it was a strange reaction…

{ January 26, 2008 @ 12:17 pm } · { depth }
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It is a cloudy, foggy, cold day in Tulsa.  I spent the night at a friends house last night with some other girls, and we had a good time.  I woke up this morning glad that the weather was gray.  I love this weather.  So I decided I wasn’t ready to go home yet and I got bundled up got my coffee and went to the river.  I walked across the bridge and onto the other side and sat on a bench looking out over the water.  I watched the birds fly in random patterns, then dive down simultaneously to catch fish, or maybe they just do it because it’s fun.  I listened to the noises of the factory behind me with its smoke rising high and blending in with the fog.  I listened to the river rushing over the rocks, and the cars driving on the street across the way.  I looked at downtown and saw only the bottom parts of the buildings as the fog hid the tops of them from me.  I breathed it all in.  I sat thinking about the week.  It has been a strange week, but then again what weeks do you ever get to the end saying…”that was everything i expected”?  I don’t think I”ve ever done that.  Goodthing to that would be pretty boring.
As I sat on the bench I recalled all the reactions of my week.  How I reacted to different things I was told, or the things that I saw.  I thought about the reactions of my friends, or even strangers.  There is so much that we react to, when things go bad we react negatively and when they go as we planned the reaction is positive.  But of all the hundreds of reactions that occur throughout the day it is the strange reactions that we remember.  When people choose to respond to something negative with an optimism we are moved.  And it is the people whose lives are not ruled by thoughtless reactions that we remember.  Those people that can step out of the circumstance and speak from a heart that sees more then just the immediate, but also the eternal.  maybe if we could ascend the situations that we find ourselves in for a moment and see things for what they are and hear things for what they are instead of the immediate emotion they provoke in us, then we would be able to respond from something deeper and more meaningful. 
Sometimes I think my immediate reaction is the deepest most authentic, but I think authenticity has never been an immediate thing, and it is more beneficial to the people I’m around to show them depth.  Just some thoughts on the kind of person I would like to be. 

“…I slipped away last night
Took me away from sight and the place I know.
All crushed upon my skin
This mess I put you in and the punch i thrown.
It was a strange reaction
for someone like you to remain on side
And in a chain reaction
I was down and calling for a place to hide….”  Coldplay “your love means everything”

peace love react

Tis The Season…

{ December 25, 2007 @ 12:56 pm } · { Ramblings }
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…to be what? 
Do we ever really ever find out who we are?  I mean we know what to be in certain situations. For example, when you have a friend that goes through a huge trauma, you know to comfort, or when your sister gets a promotion you celebrate.  We know what kind of person we need to be in these situations, but what’s interesting to me is that the more we spend time being the situational versions of ourselves the furthur away we get from being who we are.  And who are we?  I don’t know…maybe thats the journey of life, finding out who we are.  I’ve heard my whole life that I need to find out who I am first, before I do anything in my life.  I’ve come to hate this teaching.  I have tried to find out exactly who I am and I don’t really know what that is. It has frustrated me, because I’ve brought my life to a screeching hault to pinpoint my identity.  I have decided that there is not enough time for this, and that at the core of who i am this one thing I have found.  I am living.  I am alive and living things need to keep moving.  Who I am envolves waking up, building things, creating, and loving.  There is nothing that should keep me from this.
When I find myself in a place where I no longer want these things I have denied myself its true identity.  Just some christmas day ramblings from me. 
I am preparing for an adventure.  This adventure will be with the people I love the most, and I hope to clear my mind.  So see you after a while. 

ICE STORM

{ December 11, 2007 @ 6:15 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Well Oklahoma has been hit hard, and as I sit here in barnes and noble, along with many other people without electricity, i’m so thankful that my family is unharmed.  There was a major ice storm in Oklahoma, and it coated the limbs of the trees with about an inch of ice which caused them to be so heavy.  The freezing rain continued to fall, and the limbs got heavier until they began snapping causing powerlines to break and transformers to blow.  We were sitting without electricity on sunday morning at 7, we’re always the first in Tulsa to loose electricity.  Our neighborhood has many huge trees its an old neighborhood, and in our front yard is an enormous water oak.  So sunday night we had a fire going and we all went to bed.  My parents woke up atabout 340 because a limb fell and landed ontop of the house over their room.  They began to discuss what to do, when a limb about a foot in diameter snapped and fell in our front yard….at this point we decided it wasn’t safe to be at home anymore and we left.  As we were leaving we saw a loose wire sparking and lighting up my neighbors back yard.  We  drove over to my grammy’s house which had electricity and smaller trees making it safer.  you could stand out on the porch and hear branches snapping and falling all around you.  every few minutes a branch would snap and fall….it was dangerous to be outside.  i have never been so afraid to walk outside.  The branches were just too heavy.  well the worst of it is over today and the majority of the City is without power, its hard to find gas stations…and everyone seems to congregate at paneras, barnes and noble, starbucks and other places where wireless is available…well thats all just thought I’d update on the wild weather here.  Hopefully things get back to normal soon. 

