Dungeon or Domicile?

Whew. It's Monday, and somehow that day-of-the-week marker is comforting, even though I've been tempted to write that type of identification off as irrelevant. I am not in a dungeon, not surrounded by four stone walls with no sunlight. I am not trying to keep track of the days by drawing my own blood and making painful tally marks. I can take the orientations of day of the week and day of the month and time of day as beauty, and let them stabilize me, instead of resenting every day as life as I knew it feels locked. I have an opportunity to embrace the increased space and stillness to do some of the emotional work I have claimed I am "too busy" for. Even though life looks somewhat different right now, I am not chained. Even though life looks somewhat different right now, I am not chained. I always have the choice to be grateful. And I have a choice to reach out and love. Life is still a gift, if I choose to receive it. I have so much power. Today, I claim it.

my breakfast nook, a place of peace and solace

Hopeless, Obsessed or Somewhere in Between

So. It's a tiny bit past midnight, and as often happens after a long conversation with my best friend, I'm finding it hard to wind down and sleep right this minute. And so here I am, writing a post that I already had a name and a concept for, but is mostly a messy ball of ideas at the moment. So thank you in advance for reading this in its very raw form. Hopefully it will be coherent enough now and be part of something more polished later.

Before I left to come overseas and teach homeschool this year, I was talking to some guy friends of mine about how I find it really easy to swing from being hopeless (I'm never going to find anyone or No one will like me anyway) to obsessed (I have found the person I want and now they have to like me back, they just have to). Neither mindset is one I want to be in. Both of them make me miserable, albeit in different ways, but still miserable. When I feel hopeless, specifically about romance and love, I tend to look at all the ways I am still not who I think I should be. All sorts of negative thoughts go through my head about my past failures and my current struggles and my perpetual weaknesses. "You're never going to make someone a good partner anyways." "You've failed at so many relationships--what makes you think this time will be any different?" "You're not good enough." "If you were really captivating, someone would have pursued you by now, someone who would be good for you." And then it would turn into more action-oriented, cutting things. "Maybe you should just give up." "Why keep hoping? It only hurts you."

The verse I have thought of when I think of the hopefulness that, when unexamined and then disappointed, leads to this kind of hopelessness is this:

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." Proverbs 13:12

I certainly know about the heartsickness, but I have taken this verse gravely out of context. I have used it to try and be angry that I haven't had what I long for, that it hasn't come to pass yet. I reason that a good God wouldn't want my heart to be sick, so why would he let my longing be unfulfilled? I wonder if I have been reading this verse all wrong.
*First of all, longing isn't painted as a bad thing, even though it can be vulnerable, sometimes painful, and even quite confusing at times.
*Second of all, it doesn't at all mention what kind of hope is being deferred. If the hope is for meaningful connection, acceptance, and love, then that is absolutely not out of reach, no matter what my relationship status happens to be.
*Thirdly, God has made us for longing, and He is the only one who can ultimately fulfill our hearts, so perhaps when hope is deferred it is not about our lives being really tough so much as what we choose to believe when our lives get tough and it feels like our deepest dreams or strongest hopes are genuinely never going to happen/come to pass.

If all three of these things are true, then that is very good news. And this verse isn't a license to rage and rail at God for withholding good things from us. Perhaps it is a reminder that he has given us Himself, the very best gift we could ever hope for, and He has also given us longing.

Longing is a gift. I know that is counterintuitive, but sometimes us melancholy people feel that truth deep down in the marrow of our bones. To deeply desire and to feel that ache is a beautiful human experience. But where I sometimes get it wrong is thinking that longing is the main gift, that in itself it is complete. But the thing about longing is that it always points to something. Maybe you long for adventure. Then adventure is the object of your affection and also your longing. Maybe you long for rest. Then rest is the object of your longing. The problem is that when we long for something deeply and for its own sake, we are so often catapulted right into the deep end of this spectrum, which is nothing less than obsession.

