I have this thing I'm kind of addicted to...it's called sleep. I feel like I can never get enough of it. Maybe it's because it's the only time during the day when my mind calms down... Whatever it is, I sleep a lot. My friends have told me that I actually hibernate. I can usually fall asleep anywhere at anytime, but I've actually been having trouble sleeping lately. Sometimes when I try and fall asleep my mind just won't shut up. One thing that's really strange is when I dream. You see, I don't have normal dreams like everybody else. Nope, I got stuck with the weird ones. I can sometimes control my dreams, can always remember them, and half the time I think it's actually happening: that's how vivid they are. I always seem to have dreams about me waking up, but I'm still sleeping...really strange. I've always kind of wondered if dreams mean anything. You could probably write a book about my dreams. Anyway, I love sleep. When I can take a nap and don't have a certain time I must wake up, it seriously is the best feeling in the world.
"No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow." -Alice Walker
“No smile is more beautiful than the one who has struggled through the tears.”
-Unknown
"I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love." -Mother Teresa
"The best proof of love is trust" -Dr. Joyce Brothers.
“The problem with life is that there’s no background music.” -Unknown
“Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.”-Anonymous
"It is not so much our friend's help that helps us, as the
confidence of their help." - Epicurus
"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." -Robert A. Heinlein
“The test of true love is found not in trying to hold our friendships tighter, but in the strength to let them go.”-Anonymous
"I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it." - Audrey Hepburn
“When they have really learned to love their neighbors as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbors.” –C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
"We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them. We say we love trees, yet we cut them down. And some people still wonder why some are afraid when they are told they are loved" -Unknown.
"A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her." -Max Lucado
“If you live to be 100, I want to live to be 100 minus 1 day so I never have to live a day without you.” -Winnie the Pooh
The other day I did something I haven't done before. I went back to the beginning of my journal and started reading. My journal was given to me at the beginning of my sophomore year by one of my youth leaders. Throughout the few years, I have filled it up mostly with prayers, sermon notes, and quotes. I don't really find a lot of reason to write about my day like a kid with a diary, but writing to God is something I love to do. What was crazy when I started to read my old entries was that I actually got to see how God has been working in my life. A lot of times, I feel as if I'm the kind of person who takes two steps forward and one step back. I can't see any good in me or any change. Sometimes I think one failure in life makes everything else I've done that is right inferior. But reading my journal, I saw that I have changed so much since sophomore year. I've changed so much since my entries even last semester. Good things have happened, I have grown, and God is working. I realized that prayers I had became answered and goals I set were starting to come true. Sure, there is a lot that still needs prayer and work, but I have no doubt anymore that while "I've been waiting, God is working." I look back at the things in my life I thought were such a huge deal, and realize while they may have seemed overwhelming, God worked through them. It honestly gives me hope God will heal the things that are currently overwhelming me. God has come through for me before, and I know He will do it again. Now that I've recognized this, I am starting to put my hope back in Christ and somehow begin to wait patiently.
"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." -Romans 12:12
I'm still walking the line that leads me home, alone
All I know I still got mountains to climb
On my own
On my own
Do you love me enough to let me go?
Do you love me enough to let me go?
To let me follow through
To let me fall for you, my love
Do you love me enough to let me go?
Back from the dead of winter
Back from the dead and all our leaves are dry
You're so beautiful tonight
Back from the dead we went through
Back from the dead and both our tongues are tied
You look beautiful tonight
But every seed dies before it grows
Do you love me enough to let me go?
Do you love me enough to let me go?
To let me follow through
To let me fall for you, my love
Do you love me enough to let me go?
Breathe it in
And let it go
Every breath you take is not yours to own
It's not yours to hold
Do you love me enough to let me go?
"Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." -Carl Jung "Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further." -Soren Kierkegaard
"This one started with the guitar hook I came up with during sound-check; however, most of the song took shape in a hotel room in Australia. I was thinking about how love (not just lust or codependency that commonly flood the tunes on the airways) actually involves quite a bit of faith. There's a lot of letting go involved. Two souls in love is an intricate dance of give and take. I can be a fairly solitary person from time to time. Sure, I love being with people, but I also need time alone. I guess I thrive on the poles. So this song is about the dance involved in a relationship the coming together and letting go. The song equates love with breathing- pulling in and releasing. Or a seed, for the seed to grow it has to be dropped and buried.
