Because Sometimes I Need This

Note to self: just because someone seems to appreciate something you passionately love does not mean they actually have any interest in it (or you either necessarily). Accept this, move on, and be cheerful about being a nerd. Not everyone can love something as deeply as you do. 

Wanted: New Dream

I've created a playlist simply entitled "Sleep." The mix is full of songs that cheer me on or slow down my too-quick beating heart. It doesn't always work, but each song has proven helpful on a night when sleep was near impossible. 

Lately I've had a lot of trouble sleeping. Maybe it's because a herd of teenage boys play ping-pong in the room above me late into the night or maybe it's because I've let my faithless heart go wandering yet again. Whatever the cause, tonight I am to the point that my gas-light has come on. 

Some times I think it's only when I am truly exhausted that my true character shines through. That little red light blinking back is showing me a lot these days. My loneliness. My addictions. My weakness. My oddly-placed hope. My fear. 

The weirdest/worst though has been the light shining on the empty spot my dreams should be occupying. 

My mom, a year or two back, told me that she didn't have dreams of her own. She was tired and working several jobs, and I think she just couldn't see anything beyond where she was. I hated seeing her like that because she seemed deflated and empty. I remember wishing and praying that God would help her find one, but at the time, I couldn't grasp how she felt. I remember thinking it was crazy. Everyone always has a dream to pursue, right?

Apparently not. I wish I still didn't know this feeling, but I am hoping now that at the very least this experience will help me grow and help me encourage others with their own struggles. 

There is hope, of course, my mom has since found a new dream and now happily spends her days helping kids at the library she works for and planning events for them. 

There are always more dreams. Now I just have to find mine. 

Passion, You Disarm Me

My problem is, and probably always will be, passion.

Passion that wants to change the world from the inside out.  Passion that wants to share a life with someone else starting at this very moment.  Passion that wants to feel deeply and run free.  Passion that wants to hold the heart of another person tightly and lavish it with everything I can.

I am drawn to the passion of others.  I find people most attractive when they are discussing what brings them the most joy.  I love listening to my friend, Jay talk about music and recording.  I love listening to my friend Amy talk about ministry and God.  The same can be said of my friend Jake.  With Jordan it is languages and computers and theology.  With Nikky it has always been about art and love and movies and language.  Sam undoes me when he sings or plays and talks music or people.

Each person, as Neil Gaiman once said, is full of their own secret worlds.  They may seem quiet and subdued, but each one of us has something inside of us that makes us beautiful.  We are all full of secrets and magic and light, but so few people will ever take the time to see that.

It's this secret inside the hearts of others that I find so beautiful.  What draws me most to people is when I see glimmers of this.

I cannot help but feel a little overwhelmed when I hear someone sing and I can hear the words resonate deep inside them.  It makes me ache and wish that I could find a way to see what make those words or that song mean what it does for them.

Recycle

(Picture by Terrence Raper)

Favorite things of this very moment (11:57 am CST):

• Jingle Bell Java coffee with some eggnog
• Being handed a Snapple Raspberry Ice Tea (which is probably my favorite) by my younger brothers after they'd borrowed my car
• Having heard from Nikky this morning
• Good music shuffling through my iTunes
• Having a good conversation with Jordan echoing through my head and helping to clear the last of the shadows of the ache I was feeling last night slowly dissipate
• Christmas lights (they truly never get old)
• Sunshine
• The promise of some girl time with Heather later this evening

I was trying to come up with an appropriate response to a post Jordan had written earlier today, and I was reminded of something about myself. I am a recycler and a rescuer. I am a collector of the lost and a restorer of the forgotten.

Nikky can attest to my bizarre reuse of paper. I tend to write her letters on whatever I have at hand at the moment: napkins, scratch paper, old memos, Beef-A-Roo tray inserts, Alfanos place mats, and even Cheese Nips boxes. I believe everything has a use. I tend to use scraps of cloth to create new things. I am currently creating a creature that Nikky will eventually probably get to own (she often gets stuck with my more bizarre creations). It's made from old scraps of fleece that my mom used to make blankets. I once made an afghan for a friend that was made almost entirely of yarn my grandmother had given me. A huge blanket made of castaway colors. It is one of the strangest looking blankets in history, but he loves it.