This is the opposite of hopelessness, but we are just as focused on ourselves. The other thing is that we are not trusting in God to do anything about it if we are in either of these extremes. We've either given up because we don't think there's anything we can do and we don't think He will make a move, or we have moved into the mindset where we will do anything possible to win that person over, get that job, or obtain perfection in a particular skill or habit. So when we are in that far extreme of obsession, there is this do-it-yourself attitude that shoves God out, puts us on center stage, essentially responsible for everything that happens without any input or wisdom from the God who created us. There is also a sense of entitlement that is dangerous. More often than not in this extreme, we leave behind the mindset that we're not good enough or that we don't have what it takes to move forward in our lives, and instead our egos have grown so much that not only do we think we're doing great, but we think we are entitled to get that thing or person or job that we have been wanting.

Longing is this place somewhere in between being hopeless and obsessed. When we are vulnerable and honest with God and ourselves first about what we desire and then safe, supportive people, there is something beautiful about that, and healing. We bring our feelings to God, and even if they are in the extremes of hopeless or obsessed, he can help us sort things out, bring us balance, and then redirect our longing to Himself, so that we don't drown in it. And being drawn to God in our longing can only help us. So longing is a gift—if we bring it to Him.

Why We Should Stop the Pursuit of Happiness

I know this title alone will have some people up in arms, especially Americans. It's written into the fabric of our country, isn't it? The inalienable rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I believe this phrase is almost as revered as the ten commandments used to be. In fact, don't we think something is wrong with the person who isn't doggedly pursuing happiness, or don't we at least think they're weird?

But it's gone too far. It's an obsession. We are obsessed with finding someone, some job, some house, some defining moment, some drink, some song, some book, some artist...and the list goes on. Someday we'll be happy if...

Maybe we can be happy when...  

I think we should absolutely have goals in our lives, and people to share our lives with. But we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that with the acquisition of some new passion or relationship, we will suddenly be all-encompassingly happy. Our lives are right now, in this moment, not yesterday in the "if only I had done things differently" or tomorrow in the "if I just do things differently". Today we have to choose who we will be, and what our lives will be about. A happy, fulfilling life is just a bunch of those todays strung together. We don't even always make meaning out of them until later.

Maybe it's time for me to shift my focus. My happiness plans don't tend to pan out well anyways, and this intense focus on finding my fix or my niche or whatever just makes me feel more tired. I know it will take some time to break the habit; it's so well-formed. If I feel a little uncomfortable or the silence becomes too oppressive, my instinct is to put a TV show on. If I feel restless, sometimes it's shopping. Or a nap, that'll solve everything right? It just makes me feel more discontent. This gnawing for satisfaction is seemingly endless, a hunger not easily sated by anything for long. 

Just to be clear, I'm not demonizing happiness itself. It has its place. If I was never ever happy, chances are that there might be some questions to ask myself. I'm saying that the unrelenting pursuit of it in abandonment of everything else or at the cost of everything else is nothing short of selfish, and even crazy.

My thoughts on this are not fully formed, but I am noticing that the more present I can be in each moment, the greater the capacity for feeling alive. Not every moment is going to be happy, but I can choose to be content in whatever emotion happens to be moving through me in that moment, and maybe that's even better.

Processing Depression (and Living Well Anyways)

Someone told me recently, “Usually when things go to shit, everything goes to shit”. It’s also true that there’s never a good time to fall apart; it will never be convenient for the people around you. It’s why people who are clinically and chronically depressed feel like they’re "too much", because in a way, our pain and sometimes crippling emotions are an extra burden for those around us to bear. I’m in a tough place right now, and I’ve been doing a fair bit of leaning on other people. But I have to believe—to get through day after day—that it won’t always be like this and I will emerge from this season stronger and more resilient to the hurricane-force winds that life brings. And then I will be someone others can lean on, and I will be fortified so that I don’t break under the weight of their burdens.

There’s a difference between feeling inconvenient and being inconvenient. Life is not all about taking care of ourselves; we also care for others. Others’ needs and feelings and hurts are rarely if ever convenient, but that doesn’t make them any less important. It’s in these moments that we do something inconvenient, that we step outside of ourselves, that we are showing love.

