My Wedding Complex

I have a serious wedding complex. I am not a fan of weddings. I don't like going to them or thinking about being in one. I dislike them so much that I already have plans to elope. I'm not really sure where this aversion to weddings came from, but I definitely know that I don't like them.

However...

I am in love with the show, "Say 'Yes' to the Dress." There's just something about lying in bed, eating a jar of maraschino cheeries, and watching a bunch of spoiled women decide what to wear on their wedding days. The brides are bratty, and the mothers are annoying, but the fathers are sweet and the grooms are adorable. I love watching the poor sappy man stand at the end of the aisle and wait for his sweet little bride to reach him. Although in some cases the bride is more of an Amazonian warrior.

A Manifesto

Once I heard an analogy about how un-forgiveness is like a cage. When you refuse to forgive someone you trap that person inside your heart, making it impossible for you to let the situation go, and move on. You'd think that keeping this analogy in mind would make it easier to forgive people. After all, who wants to carry around a load of hurt in their heart? Who wants to constantly think of the person who wronged them?

I do.

Well...I don't want to, but I tend to do it anyways. I carry a lot of bitterness around. Towards girls who made thoughtless remarks about my appearance and personality. Towards boys (half of whom didn't know of my existence) who took up a lot of space in my mind and heart for a time, but then ended up not being "the one." Towards teachers and authority figures who I feel have let me down. Towards myself for making childish mistakes over and over and over again. Towards random people who I don't really know, for no real reason other than they remind me of hurtful people and situations from the past.

My bitterness whispers to me throughout the day about how I am justified in being unhappy. It's okay to be angry because I have been wronged, hurt, mistreated, and used. Those things excuse my behavior. I have been treated unkindly, so why should I bother with kindness toward others? People who I trusted failed me, so why should I open myself up to new relationships that might also fall apart? It's okay to pretend to be invincible, to be cold toward others, to hide behind a slowly cracking shell of perfection, to dislike people based on their appearance, or their friends, or their voice, or any other random reason I can think of.

No.

Bitterness is toxic. It blocks out the sunshine and it murders my hope and my happiness. I have ceded enough of my life to un-forgiveness. I have held all of the hurts and mistakes hostage in my heart for long enough.

Yes, people have failed me. Yes, I have failed myself. But there is more to the story.

If GOD, who has much more right to be un-forgiving than I do, was both capable and willing to forgive those people (and me), then I have no right to hold onto all of that crap anymore.

These words are not my own...but the thoughts are very similar to mine.

The Breather

by Billy Collins

Just as in the horror movies

when someone discovers that the phone calls
are coming from inside the house

so too, I realized
that our tender overlapping
has been taking place only inside me.

All that sweetness, the love and desire—

it’s just been me dialing myself
then following the ringing to another room

to find no one on the line,

well, sometimes a little breathing

but more often than not, nothing.

To think that all this time—

which would include the boat rides,

the airport embraces, and all the drinks—

it’s been only me and the two telephones,
the one on the wall in the kitchen

and the extension in the darkened guest room upstairs.

Team Snape

So I'm currently reading the seventh Harry Potter book. (Confession: I've never actually read the whole thing...I've read the beginning and ending and I've skimmed the middle a couple times, but I've never been able to get through the whole thing. I love most of those books, but for some reason I've never really been a fan of the fourth and seventh ones.) I had forgotten how in love with Snape I am. He has got to be the best constructed Potter character. For that matter, I think he's one of the best constructed characters in modern literature.

I've had a thing for Snape from the first time I encountered him in the Great Hall. (Granted, I'm a Harry-hater, so the fact that he was hurting Harry made me happy.) I think it really boils down to the fact that I just can't figure him out. Is he good? Is he bad? Is he lonely? Why isn't he married? Why in the world doesn't he take of his personal hygeine problems?

Anyways, I love him. That's all there is to it.

