Hello, somewhat (but mostly not) sunny August. Thanks for not burning us out yet, although I won't complain if you decide to get a little warmer from here on out. I'm just saying...



I've been having a summerish summer, what with endless family stuff at the beginning and endless friend stuff for the last several weeks. Barbaques, card nights, hikes, girl sleepovers, river days, party crashing, road trips- the usual. These things smell and taste and look like summer, and it's got this addictive, sedative feeling about it that makes me want to freeze everything right here and never grow a day older.



On the other hand, I'm never out of borring stuff that has to get done, none of which ever seems to propell me forward. So maybe I'm getting my wish and being stuck in time. But it almost makes me want to go BACK in time to when everything was exciting and interesting in-the-moment, when my whole mind belonged to the present instead of worrying and wondering about what it all meant and weather or not I was making a difference or a lasting mark on my surroundings.



But here I am, living and breathing and fully ME. I can't be any less me then I am right now, I don't think. Constantly working on changing, reforming, and pushing that me to be more, I have at least I've arrived at the point where I know who I am. I may one day be more comfortable with strangers, more confident in my own shoes, more sure of what I want, less stuck on getting my way, less emotional, less reactive, less hard-nosed and up-tight.

Thought:

There is a tremendous difference between a satisfied concience and a satisfied God.

I think this could radically change every part of my life if I let it. I'm realizing that SO much of what I do- from trying to eat healthy to going on a mission trip next year- is to satisfy my concience. But my concience is weak and satisfied with the bare minimum. So long as I'm doing SOMETHING, I feel okay about myself.

But the truth is, what it takes to trully live in a completely God-glorifying way is beyond anyone's ability to accomplish, which means we should never really stop pushing past what we feel is enough. Kind of like the way Paul lived, all the time.

I'm wondering how many people persue good things just looking for a life of ease of concience, and then are content only to work in the smallest of capasities once they get there. Not that there is no place for behind-the-scenes workers, and not that there are any jobs less important or God-glorifying than others. But being content just to exist without being ready to do whatever is most needed of you really shouldn't be an option.

This has been really convicting to me, and I certainly didn't come up with it myself so I thought maybe y'all could get some good out of it too.

it's a joke, nobody knows- they got tickets to the show

I've been sitting here looking at some other people's blogs and marveling at the kinds of things they choose to write for the whole world to see. It has occured to me that many will put just the tiniest bit of themselves out there, and not even the most prominent or important bit of themselves. It's just the part that they want to share, the kind of mood or way of thinking that they want to spread around. That seems really nobel and unselfish to me and I kind of wish I could be more like that.

I can never write posts about what I've been doing lately, re-inventing for all of you the blow-by-blow accounts of life as I know it. I get boared, seeing as I already lived it. Here is where I seek to find the meaning behind all that's been happening, and the more personal my struggles are the more philosophical I become, trying to veil the truth in the theoretical.

It really fascinates me to think that we all move around on this plannet doing things and talking about them as though they have face value- when they really don't. I mean, there are very few things in life so all-consuming that they actually get us out of our own heads. And it's the stuff going on in our heads that makes us enjoy one experience over another. The way things make us feel, the associations we have with them, and the things going on under the surface are all way more important than the facts of the experience.

Then again, I don't know if this is true or if I just want it to be true. Maybe we humans are, when you get down to it, pretty much simple creatures who seek out our own comfort and adrenalin rushes and warm weather. Maybe we only hang out with other people because we want to have fun, and then we try to dress it up as something deep and meaningful to feel better about ourselves. Or maybe it's just me that feels a need to dress things up in "meaningful" clothing. Opinions, anyone?

thoughts on existance

It has been a long day and a long time since I last wrote about anything, so I give you fair warning that this could very well be long and rambling and too philosophical for my own good (or yours). That being said, I have been thinking about the question, "What is it to be human?"

Considering this, I realize I've started in the wrong place in my attempt to question the meaning of life in one all-encompasing breath. To get to the root of the matter, however, I have to step inside my worldview- something I'm learning not to be afraid of doing. So I'll go ahead and ask the question and assume that it's the most fundumental question conserning existance I could ask: "What is it to be God?"