It may seem silly, but when someone lets me turn right out of a parking lot onto a busy street, I am so grateful. I feel that they have done something lovely. Do you know why? It was inconvenient for them. And yet, when I see people waiting to turn right, so often my instant reaction is that I have somewhere to be, that someone else will wait for them to turn. But here’s the thing: everyone has somewhere to be. But if we never act outside of what is entirely comfortable and best for us, what a mad world it would be. And what a mad world it already is. What if we made it a little less mad? What if each of us did one thing for someone else that was inconvenient every day? I don’t know if it would change the world, but I think it would start to change us.

The Beauty of Sleeplessness

Hello friends,

the title of this post is somewhat sarcastic and slightly sardonic, since at the moment it is 1:27 in the morning and I woke up about an hour ago for no apparent reason after going to bed at 10:00 at night, because that's the sensible thing to do when waking up at 5 or 5:30 a.m. I also have a raging sore throat. But I digress. I'm not here to complain.

This is actually the third night this week that I have either not slept well or slept very little for various reasons, and when I finally realized I wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep I had a few different choices. I could find something amusing to watch on Netflix (but I've been trying to cut back on mind-glazing entertainment), I could make a list of all the things I needed to do (which seemed sensible and adult-y), or I could write. What I used to do when I couldn't sleep was write. I wrote fiction, raw material that turned into blog posts, I journaled, I thought onto the page, often very messily. There were times I looked at my words the next day and didn't really know what to make of them.

Now the "beauty" of sleeplessness comes in the fact that to my mind and body, it is no longer an option to be asleep. This means that my brain is awake as well, and it wants to do something. I am encouraged by the fact that although I briefly considered "glazing" and watching something on Netflix, it did not feel like that attractive of an option. So I opened my blog and clicked new post, intending to close it immediately and link to my blog drafts. After writing many—oh, so many—posts in my drafts that had nothing more than an interesting title and no body, I really wanted to finish one of them. But I knew that in my also very awake perfectionist self, I would scroll through, find all of the titles wanting, despair at having to choose any of them, and ultimately, feeling discouraged and frustrated with myself, write absolutely nothing and turn to Netflix for solace. That wouldn't do. And so, taking a deep breath, I clicked new post, and promised myself that even if what came out was raw and something that I doubted people would relish, I would post it, if only to force myself back into a writing rhythm.

So here I am, sleepless and madly typing, and feeling the strange euphoria that only comes from creating something where there was nothing, watching words appear out of the depths of my strange brain, and knowing that if I hadn't woken up at a bizarre time, this post wouldn't have happened. That is not to say I don't write blog posts at "normal" times, but THIS post wouldn't have happened. These thoughts wouldn't exist on the page. I think that's kind of crazy, and more than a little cool. Ergo, the beauty of sleeplessness.

It has been said that the best time to write is right when you wake up, because you give yourself a chance to be creative before your inner critic and editor entirely wake up. There's a flow and a freedom that is different. And I agree. It's also important to make sure you edit when you write in this state, unless you're writing a blog post like this, which I feel is important to leave as is, kind of to make a point. The point is that polished and perfect is not all that all the time, just like having a routine and a regular schedule is not all that, and making perfect [lists] of things to do isn't all that. We are so beautiful in our messiness, in our craziness, in our sleeplessness. Thank you for reading this post, as is, hardly backspaced or overthought, and I wish you both beauty and (occasional) sleeplessness. At least metaphorically.

Cheers,
Camila

P.S. I know that writing about writing (so meta!) is sometimes discouraged. But since a lot of my issues with continuing to write have to do with the insane struggle of writing itself, I made an exception. ;-)

Making Friends With Silence

Hello fellow sojourners,

I took a two week break between graduating with my bachelor's degree and jumping into my master's program (after three days of trying to push through pure exhaustion and realizing I needed time to recuperate) and it's one of the most life-giving, peaceful things I could have done for myself. I realize, after looking around at a lot of lives, that this hiatus is a privilege, not a right, and I am grateful for every day. I also have been embracing some different patterns. I decided I needed to stop watching high-intensity dramas, at least for a good while, because they were exacerbating my fear and anxiety, and even depression. I knew that these weren't healthy ways to escape, but had resisted making this change for a long time. And why? Because I was afraid of the silence that I knew would be there when I turned off the static of empty entertainment. The noise in my head was sometimes overwhelming, but at least I wasn't hearing all of my own thoughts.

