lost its blue allure.

It began to rain.

At first just a drip every once in awhile, nothing too significant. Nothing that would slow me down. However, those drips turned to sprinkles and the sprinkles to drops and suddenly it was pouring down rain on me. And I am standing there, shovel in hand, watching and feeling the rain cover me, turn my dirt pile to mud and wash away the specks of dirt.

I love the rain.

I often think about the rain, the way it makes the earth smell and the grass greener. It makes everything appear new and fresh. Rain has a cleansing power, an ability to make things clean and new- unscathed.

However, rain also fleshes out the imperfections; it tears down our masks and uncovers our attempts at covering our imperfections. We can use a piece of chalk to draw over and mask a crack or a flaw on the sidewalk but when the rain comes, the chalk is washed away and the thing we were trying to hide is once again before our eyes. We can only hide and cover-up our mistakes, errors, and imperfections until the next rain.

And the rain will come.

So, maybe God is like the rain- twofold- allowing us a cleansing from all that is unclean but also laying bear what we tried to leave unseen. He takes us from our broken, battered, dirty state and creates in us something new and beautiful. However, He also uncovers our attempts at hiding and masking- He sees our flaws and our imperfections. I don't think He uncovers these to hurt us, but rather to see our hurts and heal us.

The rain is beautiful, but it can be uncomfortable as well.

I am standing there being soaked and even though it was once warm and sunny, I am now becoming cold. My shoes are becoming soggy. My hair is dripping in my eyes. My clothes are sticking to me. My feet are sticking to the mud. And the rain that is renewing and restoring is now making me uncomfortable...

... but only for a season.

At the Risk of Sounding Selfish...

I want to make a difference

I want to change things

or something for someone

I want to give someone hope

I want to dry the orphan's tears

I want to show someone that there is more to life

more then what they know

I want to give more than I have

and more than I thought I could give

I want to not let money prevent me from following my dreams

I want to make the world different for my sisters

I want to have hope that tomorrow is better than today

and know it is possible

I want to jump out of an airplane

with a parachute

I want to wake up desiring to read my Bible

because most days I don't

I want to tell my story

so someone knows bad things can happen to good people

so someone knows their story can be different

so someone, somewhere can relate and know they can make it too

I want to defy the odds

and come out the winner

I want to change the statistics

I want to travel the world

to see that which is beautiful

to see that which is not beautiful

to see what others have forgotten

to what others refuse to see

I want to write

and not be afraid of people's reactions

I want to grow in more ways then I thought possible

I want community to not be another Christian word

but a reality

I want to look back on my life and know I did all that I could do

I want to truly live

but most of all, above all else, I want to love