To Write Again…

{ November 27, 2007 @ 1:50 pm } · { Life }
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To write again is something that requires so much energy, as if the words I seemed to once be able to use as molds for my thoughts, have turned to stone.  I find that I cannot quite retrieve thoughts from this mind that is thrown into shock with the encounter of permenant partings. There is a certain darkness that comes over when change happens, not a darkness that is cold, just a darkness that blinds you.  It keeps you from expressing anything that seems to be developing in your mind.  I find my world has shifted drastically and I know it is not the last time it will, or that the shifting will ever cease, so I suppose it is something I should get used to.  But I just can’t seem to. 
I was talking to my sister, who was unable to join us this thanksgiving and she asked me how Thanksgiving dinner with my family was. This is the first year we havn’t had thanksgiving at my grammy’s house, and one of our dear friends, that took care of my mom when she was growing up died this summer, so things were not as we had planned.  I told her that things were different and she said, “change is a weird thing, we always know its coming, but we never seem to be ready for it.”  I agree with her.  I am able to deal with suddle changes everyday without a second thought, always adjusting, but when change whose effects are lasting come knocking at my door, I am unable to greet it hospitably.  I have heard many things rationalized and explained to me, but you can’t explain pain away. 
It is here that I find myself in a somewhat comforting darkness, with no desire to have things explained to me.  It is here that I realize the shift is permenant.  It is not like other times i’ve felt pain and desired some degree of numbness to propell me out of it, I want to feel it all.  I want to feel the tears that come from remembering, the tears that come from doubt and fear, and missing a dear friend.  I was asked to sing a song that she loved, in a time when singing seemed impossible. 
My mind has become a store of questions, questions of how life continues after change, and I have found the answer can be found in waking up.  In singing again, and that somehow learning how to live comes from going through the changes and regardless of where you find yourself remembering to write again. 
To write again, is coming to the realization, that there are still things that need to be written about. 

Community

{ September 24, 2007 @ 10:48 pm } · { community }
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Community, my mind is alive with thoughts on this one subject.  It is late and I should be in bed, but I cannot sleep without first writing about what my heart has realized as the one neccessity to life.  I did not understand this concept of community until this last week, when I saw how much I needed it.  My heart is full of thankfulness for the community I have, but yet it mourns for those who do not experience true community, and furthurmore for people that do not realize how important it is. 
We fear being alone, and we are afraid of isolation, and rightfully so for its destructive powers in our lives, are seen on grand scales through people who in their destitute state; bomb schools, rape and take advantage of other people, murder, steal, and many other things.  These are just magnified examples of what lonliness, abandonment, and isolation can lead to.  We desire to be known and to know others, when we don’t our problems seem to grow and consume our thoughts.  We were designed to be with others sharing our struggles bearing eachothers burdens, imposing, and giving because of the love we have for our friends.  I now am willing to give anything for community.  In no means am I saying that we will become murderers if we are alone, but don’t we find ourselves far from true life when we know of no one that truly knows us, and therefore no one who would give their lives for us, our crap and all, not just the socially acceptable us. 
There is nothing comparable to the relief brought when a friend says “how are you” and really wants you to tell them how you are doing.  I don’t have much else to say except that this inexpressible thing happens in community, it is life and love, it is growth and joy, heartache and healing.  “Love, twue love, is what bwings us togever today.” this is one of my favorite lines from The Princess Bride, but it explains community so well.  True love is something that is worth getting up in the morning for, it is worth fighting for, it is worth dieing for, and more then that it is worth living for.  So if you can’t find a reason to live and fight and wake up in the morning, maybe its because you are alone.  For lonliness is the darkness of our soul, and without light nothing can grow and prosper.  I want to grow and love and wake up with purpose, and I find that I am able to do that best when I’m in community.  Thats all for now, I seriously need to go to bed.
peacelove

