wow....

tonight i had a look through my 2007-2008 planner. not sure why i keep it, but i just had it around and was searching for my eternally lost watch when i came across it and decided to take a look. in some senses, not much has changed. my life is still dominated by academics, bcm, etc., but in other manners it has changed a lot. like, i see all the preparation and work i really did put into last year--things i had forgotten about. and it gives me a little more reassurance that i'm right where i'm supposed to be right now. even more, it reminds me that God is in control--i wasn't sure what life was going to be like a year ago now (does that make any sense? haha...). i guess what i'm trying to say is that a year ago, i wouldn't have thought things would be the way they are now...in some good ways, and in some not-so-good ways. but it reminds me, more than anything, that God is so in charge of all of this, not me. i'm so thankful.

ahhhhh!

do you ever feel like life is speeding up and you just want it to slow down? part of me LOVES being a planner and having everything that i have to do on a calender. the other part of me just gets SUPER SUPER overwhelmed....ahhh!!! senior thesis is coming up, as well as seminary applications and scholarship applications--neither of which have deadlines until the spring, BUT...i really need to go ahead and work on them now, so i can find out sooner, so i can make my decision!!

speaking of seminary...i'm kind of thinking about moving to birmingham. random, i know. but beeson divinity school is there, and it's a great school. i have some friends nearby. it'd be a change of pace from north and south carolina (sadly, i would still be in southern culture, alas). i'm just not sure yet, though. i'll figure it out along the way, i suppose.

you know what makes you feel better when you don't know where you are going to go to seminary? eating french toast sticks. so that's what i'm gonna do.

you should probably know...

that i write, when i need to vent.
that i write, when i feel like i have no control over anything.
that i write, when i'm not sure what else to do.
so i put pencil to paper, or my fingers to the keys, and i let loose streams of words, that don't always make sense. that aren't proofread, or filtered. i write from my heart, and sometimes that's a little fuzzy, a little blurry, and a little different.

tonight, i feel confused and alone. i'm not sure why. i think finally everything is catching up to me. every single thing. i feel like no one understands any of this. as i watch my video from the summer--i feel like life was so much easier then, and that i knew what i was doing. i feel like people trust me too much to do the "right" thing. they say i'll know where the "right" place is for me to be. but how do they know? and what makes them think that i will know, either?

i miss...

my beautiful staff. i really, really do. last night, as i was thinking, i kept having these vivid, vivid flashbacks. walking into the cafeteria on saturdays when no campers were there. bringing in coolers. i miss my beautiful staff so much. i find myself homesick for the little, small things. even for throwing down my marker during evals and the incessant requests of having live animals. i wish life could be like it was this summer...but it can't. so i'm going to keep hoping and know that God has more in store for philadelphia, and more in store for me, and maybe or maybe not we'll meet again...and in the meantime, i've met twenty-two more people who i will love for the rest of my life...

i want community. and i don't have it anymore. and i want it back. and i want the next place i move, to have community. lots of it. and i'm scared that i'll make the wrong decision and wind up where i am now. and i really just need someone to tell me to shut up and to stop worrying, and that everything will turn out okay in the end.

okay?

o.a.r. sings the soundtrack to my life...

or, well, actually they just sing one song. but it's a good song.

my favorite part of the lyrics:

in a way, i need a change
from this burnout scene
another time, another town, another everything
but it's always back to you
stumble out, in the night
from the pouring rain
made the block, sat and thought
there's more i need
it's always back to you
but i'm good without ya
yeah, i'm good without you
yeah, yeah, yeah
how many times can i break till i shatter?
over the line can't define what i'm after
i always turn the car around
give me a break let me make my own pattern
all that it takes is some time
but i'm shattered
i always turn the car around

i have to confess that i don't exactly know what's going on in my life right now. i also have to confess that i know it's going to be okay. do you ever feel like you are just about to let go. at the line. ready to shatter. that's how i feel right now, and i don't exactly know where to turn, or who to turn to...nothing feels right anymore. i want things to feel right again. my head knows that God is in control, but i need Him to whisper it to my heart and remind me...right now, i just feel like everything is chaos and i'm standing in the middle, screaming, but no one really hears. i just want someone to listen for once.

the power of positive thinking

lately, i'm noticing the power of positive thinking. in specifics, i'm noticing just how positive i've been--kind of as a before-and-after with camp. life before camp was hard, and life after camp is hard, but i know because God is sovereign, He's in control. it makes life a whole lot easier. so negativity becomes much easier to shun, and it seem you find the urge to squelch it. to make people stop being negative, which is easier said than done.

i just feel in control right now, in this very moment, and it is a wonderful feeling. i feel like God is taking care of it all. i mean, i might start freaking out tomorrow, but tonight i'm at peace.

did i mention i love fall, and the fact that next week is going to be in the 60s? if i ever do get married (and it's looking pretty doubtful), it's going to be in the fall. i've been through too much crap in the fall, so it needs to redeem itself, and it is the most beautiful time of the year. you know, the whole beauty is in the fact that these leaves are so brilliant as they are finally dying...how beautiful we would be if we died a little to ourselves every day, and i think that is a wonderful portrait of what marriage could be.

weirdness, fate, destiny, and other random things.

this weekend was a real deja vu experience for me altogether. it was almost...odd. its theme song would definitely be "again" by needtobreathe, which is currently playing over and over again in my head.

regrets. fate. destiny. second chances. they're all kind of squirrelly things, aren't they? it seems almost easy to say that maybe we're given a "second chance" for things to be right again, but maybe it's just a continuance of the first. at one time, i thought the worst thing in the world was being rejected--caring for someone and not having them return that sentiment in the same way. while i still agree that is awful, i find what is much more difficult to deal with is knowing something isn't right, no matter how wonderful it feels. knowing that it's not that the "timing is off" or that "circumstances won't allow" but that it's just not supposed to be this way. it doesn't get to end up like this. i don't get to play the pretend fairy tales in my head. things are going to stay the way they are, because that, my friends, is just how it is supposed to be.

