Rebuilding and Remembering

It's already a quarter of the way into the year two thousand fifteen. It's hard to imagine that... especially as I reach days that I marked as important days in years past. This past year has been one of growth and extreme learning, and there was much pleasure and much pain throughout the year. I wonder that for us humans there is so much dependence on our feelings. That is, what we feel makes up a very big part of our life. Feelings are what we remember, our impressions and our memories... are all intertwined with feelings. And when I look back on the days past, I am still. I see how I often was caught up in the moment... caught up with my feelings... and my decisions were wrapped up in the beatings of my heart. Like a playground swing, I would rise high to the sky, then swing low, and then high again, but to the other side. The sun was bright and warm, and my energy and excitement propelled me higher, higher, and I was bouncing on the swing. Then, the clouds drifted across the sun, and I slowed, weariness coming over me with the same subtlety as the clouds drifting over the sun. And soon, I was barely moving. And so it would go. First up, then down. Happy, then sad. In the height of joy, to the pit of misery.

There were the best memories in the past year, I believe. Too many to tell, and some too special to share with the world, but many all the same. Like camp... and the intimate and wonderful moments there.... Like breathes of freedom, and the joy found in travel... Like swing dancing, and learning something new... Like learning new things, like snowboarding...

Like making new friends, and like all the whispered discussions held under heavy comforters at night... Like late nights in friendly homes...

 

Games, new things, life, work... Like giggling late into the night...

 

 

Like movies... Up Poppy Hill, Ponyo, My Neighbor Totoro.... Good movies. Nice movies.

 

 

Like treats made and then being sick afterwards with a horrible cold :/

 

 

 

Like discovering that there is much good in the world still, and that I can find so much enjoyment in the most different of people....

I think about my friends, and laugh because I know such a wide assortment of lives. From the most strict and conservative to the most country of country girls... from cowboys to midwives, Catholics to Baptists, Christians to athiests, dancers to non-resistant believers... and that's not even delving into my extended family. It's funny, I've been struggling a lot with the differences, because I desperately wish to please my friends, and especially my mentors, and I feel the differences distinctly. In many cases, I feel guilty for being different, and I wish I could feel happy about just conforming to whatever they want to be. Not in bad ways, of course... just in harmless aspects. But... I can't, or dear chiropracting uncle, for your sake I'll cut out the 'can't' and supplement 'I don't want to'. ;) I don't want to stop dancing... it makes me so happy. I don't want to stop wearing the clothing choices I have made just to please everyone else, because I like what I wear... I don't want to stop listening to my beautiful music just because others think it's distasteful and wrong.... it lifts my soul, and makes me so happy and thankful... I don't want to go to college, I don't want to always live at home under my parents' "Godly authority", I don't want to always ask and obey my father's opinion for the rest of my single life... I want to be free, and I want to be able to decide for myself what is wrong and what is right.

Right there, I may sound rebellious to some people. Right there, I may sound selfish and self willed. I may sound like I don't want authority and I want to be able to do whatever I want. Perhaps that's true. Perhaps that is how I actually do sound. I don't know, all I see is the picture from my own sights. And I don't feel rebellious. I don't feel resentful and bitter against authority. I don't. Yet I'm sure I would be told that I need to be submissive, and that it's God's plan for daughters to stay at home and be under their parent's authority until a young man comes along and then I can be under his authority until he dies, then I... well, scandalous, I guess I must be without an authority then! Finally, I guess, if I outlive my husband, then I don't need to be living under a man's authority. Gah. Whatever.

No, I know that many people don't actually believe that. I know that not all my friends would think it necessary for me to live at home under my parent's authority until I get married. Not all. Perhaps not even any would think that drastically. Perhaps I'm just being paranoid. Yah... I get that way, worrying over what people think of me. It's a bad thing... I try so hard to just be myself and be open about what I believe, but later I look back and sigh, because I see so clearly how I am trying to fit in. Trying to be one of my peers. Trying not to offend anyone. Then when I go away from them, and am around friends who are more like me, I change. I'm different... perhaps not in personality, but in dress and with an openness to what I'm actually like.

What even am I trying to say? What even am I rambling about? Silly me... distressing myself over others. God didn't intend it to be this way, you know. He didn't intend for us to be horizontally focused... No, we are to be vertically focused, upwardly focused on Christ. Looking up, moving onward. Not glancing around us and trying to figure out what everyone else thinks about me and judges me as... We aren't meant to be pleasing to men, but to God.

But the trial, for me, comes when a mentor straightens himself and looks at me sternly and soberly and tells me I'm not pleasing God. To quote one should-be-mentor-but-isn't, [to say that I want to be able to do what I decide is right is like saying] "Lord, I will stay at your house and tithe a bit, but you must let me do whatever I want."

What?

What?

Excuse me. Shall I go into different topics? Rebuilding. Yes, I am rebuilding. Finding a church, buying homeopathic medicine for my horrid cold that won't go away, working, growing, learning Deitch, writing, reading, praying, searching...

There is a cd that I have listened to over and over and over... It seems that I am in a new and different stage of my life, and different songs appeal to me than before. It isn't the Struggle focus anymore... But the Cathedrals. It's not the song "I'm Worn", but the one "More Than You Think I Am". It's now more than ever that I learn that God's bigger than I ever imagined, and it's now that I need - even more than before - His protecting and comforting hand encircled about me. It's now, when I could go and do whatever I want, that I need His wisdom, His guidance. And I have tasted and seen, and the Lord is good. Over all my dreams, abundantly, beyond measure. Even with a drawn out sickness and insecurity in my daily life, I dream of Him, reach for Him, beg for Him, go to Him. And how good it is to go to Him for all my wants, hurts, needs and prayers. I'm far from perfect. Further than most Christians, likely. I see all my imperfections and problems clearly. But I'm not here to talk about those. I'm not here to talk about me. No, all I can say is, "my Saviour!" He corrects me when I am wrong, and is with me when no one else is. It's my desire to please Him, and learn even more of His will.

It sounds good there, doesn't it? Good and easy. Yeah... it does sound that way. Ha. Of course, it isn't. Didn't I already say how it's harder now than before? Maybe I didn't say that. But it's true. And it is teaching me a lot. It's funny, I tell my coworker, Bob... It's funny how we look back to the past and say that our teenaged years were the "good old days", but aren't we humans just a little bit selective in our remembering? We remember the good things, and we see the little bittle trials we had back then, and we see the middle sized or great big trials we have now, and say, Ah! It was so much easier then! But the trials in the moment always seem the hardest. And what we don't know or don't always realize is that the trials we are in now are only to prepare us for the future. It's true, I'm a product of that truth. It's happened to me time and time over. I never wish to be in the past... I sometimes fear the future becoming the present, I sometimes fear getting older, but it's always only gotten better. It's always harder, and always better.

Thank God for that.

PORTRAITS?