The Choice

{ August 14, 2007 @ 9:50 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Today was a great day.  I had work from 9-5 and wasn’t expecting it to be a time where I learned and had some good conversations but it was.  I came home and went on a bike ride and then just hung out with Raissa and Kjirsten. 
Everyone winded down for bed and my mind came alive, I have always been able to relate to Joe March from Little Women when she says, “at night my mind came alive, with stories and characters dear to my heart”. 
I went out on my deck to process all the thoughts my mind was being bombarded with and began to somewhat place them in order.  I always look across to my neighbor when I’m on the deck.  She is old probable in her late 70’s.  Her husband died when I was about 7 and she spends every night sitting in the same spot reading.  As I was sitting there watching her the lights from the TV in my house were reflecting off the overhang of my deck and at certain times reminded me of a strobe light.  I compared how she spent her nights to how we spend our nights.  And somehow it got me thinking about how we have a choice. 
We do not choose to live, we are born. We do not choose the family we have or the way we look or the way things happen.  We do not choose death or for our bodies to not work right, or for our cars to break down.  There are many things that we have no way of choosing how they happen.  But we do however have a choice as to the kind of life we want to live, the kinds of people we want to be. 
More and more we are given more choices, and it leads us to forget this foundational choice.  Now we can choice the way we look, by the color of our hair, or the option of plastic surgery.  Thousands of years ago peple didn’t have the kind of choices that we do now. Even when we are children we didn’t have the choices that we do as we grow older and more independent, yet don’t children seem to live life so much fuller then we do. 
Maybe with all these choices that aren’t necessarily bad, we’ve gotten distracted from the choice that is most important the choice that we’ve always had and the first choice a human was given. 
And as I sat there I decided that I want to choose the kind of person I want to be and the life I want to lead, I do not want to stumble upon it and someday find that I am this person, and have no idea why.  I’m not saying the little choices don’t matter and there are many things out of our control but what if the little choices were made not to make us look a certain way by what we can do or not do, but to furthur us in a direction we knew we wanted to go. 
What if we saw every choice as one that either furthered us along on the way we wanted or kept us from going there and in some cases derailed us. 
I sometimes wonder God’s thoughts as he was planning out creation, as he thought of us and what he wanted us to be, robotic without minds or creative like him or  whatever else he was thinking.  And at some point he decided to give us a great gift, the gift of choice.  He simbolized it with a tree, and we had no say when he breathed life into us, but when we came alive, so choice entered our minds. 
So he breathes into us, puts a piece of himself in us, and then says “now choose, choose names for the animals rule govern live, and I have placed some of myself in you to help you choose what is right, but i don’t force you too, no, for you there is a choice.” 
Many things will happen that we don’t want to happen and things that maybe we do want, but its not whats out of control that happens to us that matters as much as it is what we do with the things that happen with the cards we’re delt …So we live now with choice, little choices like whether to watch TV or read, that when summed up and simplified come down to what kind of journey you want this life to be, a journey of timid traveling one of smooth paths leading in the same general direction as others or one of excitment challenge lots of falling and uneven paths but one unlike any other… this is, the choice.

The Lord Will provide

{ August 12, 2007 @ 12:20 pm } · { Life }
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Yahweh Yireh

I have a book that has some of the names of God mentioned in the Bible and the one above is my favorite.  Yahweh Yireh means the Lord will provide.  The context that it is used in is when God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his only son.  Abraham does what the Lord tells him but before he actually sacrifices his son he looks over and sees a ram caught in something so he sacrifices the ram instead, and he calls the place Yahweh Yireh “the Lord will provide”.  This story moves me.  Abraham has such an amazing balance of trust and fear, he trusts that God will keep his promise to fill the earth with his descendents, but he fears to withold anything from God.  And that produces in him courage to obey.  I find it amazing that the thing God has promised to Abraham, a son, is the very thing he tells him to give up.  Not becuase he actually wants him to, he provides a substitute, but to see where his heart is. 
I think there are so many things you can get out of this story so many characteristics in Abraham to work towards getting.  At the end of the story the angel of the Lord says to Abraham after telling him not to harm the boy, “now I know that you fear God.” I think that God inspires us and promises things to us, and gives us dreams and goals and desires, but I’ve never truly realized our responsibility to follow those.  To follow our dreams to move into his promises is to obey him, and to not follow the dreams that he’s placed in our hearts is disobediance, and stems from not seeing our responsibility.   I’m responsible for the dreams and passions he’s placed in my heart.  Do I trust that he will provide so that I can step into what he’s promised?  Do I fear being nonresponsive to God moving in my life? 
I have friends who trust God and are stepping into his promise, and I am moved by their faith.  I thught the largest feeling I would have would be sadness becuase they are going somewhere I can’t, but I find the thing I feel the most is inspired.  I am inspired to follow God to trust him and to just begin walking and allowing myself to dream…I fear not obeying God not stepping into the things he provides for me.  I know that wherever I go and whatever happens, the Lord will be right there ready to provide what I need. 
I’m am so glad to follow a God that provides and I want to show people that in how I provide things for them.  I want my life to be spent providing for people and showing them a God that cared enough he provided, becuase he’s provided for me I want to provide for others. 
Anyways my thoughts are scattered, but I feel as though the God that seemed so distant is close and no matter what happens he’s with us for he is everywhere.  All the things I’ve used to numb in times of pain is wearing off Its useless against the power of God that makes me feel, feel in a way I can’t even explain, its not like the alive you feel at a concert where everyone is hyper and it dies down, its not like that, its constant and because of the realization that his love is constant. and allows emotion but flows deep in my heart. And with each day I’m begining to feel more.  I feel life. 

