It is a season calling for changes. I feel it in the air, but I dont know what they are yet...
I know I want to change a few things. Like writing. Writing has always been such a big part of who I am, yet I think I also take it for granted. I will just write and write and not worry about how I am expressing myself. Now i want to write something more real, maybe a real story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I want it to be something worth reading, not just my little windows of imagination or ramblings of observation. But then I also have my blank canvases sitting here waiting for me, waiting to be covered in paint and made into one of a kind, wanted individuals. yet somehow their purity intimidates me, i dont want to create something not worth looking at and waste one of them. but since i can never come up with a full idea for a painting without starting it, I will have to take a risk. I will have to just start one and hope that what comes out of my hands is something worth seeing, worth hanging on the wall and gazing at. Kinda like life maybe, you'll never know how something will turn out unless you start it. I have so much school work due in the next few days, I am working so many extra hours to make ends meet, and yet my mind is filled with ideas of creativity...my weekends are full and fun and i make time for more. i will and i must.
today was kinda a failure. so was yesterday. yesterday was way worse actually. I am on a weird roller coaster of anger and frustration and excitement and creativity. it is so annoying. I dislike the drama of my workplace and am not looking forward to working nine hours there tomorrow, but then i feel bad because its a great job and i should be really greatful. i should not be what i wish i wasnt surrounded with. i need to hold my own and remain sane, haha, why does that seem so funny? I also have so much work to do, which is difficult to do with our apartment mate yelling world of warcraft instructions at my husband from his room. I have no idea how I will get all of my homework done. So, i better get back to it, since its 2:15 am and I must get up at 8 tomorrow morning...
05 December 2009
30 August 2009
Married Now
Married and so glad for it. Finally life is moving forward. Its still not easy and it can be sometimes quite awful still but i do try. quiet moments, crazy ones, no sleep because of opposite schedules, our cute apartment. life is good. i love my love. and that is good. i lay here typing and thinking and talking because my lover is at work all night and i cant sleep. kinda amazing how fast you come to need someone there even after years alone. but i dont mind. its better to long then to have no one. tonight i will attempt to visit him for his lunch break at 3 am, if i am awake enough to drive at that time, haha. no work tomorrow, but no time for church either. too bad there arnt sunday night services anymore. i had an awesome conversation with a good friend last night about community and it excited me. i miss community..shes really on the right track. its good to know somewhere its working, the wave is catching and coming and making a difference. its all we can hope for, really, that someone life will change for the better somewhere in spite of all our best efforts.
i am proud of myself for today, because after my crazy day at the music store i came home and actually practiced my violin, FINALLY, and even went and swam laps at the apartment pool. there was an old lady there whose unfriendly poodle tried to get me and wound up just choking on its collar as she told me all about how her grandchildren were going to come and swim. i am starting to understand how people end up the way they do sometimes. maybe its working in retail. People are such interesting creatures. its funny how unrealistic very simple expectations are. gabriel keeps telling me to let go of the little expections, and be happy and giving, instead of stressing and getting upset about them. he is right. he is wonderful. and, really, in spite of any hardship, life is wonderful.
i am proud of myself for today, because after my crazy day at the music store i came home and actually practiced my violin, FINALLY, and even went and swam laps at the apartment pool. there was an old lady there whose unfriendly poodle tried to get me and wound up just choking on its collar as she told me all about how her grandchildren were going to come and swim. i am starting to understand how people end up the way they do sometimes. maybe its working in retail. People are such interesting creatures. its funny how unrealistic very simple expectations are. gabriel keeps telling me to let go of the little expections, and be happy and giving, instead of stressing and getting upset about them. he is right. he is wonderful. and, really, in spite of any hardship, life is wonderful.
05 August 2009
down she goes
i discovered that if i spend too much time thinking about what other people are doing i start getting really down on myself. i guess being selfishly focused has its place. everything in my life is changing right now and nothing is the way i wished it would be, and being the perfectionist i am that is hard to deal with. i am so in love with Gabe, so happy with him, so ready to have our apartment and our lives. yet on the eve of our wedding weeks my dad gets so sick he nearly dies, and i forget the wedding, forget the planning, lose my focus. and now it is upon me and i hope that is is worth remembering. i hope people who love me come. i hope that i love it. i hope that gabe loves it. and i hope that these difficult times will be worth it, that gabe and i;s life will go up and forward from here. that we can look back and smile and say, we made it. we accomplished our dreams, we loved each other well, we held on to what really matters in life. i still miss things i cant have right now, i still miss people who are so far away. i am trying to keep my life together, and one day i believe all will truly be well.
04 August 2009
its a challenge just to keep eyes dry. so many changes in no time at all. is it possible to have joy without there being pain mixed in? why now? my head spins and throats tight. for a year i have been torn between the two men that i love, especially by their inability to find peace with each other. and now i feel like one is threatening to be torn from me while the other questions my anguish. if only i could fix everything with the blink of an eye, with one breathe blown in the right direction. its a danger to love even those you must. how does one deal with such turmoil in the midst of such progression. i can not make my eyes see past this or my head wrap around this. tomorrow is another day is both a comfort and sentence of torment. what will a few hours bring? a few moments? a few days? can i condemn myself for not knowing what to do with my intuition or what of it to believe? i am not my own to condemn i console myself with. yet it is there. so much is there. breathing takes focus. hungry and cant eat. life is cruel sometimes.