Things I Think Are Beautiful

1. Freshly printed essays. I love the smell of paper hot off the copier. I love how clean the paper looks. I love how crisp my words look when they're typed and printed. Honestly, seeing my work in print elates me beyond description, even when it's just an essay for Advanced Composition.
2. Zoey Deschanel's voice. Also her face. Also her hair.
3. The coffee cups sitting on my shelf.
4. Spoken (or sung) French. (Pandora has been good to me lately.)
5. My bed right after I make it in the morning.
6. My roommate's cinnamon colored hair. She doesn't know this, but I've always envied her for it.
7. My novels. I love studying poetry and short stories and essays and biographies all day in my classes, but at night there's nothing quite like coming home to my little collection of novels.
8. My sad attempts at painting and drawing. I'll admit that no one really likes them other than me, but I still think they're pretty in their own right.
9. Everything about Audrey Hepburn. She was just a beautiful person through and through.
10. My mother's eyes.

Playing With Scissors

I really like how I'm doing life right now. I woke up thinking that this morning, and it's kind of been the theme of my thoughts all day.

Almost six months ago GOD showed me some stuff that I needed to cut out of my life: bad habits that seemed too small to be important enough to really get rid of, old wounds and hurts from the past that my bitterness held onto, and places and people that my selfishness just couldn't bear to let go of. (Ha! I just ended a sentence with a preposition and now I feel rebellious!)

I didn't want to let go of any of that stuff. So I didn't. I held onto it all and let it cause a lot of problems.

Holding onto all of those things wore me out. Gradually I just decided that I had had enough. I'm not really sure when, but at some point I pulled out the scissors (metaphorically) and just started cutting away at my life. At first, it was one of the scariest things I've ever tried to do. These things I'd been holding onto had become my entire existence, and I was desperately afraid that once they were gone I wouldn't have anything of myself left.

But I kept cutting anyways.

And then yesterday I woke up and I realized I was done. I had finally managed to purge my life of the things that were holding me back from being happy, from being complete, and from being obedient to GOD. It was a little bit of a saddening realization; some of the things I had cut away weren't bad in and of themselves, but my idolatry of them had made them despicable. They had to go.

This morning when I woke up I felt really and truly and deeply at peace for the first time in a long time.

GOD's Will

"Have you decided what you want to do with your life?"

"You mean, like a job?"

"Yeah."

"Nope. Although I think if I can't get a job after college with an English major, I could just go to cosmetology school and do hair."

"Please don't do that."

"Okay."

I have had this exact conversation with my father five times. He's one of those people who likes to have a plan for everything, so I think it stresses him out that I'm not entirely sure what I want to do after college. I mean, I have quite a few ideas that I think I could make fly, I'm just not ready to nail myself down to one quite yet...I want to keep my options open for as long as possible.

Lately I've been kind of having this "What's GOD's will?" crisis. Well...maybe not a crisis, per se. I guess it's just been more of a series of revelations.

It all started one day when I was being super morbid. I was lying in bed, alternating between staring at the ceiling and praying about what GOD's will for my life was, when I had a weird thought: If I die next week, without ever having a career or a husband or children or a house or all of those other things that I feel like I need to plan for right now, does that mean that I never fulfilled GOD's will for my life? For that matter, if I never manage to attain those things does that mean that my life is worthless?

It was with those thoughts in mind that I came across this phrase: "There is more to this life than what you see everyday."

I found myself with a paradox. If there is more to this life than what I see everyday, then what am I supposed to do with everyday? If life is not about the everyday, little things, then if I die next week I'm afraid that my life will have held little value. I've never accomplished anything big. There isn't really one day that sticks out in my mind as having been much more important than any of the others.

I decided that life is all about everyday stuff, and I think that GOD is all about everyday stuff too. I think that He would much rather I focus my efforts on building Him into my life right now, instead of taking up all my prayers with worries about whether or not I should get married and if I should get married, who I should marry, and what sort of career I should have, and where I should live after school, and whether or not I should have kids, and what sort of school I should send those kids to if I do have them, and whether or not I should go to Europe and whether or not I should...

You get the point.

If my life was all about the big main events, it wouldn't be a life. It would be a movie.