and i guess what might be even more frustrating than the whole "it's not going to work out" thing, is knowing this in the face of something that looks perfect on the outside, that seems to fit just right. you know, in my personal life, i have this awful and terrible habit of imagining things turning out perfectly, like a nice neat story. but at the end of the day, although life is beautiful, it isn't a nice, easy story, cut out perfectly with straight edges, where someone has colored in the right parts and penned a common sense tale that everyone saw coming. in the end, life is colored outside the lines, blurry, with fuzzy edges, rough corners, and a mumbling of words which echoes across time. it's not perfect, and no one ever said it would be, and in the end....why would anyone want to settle for perfect when they can have real, and unpredictable, and unique?

such a good question.

oh. my. goodness.

so i keep having these CR-AAZY dreams. and in these dreams, all these guys are professing their undying love for me or whatever (yeah, this should be nice, right) but i don't want to be with any of them at all in my dreams...haha, or in real life. they're nice guys. they're good guys. they're the kind of guys who bring you ice cream when you have a bad day. BUT...they're just not it. i am frustrated right now with this. with being patient. with finding contentment in God when, as each day passes, i try not to buy into the stupid illusions of the world when it comes to relationships. i try not to dream, or daydream. i'm trying to teach myself to have the desires for my life that God does...and so far, it is NOT working out very well.

i can.

tonight as i study, or as i procrastinate studying, rather, i keep thinking about the odds.

not the odds of me passing this test (which aren't good, as seeing how i'm permanently glued to facebook and youtube watching SNL skits from the past two weeks), but the odds of overcoming the odds.

you see, all my life, i had this idea of things i could and could not do. and a lot of it, well, it wasn't really my own thing--i was pretty influenced by other people who told me what i could and couldn't do. or wouldn't do.

and now that i look back on my last twenty-one years, especially the last three years, i've done some things i would have never thought i could do.

i moved two hours away, where i knew practically no one, for school. while it was tough, it ended up being a good thing, and i don't know what i'm going to do when i have to leave here in may.

i went back home and got a real job, and saved money--not something that really happens in my family. but i've became a financially wise person.

i changed my major and let go of my control for the future and gave it to God.

i served as a summer missionary in south carolina with children--one of the best experiences of my life.

i've managed to keep over a 3.5, in the honors college, with a religion major and an english minor. not the hardest things in the world, mind you, but i've balanced it with a part-time job, a social life, and organization responsibilities.

i went through a tough ministry transition, but i survived and have even thrived in the last six months.

i've found a church where i can worship and i feel loved, and even though i have to leave that church in may, i know that i will be greatly in debt to them and the people there.

i got on a plane (shocker!) and flew to boston, and despite the odds, fell in love with new england.

i got on a plane AGAIN and then i served as a staffer for m-fuge, something i never thought i would get the chance to do, and God showed me how He perfects our weaknesses in His PERFECT strength. and He showed me that His calling me into the ministry is a sure thing at this point.

i've been bcm president officially since april, and i'm not perfect, but i'm doing okay and surviving, and God is teaching me how to lead an organization with 100+ members.

in march, i will be flying to krakow, poland, with fourteen other fuge staffers to minister to the romany people...i'll be flying overseas, across the atlantic ocean.

in may, i'll be graduating COLLEGE, hopefully working camp again, and packing up to start a new chapter of my life, and while i'll probably be alone, i really think God is control, and i feel like, if He's brought me to this, i can do it, through Him.

this is coming from the girl who grew up dirt poor, who didn't have a lot of friends and wasn't well liked, who had no sense of humor and didn't know how to have fun, who fell for her best guy friend, who experienced two father figures walking out on her, who saw countless ministers and youth pastors leave her, who had no other choice but to get a scholarship for college, who spent her first semester in college seriously depressed, who experienced most of her friends find life partners while she remained (and remains) alone in that sense....

tonight, as i try to study for my test, i feel like i'm on top of the world. i've beaten the odds. i don't have to be the person that, statistically, i should be. i don't have to settle for anything less than the dreams God has for me, and they're big dreams. i'm so thankful.

so tuesday, i'm going to take this test, and if i make an A or C, while it matters in the short term, in the long run it is just a grade, which is a part of something SO much bigger. i'm thankful for all of this, and for what lies ahead.

spoken for

"take this world from me,
i don't need it anymore
i am finally free,
my heart is spoken for"

i just want to let go of all of my selfish desires and dreams, and lay at the feet of Christ and worship Him in spirit and in truth. and i want my flesh to desire to do the same as my heart. Paul was certainly right.

alone.

do you ever have days, or moments, where you just feel alone? when, in a room full of people, you feel like everyone is walking right by you and you just aren't there? when you feel like most of the people dear to you have abandoned you? then, friends, you can sympathize with how i'm feeling. i'm not sure what has elicited this emotion in me, exactly. as of late, i guess i've been thinking a lot about camp. even on the hardest days, i never felt completely alone. what's more, i had twenty-two other people who, at any moment, could be--and WOULD be, and were, and still are--there for me. but life is different in the fall, back at school, in a routine. i'm not sure exactly what has happened, but i feel the need more and more to reach out, and it seems like i just can't. like people are slipping away from me, slowly, and i just need something to hold onto right now...

haha, sorry for being so strangely emotional and sort of morbid. that's not really like me...all of the time anyways! in other news...school is errgh. well, not really. i'm just ready to feel prepared for this exam and have it over--i knew this class was going to be hard, but worth it, and so far it is...it's just a little, tiny bit frustrating.

time for more studying!