Then I was having some time with Jesus a couple mornings ago and He said to me,

"Silence feels like a threat—to happiness, to peace of mind, to keeping occupied. It feels scary so you've made it your enemy. Would you like to make friends with it again?"

And I realized that I did. When I asked Him how I would be able to do that, He said,

"Same way anyone makes friends...spend time with it. You've become buddies with noise, so it may feel pretty uncomfortable or unnatural at first, but you can learn to savor silence, not only when you are alone but with other people. Not feeling that you have to fill the space will be freeing (a relief, really) for you and make you a more restful, peaceful human being. I think that's what you want, right? ;)"
(and yes, I did feel that he was winking at me, because of course he knows what I want, and how to help me with those struggles)

So I've been spending little bits of time in silence, and felt the noise that was so constant subsiding, both outside of me and somewhat on the inside as well. Even choosing to listen to instrumental music when I'm already feeling like there's a lot going on inside of me emotionally has been really good in choosing to rest in Jesus instead of escaping into noise.

The verse that comes to mind is, "Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted in the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!" God doesn't just call us to be still for our own sake, although it often ends up being really good for our hearts, but to turn our eyes to Him and to His glory. He is worthy of all of our attention and worship, and when we are focused on Him, we don't have to be afraid.

Resting,
Camila Joy

First Time in a Long Time

Hello fellow sojourners,

        Today is a day of not exactly firsts, but firsts in a long time. For example, somehow I have not managed to write and publish a blog post since a little over two years ago, but here I am writing one. And I picked up my guitar out of the corner for the first time this afternoon and did some songwriting—which felt fantastic. I get an odd pleasure out of my fingers being newly sore from pressing on guitar strings, because it means that I'm breaking them in again, forming calluses.
      I started reading this book that my sister recommended called "Better Than Before" which is all about mastering habits, so that we actually do the things that we want to do. Think about it. There are so many thing we say that we want to do, but out of habit or, perhaps, lack of habit, we just don't get around to it. And here's the thing. If we don't just choose to start doing something again, even if it feels clunky or unnatural, we might never get around to it.
      There are lots of things I would like to change, but I think it all boils down to one main idea. I want to choose things that bring me life. I already know, from experience, that empty entertainment (episode after episode of some show on Netflix for example) drains me. I can take a little of it for unwinding or enjoyment, but hours and hours on end make me groggy and dull my senses to the world around me. Also, I tend to watch dramas, so everything feels a little more urgent or dramatic after I've been in that space for a while. But enough about what I don't want to do.
      I want to play and write music, write lots and lots of bad songs without worrying about getting to the good ones, which I'm sure will come eventually. I want to read real books with paper, not on a screen, for fun and also for improvement and challenging myself in certain areas. I want to write stories that are full of the messiness of people and life and the sorrow and the joy that are mixed up together. I want to organize my stuff in such a way that I have readily available what I need often and tidily stored what I don't, and be able to see my surfaces and enjoy peace. Someone once told me what CHAOS stood for in this context: Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. I totally agree. When my space is at its worst, I don't invite people into it. I would like to have PEACE—Place for Everything And Creative Endeavors. I'll work on that acronym, but you get the idea.
       I hope that this post finds you well, but whether it does or not, I offer you the idea that I am putting into place. It's a daily gratitude journal. I'm going to write down three new things every day that I am grateful for. I'll do it for a month to start with, and hopefully by then it'll be engrained, because I hope to do it for a long time to come. In the midst of many obligations and expectations that often feel heavy and fresh grief, I have to actively acknowledge the beauty in the world to see it, because things can so easily become a blur. I started on Monday and then forgot yesterday, so I'm writing six (double-punching, as my significant other calls it) today. Here are my six for yesterday and today:

~A beautiful breeze
~People that fix electronics, especially computers
~Clean water to drink and bathe in
~My guitar, Clifford
~A tight-knit family
~Tea

What are three things that you are grateful for today?
Name them, maybe even write them down. Savor life.

