~ On Memories ~

It's been so long. But it feels like yesterday. Everything has changed, yet nothing is different. When I think about 2012 and 2013, I can not compare the two. They have each been so full. Full of everything I suppose. New friends, old friends, new music, music that brings back memories, confusion and peril, happiness and contentment, love and hurt, days and nights of summer bliss. Busyness, business. 

God is faithful. I rest in Him. Through sunshine and rain. Through love and pain. 

He is the same. 

Some days I wonder if I could've changed the way things are: If I could've helped or if I could've avoided change. But it's all part of the plan. Not my plan. Thank God it's not my plan. 

I wonder if people miss me when I go. I wonder if friends hold on to memories or if they forget. All I know is that I hold on to every memory I can find, and keep it there. Some memories are clearer than others, but each one is important. What about the things I'd rather forget? I still hold on to those to learn from them. Even if they're embarrassing or it hurts to think back, I must hold on to it. God puts each and every feeling and experience in my life for a reason, and I can't bear forgetting. I do too often forget. 

Forget what I've learned. 

Forget how steadfast The Lord is and become fearful and doubt. 

Forget how much something meant to me. 

Get so caught up in unimportant things that I forget to spend time on the most important thing: a relationship with God. 

But, sometimes I feel like it's best to make new memories instead of dwell on the old ones. 

So let's go out and make some memories. 

Posted from my iPhone. 

~ On Being Transferred ~

Whew. What a month. Praise God.
May has been one of the craziest, packed full, insane, spirit filled months of my entire life here on earth. I can't even begin to write about it, and I'll admit it; I have been putting it off. Writing has seemed for the past month like something I don't have enough time to sit down and do. But this morning is so calm. I'm in my own house, in my own room, reading my own Bible, singing my own songs, and writing. Life hasn't felt this good in a very long time. The Lord brought peace again, like He never fails to do.



I would write about what Transfer was like and how all the messages were so great and the worship...maybe another time. But oh, summer brings great things, and I'm sure of it. At this point, staying home from everything is a very, very great thing. Being able to play outside in our backyard is a very great thing. Reading to Ryan, showing him the magic of Narnia and Harry Potter, that is a great thing. Reviewing notes and re-reading passages of scripture, jumping on the trampoline late at night, getting together volleyball and soccer games...that's what's in store for my summer. I don't know where the Lord wants me to be as far as mission trips go, but for now, before everything is worked out, I will make home my mission, along with joining the work-place for the first time. I will try to make pouring into my friends my mission: encouraging them in the gospel.

~ Short, short-story ~

I wrote this the other day, and thought I'd put it on here.

She tried and tried, but her heart just wasn't in it that day. Her sketches were as bland as the words on the page. When she wasn't drawing, she was writing, and when she couldn't write, she drew, and when she couldn't draw, she wrote. Both were particularly unhelpful tonight. Maybe it was the weather: dreary, rainy, depressing, and probably smothering her creative outlook.
"Maybe tracing would be easier," she thought. The lines weren't straight.
"Perhaps writing a song would work." The lines didn't rhyme.
Things just were not going well on that rainy night in the city. All she could hear were the raindrops on the avenues, highways, and back alleys, the knick knacks on her counter rattling with the thunder, and the round lanterns (imported straight from Japan and China) blowing back and forth under her ceiling fan.
"Reading?" she asked herself. "No, still too much to do."
Yet here she sat, blankly staring at a screen that was no more helpful than the rain outside. Papers were scattered around her chair, filled with either the first chapters of a novel (which would have been supremely popular over every other in her time), or the beginnings of a sketch of a girl or a boy, doing something or other depending on their expressions.
"I just need to step back."
The digital-green clock read "1:00AM" but that was the usual for her. The streets were still busy in the city: so was she. Or at least, she was trying to be busy. She was trying very hard to be busy. But, artist's and writer's block had finally forced her outside onto her little apartment's "back porch." The lines of the city were blurred without her glasses, but she wasn't about to put them back on. The rain felt too nice on her discouraged face. She took a deep breath, and the refreshing moment was spoiled by the inhalation of exhaust from the cars, taxis, and trucks below. They looked like little blurs too.
Suddenly, a burst on inspiration hit her. She ran back inside without drying her hair or her face and sat down on the floor. Ravenously, she grabbed a piece of drawn on paper and found a blank space. She sat for at least an hour trying to get it right, occasionally going outside and coming back in, looking out the windows, and taking her glasses on and off.
The result was amazing, with or without glasses! She didn't sleep that night, but she wrote a short paragraph for her sketch, showered, dressed, and drove down to the Agency at "6:00AM," according to the clock.
They loved it, all of it, and the next day it was up on a billboard, sponsoring some perfume they had named after it: "The Raining City."

For us. For all the girls who are doing something or other, hitting blank pages and spacing out. Sometimes we have to blur the lines to see them.

~ So Close ~

How to begin?



April has been it's own month this year. Feels like every other month was a month of nostalgia. Or at least, I made it one in my head. My thoughts have been pouring forward in stead of backward. Sometimes this is good, and sometimes not, but I guess that strongly depends on what your future and past look like. Things seem to fly past without warning, and then come back to you later.
Your siblings got taller last night.
April 2013 is 4 days from being over.
The trees have leaves for the first time since early October.
We hardly have any 30 degree days anymore.
3 weeks of school.
3 weeks until summer.
3 weeks until graduation.

