confessions

i feel like i have a lot of people i should be praying for. people that i want to pray for. sometimes prayer is the only way to help someone but i wish i could actively do more. i wish i could fix problems like disease and death and emotional hurt. i wish i could open people's eyes to a more broad perspective. i wish i could open my own eyes to a broad enough perspective to see how some decisions and actions make sense in other people's minds. i wish the things i've gone through and learned from could be taught to others and make an impact on someone.

...

i am going in a cycle, as i have for the past 3 years (and probably longer...but this is the noticable time period). each part of the cycle has a different level of intensity dependant on what is going on in my life. i've been learning to cope and healthily deal with issues, and as i do so the entire cycle is starting to lose its extremes, both highs and lows. it is encouraging to me when i see improvements like these in myself. but somehow, i miss the old cycle. why? because that was "normal" for so long. and now i have to adjust to a new normal. i dislike adjustments, even when i can see that it's so much better for me. my life hasn't gotten any less stressful or any less busy and i don't have a smaller amount of issues being thrown at me, but the difference is that i'm learning to handle these things in a better way than i did.

i used to burry my issues. i would push things down until they were manifested in my heart and mind as truth. i would believe lies until they were truth. even when someone would point out that the root of my issue could be deeper than i thought it to be, i would deny it and argue that know one could know how deep it was except me. i really didn't know that it was so deep and so harmful. i thought i knew exactly where my issues lay and all i needed to do was go through trial and error until they were fixed. i was wrong. i recently had an experience where i actually caught myself- my mind and heart- letting a lie become manifested deeper within me. for the first time, i saw and felt it happen. it was the strangest, scariest feeling. i realized that i am the reason i experienced so much pain in the last few years. i caused the problems to go so deep- i let them dig so deep- that they became truth and fact in my mind. i can't believe i was about to do it again.

i am now devoting my time to finding these lies and training my brain to label them as "lie", not as truth and hurt and grudge. i am looking for truth in all situations in order to not let myself become vulnerable to lies.

...

prayer is powerful. i am giving these things to prayer and to the Lord. i am giving Him my mind and heart because i know that that is the only place they are safe.

in a true friendship you learn to carry another person's weight. you learn how to help them and be there for them and in turn, they learn those things about you. true friends share their weight. when one person is going through a hard time or tough situation, the other person steps back and forgets about their own needs, as well as compensating for what their friend cannot do and carrying the extra weight for that person, all without expecting anything back.
true friends share emotions- joy in one another's joy, pain in one another's pain.
sometimes this feels natural. other times it is much easier said than done.

The Heart of Life

I hate to see you cry
Lying there in that position
There's things you need to hear
So turn off your tears
And listen

Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won't all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good

You know, it's nothing new
Bad news never had good timing
But, then your circle of friends
Will defend the silver lining

Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won't all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good

Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
Fear is a friend who's misunderstood
But I know the heart of life is good
I know it's good

writer's block?

i'm thinking about deleting my blog. it's becoming overwhelming to me, meaning i feel like i have to post stuff but i never really post what i want to. i end up saying what i've been doing, what i will be doing and then not posting for weeks or months at a time. i'd rather use my blog as more of a place for an outlet of thoughts or ideas, but i can't get them out in a way that i'm comfortable with people reading. i have lots of things to say, but don't have the time to put them into well written form.

back when i was in high school and college...

how is it already june??? seriously. when did that happen! kids alive is in a month and 10 days. this has been a major stress for me lately, especially with rima being in sudan right now- literally EVERYTHING is on my shoulders for this event to be successful. this is not what i was expecting when i "signed up". i'm honestly really happy to be doing kids alive this year and it's going to be great, but it's a whole lot to try to do on my own. the deadline is now in the foreseeable future, not just a date. it's getting to the point where there is no room to slack off and take a break from it. i have to focus my attention which is really hard to do right now. there is so much going on- finals, my best friend moving, the general excitement of summer (including jeff coming home, yay!), and the everyday things that don't tend to stop when i feel overwhelmed/stressed (aka work, school, random events etc).
i'm just excited to be done with june, get into the meat of july, and then be able to relax.