Glad to be writing again,
Camila

The Power of Choice and Deletion of Should

         Life and people often put so many demands on us, and sometimes the pressure can suffocate us, but it doesn't have to. I do my best not to use "should" in the way I think about and talk about my life, and I am working on eliminating "have to" as well. I either do something or I don't. I either want to do something, or I don't. I'm either assigned something or I'm not. I either have dirty dishes in the sink, or clean ones in the drain. I am not a slave to duty. I have the privilege of choice.
        Let that knowledge sink in. Even if you have deadlines, you have a choice about how you spend your time. Do the things that bring you life, not because you "should", but because you CAN.

A Long Time in Coming

Hi fellow wanderers, discoverers, mourners, rejoicers, 
this post has been a long time in coming, and so has a return to joy. But now, with the return to joy, these words are for you.

Grief is not forever. 
Hope is not gone. 
Pain is not the absence of Joy. 

Agony and Ecstacy are sides of the same coin; if you can howl in utter desperation as you are breaking apart, it is certain that you can find your way back to wholeness. Be where you are, and don't be afraid to feel. Don't be afraid to break. Don't be afraid to be afraid, but only be afraid of not fully living. And even then, don't stay there. Live. 

Love.

4/6/2013-4/7/2013

So THAT'S why they call it Monday...

Oh, yes. It has been quite a Monday. I got an essay back from my comparative religions class with a "C" on it. I have a week to rewrite it for a better grade. Then, inexplicably, I felt really really sick before I got on the bus to go back home and retrieve the stuff I needed for my next class. So I didn't go to that class today. To top it all off, my joints are all aching and my feet hurt really bad. I have very little energy at all. BUT...
1. I'm still able to walk on my own.
2. I have a God who loves me.
3. I have a family who supports me.
4. I get to live with my sister, who is rooting for me to get through all of this emotional and physical pain and only be stronger because of it.
5. Coffee still tastes excellent, and there is plenty of it for me to drink.

Those are my top 5 "things to be thankful for". I do believe the enemy is all over the sickness and weakness today, because the second week of the "Restoring Wholeness" group I go to meets tonight, and I have faith that it is going to be a key component in me getting the better of this depression and rising up a whole and joyful person. So I'm going to keep fighting. I hope that you all have had better Mondays, but if you haven't, try listing 5 things you can be thankful for, then thank your Creator and Daddy God for those things. It's already changing my perspective as I write this. Hang in there, warriors! This world is not our home, and God has prepared a wonderful place for us, but we need to live our lives with all that we have, because He's worth it. And he will love us through all of it.

Rejoicing in the Valley

It’s time I started writing again. It’s the way that I’ve always processed, found my way back from the darkest caves and all my wanderings. I know that things are a mess right now, but the only way out of a mess is to move. The only way out of a mess is to recognize that you’re in one, and to start doing one small thing at a time. Healing does take time, but it does happen. To heal is a verb though, and it doesn’t happen by simply waiting to be zapped out of the sky. I know that now, more than ever. And I do have the choice to make things better or worse, no matter how bad or good things are. I always have the choices of what to do, what attitude to have, what response to have. I have the choice of what to believe about myself and about God, what to believe about others, what to believe about life. I have the choice what to let influence me, what music to listen to, what books to read, what shows and movies to watch. I have the choice to let my emotions control me or not, to push through the emotional and physical pain and do what I need to do to heal. I know that I’m stronger inside than I sometimes feel. 

