I am more

Sometimes, other people sum it up so much better than we can. Definitely needed this today.

There's a girl in the corner 
With tear stains on her eyes 
From the places she's wandered 
And the shame she can't hide 

She says, "How did I get here? 
I'm not who I once was. 
And I'm crippled by the fear 
That I've fallen too far to love" 

But don't you know who you are, 
What's been done for you? 
Yeah don't you know who you are? 

You are more than the choices that you've made, 
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, 
You are more than the problems you create, 
You've been remade. 

Well she tries to believe it 
That she's been given new life 
But she can't shake the feeling 
That it's not true tonight 

She knows all the answers 
And she's rehearsed all the lines 
And so she'll try to do better 
But then she's too weak to try 

But don't you know who you are? 

You are more than the choices that you've made, 
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, 
You are more than the problems you create, 

You've been remade. 

You are more than the choices that you've made, 
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, 
You are more than the problems you create, 
You've been remade. 

'Cause this is not about what you've done, 
But what's been done for you. 
This is not about where you've been, 
But where your brokenness brings you to 

This is not about what you feel, 
But what He felt to forgive you, 
And what He felt to make you loved. 

You are more than the choices that you've made, 
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, 
You are more than the problems you create, 
You've been remade. 

"You can't live for god until you learn how to live because of God.

You can't make good choices until you understand that the choices you make don't make you who you are. 

What Christ has done for you makes you who you are. 

Where we end up is not who we are.

Who we are is not what we do, but what has been done for us.

If you're good, you're more than your success. If you're bad, you're more than your failures.

You're more than your choices, you're more than your mistakes, you are the sum of the Father's love for us. And that's who we are. We're not struggling to be free. If we're in Christ, we're free to struggle."

-Mike Donehey

Vertigo

In dance, the one thing I struggle with the most is balance. 

In relationships, it's one of the things I struggle with the most as well. 

I'm a people-pleaser to the core. 

All I want is to like everyone and for everyone to like me. 

It's a good thing that I like everyone, but not a good thing when my need for everyone to like me is the reason I like everyone. That's not the case all the time, I genuinely love people. And I generally look for the good in people naturally. Unless I have someone else's opinion as my predisposition. Which is another thing about me: my opinion is so easily altered, but that's beside the point. 

I can't handle when someone is mad or unhappy with me, so I try as hard as I can to prevent that from happening. 

But, I always seem to underestimate the number of people I want to keep happy. 

I'm really bad at prioritizing. I'm really bad at balancing my relationships. When I'm focusing on someone, they get all my attention, and I forget my other priorities. 

But I don't know how to fix this. 

Prioritize and balance, of course. But those words are so foreign to me. I see the details, not the bigger picture. Priority and balance both require seeing the bigger picture. 

I envy people that have the ability to focus on the bigger picture and make decisions accordingly. 

Don't get me wrong, there are benefits to being detail-oriented for sure. But, as my good friend the wannabe philosopher always says, "it's all about the balance". 

When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. 

Nothing's ever as it seems.

The sooner I realize that, the happier I will be. I can stop expecting things to be the way I see and feel them to be and expect to be constantly surprised. 

There's always an ulterior motive, or a hidden emotion, or a silver lining. And that's always how it's always going to be. The universe and all it's laws don't change. God and His promises don't change. People and their human nature don't change. 

It's me that's got to change. It's my surrounding that have got to change. It's me that's got to adapt to my surroundings and learn how to function and flourish in them.

There are so many things I've yet to realize about myself and about this world I live in. I've got to open my eyes because nothing is what I think it is. Nothing is going to change or adapt to me...it's going to change no matter what, and I'm the one that has to adapt.

And change is good. Change makes me learn. It's the one thing in life that I can count on not changing, besides God, of course.

Accept it. Learn from it. And let the change, change you in all the ways it needs to. 

Because change is inevitable. And nothing is ever as it seems. 

Intersections and round-a-bouts

It's so interesting to me the way our lives intertwine; the way our paths cross at just the right time in just the right place, so we can meet just the right person to change our life in just the right way.


When I think about it, I picture a HUGE web. A web of experiences and detours. A web of perpendicular and parallel lines of different lives that cross at certain times, some more than others. A web that at these intersections  there is always something to be learned and carried onto the next. Like this:

Multiply this by the number of people in the world. 