GOD's will for my life is right here, right now. It's GOD's will for me to step out of my comfort zone and spend time with people who are different from me. It's GOD's will for me to go out of my way to find kind things to say and do for others. It's GOD's will for me to give up things that I've been clinging to that are keeping me from loving Him. GOD has surrounded me with little ways to obey Him everyday, and I think that at the end of my life those things will be what mattered the most.

Confession: I'm having trouble holding back my inner mean girl.

I'll be honest...I have a serious spiteful streak in me. And it's the nasty kind of spiteful too...the kind that's sneaky and subtle. I like revenge. I love movies where the bad guy dies at the end. Somehow I've gotten this mentality that vindication is good, no matter what (or who) it costs me.

Right now this aspect of my personality is kind of in full swing. Some of you are probably shaking your heads in disagreement right now because I've managed to convince you that I'm sweet, docile, and fairly cookie cutter. You are wrong.

Deep inside me there is a mean girl trying to claw her way out.

Sometimes she manages to and she ends up manifesting herself in a loud exclamation of "Shut up already!" to one of my classmates who particularly enjoys talking. She also enjoys expressing herself using my very communicative facial expressions. More than one person has recieved a nasty glare this week. When I'm feeling insecure she usually convinces me to ignore (rather than deal with) what's bothering me and just toss my hair and hold my head up higher.

I wish that these reactions weren't almost involuntary for me. I also wish that the mean girl inside my heart was quieter...actually I wish she didn't exist.

If I ever have a daughter...

If I ever have a daughter I will name her Emily Catherine. She will be the Patron Saint of Introverts because her namesakes will be two of the most quiet, reclusive women in literary history: Emily Dickinson and Emily Bronte. Most likely she'll have quite a personality though...she would have to considering her middle name derives from one of Bronte's characters in Wuthering Heights who has quite the temper and attitude.

If I ever have a daughter I will read to her every night, starting with Dr. Seuss's Oh the Places You'll Go. I will show her the wonders of words, from Nancy Drew to Robert Frost, from Kate DiCamillo to Jane Austen, from Winnie the Pooh to Ayn Rand. I will read her things that make her laugh until it hurts her sides, and I will read her things that will make her so sad that we will just sit and cry with each other until we run out of tears.

If I ever have a daughter I will teach her the lost arts of cooking and cleaning. I will teach her to appreciate the value of doing things that require time and effort, rather than relying on quick and easy solutions. I will show her how to wait and work for the things that she wants.

If I ever have a daughter I will teach her to climb trees and jump on beds, to sing loudly regardless of who's listening and to smile when it's raining. I will show her that it's okay not to worry about what people think.

If I ever have a daughter I will teach her about Jesus. I will pray with (and for) her. I will listen to her own sweet prayers and they will seem to hold much more power than my own. She will learn about grace from watching my life. She will see me fall and struggle, and then she will see the LORD forgive me and pour His grace out on me.

If I ever have a daughter I will love her.

So much for being social...

I'm feeling super angsty. I'm not sure if it's because I now have pink in my hair, thus rendering me more susceptible to hipster-like bouts of moodiness, or if it's the result of currently having my butt seriously kicked by a really nasty cold.

The angst is bad enough that I just managed to delete pretty much any form of social networking account that I have (or had, rather). Still have facebook...although that underwent a serious un-friending kamikaze. I also deleted all of my family members from the sidebar...so if you were one of them, sorry. (PS I'm phasing out facebook, so if you want to keep up with my posts you need to subscribe to my blog by e-mail or google reader, whichever one fits your fancy.)

I'm so tired of the noise. I'm so tired of being obsessed with people and places and things on the internet that really don't matter. The problem for me isn't really the internet. It's me. It's me not being content with the people who are sitting right in front of me. It's me not being happy with the place I'm at right now. It's me not allowing myself to relax for more than five seconds at a time because I feel like I need to be worrying about how I'm going to manage to get all of the stuff I want out of life.

I just want quiet - for my eyes, as well as my ears.

Hence all of the deletion.

A Video Depicting Something Slightly Extreme

The Waiting Place

Can I just say that the past few days have been rough on my mascara?

I am not a fan of the things GOD is teaching me right now. At all.