19 April 2009
Hero...
Lucia Micarelli
I have loved this music for a long time, but only after watching of video of her do i realize that...basically...i want to BE her.
Please check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrTFap4-3NA
I have loved this music for a long time, but only after watching of video of her do i realize that...basically...i want to BE her.
Please check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrTFap4-3NA
Pretty things
These are all by someone who calls themself "svaynstaynger." The website is http://svaynstaynger.deviantart.com/gallery/. I just love thier style, and it reminds me of beautiful days in Europe.
12 April 2009
Some Backstory, and Hopes for the Future
Well, the quick rundown of who I am so far is this. I graduated from high school knowing that there had to be more to life then houses, cars, jobs, and dogs. There was a big world out there, and I was going to see it all, and then find a way to make a lasting, measurable impact on it. Then maybe my life would count for something. So I went from school into a program with my church, the only reason really being that they had a reputation for traveling to crazy places and doing extreme things there. That program turned not to be all it was cracked up to be in some ways and more then I bargained for in others, but I did make it to many different countries with them. From there I went into YWAM, or Youth with a Mission, and moved to east Germany. From there I visited a lot of the rest of Europe, as well as spending three months and then another two weeks in Pakistan. Pakistan was by far the most intense time of my life, between ducking from hidden home church to hidden home church, bombs going off around me (literally- I am not trying to be cool), and spending time in the Northwest Frontier Provence with a wonderful people group called the Kalash.
Honestly when I moved to Germany I had no intention of ever coming back to the USA. That is not something I necessarily told people, but that was in my heart. I wanted to disappear into the world and spend my life on a cause that changed people's lives forever. I didn't expect to get married, to ever own much, and I was ok with maybe not living to be really old. I was idealistic and passionate. I am still really passionate, but the idealism has gone to wayside in many ways. That's something the world will teach you, how to be more real. It is easy to deceive yourself, especially in youthful ignorance. "Life sucks then you die" is a quote from a German man I greatly respect, and accepting that as truth (which it is, sorry guys) can be difficult to live with at first. Reality must be accepted at some point though. In Pakistan I sat in a car outside the High Courts Building in Lahore, and looked into the eyes of several dozen Pakistani policemen. They were about my age, and looked a little confused as to why they were there. Maybe even a little fearful. We'll never know. I asked my Pakistani friend why there were so many Police there, and she said for security (another words, she didnt know). We pulled forward. One minute went by, then another, and the car was rocked by a loud boom. We looked back and all that was left of where we just sitting was a cloud of white smoke. Those police officers are dead. They really are. There is no way around it, they are dead. Young men, in thier twenties, who listen to music and talk on cell phones and laugh and joke. Real people. Really dead. Thats an extreme example. but some things just are not real at first.
I have a dream and vision, that has been growing in me since one quiet afternoon in 2005 laying on the concrete floor in a church in Mexico. There I felt my first stirring of inspiration, as if God spoke to me about writing, about being a witness of his work, and telling people's stories. I didn't know what that meant, but its in me, the story bug in is me. I feel that He continued to speak to me about a life full of people, moving and traveling, belonging nowhere and everywhere, and telling stories as I connected people and resources to each other ever since. I have felt inspiration in a Burmese Pagoda, in Tianamen Square, in a hundred year old building in China where Christians gather and sing at the top of their lungs. I have felt inspired at an international missions conference in Germany, in a hotel in Lahore, in a dirty bathroom covered in hives in NWFP, while watching a documentary about a war photographer, and while listening to my friend's passionate dreams. Its stories that are the most powerful thing in the world I think. I am to tell them, and somehow those stories were going to help a lot of people, and maybe even "change the world."
Also in my travels I realized that an uneducated 'crazy kid' was not going to get as far as a professional would. I decided that I would rather be the professional who put in the work to become skilled in a field then spend my life trying to make friends with those people. I also met Gabriel, a man who has the same dreams as I do, something I did not expect. When we put our ideas together it became clear that working together would help us a lot. He wanted to make videos, documentaries. I loved art and photography and had many ideas as well...so we came to the decision to return to the United States and go to film school. So that is what we are doing now, studying hard at the Colorado Film School, majoring in Cinematography/Videography for me (with some extra production classes, writing classes, anthropology classes, etc) and in Post Production and Graphic Arts for Gabe. Its hard, the day to day, especially as we read inspiring blogs about our friends who are still in Germany or Ethiopia or China, and starting orphanages and saving children. But one day we will be over there and making movies on a professional level that will be useful to those ministries and more then we can imagine. God willing.
Sometimes the road is hard, but I do not plan on giving up. And yes, I am really doing it. There is a lot of talk out there, but I am determined not to just be a talker. I am doing my best to keep focused and get back over there where I know I belong, after doing what I set out to do here.