Also when I picture it, I picture the spaghetti bowl roads of Vegas.. not really sure why.

I believe our experiences make us who we are, among other things. They shape us and mold us involuntarily, as most of our experiences in life are involuntary. And those experiences are what lead us to these intersections with others' experiences, which lead them to more intersections, and so on.

It's crazy! It makes me dizzy thinking about all the people I've come in contact with in my life, and what led them to where they were at that exact moment in time that we came in contact. All the hurt, scars, joy, success, and failures that caused one foot to be put in front of the other are unique from anyone else. Had one experience been different, the whole course could be changed. 

I wrote a poem in my creative writing class. The shells represent people, for those non-abstract thinkers out there.

This is Your Museum of Shells

This is your museum of shells.

Mollusks, tritons, egg shells, limpets, periwinkles, and snail shells.

They come from ocean floors, rivers, mountains and sidewalks, or even Avilla Beach.

In my hand I hold a pearly white Conch.

A home, a shelter, a disguise.

Abandoned and newly washed up on the shore.

Each shell with a story, a background, a past.

Formed by waterfalls, whirl pools, or years of patience and discovery.

Broken by footsteps, hungry animals, or unruly weather.

Traveling the world against their will,

Taken wherever the waves take them,

Ignored by many, and adored by few.

The warm sand its resting place,

A simple shell with a story,

Shaped by a lifetime of being tossed and being turned.

Also, there's a quote from "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" that I think sums up my thoughts better than I can. Long, and only makes sense with the movie, but very relevant.

Sometimes we're on a collision course, and we just don't know it. Whether it's by accident or by design, there's not a thing we can do about it. A woman in Paris was on her way to go shopping, but she had forgotten her coat - went back to get it. When she had gotten her coat, the phone had rung, so she'd stopped to answer it; talked for a couple of minutes. While the woman was on the phone, Daisy was rehearsing for a performance at the Paris Opera House. And while she was rehearsing, the woman, off the phone now, had gone outside to get a taxi. Now a taxi driver had dropped off a fare earlier and had stopped to get a cup of coffee. And all the while, Daisy was rehearsing. And this cab driver, who dropped off the earlier fare; who'd stopped to get the cup of coffee, had picked up the lady who was going to shopping, and had missed getting an earlier cab. The taxi had to stop for a man crossing the street, who had left for work five minutes later than he normally did, because he forgot to set off his alarm. While that man, late for work, was crossing the street, Daisy had finished rehearsing, and was taking a shower. And while Daisy was showering, the taxi was waiting outside a boutique for the woman to pick up a package, which hadn't been wrapped yet, because the girl who was supposed to wrap it had broken up with her boyfriend the night before, and forgot.  When the package was wrapped, the woman, who was back in the cab, was blocked by a delivery truck, all the while Daisy was getting dressed. The delivery truck pulled away and the taxi was able to move, while Daisy, the last to be dressed, waited for one of her friends, who had broken a shoelace. While the taxi was stopped, waiting for a traffic light, Daisy and her friend came out the back of the theater. And if only one thing had happened differently: if that shoelace hadn't broken; or that delivery truck had moved moments earlier; or that package had been wrapped and ready, because the girl hadn't broken up with her boyfriend; or that man had set his alarm and got up five minutes earlier; or that taxi driver hadn't stopped for a cup of coffee; or that woman had remembered her coat, and got into an earlier cab, Daisy and her friend would've crossed the street, and the taxi would've driven by. But life being what it is - a series of intersecting lives and incidents, out of anyone's control - that taxi did not go by, and that driver was momentarily distracted, and that taxi hit Daisy, and her leg was crushed. 

 Life: a series of intersecting lives and incidents, out of anyone's control. Defined by choices and experiences, brightened by relationships and simple human connection. 


Ohhh, life. 

Scars

Why is it so much fun to pick a scab?


Why can't we just let the wound heal instead of repeatedly reopening it, leaving a larger scar than we would have had before?