The worst part is that nothing is really going wrong for me...in fact, almost everything is going right! I love my classes (I've made my peace with spiritual formation...quite a bit of good poetry has been born in that class.) I'm living with incredible women. Every need I have has been provided for abundantly. I'm surrounded by people who inspire, convict, and encourage me.

Here is the problem though: I'm stuck in The Waiting Place.

I feel like my entire life's story can be summed up by Oh, the Places You'll Go.

I don't really feel like sharing with the world all of the stuff I'm waiting on, so I'll give you Dr. Seuss's list instead:

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.

Confession: I'm jealous of myself.

Lately I've been struggling with contentment...again...being content is a really big problem for me, if you haven't figured it out yet.

But it's morphed from where it was here, to this new weird sort of thing where I'm not content with myself or my relationships or where I am in life, because I miss how those things used to be. I want to go back to how things were.

But I can't. Everything has changed. I've changed.

I struggle more with trust now than I ever have. I find myself constantly questioning GOD, myself, and the people around me. When did it start taking effort to actually feel like I actually believe that things that I know to be true?

But not all of the changes have been bad.

I doubt GOD more, but somehow He seems greater. I guess because I feel weaker than I ever have, He seems stronger than He ever has to me. I've also learned that it's okay to move around outside of my little Baptist box (a scary thought for me!).

I see a lot of growth in myself too...not nearly as much as I would like to see, but some progress is better than none. When I was younger I did a science project with plants where I put one next to a window and another in a closet. After letting them grow for a few weeks, I compared the two. The one that had been by the window was beautiful (as far as plants go), and perfect. The plant that had been kept in the dark was a strange shade of green, and contorted in weird ways because it had struggled so much to find light. I kind of feel like the plant kept in the dark, right now...I've grown, but not really in the way I feel I was meant to.

On the flip side of that, that plant had absolutely no choice about where it was placed; it had no control over how much light it got. I put it where I wanted, so that it would serve my purpose, not it's own. I guess that's how GOD is.

Hide and Seek

This poem has been stuck in my head since 2:32 yesterday afternoon. I know, because I looked at the clock. For some reason I've developed an obsession with Kay Ryan, lately.

Hide and Seek
By Kay Ryan

It's hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It's
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It's
like some form
of skin's developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.

Confession...

So I have a confession...confession is good for the soul and it always makes me feel better...but honestly, I'm more ashamed of this one than usual.

My heart is not right. I really, really hate admitting this.

I hate admitting it because I can't pinpoint the reason that it isn't right. I can't sit and reflect and come up with some solution for making things better. Honestly, I kind of feel like GOD might be letting me stumble around solution-less to force me to go to Him in search of healing. I like DIY's...I want to be able to fix myself...but right now I can't, because I can't even figure out what's wrong.

I've been feeling this way for a week or two now, but last night it came to a head. I had originally figured that if I gave myself time I would be able to figure out what was going on. The problem with that plan wass that I just couldn't seem to find time to reflect on what was going on. Eventually it got to the point where I started giving myself things to do so that I wouldn't have to think about what was going on. I kept myself busy so that I wouldn't have to confront the hardness of my heart.

I think GOD had enough of that last night. As soon as I finished classes, I started to feel awful. I had planned on working on one of my ten million projects last night, but instead I found myself lying in my bed staring at the ceiling for most of the evening and night. I tried really hard to work on other stuff, but eventually I just gave in and laid there.

GOD and I talked a lot. Actually, He talked and I listened. Honestly, I'm still not really sure what's wrong with my heart, but He knows and that's enough. He knows and He's going to fix it and that's more than enough.

It's just been one of those days...

I need some catharsis...so this post is going to be a dumping ground for what all is in my head tonight.

I'm tired. My head has that muddled, fuzzy feeling it gets when it's about to demand sleep. I just woke up from a two hour nap that I'd hoped would alleviate that feeling...but it's still here.

Today I was sitting in one of my classes, when I had this moment of freaking out over being in college. It was the weirdest thing. I mean, I'm a sophomore. You'd think I would have gotten the childish, freaking out thing over with a year ago. Nope. It happened today.