I feel people should be looked at in the same way was the blankets I've made or the creature I'm creating: each piece of them tells a story, and they're always made from love. I don't create things because I hate them, I retrieve the bits and find ways to use them for something better. People are the same. There will never come a day when I find a person who is without a little sparkle and magic of their own. There is always something worth restoring. Something worth protecting and preserving. Something worth pursuing and nurturing.

We are all lost, but we are also all worth being recovered and restored. We are priceless like jewels. Each of us starts off as something rough and uncut, but we can be turned into something much more beautiful. Something more.

We are diamonds in the rough.

What's A Girl To Do?

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Favorite things of this very moment (8:45 am CST):

• Tyler Hilton
• Mom's comment that she's never seen me move as fast as I did this morning when she woke me up to tell me that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were going to be on the Today show
• Seeing Robert Pattison and Kristen Stewart on the Today show
• Talking to Dan online this morning
• Knowing Nikky will have a box from me in hand by the end of today
• Having a discussion with Ben when I don't have nearly enough sleep and too much caffeine in my system
• The urge to dance badly, even when sleep deprived, caffeinated, and aching
• That this is sincerely my friend Dustin reincarnated into a movie villain, and not just any villain, but JAMES: http://www.bordersmedia.com/twilight/?cmpid=SL_20081120_REW#video

How should love be?

Honestly, what's it really supposed to be like? How are you supposed to know when you've found the right person? Obviously things aren't immediately going to go smoothly. Life doesn't work that way, and I have a sneaking suspicion that love doesn't either.

Do you know you're in love when all you want is for that other person to be happy? Does it become obvious when you what to sacrifice what you want in order that they're taken care of? Or does that just mean that you want to be a martyr?

I don't want to be a martyr. I want to find a way to love and love deeply, but the thing is, in order to do that, you have to find someone to love.

Here I am world.

I am lost, lonely, and aching for something more. At least somewhere deep down I am. Ironically, on the surface, for the people I meet, most of them don't see this side of me. I don't like it showing through. Savage intensity tends to scare people...go figure.

So what's a girl to do?

She writes. A lot. Lyrics, bad poetry, the occasional bit of good poetry, scripts, sketches, scenes from life, short stories, and works on books.

Maybe someday I'll have a tall dark outlet for this insanity. The kind that has a beautiful voice and likes to read books as much as I do and won't mind staring up into the night sky with me for hours...

Until then, I'll work on living.

Challenge

Favorite things of this very moment (10:44 am CST):

• Magic (not the card game)
• Cinnamon rolls
• Perfect weather (sunshine, cool breeze, lovely lovely temp)
• Night & Day mixes from Jay Laurent (the man is a genius, I adore him)
• Ice tea
• The Wednesday Letters

Nikky asked a question yesterday. She asked, "What do we do with passion?" The passion instilled in our being by God. God is passionate for us, and we, as His creation have a great deal of passion of our own. Not necessarily for the same things, but still passion none the less.

It's passion, I believe, that creates. I use my passion to create poetry, short stories, letters, etc. Jay uses his passion to create his music. Nikky uses her passion to create beautiful artwork and writings.

But these things are not all our passion is used for. I know that a portion of my passion is in wait. But there is a key to unlocking that, and I do not possess that key. Someday I'll get to use that. Until then...REPRESSED. err...

There is also the passion to live. This is the one that takes the most practice unfortunately. I don't think it's supposed to take a lot of practice. I think living with passion should be our natural response to life, but, I think, overtime, we've had the joy and ability all but sucked out of us. So we must intend to live with passion. We must strive for it. We must search out and find the joy in life and be willing to patiently listen for the nudge, the still small voice, and/or learn to decipher the messages God sends us through the lives of people around us and the world He has so perfectly created.

The choice is, in a lot of ways, the same as the choice to love. Love is a verb. It is action. It is motion and finding ways every day to show the people around us love. The choice to live with passion is very much wrapped into the choice to love. When we choose to live lives of love (so many l's) daily we are also choosing to live passionately. Our love for God seeps through when we show love to one another. Choosing to let someone have their needs met first...

Just my thoughts anyway...

So...I will echo Nikky's question and challenge you (and myself): What do we do with it?