What is love?

not
I used to think you could only ever love one person in your life, romantically speaking.
So if you fall out of love, that means you never really loved the person in the first place.
But I've realized being "in love" is such a pop culture invention. For a long time I didn't understand that love is so much more than what Hollywood and magazines make it out to be.
I thought being in love was a feeling, based on how the person made you feel. Butterflies and smiles. But I see now that the love of that feeling can be disguised as love for another person.


Love is not feeling special.
Love is not feeling beautiful.
Love is not feeling loved.
Love is not a feeling.
And love is not a magical spell that once you're under, there's no reversing it. It's not even a temporary spell.


is
Being "in love" and loving someone, I think, are different.
Being "in love" with someone is so much deeper than that feeling. Being in love with someone means loving who they are, even the tiny little details that aren't visible to the naked eye. Being in love means you're committed to loving that person through thick and thin, "I'm in," so to say.


I think that being in love can be a feeling, though. If you pass the test of knowing the person deeply, and really loving their qualities, then feel away. What else are we gonna call that intense, wanna-scream,  can't-eat, can't- sleep, reach-for-the-stars, over-the-fence, world-series, kind of feeling? 


Loving someone is less emotional, more a decision. Sometimes you can't help being in love with someone. You can't help loving their laugh, or the way he/she thinks, or just the way they make you feel. But you can help loving someone. 
Love is a commitment.
Love is an action.
Love is a choice.
And loving someone is not easy, by any means.

1 Corinthians 13 

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice in evil but delights in the truth. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and always perseveres.

Well, I sure can't recall the last time I was able to treat someone in all those ways.
But, that's what loving someone is.




all in all
Love is capable of being a feeling if and when accompanied by commitment and action.
But love, in and of itself, is not a feeling or a spell. Love is a decision. 


And that's what I've learned about love. Romantic love, that is.
But who knows, really?


I do know
God is love, perfect love. The magnitude of his love is incomprehensible by my finite mind. And that's the love we try to mimic, and that''s the love we try to find everywhere else but the one place it can be found. 






Warren Barfield said it best in his song "Love is Not a Fight"

Love is not a place
To come and go as we please
It's a house we enter in
Then commit to never leave

So lock the door behind you
Throw away the key
We'll work it out together
Let it bring us to our knees

Love is a shelter in a raging storm
Love is peace in the middle of a war
And if we try to leave, may God send angels to guard the door
No, love is not a fight but it's something worth fighting for

To some, love is a word
That they can fall into
But when they're falling out
Keeping that word is hard to do

Love is a shelter in a raging storm
Love is peace in the middle of a war
And if we try to leave, may God send angels to guard the door
No, love is not a fight but it's something worth fighting for

Love will come to save us
If we'll only call
He will ask nothing from us
But demand we give our all

Love is a shelter in a raging storm
Love is peace in the middle of a war
And if we try to leave, may God send angels to guard the door
No, love is not a fight but it's something worth fighting for

I will fight for you
Would you fight for me?
It's worth fighting for

I need a weed whacker

You know when you do something all day, then when you go to sleep that's all you see when you close your eyes?


Like if you've been swimming all day, you feel like you're floating and all you see is water.


Or if you've been dancing all day, all you can think about is the choreography, running and running through your brain.


Or if you've pulled weeds for hours, all you can think about is wrapping your hand tightly around the stem as far as you can get to the dirt, and pulling until the root budges. 


Well, that's what happens to me..


I'm one of those people that believes there's symbolism in everything, or I pretend there is. 
"It's a sign," I think. 


So when I was pulling weeds early in the summer morning, I couldn't help but see the symbolism. 


I love the feeling when you pull for what seems like hours, as hard as you can, praying the weed doesn't just break, and the root finally releases. Then you pull out the biggest root you've ever seen. That's the best feeling. 


I need to get rid of the weeds in my life, the things that are preventing me from growing. The things that have roots so deep, they're constricting all other good things from planting. These things that have taken over the yard of my heart and my mind. 


But there's no use in pulling it if I can't get the root. 
I can easily make it look better on the surface, plant some fake flowers, put in some fake grass, but the weeds will always grow back if I leave the root.


The problem can easily be fixed, but the root of the problem is what really matters.


I just have to pull the root, or many roots, and start planting flowers. 

Now to figure out what the root is of the weed is.