**last night was a ridiculously fun night filled with way too much laughter and complete insanity that i really needed and enjoyed :) [courtesy of beck, marianne, elisabeth, and melin (and of course claude...what a good fellow) also, i think some credit should go to the RIP pops man, shotgun!! men, and the "greetings" crew]

a little bit about myself

i've been learning a lot about myself lately, specifically when it comes to writing.
i have discovered that i have a VERY hard time writing something "assigned" or with a deadline if i have things going on in my personal life that i haven't released verbally or on paper. sometimes even if i've talked or vented about it, i still need to write it out and just let it go. i'm a very emotional person and my emotions get in the way easily.
i was recently trying to write an article for the children's newsletter at church but i couldn't focus on it or get inspiration to write it. it was about kids alive, which is now on my mind about 75% of the time (that percentage is rapidly rising!). i have known about the article for a week or two, but the deadline snuck up on me and so i found myself trying to force my mind into thinking about it and what i needed say instead of just letting it flow out. something that should have taken me 30 mins to write ended up taking me several days of jotting down thoughts/ideas and then about an hour to put them together and transition them. and i'm still not happy with it. it's now printed, but i'm not content about it.
i think i've put my finger on why it was so hard. every time i would go to work on the article (even a week in advance), my mind would want to write about the current "big deals" in my life and it wouldn't let me focus on what i told it to focus on. i would write one terrible sentence about kids alive and then either lose complete control of the pen and start word vomiting on paper or just stop writing altogether. it was really annoying and just made me mad to the point that i just blocked out the article until literally the very last minute.
i don't know why i didn't just let myself journal and write what i wanted/needed to (i think i told myself i didn't have time? or that it wasn't important or something. dumb.). things would have been so much less stressful if i would have just taken care of things in order. i see that now and will hopefully be able to take care of problems like this quicker in the future.


*this is the reason for so much time between my blog posts. if the things on my mind are too personal to post on here and i don't choose to just write or talk them out, i don't write for weeks at a time.

matrimonia

the best way to answer the question, "what was your favorite part of your trip?" is to say, "oh, you know, the part where i got married..." [it gets better after that, depending on how well i know the person ;)] i've gotten some fun looks and some majorly confused people :)
so here's what happened. first of all, i blame everything on bailee and louis. and maybe [s]ack (he was in on some of the translation but i really can't blame him for anything).
anyway...it was the second day on the job site and there were several of us standing around talking to the kids and just having a good time. we were teaching each other words and stuff. it was honestly one of my favorite parts of the trip. so after maybe five minutes of this, 2 guys started walking over and tried to talk to us. of course, our spanish knowledge is minimal and their english knowledge is nonexistent, so it was very broken and confusing. we found out that their names were olman and louis. louis was trying to communicate the idea that olman liked me. bailee, being the only one of the two of us actually talking, decided that this was a good time to marry me off. thanks friend :)
so this is the part where i say "si." louis asked if i liked olman. now...it is pretty much impossible to explain in spanish the difference between liking someone as a friend/just liking them as a person in general and actually "liking" them. so all i really could say was yes. well apparently i should have said "no." louis then brought up the idea of "matrimonia" (for any nit-wits out there, that means MARRIAGE!!). and again, my lovely friend who apparently wants me to move away, have nine children and live in honduras for the rest of my life starts encouraging the idea of matrimonia! louis wanted to have the wedding that afternoon. bailee suggested tomorrow. again, thanks friend. you really saved my skin on that one! *note the sarcasm.
here's a picture of the little conversation...olman is in the hat and louis is hiding behind micah, trying to scheme with bailee. (*notice the smile on my face that says, "i'm going to kill you!" not, "thank you. this is fun...")


so that was pretty much the end of the conversation. we left it at "wedding tomorrow". to be honest though, i was worried and felt pretty bad about it all because that isn't extremely abnormal for their culture. i was a little bit scared that he would come the next day expecting something...thankfully he didn't. (BUT, i did have to explain to his parents at the end of the trip why i wasn't going to marry him. that was just awkward. i felt horrible.)
i obviously didn't get married on the trip, but i think i came just about as close as you can. i even picked who was going to be in the wedding and we had a bit of a bachelorette party in our hotel room/by the pool that night. [thank you Lord for this day!]
word spread about the marriage and i would see kids pointing and laughing or the kitchen ladies smiling at me whenever i turned around. it was pretty funny. my favorite lady "sign language" brought it up every day and would point at him then me and give me a hug :) she was great.


okay, that's all i got for this story. have fun with the comments :)