How is it possible, that I can't stop caring?

Somewhere along the way, I think I lost my ability for self-preservation. I think I've lost my ability to say no, and I've lost my hope that anything can come of all this.

I get to the point where I would fight for you. I would defend you with every last breath, even if they are right. Even if everything they say is true. I would defend you.

Not a day goes by where you don't mention some girl who means a little bit more to you, at least for that second.

I'm back and forth, up and down, and yet, you're always there, and I'm always wanting you to be.

I always want you to be there. Hear your voice. See your smile when you're making fun of me.

You infuriate me more than most, and yet you make me smile a lot more than the rest.

You make awful things seem cool and sometimes you wishing to seem cool to others makes me feel awful.

I think that you don't get it. You don't understand how truly great you are. You don't see how your big heart could be meant for someone who is going to appreciate it, instead of young girls who are going to use it for their benefit.

I so desperately want you to see what I see.

I want you to see the dedication, the drive, the heart, the light and the beauty that I see in you.

You are so much better than trying to fit in with the people who will never be what you truly need. The people who live the lifestyle because they don't know what real love truly is. God's love.

And you know His love. You can be such a light for His love. You can spread hope, and joy, and you can be so much more than just someone who tries to fit into the mold that the world has set before you.

You are so much better than this. You deserve so much more than this.

Yes I've said all this before. You don't know the extent of my heart behind it, but you know that I care. At least there's that.

I care about you. I care if you get hurt, or if there's a girl you're interested in who is seriously not good enough for you. I care if your dreams come true. I care if you leave and I care if you stay. I care...

Welcome Back to Freedom

So, it's been a while. For those of you that read my ramblings.

It's November 12, and I've been in school for about a month and a week.

This year has been completely different than last year.

Where first year at MLSSM is based on identity and our foundation, second year is based on leadership and growing us in that area.

So this year so far, has been me being thrown into leadership in different places of my life.

However, as interesting as that all is, it's not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about the struggle.

The struggle that I've faced with holding onto my identity and my joy.

Brace yourself for the seemingly endless rambling.

These past couple of weeks have felt very off. I had felt very off.

I was easily irritated, I actually at one point was so peeved that I felt like I was going to explode on someone.

Through all of this I did manage to somewhat hang on to my sanity. I didn't tear anyones head off.

I didn't know what it was, but something was wrong. Everyone else could tell because people kept asking me if I was okay.

I kept saying yes, and that I was only tired, but no. I was not okay.

On Thursday we do worship time in The Station office before we work. And my boss Rachel prayed and asked us all if we had any prayer requests. I took this opportunity to open up with people and be vulnerable.

I wasn't okay. I felt like somewhere along the way I had agreed with something and let it back into my life and it was drastically affecting me. I was full of negativity and I didn't know why. So I shared this with the team.

After I shared, Rachel told me that she had seen the shift in me a couple of weeks before. It wasn't until that moment and her saying that, that it clicked. I knew what I had done.

I don't know how far back I shared this with all of you, but in high school and college I struggled a lot with lust. But more specifically I struggled with acting on lust. Now I've never had a boyfriend, or any relations with men, so people automatically assume that I don't struggle with anything like that. Actually people often think I don't struggle with anything and that I'm perfect. Another impossible pressure on my life. I will never be perfect.

Anyways. A couple weeks ago I slipped up. I slipped up and then immediately after I repented from what I had done. I apologized for willingly allowing lust to come between me and my Father. However, even though I repented, the shame stayed.

I had invited shame back into my life and it was tearing my heart apart. It made me self-conscious. It made me angry at myself and then I was easily angered by others. The self-hatred snuck back in. I felt my body changing. I was breaking out like crazy and I felt awful and worst of all, my joy wasn't there. The thing that I fought so hard to get back, somehow slipped from my grasp.

As the team began to pray, I began praying in my spiritual language. My Swiss roommate struggled with sharing her testimony as I did, and so I prayed for both of us, that we would receive freedom to share our testimonies that would bring others freedom.

Rachel prayed freedom over me, freedom from fear. The joy was prayed back into my life. Once we were done praying and I had cried a whole buckets worth of tears, I felt it. My joyful spirit was back.

Normally after you cry you still have that sorrowful feeling of what you were crying about. But this, it just seemed the more I cried, the more freedom I received back. The more freedom I claimed back. I noticed, the rest of Thursday that I felt lighter. I felt freer. I felt joyful. When I looked in the mirror that day, I felt beautiful again. I felt like I could look at myself and honestly say that I loved who I was.

Yesterday I spent a good three hours talking with a friend about my dreams and what I believe God is doing in my life. I was talking into God's destiny for me. I came home and realized that my skin was clearing up. It had been one day. One day of freedom and my whole life seemed turned around, back on the right path.

I have passion for my future again. I have passion to help people again and love people again. If this is my welcome back to freedom, I'm never going to take it for granted again. I'm never going back.

I Cry

When I see other people in pain, I cry.Sometimes I cry when something is too beautiful to just say it.

I cry when people reconcile. Something as small as a beautiful voice can make me cry.