I'm taking a contemporary poetry class this semester. The other night the reading assignment made me cry harder than I can ever remember crying. It shocked me because I didn't relate to the poet at all; I found myself clutching my book and sobbing and I wasn't even able to see myself in his words. I still don't really know what it was about him that made me feel so deeply. It seriously irritated me when today in class a girl ranted about how much his work disgusted her.

I'm reading the book of Romans. It's coming along very slowly. I realized that I tend to read like it's a marathon so I decided to start reading sections instead of chapters.

Well...this isn't doing the trick for me catharsis-wise, so I'm off to wander around or some other such thing...I'll leave you with some other wisdom I picked up from my poetry class:

This Life

By Kay Ryan

It's a pickle, this life.
Even shut down to a trickle
it carries every kind of particle
that causes strife on a grander scale:
to be miniature is to be swallowed
by a miniature whale. Zeno knew
the law that we know: no matter
how carefully diminished, a race
can only be half finished with success;
then comes the endless halving of the rest --
the ribbon's stalled approach, the helpless
red-faced urgings of the coach.

I'm totally wearing a wig.

Sorry about the awkwardness at the end, someone was in the bathroom and it made me lose my train of thought.

My Strange Relationship With Food

Confession: I'm a picky eater. It's always kind of been a problem for me, and honestly, lately it's gotten worse. There is a lot of food out there that I either hate or that I'm not supposed to have. Most of the time I feel like this:

I mean, I really do like food. I just only like certain food. I even have a pinterest devoted to stuff I like eating, which can be found here. (Hopefully that link works...pinterest has been persnickety lately.)

I'm depressed.

So I'm home for Labor Day and my mumzy and I were out and about and she asked if I wanted to go to Border's. Of course, I got that warm filling in the pit of my stomach (that most people associate with being in love) that I always get at the prospect of browsing through a bookstore in search of new books to make friends with.

Honestly, I felt like crying from the moment we pulled up in front of the store. They had plastered the front of it with all of these nasty 'Store Closing' signs. I felt like someone had tattooed my (hypothetical) child. There were people carrying out the shelves and the furniture. I just stood in the parking lot staring as they took apart my store, piece by piece.

Then I went in and it got even worse. There were hardly any books to be seen. The remaining shelves had a few books scattered aimlessly across them. There were 70% off signs everywhere. It looked like someone had kidnapped my favorite place in the world and replaced it with a war zone.

I wrote an essay about this store. I blogged about this store. I spent hours in this store. I consumed gallons of coffee in this store. I first met Ayn Rand and Robert Frost and C. S. Lewis and countless others in this store.

I felt like Kathleen Kelly did in You've Got Mail when she had to close The Shop Around the Corner. I know that most of you are probably laughing at my melodrama at this point, but I really am down about this. The only consolation I have is that I managed to find a Beowulf translation, a couple of Dante's minor works and a collection of Emerson's essays. I got one hundred dollars worth of books for thirty eight. And honestly, that's not as much of a consolation right now in light of the circumstances...

Leg Waxing, Room Rearrangement, and a Birthday

So yesterday was kind of monumental for me...not only was it my blog's ten month birthday, but it was also the day when I reached my goal for the year of getting 5,000 blog hits. I kind of threw myself a little party.

Also, Rebecca and I have already managed to move our room around. The dresser and desks are still where they were, but we moved our beds and our bookshelves. I would have done a vlog to show you, but I'm looking/feeling rather bleary tonight so I'll have to show you all another time. I promise it will happen at some point though...that is if I ever have free time again! I have so many projects I need to be working on right now, but instead I'm sitting here blogging and being lazy.

Another random fact: totally waxed my legs tonight. It was kind of blecky because I had to grow my leg hairs out which was super disgusting and I had to wear jeans everywhere and it's been soooo hot around here lately so I was not a happy camper...but it was well worth it. I only yelled for about the first ten minutes too so that was a plus. I don't know if I'll ever go back to shaving because my legs are really enjoying the feeling of being able to breathe. We'll see. I don't know if I'll be able to talk anyone into helping me again. I think I kind of scarred them with the yelling and the kicking.

I'm super excited about not having class tomorrow! Or on Monday!