This is a mind-blowing thing to consider, because God is outside everything tangable. In the blank, black canvas of EXISTANCE there is God, and then in a one-inch straight line in the middle of the canvas is Time, in which exists the entirety of humanity and substance. This is easy enough to grasp when using the right imagry, but what happens if you try to take God away? Then existance folds in on it's self and we have to try to imagine that NOTHING ever happened or was. Which is inconceivable to us. So where did God come from? Does He ever wonder how He got there? To be omnicient, He must understand why He exists. And while that's a line of thought I, for one, can't follow through on, it's enough to consider that God relies on nothing to define Himself or His purpose in existing. He is not only self-sustained but self-defining, which I think is interesting, because everything else in the universe is ultimately defined by it's relationship to something greater than it's self.

So what is it to be God? It is, in a word, to self-exist. To be the end of the line of dependency and proof; to be the only thing in the universe that is only dependent on and proven by itself.

On a sidenote, how incredibly blessed are we that this God is wise, just, clear, and good? Had he been any different, the entirety of creation would have been vastly different- He could have made us all so miserable, and yet He chose (and chooses) to self-exist in a way that is beautiful and perfect for the cause of humanity. I find this totally mind-blowing! In a world where evil seems to prevail the vast majority of the time, the ultimate end and beginning of the universe is intrinsically... good. Wow! (I'm not sure that I'm on track here with this line of speculation; it's just a thought- but something to think about for sure.)

That being established, the question of what it is to be human becomes very easy to answer. God created us out of His own self-existance basically because He wanted to- because He decided that existance was good and in line with His character. In that sense, humans do serve a purpose just by existing. This includes both those who live for Christ and those who don't.

I'm really, really thankful, however, that my ultimate purpose in life is not just to exist. Because if that's the case, I may as well park myself on the couch and do nothing for the rest of my life. But this is not the case. I was called out of many, for reasons infathomable to me, to live a higher life with a higher purpose- glorifying God not just with my existance but with my heart, my soul, and my strength. To do this, I have to be working constantly within the framework of truth provided by the Bible- working to sharpen my capacities so that I can live better for Christ in every conceivable areana of life. And I've got to do this with the reckless abandon that shows I really believe it is THE only purpose to existing.

So in answer to the original question, to be human is just to exist. To be a Christian, that is to exist with purpose- one that will take a lifetime to fufill. At that, I can only marvel at the goodness of God and the beauty of the task before me.

I recently found a passage in Jeremiah in which the prophet starts to complain, in a very respectful way, about his life, which is feeling totally devoid of purpose to him. "Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land! I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me." (15:10) In verse 19, God answers him like this: "If you return, I will restore you, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth. They shall turn to you, but you shall not turn to them."

This was absolutely incredible to me because it was as though God was saying, "Cheer up, your life is full of purpose. You are my servant, what could be more purposeful than that?"

So true, isn't it?

10 things I have been obsessed with lately

This is not the post I wanted to make, but it's getting late and I just can't sleep, and my mind's still not up to anything epic or interesting. So, here's a mindless midnight list:

10. Nail polish



9. The movie Young Queen Victoria

Girls, if you have not seen this movie, you really must. I like to think that my marriage will be just like this if I get married, other than the whole rulling-a-country thing. I've never seen a movie potray marriage so realalistically and yet also so beautifully.

8. Striking poses



7. Discussions about true beauty and PRESUPPOSITIONS

If there is one thing I love about my church, it is that people gasp in excitement when they hear big words. In Sunday School we've been debating weather or not there is an absolute standard for esthetics (the perception of beauty) and it's got the whole church talking- I was part of three discussions throughout the day and a couple during the week on this subject alone. It's very thought-provoking and exciting because I feel like something big is about to fall into place in my thinking.

6. Mix-matched socks



5. Running

I hit my goal milage twice this week! When you run with good music (see #3) or good friends (#1) you don't really want to stop. Now it's time to set a new goal. I'm realizing setting goals and actually reaching them is a really, really good thing and I should do it more often.

4. Incuring Elizabeth's wrath :-P




3. Glee

Synonomous for brilliant, in my perhaps not-so-humble opinion. :-P And when I say Glee, I really just mean Glee music. I've logged so many hours on the season one soundtrack this week it's probably not even good for me. It makes it so easy to imagine an ideal world in which all I do is sing and dance with my friends all day long. And I ask you, is there any better feeling than that?

2. This girl



1. Hanging out with my out-of-town cousins

Yep, the Carlsons are in town for a whole entire MONTH. We've been playing yard games, having photo shoots, planning and shooting a music video, and singing hymns for a whole week now. They come to stay at our house tomorrow. It's going to be stupendous. Not only is my family trully amazing and made up of trully amazing people, but together we have such perfectly summerish good times. Honestly, the sunshine just needs to catch up with us.

