unsettled

some things:

 

I've been home a week, which means (due to weather) that I've been in the house a week.  And though it's so nice to be home I feel unsettled...almost sick to my stomach.  I feel like those older, wise people who claim that, "something's coming, i can feel it in my bones!"   But in a way I do.  I feel that something is happening and changing.  This has happened before and I'm not sure that I can remember anything coming of it, but I feel strongly that something is coming.  (maybe it's the snow)

some thoughts on life:

      

Have you ever stepped outside of your life and viewed yourself as an outsider.  It's quite revealing or rather enlightening.  It gives one an amazing amount of perspective.  I see myself going to school, writing papers, walking around campus, and it all seems so silly.  I'm not even sure why.  I think that when I see how much I walk in the treads of everyone else, it makes me really want to have a darn good reason for doing so.   For instance college, millions of students attend college and get degrees.  But why am I going to college.  It's part of our socialization, and I don't need to try be some elitist nonconformist, but really if I'm going to be a part of something that in all reality is a privilege, I want to have a reason why.  I don't want your reason, or society's reason, I want my own reason.  This sounds like a typical college student quandry, but look at everything you do in life.  It's all been done before it's nothing different than anyone else.  What makes it yours is your reason for doing it.  So why?  Why do I do the things I do and pursue the things I do?  Why do you go to your job?  Why do you do what you do?  Sometimes it's really good to be reminded how small you are.  To be reminded that you really are one among millions and on the flip side it reveals how important your life is with the knowledge that it is so small.  does that make sense?

snow storm?

I think one of my favorite things about my home town is that if we get even so much as an inch of snow...the whole town shuts down.  Schools close, roads empty, and people flee to the safety of their homes.   It's beautiful really.  I'm sure some think that we're wimps...but I have no complaints with getting school/work off for a day or two or however many days the "danger" lasts!  

   I spent most of yesterday in the house sewing with a single break to take a walk out in the snow to the nearest coffee shop for a much needed latte.  It was nice.   You know how different times of life have different music...well the "soundtrack" for my break so far would hands down be Blitzen Trapper.  The song Furr has been the perfect match for these quiet snow landscaped days.  Lately, I've realized how much I need a break.  

  I've been home 3 days and have yet to read a book...do you realize how sad this is?!  It's because i've had so many thoughts and ideas whirling around in my head.  For the first time in a long while, I have the time to write...(and i don't mean on this blog)..i can sit down and start letting all the stories in my head a chance to make their debut on paper.  For some reason, as long as there's still ideas in my head, I can't seem to focus on a book.   Which is so sad...I've been waiting through finals for a chance to read the books piled up waiting for me.   .  . ready for the list:

• 1984
• the essential Rumi
• Edna St. Vincent Millay poetry
• Invisible Man
• Slam
• The Seven Wonders of Sassafrass Springs
• Purity of Heart...(kierkegaard)...which i have looked everywhere for here but cannot find :(
• For Whom the Bell Tolls

  ...and so many more...i have a serious book addiction.  Okay, 1984 is calling my name..I'm only two chapters in to it and it's reminding me of Fahrenheit 451..which is an amazing book..so i'm super excited to read it....

(yes..i realize i just overly-revealed my high degree of nerdy-ness...i apologize)

hasta pasta!

wishful thinking

maybe if i could breathe

maybe if i could stop in silence

maybe if time was of no consideration

then i would see

i would know 

and would hear all the answers

that i listen so closely for

but never receive

maybe if i was nothing

maybe if i saw others as everything

maybe if you were everything

then i could taste

a life more full

and could live a life

where i can just be

knowing that you are

maybe if i was strong

maybe if i had the courage i need

maybe if i was fully myself

then i could step

out of this tread

and onto a fresh path

walking as i desire

and not as i am

on being content

i was thinking/have been thinking.  .  . about being content. 

 and about where i am presently at in life.  i've always strived to have an attitude of "contentedness" when it comes to material things...being content with what i have. . . and those things seem to continually lose their importance to me.  

but contentedness in life and who i am...i'm not sure about that.  for a while i was on a "self-esteem" kick. . . where i strived to be a person content in who they are and i succeeded.  but recently i've been less and less satisfied.  just yesterday i had this thought: what if my dissatisfaction with myself stems from my discontent with God.  i've been taught that my identity should stem, not in affirmation from people, but from God.   my identity is founded in my view of God.  

all this wandering of written thoughts...where is it going? to this.  it is not God who i am unsatisfied with...but my view of God.   lately, my view of God is changing and as it does my view of myself shifts.   

i have realized that i can learn to be content with this life

but should i be?  i said, i can be content with life, but lately I'm not.  i see the future that has been mapped out by 4 years of college and i realize that it is good.  but i am not content with it.  i don't want to just be good.  i want to live.  i want to experience life outside of security, to truly know people, and to draw closer to God.  

i have also learned that i can never be content with God.

that seems wrong, but to my experience it is true.

an explanation: i have sought to understand my relationship with God...I have sought to draw closer and closer to Him.  .  . but as I draw nearer to God, I become less and less content with life...and less and less content with my relationship with Him.  I want to be closer, I want God to be more of my life, but when i struggle to make that happen...when time after time, I find myself back at the same place...I become unsatisfied.

So, in reaction to that I pull away and leave God out of my life.  I live normally, happily, but without the intimacy of God.  And though I find myself moving through life quite fine...i realize it is not as it should be.  life loses its most brilliant emotions and colors.  

So, you see I can not be content to live without God, but I have never succeeded in being content with God.

i am grateful for discontent.  without i would settle into a comfortable surface-level life.  with it, i push beyond myself.  i push beyond what i don't understand, and i push beyond security to what is unknown.

a first post

  i feel little strange starting a blog.  i've always told myself i wouldn't...a lot of good that did me.  But here I am listening to Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection, ignoring Melieu (the cat) wanting to go outside, and attempting to begin this blog.  Hmm ...yes.  I'll stop there.  Be back when I have something to say.