In our barcode media, love is often portrayed as consumption. As consumers in a commercial driven culture we can begin to view other souls as objects, or potential cures for our deepest fears and insecurities. "Perhaps if I found the right lover I would no longer feel this deep existential despair." But of course no human soul could be the Constant Other, the face that will never go away. Only the infinite can fill that role. But the silence can be deafening. It's a fearful thing to be alone. Do you love me enough to let me go? "I can't live without you"- "I would die if you ever left me"- These are not the songs of love, these are the songs of consumption." -Jon Foreman
So this is how the story went
I met someone by accident
That blew me away
That blew me away
It was in the darkest of my days
When you took my sorrow and you took my pain
And buried them away, you buried them away
And I wish I could lay down beside you
When the day is done
And wake up to your face under the morning sun
But like everything I've ever known
I'm sure you'll go one day
So I'll spend my whole life hiding my heart away
And I can't spend my whole life hiding my heart away
I dropped you off at the train station
And put a kiss on top of your head
I watched you wave
I watched you wave
Then I went on home to my skyscrapers
Neon lights and waiting papers
That I call home
I call it home
And I wish I could lay down beside you
When the day is done
And wake up to your face against the morning sun
But like everything I've ever known
I'm sure you'll go one day
So I'll spend my whole life hiding my heart away
And I can't spend my whole life hiding my heart away
I woke up feeling heavy hearted
I'm going back to where I started
The morning rain
The morning rain
And you know I wish that you were here
But that same old road that brought me here
Is calling me home
Is calling me home
And I wish I could lay down beside you
When the day is done
And wake up to your face against the morning sun
But like everything I've ever known
You'll disappear someday
So I'll spend my whole life hiding my heart away
And I can't spend my whole life hiding my heart away
So the country music station has been playing on my hall all day long. I am not a fan of country music. Someone once described it to me as "my dog just died and my truck broke down" and I just about died laughing. Needless to say, there are a few songs that I do enjoy that fall under this genre. This is one of them. I even took the time to learn it on guitar once. Enjoy!
So I'm in Santa Barbara again for the four day weekend. It's strange to come home to such an empty house. I'm so used to having my sisters around, but now they're over 900 miles away. I don't really know what I'm expecting out of this break. Hopefully I'll get to see some friends and enjoy some time with them. But today I had a different experience than I was expecting. Today I went to my Papa and Grandma's house to help my mom and aunts clean it out. That was a strange sensation in itself, to go somewhere you've been a hundred times, but suddenly it's different. The people that filled it up are now gone, and you're going through their stuff. In a way, as I went through drawers and shelves, I felt like I began to understand them a little better. They had the most random things in the most random places. Honestly sometimes I would just start laughing. But it reminded me who my grandparents were; they were quirky, war torn, immigrants, Russian, and God fearing. They endured so much and yet kept such faith in God until the very end. My grandma wrote a book about her life that she would always try and get us to read. Sadly to say, I never read it. But now that she's gone, and I no longer have the ability to ask her about her life myself, I have the greatest desire to read her story. Who knows, maybe it will help me understand more about myself.
{Papa and Grandma's house}
{I got some old pictures of Russia}
{Here's what I ended up collecting from their house}
"But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus."
I love going through my iTunes and listening to music that I haven't heard in a long time. Music is something that just speaks to you when words can't. Here are some links to my recent favorites from artists I like.
"...the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; Blessed be the name of the LORD."
It's only the middle of February, yet I feel as if 2011 has been a really hard year so far. If I look at the past two months or so, I can see the great losses I've had. But then I stop and take a step back. I look harder and notice all of the amazing changes and opportunities that could never have happened if I had not experienced the loss. I have never experienced such intimacy with God like I have during this year so far. It seems to me that because of the loss, I have come to grip God so tightly. I've been trying to hold onto the things that He has been taking away from me. I'll admit that at first I wasn't dealing with all of the losses very well. I was so scared of letting go of these things that I was so used to and that I trusted in. It didn't really hit me until one day when a good friend told me that she saw God trying to hold me, literally wrapping His arms around me, but I was fighting Him and struggling to let me go. I wouldn't surrender. I then came across a verse in Deuteronomy 4:24, "For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God." It finally hit. So many things were becoming more important to me than Him, and He got jealous. The Lord will not relent until He has all of you. I was unwilling to surrender anything in my possession to Him, so He started taking it away, little by little. I'll be honest, at first I was bitter. But then something greater came over me. God loves me so much that He will keep fighting until I give Him my complete love back. I've really been realizing that no human love will ever be perfect, but God's love is. If I know I've experienced love and trust here on this earth, then how much more does God love me? How much more can I trust Him? What it has come down to is a daily surrender of my fears and insecurities to the God of the universe, knowing that He will protect me. I've been trying this new thing where I live my life day by day. It's based off of Matthew 6:34, where it talks about not worrying about tomorrow. I'm a big worrier, so for me having the mindset of not worrying about next month or next year is difficult. But knowing that God has it in control is good. I know that whatever I do today will effect what happens tomorrow and in the future. All I can do is live today and glorify God to the best of my ability. All this said, another good friend asked me if I was bitter or angry that all of this had happened to me in such a short amount of time. I stopped for a second before I answered. I told her no, I wasn't. If anything, I am grateful. It may have taken me some time to come to this side of it, but I thank God that I have. Now I can truly say, with all of my heart, "blessed be the name of the Lord."