And those are at least some of the things that make my life 100% worth living right now. :-)

Day 40

For those of you non-facebookers... my Roblealto application was accepted!!

I guess they probably arn't too picky, but I was getting really concerned that this was just another pipe dream and now it feels more like reality. They told me I'll have my own room and they brought the cost down a lot. I guess this makes me one step closer! :-)

this post is much too long and probably shouldn't be read.

I just came down from an hour spent at the height of my OCD mood. You all will be happy to know tht even my jewlry is now filed into sub-piles. My room was already IN ridiculously good shape, and now it's about ready to have brain surgery performed in it. The only thing left to organize is my life, and here is where I completely break down.

Keeping my room clean goes along with exercise, having long devotions, and forcing myself to read borring books in the list of things I often do in an attempt to fix the mistakes of the day. Why are there always so many long hours completely wasted, and so many fruitless activities persuied at full-throttle? So, so often I feel that I am completely out of control in my own life, and so I have to find little things that I can control, like the rings standing face-up in the jewlry box.

I'm just so frusterated, because my spanish program isn't working, I still can't find a job and I'm past the deadline, and I haven't heard back from Costa Rica since I sent in my official application. Meanwhile, time ticks by and I'm acomplishing absolutely nothing. There is no way to go to bed at night satisfied with your day when all it held was a bunch of randomly strung-together chores, not one of which contribute to the greater good of anything ongoing or significant. One is left without any sense of continuity or purpose.

I've been realizing lately that I've never really had the experience of working hard for something and actually acheiving that goal. I've been goal-setting all my life, but I never had the follow-through. I had so many bright dreams- going to private school, getting an English degree, becomming a dancer, singing with one of the best local choirs, moving out, even just becoming the kind of amazing, confident person who inspires others... and not one of them every came true. Until last quarter of school, in which I actually managed to get on the Deans list. It was also the most credit's I'd ever taken, and I was working twenty hours a week on top. Now that's living. That's what I want out of this life- a way to work hard, play hard, and sleep hard at night. And make a difference. Do something good, honest, comendable, God-honoring, and really meaningful. Wherever there is a job like that for me, I will go.

So why is it now, once I've finally got a bit more maturity and experience under my belt, that everything comes to a grinding halt? I'm sick of looking people in the eye and explaining that no, I'm not really doing anything with my life. I hate people seeing me living in my parents house, wearing the same clothes I wore two years ago, looking depressed and grumpy- these are the golden years of my life.

I'm sorry to be so complaining, but I really feel a need to justify who I am and what I'm doing to everyone. How do I even want to be seen? I want to be the girl who inspires others to be the best versions of themselves, and I want to be bright and cheerful and confident. I don't really want to be the most fashionable or the most exciting or the most popular, but I do want to be tasteful and relatable and lovable. Isn't that what we all want, in the end? Just love me, not because you have to or because you think you should, but because you really think I'm one of the most awesome people you've met. Don't tell me you don't want it too.

I think it's also really important to me that I be seen as deep and thoughtful, that I'm not just some steriotype from a chick flick. That I'm a tiny bit different and unique without being pretentious or trying too hard to stand out. That my brain is a cool place that "believes six impossible things before breackfast" instead of a place just thinks about what everybody should be doing or how hungry I am.

I tend to feel like all of this would be solved, like I would automatically become the perfect person, if I could just go to Costa Rica and have this life-altering experience. But I guess to be honest I'm really way more concerned about who I am than what I'm doing. If I could do what I'm doing now well and feel good about myself doing it, I probably would never want to leave.

In the end of the day, I guess whoever said it was right when they said, "It's not about being yourself, it's about creating yourself." And in tiny ways, I am moving towards that ideal version of me instead of sitting there in the mire of hating who I really am. I'm trying to be more creative in the way I live my life, for instance, which somehow makes me feel more me and more interesting. I'm beginning to realize art is really really great for a person to do- never a waste of time. And I'm trying to explore music and movies on my own (very slowly) and really carve my own path in these sorts of things. It helps. But I still often feel in bondage, stuck behind bars of other people's opinions and my own stupid inhabitions, all of which basically come down to sin.

I'm such a late bloomer and always so behind most of my friends, even those much younger than me, but on the bright side I think maybe my journey to "arrival" (if such a thing exists) is almost over. Just a couple more years, and if I continue to change at the rate I have been changing, I will be the person I want to be and maybe even doing the things I want to do. By the grace of God alone, that is. In the mean time, I'm afraid the ride can be rather bumpy.