Cuz I'm standing here and you're miles away...

I am....
Smiling cuz it's my favorite. Missing how things were. Tired cuz I can be. Sore from lifting. Stressed due to the lack of order in my room. Happy around you. Excited for the weekend. Only fooling myself. Glad its finally summer. Covered with papercuts from filing at work. Saying a little prayer. Loving life. Learning to say what I need to say. Not afraid anymore. Needing routine, like NOW. Stuck in a rut. In like (and not sure how I feel about it...)Trusting God. Enjoying the sunshine. Shy when I shouldn't be. Waiting for some guidance. Lucky to be standing where I am. Kindly unspoken. Praying for direction. Trying to have patience. Confusing from time to time. Becoming a stranger to myself. Wanting to go camping. Going back to the start. Looking forward to this summer. Thankful for the people around me. Working on getting it right. Ready for more change. Getting lost tonight. Letting go of control. . Happier than I've been in a long time.

I'm too random for my own good sometimes. But basically I couldn't decide what to write about so it's kinda all just morphed into one random entry... It didn't really go as planned but lately most things don't so no big deal.

Playing hide and seek without hiding.

It's summertime! Doesn't really feel like it weather wise but there are boxes covering my floor, there's a new setup in my room, and I've had my first bonfire of the season. So basically all is right in my world now, or something like that. I have been looking forward to summer since spring semester started, and now it's here and I don't know quite what to make of it. I've said goodbye to some amazing friends, packed up way more stuff than any one person should own, and I've gotten to see the amazing friends that have said their own goodbyes and are now home.
It's so weird living in the same town that you go to school in. To some extent it doesn't really feel like summer or break because I'm still right here, the scenery hasn't changed much just the people have. So basically the only difference is that I'm living at home all the time now instead of a couple hours a day and a night or two a week (I spent way more time home than I have ever done in a semester) and that for the next few weeks I am free of classes. :) It's a good break in that sense.
This semester kicked my butt, between the course work, being sick a lot, stuff at home, and a appointment like every couple days I was all over the place. And somehow I still managed to pull off pretty decent grades. I think I even found a little of that change that I was looking for in Feburary.

Only problem is I don't know where to go from here. I don't really have any plans just a lot of unanswered questions, some what if's, and a couple different possibilities but I don't know what to do with any of it. Any attempts that I have made to sort it all out have failed. So I'm letting it go,but not in the sense that I'm quitting. I've learned a lot in recent months and it's time for me to act on it. I'm done hiding, and doing my own thing. I'm seeking and letting go of everything that I hold onto. I've thought a lot about what comes next and where I go from here. And I still don't have an answer. I just know that everything is going to be fine however it plays out.

"For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart. Then I will be found my you." -Jeremiah 29:11-14

Cleaning out my closet and learning lessons from blocks of wood

When I was younger I used to go to camp for a week every summer. One year we were sent home with a block of wood that had words written on each side of it. PRAY-TAKE ACTION-LISTEN-COMMIT. Each word was a theme during the week, but that's really not important now. I had entirely forgotten about that summer at camp and the block of wood, until last night. I was cleaning out my closet when I found it commitment side up. :) Yeah that's right out of the four sides it could have been flipped to the word commit was there in big bold letters. Perhaps there's a reason I uncovered the block of wood in my closet.
In the past I've been a little afraid of commitment when it comes to relationships. I have a hard time letting people in past a certain point and once they are there all I want to do is push them out. No real reason that I do it, just not a fan of that whole vulnerability thing. Well that and up until now it wasn't the right timing (yep, I played that card!) I've tried to do the relationship thing on several different occasions and while they all got somewhere, they really went nowhere. Because I ignored the one relationship that I truely needed to commit to. Combine a girl that doesn't want to be vulnerable with a girl not sure where she's going/who she is. Then throw in a girl who's not on the right track with God and you've got yourself a commitaphobe. Not exactly the idea combination but I made it work for awhile. And over the past year it began to work less and less. So I was scrambling and making parts of it work. All the while I began to realize who I was and where I was going with a lot of help from God. It took a year or two of being something that I wasn't and a couple failed attempts at commitment to realize that I had one relationship to focus on. And focus on it I did.
So now I sit typing alway and staring down at the block of wood. Which suddenly seems to serve as a little reminder of where I was and where I now stand. As well as whats to come.

No giving up now

I'm here, I'm now, I'm ready.... but something just doesn't seem quite right...

Bitter-sweet symphony....

I'm currently sitting on my bed, because that seems to be the only area of my room not cluttered with boxes and bags of a year's worth of crap ready to be packed up. As I look at everything in front of me, and think about what it represents, I can't help but think it's bitter sweet. The semester is over, another year of college is finished, and the summer of 08 is waiting to begin. I am ready to be done with this semester, to get away, clear my head, and figure things out. But I've also become quite comfortable with this routine that I have created and I'm not ready to let it go of it. Or of the relationships that have been formed, repaired, or expanded upon. Everything is different when you go home. And while I'm excited to move home (a whole 5 minutes down the road), I'm not quite ready for it. The end of the year becomes this bitter-sweet symphony because it's full of up's and down's, beginning's and end's, goodbye's and welcome home's and a brand new routine.

Honesty will reach out from inside you, and tatoo itself all over your face....

So I'm kind of a journal-aholic. I have a journal for everything- one for quotes, one for prayers, another the reads more like a diary or a breakdown of my day, and one for the things that don't fit anywhere else. And these journals date back for several years. Every so often I find myself going back to these journals and reading what I wrote, seeing where I was, and looking ahead to where I am now. I happened to stumble across an entry that was written 2 years ago. It was about honesty so I decided to re-read it. "Honesty will reach out from inside you, and tatoo itself all over your face..." I read over that quote several times, it's strange but it stuck with me. It somehow fit with what I was going through then, and it fits with me now. There are so many things that I want to say but for various reasons I don't. Somehow they still seem to be said and if you pay close enough attention you'll pick up on them.