Life Is More Than What I Have Accomplished

Today was rough. I'm not even gonna say that life is great. Life has been tough.

The past couple of days I have had a couple of realizations.

And the weight of those realizations was crushing.

In school today we had the chance to talk about said realizations. About the things that make us feel alive. About the things that I haven't necessarily been doing.

I have dreams. I have passions and desires to do things that I love doing.

But to be honest. I've just barely been surviving.

We went through a whole conversation about past events that could have led me here to this place. This place where I doubt everything I do. This place where I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. Where I can't remember the last time I wrote a song. To this place where I feel like all I'm doing is what is asked of me, instead of what I want.

Once we had finished this conversation, it was as if my chest was ripped open and my heart was exposed. And I laid on the sanctuary floor with my chest open crying out to my God. Crying out for help and crying out for some explanation as to why I was crying so uncontrollably.

I couldn't breathe. I was trying to worship but all I could do was curl up into a ball and lay there, right in front of where I stand on occasion and lead worship. I had tried to sing through the tears, but it made it worse and I began hyperventilating.

Completely alone on the floor, I reached out my hands for something. I reached out for hope maybe. Or maybe something that felt like more. Maybe something that was similar to joy. Something I have been lacking for a while.

Natalie told me to text if I wasn't okay. And I desperately wanted to. But I also desperately wanted to be okay. I desperately wanted to seem as though I was strong. Because I am, and I should always be, right?

Today was a relatively good day too. I got to see the dog I took back to the shelter with his new owner. I got to hangout with good friends and eat amazing Mexican food and watch trashy television.

Then I walked into class and it seemed like the flood gates were opened and I couldn't stop.

I feel okay now. I feel very drained, but overall okay.

I have carried around this expectation of myself. That I need to be exactly who I was. I need to have the same consistency with writing songs that I did in high school.

But a wonderful friend so graciously told me today that I don't need to. I can let my focus slip to other things that matter to me. I can paint and take pictures. I can draw and make bracelets. I can write on my blog and I can write in my journal. I can do whatever I want. Because whatever it is, I am creating.

I am a creative.

I love to write, and sing, and be.

I care about people and love crafting relationships out of thin air.

I love creating things that mean the world to me.

I love learning new things.

So as I sit here internally processing, and then externally processing to you all.

I have the realization that it honestly doesn't matter what I do. If I do it with love.

So music doesn't have to be the end all be all.

Creating does. Being in relationship does.

As long as I am doing what God created me to do, then I am doing what I want to do.

As I have this revelation, a quote from my favorite band comes to mind:

"I have come to the realization that life is more than what I have accomplished and life is more than the realization that we have accomplished nothing at all..."

Identity Crisis

This weekend I had the privilege to go on vacation to Palm Springs with a few of my friends. We watched movies, ate, slept, and read magazines, on repeat.

At some point we ended up talking about couples we knew that got married and how most people end up changing because their significant other.

One of my very wise friends stated that people need to find themselves and figure out who they are before they bring someone else who has completely different interests, opinions, and values into the mix.

When I think about my desire to get married and have a family, I think about my desire to be myself.

It's funny because my whole life, as I've stated before in previous blogs, I have been the people pleaser, the one who wanted to be accepted, by guys yes, but people in general.

I've spent my whole life trying to be what other people will find attractive, funny, interesting, or just socially acceptable.

I have hated country, and then loved country again, and gotten into hardcore music, and then only listened to acoustic music.

I tried to make myself seem tough, and independent.

I tried to make myself seem more experienced and worldly.

I went from hating cussing to cussing like a sailor to hating it, to thinking it was okay, to now where I still think it's hilarious as long as people aren't getting offended.

I've spent so much time trying to be what the world wants and putting myself in roles that nobody really asked me to be in. And I am so damn tired.

I realize now that when I say I'm tired, I'm not actually tired physically, but I'm tired of spending so much time trying to fit in and be someone completely contradictory to who God created me to be.

I wasn't made to be the one who draws attention, I'm the one you get to know and figure out that I truly care about people.

I'm the one who would rather talk about you and help you than spend the time to actually help myself, which I'm seeing now, is sort of a problem sometimes.

I was made to love people, in my way.

My identity is in Christ, and it always has been.

I can live in grace by knowing that I am enough the way I am, I don't have to do anything to be loved, and I want to be a person that shows other people that they don't have to do anything to be loved.

I am loved, adored, strong, courageous, hopeful, beautiful, and on my way to joyful.

I want to live the life that God created me for, but I can't do that if I keep trying to live it as someone he didn't create me to be.