Sometimes it really does hurt to breathe. Sometimes I do feel like I can’t do anything. But what’s really true? Right now, I don’t have the energy or passion level that I used to have, and I’ve been falling short of what I have expected myself to be. But it’s not true that I can’t do anything. I can pray. I can sing. I can receive love. I can give love. I can write. I can express. I can sing. I can extend compassion. I can worship. I can listen. I can be still. I can make choices. I can attend school, because I have been, and I haven’t failed any classes. I can make coffee. I can make eggs. I can read. I can take the bus. I can open up. I can get help when I need to. I can fight depression. I can surrender. I can be humble. I can cry. I can hope. I can enjoy the fact that I have red hair for the moment. I can accept myself the way that I am. I can grieve the loss of a dream. I can heal from a broken heart. I can forgive myself for the mistakes that I made. I can forgive him for the mistakes he made. I can ask for support when I’m weak and tired. I can be transparent without being mousy or whiny. I can believe the things that are true. I can embrace the “me” that is right now without accepting that I will always be this way. I can believe that God’s promises are true. I am capable of so much, maybe less physically, but I’ve never been especially ACTIVE, just excessively bouncy. I think that God wants to teach me that it’s a lot more about what’s inside, the radiant beauty of a spirit resting in him, than anything external like physical beauty or even physical energy. I want to be at peace no matter what I’m doing or not doing. I want to be rooted so deeply in who I am in Christ that even if I were an invalid and all I could do was pray, I would feel and know that I was just as valued and precious. The living GOD cherishes me. That has to change the way I look at myself, right? Well, I want to soak it all in, in this time where I’m forced to slow down and be still a lot more than I really thought I ever wanted to.

A friend of mine started a young adult group recently and the premise of what she heard from God about it was the concept of “greatly rejoicing in the valley”. Every one of us that gathered that first night felt like we were in a valley in some way in our season of life, whether it was about career or emotional state or just feeling lost. I asked God what that meant for me, and he showed me that music was one of those gifts he’d given me that he wanted me to dig into in this season. So I expect that there will be a lot of real, raw music that will come out of this time. I’m ready to embrace the mess. I choose to embrace it, because life is worth it. And life is only worth it because of the God I serve. And that makes every day worth not only living, but celebrating.

Profile of a Warrior

A warrior is fierce, heaven-bent on protecting the honor of his King.
A warrior has her mind set on her King, who has sent her to gain victory over the enemy.
A warrior knows when to rest, so that he can return to battle refreshed and renewed.
A warrior loves deeply, knowing that she may die that day, in the heat of the fighting.
A warrior doesn’t live his life for himself, and is willing to die for the cause.
A warrior lives simply, not dragging around lots of things everywhere she goes.
A warrior is well-protected, and would never go out to battle without his armor.
A warrior is loyal, and will sacrifice her life for her friend.
A warrior stays with his army, and doesn’t isolate from them.
A warrior is honest when she is tired or wounded and asks for reinforcements.
A warrior keeps his eyes on hope, and goes out confident of the destruction of his enemies.
A warrior doesn’t give up when things seem impossible, but she presses in harder and expects breakthrough.
A warrior keeps perspective, and he doesn’t measure the final outcome by small battles lost.
A warrior fights as much for her own heart and life as for the one next to her, knowing that she is as valuable as her friend.
A warrior needs no honor or accolades to know he has done well; he values most the words of his King.
A warrior listens to her leaders, and respects their authority.
A warrior makes no compromises to let the enemy have passage, and he fights offensively to drive them back.
A warrior knows that without the whole, she has little effectiveness, but that, joined together, there is great power.
A warrior knows who he is, his strengths and weaknesses, and doesn’t try to pretend they don’t exist, but works with them and others to be the most effective.
A warrior’s life is the battle.

NaNoWriMo

I'm writing a novel in the month of November, and it's exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. It's an amazing thing to sit down and create your own world, but sometimes it feels like everything is a mess and not going the way you thought it might. I'm so glad that God doesn't get as frustrated with His Story as I do with mine. :]

21. Not the game, the age

Hello,
it's not often that I post on my actual birthday, but I feel like this is a pretty important one. :]  I turn 21 today, which somehow means a ton more in this country (USA) than being 18. So...now I can legally drink alcoholic beverages, but I'm not planning to go wild with it. I guess for me, it means that I want to be who I want to be. I mean, who I am now really is forming who I'll be for the rest of my life. I want to make my life count, for the One who gave me Life. That means that there's always something to celebrate!

In Him,
Camila

Escape!

