very tired indeed.

I haven't been writing much and I need to get back into the habit of it. I think I stopped because I have nothing to write about except for complaints, and well- even complainers get tired of complaining.

I have so been in the mood to travel lately. I think it's because I'm used to not being in St. Cloud at this time of year. As August rolls over into September I keep feeling like I need to go somewhere because I've very much liked leaving home after three months of summer. The fact remains, I want to road trip so bad. Maybe once I get a new tire I'll be able to go places and do things. I'm a little annoyed that my left rear tire finally blew yesterday, but I'm glad that it means I can get a new one- which means I can finally get out of St. Cloud- which means I really AM visiting Morris on the 15th :D I'm excited.

That's probably enough for now. I have to get up early tomorrow for work and I'm so tired already because I didn't sleep well last night. I need to take a great many pictures tomorrow- I am so behind and I HAVE to get caught up before September starts. Oh motivation, where have you evaporated to??

Goodnight, blogger world.

walk with Me

I don't know why it's a foreign thing- why it seems new to me to picture Jesus looking at me and saying "walk with Me..." I think I have lived my christian life as if I expected God to walk with ME- as if He didn't before.

"I run for dear life to God, I'll never regret it." -psalm 70:1

I want a deep lasting love...the kind Bruchko and the Motilones talked about...the kind Classic Crime are floating around in this song. I feel like there's so much missing in my life and me and my family keep trying to find something, keep searching for something we don't know. Why do I search for something I have? Do I really have it if I'm running around frantically trying to find it somewhere else- anywhere else?

There is a need for the real thing. The real You I keep hiding from and running around. For some reason I feel like I can't bear You- I can't handle You and I'm scared to let You really change my life and me. I'm afraid to let go of me. I'm afraid to be totally Yours. I'm afraid to change. I'm afraid to have all of You. Maybe it's a control thing. I need help finding You again, or finding You for the first real time. I'm realizing that my relationship with You never seems to stick- if I'm happy I love You and if I'm angry I hate You. If things go right I love You and love me, but if things go wrong I hate You and try to destroy me.

But all You want is to love me. All You want is me. Completely me. You want me to walk with You. You stand there, pleadingly, "walk with Me..." You can give me the kind of life I can't imagine living- the kind that matters, the kind I genuinely want to live. I can't stand this half-hearted relationship with You, and You can't either. I think we both want all or nothing. I feel like I have no love for You. I feel like if I really really loved You, I would want to spend time with You- I would crave that need everyday. I mean, let's look at my daydreams and how I imagine it would be to be in love- why do I feel like it shouldn't be like that with You? Have I ever taken You that seriously? I love me more than I have ever loved You. I want things to go my way. I want things selfishly from You and get so confused when You delay in giving them to me. My life isn't about You at all. It's only about me.

My life sucks and has been sucking because I choose myself repeatedly over You. When things go badly, when I suffer, I curse You instead of clinging to You for dear life, thinking it'll make me feel better but it never does. It hasn't worked. I don't want to waste another three years of my life hating You and being angry at everything You do or don't do. I think it's time I just start doing what You tell me to.

It isn't weak to change. It isn't weak even to be wrong. Humility isn't weakness. Why would it be weak to grow?

I keep skirting around the edge of us because I'm afraid. Relationships scare me- including this one. Being vulnerable is something pretty unfathomable to me in this time of life. And the choices I've been making have really been getting in the way of us too. I'm sure that's half the problem. I've been grieving You, Holy Spirit. I don't remember You anymore, after all this distance and fighting. I need to know You. Really know You.

a different kind of jungle

I'll be honest. The attitude change thing has helped a lot the last few days, but looking at tomorrow...makes me want to cry and runaway. Despite the attitude change, I still don't want to do it. Not as often as I'll have to the next two weeks anyway. A week like last week I'll do. It makes me feel like such a complainer though, after reading Bruchko. He went through things I probably never will, and it makes me feel like the things I complain about and am upset about are stupid. I feel like I ought to be tougher. Working at the pharmacy isn't life or death, isn't hinging on the chance of contracting amoebic dysentery or intestinal worms or being injured in the jungle by five inch thorns or jaguars. I don't want to say that I feel like I shouldn't be there, because I don't know if that's true...it's really that I don't WANT to be there. I don't WANT to do it. And, I guess I don't want to have to work there. I want to do something I love. I want to believe that I have just as much of a pointed purpose for my life as Bruce Olson with the Motilones. I don't know why it has never felt like that for me, or for most people I know. I don't want to be numbed down enough to just get by, just do what I have to to pay the bills. I feel like in the modern world it's extremely difficult to do anything with pointed passion. I feel like I can't escape the modernity of life in the "real" world, whatever that actually means. I feel like I can't really live with all the demands of what it costs to possess such a life. That doesn't seem fair at all. It's all feeling more and more like a venus fly trap- like the walls are slowly moving in and before I realize that- yes- they ARE in fact moving in on me, it's too late to climb out.

