escape.

I realized this morning as I was flipping through some magazine... Elle, I think it was.. how much I enjoy escaping my life through the lives of other people.

I spend a lot of time trying to get away from my million-miles-an-hour-mind. If I'm on medicine for ADD, it just makes ME go 100mph. If I'm not on medicine, my mind goes 100mph. Neither feels very healthy, to be honest.

So instead of enjoying my life, my moments, my time, I spend it wishing I was someone or something or somewhere else. I read a magazine filled with "flawless" women- airbrushed, yes- and get lost in the beauty of it. It doesn't matter that I KNOW how fake it all is, that I KNOW how this magazine is just trying to sell me something, that I KNOW it's probably not "good for me," whatever that means. All of those things take a backseat to the joy that comes with getting lost for a few minutes.

Or, another example, movies. If I'm in a mood to "get away," I pop in a movie. Most likely a "chick flick" where some girl is swept off her feet by some guy in some impossible storybook plot. Right now, it's "Pride and Prejudice"... oh, to be Elizabeth Bennet.

Is it all bad, trying to escape? Or is there something to be said for the art and the beauty that we can create, even if it is fictional?

Probably the more important question(s)- what am I trying to escape from? Why? If I continue to find release through living out another person's story, will I ever find peace and happiness in mine?

There has to be a balance here somewhere.
I'm just tired of looking for it.

So, instead I'll be honest and realistic and say that I'm angry at God right now, that looking like a girl in one of the magazines SEEMS like it would solve a few issues on my mind, and that the romance and beauty in Pride and Prejudice is a sweet escape from whatever else my mind is running around at the moment.

I miss my Grandmom Heayn. Going to visit their house was like living in one of my escape-fantasies. I could become Elizabeth Bennet, running around on the hills on their property, playing in the trees and making things and always feeling beautiful and loved for being WHO I AM and nothing else. God, I miss that feeling.


I want to be to others what she was to me.

why i love her.

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it."

-anne lamott

decluttering.

The following words have been on my mind lately:
-rhythm
-rest
-anxiety
-stress
-worry
-fear
-shalom
-peace
-dayenu
-enough
-simplify


You know that feeling you get when you de-clutter something? When you get rid of everything taking up space that doesn't NEED to be there and are left with minimalism, just the simplest necessities?
I feel like my heart, mind, soul, body are all in need of some spring cleaning. Some intense de-cluttering.

I want to be at the point where I can feel like a huge, beautiful white wall with just this single word written on it in bright bold letters:
SHALOM.

beloved.

I have to share what I read this morning by Henri Nouwen in his book, "Life of the Beloved." It was beautiful and life-giving and if nothing else, I need to read it again.

"Aren't you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don't you often hope: 'May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country, or relationship fulfill my deepest desire.' But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied. You know that this is the compulsiveness that keeps us going and busy, but at the same time makes us wonder whether we are getting anywhere in the long run. This is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burn-out. This is the way to spiritual death.

Well, you and I don't have to kill ourselves. We are the Beloved. We are intimately loved long before our parents, teachers, spouses, children, and friends loved or wounded us. That's the truth of our lives. That's the truth I want you to claim for yourself. That's the truth spoken by the voice that says, 'You are my Beloved.'

Listening to that voice with great inner attentiveness, I hear at my center words that say: 'I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother's womb. I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate that that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided you at every step. Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own as I know you as my own. You belong to me. I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover, and your spouse... yes, even your child... wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. We are one.'"



I want to drink those words in over and over and over and over and over and over....

orphans.

I don't think Jesus was kidding around or alluding to anything when He talked about taking care of the orphaned and the widowed.

There is such an ache in me right now that has me tearing up while I sit here, waiting for the girls that I'm nannying for this summer to wake up. In this beautiful home with food and beds and clothes and Love. There is pain here, too. That's not something that is any less present in the life of a family than it is in the life of an orphan, but there is the opportunity for Love to hold that pain.

I can try all I want to shake away the deep, strong pressing on my heart when it comes to babies without moms to hold them.

I can try all I want to pretend that they will be fine, that someone ELSE will take care of them, that no God would allow a child to die having never felt Love.

But I know better.

I know that God gives us choices, and SO MANY choose to sit comfortably with that thought: SOMEONE ELSE WILL TAKE CARE OF IT.


...If we all keep asking that question, who will be left? Who will ever be that "someone else"???

I'm not sure at all what my future holds. I know that I am beyond blessed to be marrying the man I never thought I deserved this January. I know that I have felt Love and Love abundant. I know that I graduate in December and will be in the "real world," having to make choices about what the next step is.

And maybe instead of trying to avoid pain (yeah, right)... I will trust the Love my Abba has shown me and trust that He can use me even with my shortcomings and failures.

I want to go to Africa and work in orphanages, especially those who have been orphaned due to the AIDS epidemic.

Maybe that's me jumping on a bandwagon, trying to be Bono or Madonna or Angelina Jolie. Ha. What a joke.

I don't think it's that. I think it's God. I think it's how God has made me, and I think in making me He said "I will give this girl the opportunity to have a compassionate heart for my orphans. I will give her a heart that she can choose to ignore or accept, and it will be filled with pain and tears and hardship, but it will also be filled with Love."

So I don't know what it's going to look like. I don't know if it will simply be me adopting when the time is right or if I will have the opportunity to go to Africa and hold those babies so tightly, and help them to laugh and smile and feel His heart. We'll just have to wait and see on that.

But I want to make the choice to not ignore His words about His children. I want to show just as much Love to babies in Africa that I do to the girls this summer, the youth at New Hanover, the people I pass on the street. I want to show that Love in how I spend money, which priorities I choose, how I speak.

Because God is Love and Love is real.

better.

Today has been better.
I don't know why, but it has been.

That being said, these lyrics from As Cities Burn are haunting, beautiful, sad, and honest.


"Daughter" by As Cities Burn

It's a shame what I thought of her
when I saw her that way.
It didn't change what You thought of her.
She's been Your daughter since she was made.

Since I was made, I've been leaving.
I'd say I'd change, but I wouldn't believe it.
It's 'cause my legs, they don't forget.
When they find a way out, they'll always take it.

Oooh, we don't
No, we don't
We don't know how we got here,
The way is overgrown.
Oooh we don't
No, we don't
we don't know how we became this.

She has a name but I don't have to know
'cause all I'm after is all she has to show.
We cannot save, we can't even slow
our loss of innocence every new child has to grow.

Oooh we don't
No, we don't
we don't know how we got here,
the way is overgrown.
Oooh we don't
No, we don't
we don't know how we became this.

angry.

Last night, I got really angry at God. I'm still angry. I've been angry for awhile now, if I'm honest. But last night it hit me all at once and I'm still trying to figure it out.

I'm angry because I hate all of the hurt happening in the world... the hurt I see in my day to day interactions and the hurt in every corner of the world, the hurt that I myself may be inflicting on brothers and sisters that I've never met.

I'm angry because I feel so alone and misunderstood, because He allows suffering, because of my constant selfishness, because I never feel good enough.

I'm angry at not having many answers, at distance, at people I love growing older, at having to watch them grow older, and at God for calling Himself Love and then not making that obvious in daily life.


I think I'm more tired than I am angry.
Maybe I'm tired of being angry?

I guess we'll see where all of this goes.