Some hate it, and some are counting down the minutes. I'm in the middle.

I remember telling a friend one night, "only 142 days until Transfer!" She made this disappointed face, but I was happy. It was so far, but it was something to look forward to. Now I check my countdown calendar and see only 28 days, 15 hours, and 37 minutes. That will probably have changed by the time I post this. It's not far. (Transfer is like the start of my summer) It's so close.
Yet it won't be the same. It's not Advance in the woods where we made all those memories. But I think it will be good. Great. Awesome.
I like to think of it this way:
We're not holding on to letting go, but letting go of holding on.

Even still, I'm not really going to try to forget. I'm just going to not to only remember all of the time.
It was too good to forget.



But, the best memories are the ones that we still haven't made yet.

~ Untitled I ~

Peace.



Peace in a world of people who are fired up. People who want something to love or something to hate. The people in our town seemed to continually get wound up at every football or basketball game, even when we're having an awful season and loose almost every game like we did last year. They stomp their feet, clap their hands, and scream. It seems to me though, that maybe even the very same people can give up on God, if their life isn't what they want it to be. They don't keep coming to church like they come to games. They don't boo and hiss at sin when it scores or gains the upper hand. They don't fight it. The band doesn't play and march for the grace of God. People just don't get excited about God. And you know, I wish they did. At our church sometimes we get excited, we get super pumped at advance especially. Our group may be smaller than Neyland stadium at Horn's Creek, but we generate more energy and passion there than on Superbowl Sunday. I miss it there. Things aren't the same at home as they are there.



I can sit in my little room and read my little books, be a little bit different from everybody else. I can be in the middle. But what difference does it really make? I mean, truly? This Easter week, I want to think a little differently. I remember back when it was easy to feel things deeper than the surface, when I didn't have to fight to get inside my own heart. It's come to the point where I'd rather sit back and not think.

But, there's a strange peacefulness. A quiet in my heart. My God has taken my insecurities and turned them around, so that I can find safety in him.
I'll admit, I am scared. The future seems so uncertain. I don't know what's going to happen or when, and I'll admit, it's sublime. Beautiful and Terrible. It fills me with wonder and scares me to death.

At times like these I remember Proverbs 31:25,

"She is clothed with strength and dignity, and laughs without fear of the future."

My good friends help me with this. I can laugh without fear of the future because my future is secured. Whatever happens will happen for the best.



I'm fine.
God is good.
It is well with my soul.
There is nothing new under the sun.

~ Breath Deep, Listen Close ~

Ah, spring. It went "there and back again." I never truly enjoyed spring, except for the Bradford Pear trees. But, I think that after that incredibly long winter, I am happy that it's back. Spring (to me anyway) was always sort of a bleak time of year: faded pastel colors and a light, baby blue sky, with white and yellow flowers everywhere. Ew.



I do have to say though, this year has been a bit different so far. I've missed having the windows down. I've missed breathing the fresh, chill air that I swear comes straight off the mountains down to our town. It's a season of life. It's a season of making new memories, whereas my winter was spent reflecting on the old ones.



The leaves are finally back on the trees, so breathe deep. Listen closely.



I have this little "tradition" I started at age 10 or 11. Every year on the 17th of March, I go out and take pictures of all the flowers, just because. These are the pictures from yesterday.

It feels fresh and new. It feels right, like this is New Year's Day, and January first was really an extra month of last year. February happened. March cleans the slate.

I don't know how to transition from that into a Psalm I want to share, so I'm just going to type it up anyway.

Psalm 69: 34-36
Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them. For God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and people shall dwell there and possess it; the offspring of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall dwell in it.

And that comes after the beginning of Psalm 69, which is the Psalmist crying out to God for help, asking him to show himself again so that he could build his faith. "For the waters have come up to my neck," he says in desperation. How inspiring are the last few verses, right?

Anyway.

~ Turning Back & Looking On ~

Hey.
I've been aware lately of just how epic my friends are. I cannot tell you guys how incredibly thankful I am for all of you. We've had some good times. But you know, the best is yet to come.

I've been super reflective lately of past times, what they meant, and how they felt. But, it's the moment at hand that I should be thinking of, not what has passed.

The other night, Ryan came in my room and slept in my bed for a while. I read Harry Potter to him. I realized how big he's gotten. I recognized his cute little interjections about the story and all of the "what if this happened" ideas. Oh, I want so badly for him to stay 7 years old forever, but he's already 8, and the days fly past faster than I can get all my work done. I feel like there's not enough time in the day for me to get everything done. And yet here I sit, writing a blog post with a paragraph in a reflection paper left and dinner to help prepare. I want to pray for more moments like that with Ryan. I'll be gone all day tomorrow; I swear I will never understand how public-schoolers manage. ;)



But, there's a purpose things are how they are, and you know how it is. :) I want to let go and live the life laid before me with dignity and strength, and laugh without fear of the future (Proverbs 31:25).

So that's it then.



It's all part of the plan.