That's not really how it is, is it?

It's really hard to see the sun through the clouds. It's easier to point at the dirt and say, "hey- what's with the dirt? that stuff isn't good for me and it hurts" than to see the skin beneath it and believe that it's still there and can be healthy again. We focus on the gross things, probably because we have a natural feeling of animosity toward anything we think isn't right- toward anything that hurts us or causes us pain. And being that at least half of us are "fixers", well, our attention is immediately guided to what needs fixing. For me, though, I tend to focus on it so hard that I forget there's anything else. Instead of fixing anything, I end up getting stuck in it- so much so that the dirt becomes reality and normalcy for me instead of the salve that is health and happiness. It's a brutal battle.

Bruchko may have battled sickness, fatigue, death, and outside threats, but I battle self-induced isolation, depression, anxiety, hopelessness. I guess this is the jungle I live in, and the people I need to reach may look differently and have different experiences and backgrounds, but they're not different from me deep down. Jesus loves us both the same. I may have to risk mental and spiritual sickness, fatigue, death, and outside threats when running to and from the jungle. It's going to suck. But I do know that, while it seems unlikely in the present and we doubt, God takes care of us. He looks after us and will protect us and guide us if we call on Him for help and trust. It's a different kind of jungle, but it is just that. A jungle.

On top of all that, I still need help. And that's okay.

oh help.

Well. It's been rough since I last posted. Turns out the whole Portland thing makes my parents think I'm foolish. Yeah. Foolish. I just love how much they support and encourage me. So there goes that, Portland, I mean. Reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is good though. It's a good book.

So I have a question. And I'm not being rhetorical. Is it foolish to think that a conference is what you need to be inspired to make necessary changes in your life? According to my dear old dad, it is. According to him, I already have everything I need to know inside me- everything I need to make changes, right in there hiding behind all the junk in the way. I think he's come to believe that because he's pretty much a recluse. In that kind of lifestyle, you HAVE to believe you have it all in there somewhere, because you don't give yourself another option, another place to find it.

This year has been especially hard for me. It took a retreat in the spring to jolt my heart back to life again- to spark enough clarity that I could really see the truth instead of blindly trying to hope for it. I honestly believe that I wouldn't have gotten out of the whole atheism thing if I hadn't gone to that retreat. I guess I'm worried that I'm in a similar state now, for different reasons- though the reasons feel the same as the other ones. I have the kind of mind that can only be interrupted by physical changes- things that physically happen- things that aren't the norm- things that are supposed to be special- things that are supposed to change you. Without them, I continue on in a haphazard kind of stumble. I need something to stop me. Because I'm almost incapable of stopping myself- when my emotions overtake me- when I reach my breaking point...it's all over. It only goes downhill from there, and usually it's the kind of downhill that you don't get skis for- the kind of downhill that is so sheer you can hardly keep your footing- the kind of downhill that has jagged rocks jutting up right where you have to put down your foot.

It's one thing to fall apart during school. It's another thing to fall apart in the "real world" where making excuses could cost you your job, and then your credit, and then your life. I thought there was pressure in school, but there's more out here. It's lonelier too. I don't know what I'm doing. Why I thought it would be better to leave. It seems that it isn't just school I can't handle, but life in general, too.

This is getting old. No one wants to hear me go on and on complaining about my life no matter how I try to change it. It isn't doing anyone else any good to read this. I don't know why I feel like I can't be one of those people who rise despite their adversity. So much of me either just wants to quit completely or do something amazing. All or nothing, apparently.

I asked God today why there couldn't be good things that are easy. If He could give me just one good thing I didn't have to kill myself to have. I don't think that's how it works though. I just wish everything wasn't a struggle. The fact that I struggle so much more than my friends makes me feel like a failure. Defective. Broken from birth. I don't want to see another counselor, even though I've been considering it. I don't want to try prescription drugs, even though I've been considering it.

I don't know what to do.



"Misery, though seemingly ridiculous, indicates life itself has the potential of meaning, and therefore pain itself must also have meaning." -Don Miller (paraphrase of Victor Frankl)