        Is it bad that one of the first things I think of when I see this word is Dory from Finding Nemo trying to sound it out on the boat? But on a more serious note, I would say that an obsession with non reality and fantasy is a big problem. Even if the form of escape is something positive, like art or music, it can quickly become something that takes priority over real people and real responsibilities. In the words of a guy in my class that I had a discussion with today "People are running from their problems." I asked him if he thought that if people really lived in reality and dealt with things from that viewpoint, if it would solve any problems. He responded that it absolutely would! I asked him why, and he responded that if people were actually facing their problems and dealing with them, there wouldn't be a need for drugs and other forms of escape to get away from the problem itself.
      So I guess my question is, if people are so comfortable living in their fantasy worlds, what would induce them to come out of there, feel the cold water on their faces, face what they've been running from? What's the incentive? What would they want more than their own dream, even if it's not real? And also just as important, what has happened to society that living a fantasy is more desirable than living in the world in front of them, and actually enjoying what reality has to offer? My hypothesis is that people don't feel like reality, as it is today, is actually worth living in. But isn't one of the issues that the problems they see that they don't like aren't being solved by and large because people are running from them? It seems to me that it's a cycle.
      But what is it that will pull people out of this, to start looking around and really seeing what's going on? We value our comfort in this country. We value the illusion that everything is good in the world if it's good in our personal lives. And if it's not even good there, we have our escape. It seems like a neat and tidy little system. But what about all the people that are unseen because of this viewpoint? What about the girls who are abused and are recruited into prostitution before they're even 18? What about the ones who abuse them? We have to take a good hard look at reality and let it sink in that we, the ones living in this world full of problems, are the ones who must take action if we want anything to change. With God's help and power, there is hope to see change and transformation. But we do have to get up and do something. Rise up, world changers! You are needed. We are needed.

New season; new things!

Hello...
It has been way too long since I've sat down to write...and I don't just mean "de blog". I used to write all the time, just for the heck of it. Now, it's rare for me to make time to write, and often I put it off. Even this--this is a guilt post, just out of reaction of the horror of the amount of time since my last one. But I'm hoping that because I'm forcing myself to write, even in a small way, that my writing coals will be re-sparked and ignited. Don't get me wrong, I still love to write; I'm just very out of practice. 
So...this becomes a way to encourage the writer in me again, and keep y'all updated. 
      So...as to what's new, I joined a small Christian dance company, which is inspiring me to dance more during the week and also a great place to connect with people as well. I am taking four classes at a community college, and enjoying that. I am in the process of finding a job as well. Oh, and in less than a week, I turn 21. How crazy is that?? Okay, maybe I'm the only one who thinks that's crazy. But it's exciting. I feel older already. :P


~The Inside-Out Beauty~

I keep dropping the ball

I can't believe it's been a whole month since I last wrote a blog post...crazy! I guess the biggest news recently is that my best friend and boyfriend who I haven't ever met before is visiting me, and he's coming...wait for it...TODAY!! :) So yeah, that's pretty much all that's on my mind. ;) Will write more soon!

Plans, hopes, dreams, and surrender

Aren't there always things we want, things we long for? I find the rhythm and balance between my desires and God's dreams for me is sometimes hard to find. As long as I keep my eyes on Him, things make more sense, but as soon as I look away, it's so much harder to find my way. I'm so grateful for His love and guidance. Jesus is my ROCK. When I stand on Him as my truth, I will not be shaken.

New season; new start

The chapter with YWAM has closed, but God doesn't leave things hanging. Instead my life is wonderfully full here in Arizona. I love being a part of the youth ministry at my church (Vineyard Community Church) and slowly integrating into the worship team for the main services. God has been blessing these days with bucketfuls of peace and joy. What a wonderful life!

Why are we surprised?

I feel like after all of the prayers God has answered recently, I shouldn't be surprised that He continues to be faithful and do the things that He's promised, but I am! I ask Him to open doors, and I see them flinging open right and left. I ask Him to give me opportunities to serve and love people, and He sent me to Malaysia for 2 and a half! Wow. I just sense that there is so much FAVOR over this season. I want to write more, but it's just shameful how little I've posted, so I'll post this now, and write more soon!