Reminders

{ August 8, 2007 @ 9:48 am } · { Life, Uncategorized }
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Yesterday as I sat out on my back deck, the sun was shining and I was thinking about how it had been so rainy earlier this summer. I was sitting there admiring the sun and just loving that it was there, and shining.  My mind went back to when it had been so rainy, and I realized that I loved it when it was rainy, that I in a sense forgot about the sun.  I loved the clouds and the rain, and came to not like the sun.  It is interesting to me how when I am not around the sun I forget that I love it, I forget how wonderful it is.  I settle for the rain, when really I love the sun more. 

Now I find this to be very applicable to my life.  I am like this in many aspects I don’t usually stay in touch with friends because I forget how much I actually enjoy being with them, I am like this with sports and things as simple as drinking tea.  I get busy and forget the things I love. 

This has been a cycle for my my life with Jesus….I hate to say this but I get busy and forget how much I love Jesus.  I forget how mysterious, beautiful, loving, and amazing he is.
I was reminded of the Israelites how they were quick to forget what God had done for them how he provided.  I love how they built big piles of rocks like at the Jordan river to remind them of what God had done, that he brought them safely through the water. 

The decision that I’ve made is to make reminders physical things that remind me of the things that I oftentimes forget I love.  I need to be disciplined with reading the Word(something I forget I love also)  I need to be reminded of the Love he has for me and purpose that is so much bigger then my little world. 

I don’t want to find myself in a year remembering how I forgot.

Dreams

{ August 4, 2007 @ 7:05 pm } · { dreams }
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Well i’m sitting here after a long day of work, just relaxing getting off my feet.  It’s nice to be at home when everyone else is out, it’s so quiet.  Last night I watched a movie with my friend, it is called Mystery, and its old school and rather creepy.  So after the movie I went home, it was pretty late, and hung out around the house, made myself a hot cup of mint tea, and then headed for bed.  As I slept I had a dream that I’ve had before.  Well it wasn’t exactly the same but it was similar, it was in the same place.  So I decided to write about it on here.

I was with some friends (I don’t remember who exactly)  and we were at this lake, only on the edges of the lake were  huge bluffs and on the bluffs were all sorts of decks that completely lined this huge cove area and were in layers all up and down the edges where we were at.  The lower decks were not too far from the water, but the higher decks were really far away from the water.  The group I was with were all sitting on a middle deck that was a good distance from the water.  we were just sitting and talking, and the purpose of going to the decks was pretty much to jump in, but no one was jumping.  So we all decided to go up to a higher deck… I think it was the highest deck there and it was a long distance from the water.  We were all sitting around then I just out of the blue like it was no big deal jumped off the deck and started plunging through the air towards the water, I was so high that one of the boats in the water didn’t see me coming and I almost hit it.  And then I landed in the water and that was it.  I mean the conversations and all that went on but that was the core of the dream.  It is so interesting to me the feelings that we have when we are dreaming, the fear or fearlessness in this case.  Its so frustrating trying to explain a feeling that you had in a dream… either way this one was good.  All that to say I love having dreams sometime, and was just wondering how the heck I thought of something like that, when I’ve never even seen anything like it.  and I think crazy movies affect our dreams.  thats all for now

peaceout

Worth Remembering?…

{ August 2, 2007 @ 12:22 am } · { Breaking Free }
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I write and rewrite, and what I want to say doesn’t seem to come out.  I feel as though I’m stuck in a square that I’ve built around my heart, painted on the walls the word “safe”, only to hide the bricks beneath, bricks of fear placed next to bricks of doubt.  Its funny how the things we use to keep us safe oftentimes we end up hiding behind and hinder us from living.  I guess these are the conditions in which I find myself living, or to put it better not living.  It is easy to live a life of caution, many people do it.  But to live a life of passion is something that is not often heard of yet it is something remembered, that kind of life conquers the boundaries of time creating a story unforgotten.  Think of the people who have lived passionately;Martin Luther King Jr., William Wallace, Patrick Henry, Thomas Edison, Mother Teresa, Jesus.  These people broke free from the shackles of mediocrity and we cannot help but pass on their stories.  It leads me to believe that we are so moved by lives of passion because it brings hope, something we scarcely allow ourselves to have, hope that the enormous amount of ability passions and potential for good that lay bottled up in us can, if we allow them to, come out and change or influence something.  Is it possible that the thoughts and ideas we have could change the world, or the state we live in, or on a smaller scale the city…our families?

This is just something I keep thinking about.  My hope for all of us is that impossible will be accomplished in small ways each day, and in large ways each year.  That the walls will slowly fall, and days that could have been lived in timidity will be lived in courage, and those days all together would make up a life truly lived and a story worth remembering.

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