So far, I haven't changed the world. It's been four years, not very long, but the fourteen gorgeous nations I have visited and all the faces of amazing people, have forever changed me.
Honestly when I moved to Germany I had no intention of ever coming back to the USA. That is not something I necessarily told people, but that was in my heart. I wanted to disappear into the world and spend my life on a cause that changed people's lives forever. I didn't expect to get married, to ever own much, and I was ok with maybe not living to be really old. I was idealistic and passionate. I am still really passionate, but the idealism has gone to wayside in many ways. That's something the world will teach you, how to be more real. It is easy to deceive yourself, especially in youthful ignorance. "Life sucks then you die" is a quote from a German man I greatly respect, and accepting that as truth (which it is, sorry guys) can be difficult to live with at first. Reality must be accepted at some point though. In Pakistan I sat in a car outside the High Courts Building in Lahore, and looked into the eyes of several dozen Pakistani policemen. They were about my age, and looked a little confused as to why they were there. Maybe even a little fearful. We'll never know. I asked my Pakistani friend why there were so many Police there, and she said for security (another words, she didnt know). We pulled forward. One minute went by, then another, and the car was rocked by a loud boom. We looked back and all that was left of where we just sitting was a cloud of white smoke. Those police officers are dead. They really are. There is no way around it, they are dead. Young men, in thier twenties, who listen to music and talk on cell phones and laugh and joke. Real people. Really dead. Thats an extreme example. but some things just are not real at first.
I have a dream and vision, that has been growing in me since one quiet afternoon in 2005 laying on the concrete floor in a church in Mexico. There I felt my first stirring of inspiration, as if God spoke to me about writing, about being a witness of his work, and telling people's stories. I didn't know what that meant, but its in me, the story bug in is me. I feel that He continued to speak to me about a life full of people, moving and traveling, belonging nowhere and everywhere, and telling stories as I connected people and resources to each other ever since. I have felt inspiration in a Burmese Pagoda, in Tianamen Square, in a hundred year old building in China where Christians gather and sing at the top of their lungs. I have felt inspired at an international missions conference in Germany, in a hotel in Lahore, in a dirty bathroom covered in hives in NWFP, while watching a documentary about a war photographer, and while listening to my friend's passionate dreams. Its stories that are the most powerful thing in the world I think. I am to tell them, and somehow those stories were going to help a lot of people, and maybe even "change the world."
Also in my travels I realized that an uneducated 'crazy kid' was not going to get as far as a professional would. I decided that I would rather be the professional who put in the work to become skilled in a field then spend my life trying to make friends with those people. I also met Gabriel, a man who has the same dreams as I do, something I did not expect. When we put our ideas together it became clear that working together would help us a lot. He wanted to make videos, documentaries. I loved art and photography and had many ideas as well...so we came to the decision to return to the United States and go to film school. So that is what we are doing now, studying hard at the Colorado Film School, majoring in Cinematography/Videography for me (with some extra production classes, writing classes, anthropology classes, etc) and in Post Production and Graphic Arts for Gabe. Its hard, the day to day, especially as we read inspiring blogs about our friends who are still in Germany or Ethiopia or China, and starting orphanages and saving children. But one day we will be over there and making movies on a professional level that will be useful to those ministries and more then we can imagine. God willing.
Sometimes the road is hard, but I do not plan on giving up. And yes, I am really doing it. There is a lot of talk out there, but I am determined not to just be a talker. I am doing my best to keep focused and get back over there where I know I belong, after doing what I set out to do here.
So far, I haven't changed the world. It's been four years, not very long, but the fourteen gorgeous nations I have visited and all the faces of amazing people, have forever changed me.
20 February 2009
I named this blog rain drops for many reasons. I like rain, I like how its refreshing and brings life, how its part of a cycle that doesn’t end, and because it must be fun to be a raindrop flying down from the sky. Rain drops make me imagine glorious, long awaited thunder storms in the rocky mountains, massive monsoons in Thailand that burst from skies that were blue moments before and flood everything in seconds, gentle misty rain in the mystical German woods, flooded streets in Burma, and dark nights in back streets in China. Rain is one of a few things that tie all my travels, adventures and misguided walks together. It is something that is bigger then me, that every single tiny part making up the whole is important, and reminds me that I am one in a million, like a rain drop. And so are you.
The purpose of this for me is to put up art and writing that I do all the time but no one ever sees, and even if no one reads or looks at on here either, I feel that it is something I need to do right now. To document this part of the journey of life I am in right now, and to help me enjoy watching it unfold even though it is a slower season. I am determined to make the most of these days and fill them with as much joy for others and myself as I can. And maybe it will be a way for me to feel more connected to the friends that are sadly so far away, and to new ones closer by.
The purpose of this for me is to put up art and writing that I do all the time but no one ever sees, and even if no one reads or looks at on here either, I feel that it is something I need to do right now. To document this part of the journey of life I am in right now, and to help me enjoy watching it unfold even though it is a slower season. I am determined to make the most of these days and fill them with as much joy for others and myself as I can. And maybe it will be a way for me to feel more connected to the friends that are sadly so far away, and to new ones closer by.
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