Being angry makes me cry. Getting yelled at makes me cry.

Sometimes people will snap at me and I’ll wait until they are gone, then I’ll cry.

Loving people makes me cry. Good music, and wonderful poetry make me cry.

I cry when I’m proud of someone.

Encouraging words make me cry.

I cry when I’m overwhelmed.

Sometimes I even cry when I read sweet things. I’ve probably cried during every book I’ve ever read. I’ve cried because of things, I myself, have written.

Movies are my Kryptonite. Whether it be tears of laughter, joy, or sadness.

So basically I cry a lot.

But I’m not even ashamed of it.

I cry because things are important to me. Relationships matter. People matter. Music matters. I have empathy so strong, I cry for fictional characters when they are wronged.

I’m a sensitive person.

But I’m strong when it counts.

Like when someone yells at my best friend and expects to get away with it. Or when I slip down the stairs and receive a huge purple bruise on my butt.

I’m someone people can laugh with, and cry with, or just be real with.

I wouldn’t change who I am for anything.

I’m just glad that I’ve finally gotten to this point. The point where I know that even when I cry, I am beautiful.

Time Has Taught Me Things

In 2010, I started writing my own teen novel. I worked on it for a long time and then eventually felt like it was terrible and it would never get published, or even finished. I read so many better things around me and knew so many writers that were exceedingly better than I was.

Last week, I opened it back up again. I began rewriting it, adding detail and changing certain situations. I was fully immersed in it. It brought me joy again.

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In sixth grade I got my first guitar. I loved it. I wrote terrible songs with my friends and then we would stand by our tree and sing them during school breaks. It never led anywhere but eventually my songs got better and I could do it on my own.

Recently I've had a really hard time playing my guitar and writing songs. Even looking at my guitar across the room makes me feel guilty for not touching it. I have a hard time because I don't want anyone to hear me. There is a much better guitar player in the house and I think sometimes I'm just too intimidated to write my songs that consist of four chords.

So I haven't.

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Sometimes I think we allow others success to scare us out of our own.

I spent almost all of college feeling like I couldn't be a writer because it was somebody else's thing. They were a terrific writer and I sucked, or at least felt like I did.

But when we put the pressure of others success on ourselves, it scares us out of trying.

At least it scared me out of trying.

Instead of asking my friend to read my writing and help me become better, I just stopped writing.

I became too prideful. If I couldn't be great at it on my own then I wasn't going to do it at all.

I'm scared of criticism, even if it's constructive, especially if it's constructive.

But here I am again, writing. I'm writing because I love it. Because I love creating things.

If I love something, I'm not going to stop because someone else does it better. There's always going to be someone that does something better.

The only difference is that they aren't me. They don't want to say what I want to say.

They don't want to sing how I want to sing, or play guitar.

No one can do what I do, because no one is me, but me.

I can keep doing what I love and continue to get better.

Or I can stop everything because I think that I'm not good enough, based on someone else's years of practice.

These are the things that time has taught me.

Laugh

"How wonderful is it that we laugh because our bodies cannot contain the joy"

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This quote basically killed me today. You want to know why? Because I cannot even count the number of people that have apologized for the sound, or decibel of their laugh. Sometimes, me and a friend of mine drive around in my car and one of us will laugh ridiculously, and then it spirals out of control into this unspoken contest of who can make the stupidest sounding laugh. And you know what? We laughed.

I've apologized for my laugh. Sometimes I'll be at work and I'll laugh at a friends joke, loudly, and I look towards our bosses office scared that he'll come out and scold me for laughing. Even though he's never given me a reason to believe he would actually do such a thing. Why is it that I feel I need to apologize for laughing? Why does anyone feel that way? It's idiotic.

The only time that maybe I was justified for apologizing after a laugh, was on my first date when I laughed and water squirted out of my mouth. And I'm gonna be honest, that was probably my selling point, because I couldn't really shake him.

I love laughing. I love crying because I'm laughing so hard. You really know that something is funny if you are alone and you are rolling around on the floor cracking up. I'm sure my quadmates all thought I was crazy from all the laughs they heard down the hall because I think everything is funny.

I usually always get insecure when someone points out my laugh. And it's not even bad. Someone will be like, "I love your laugh." And then I overanalyze everything they could be talking about. The sound? How my face looks when I laugh? How I basically open my mouth fully and let the sound echo up and out from my diaphragm?

I don't get it. But I know that it's a compliment that I'm no longer going to let make me feel insecure.

Laughter is beautiful. It's probably one of the most amazing expressions of life. If you can make someone who is sad laugh, I think that you've done a great thing.

About two years ago in college, I remember struggling with myself and who I was. I remember I went through a time where I was even more insecure than I am now. I was sitting in one of my classes and all the sudden out of nowhere, like God was speaking right to my heart I heard Him say that he smiles when I laugh.

God smiles when I laugh. I understand now through that one quote that it's basically what it is. Joy escaping our lips because we cannot contain it. And why wouldn't God smile at His joyful children?

This is the most important thing. Knowing how to laugh and letting the joy consume you. Let your laugh echo in the late night hours. Let your stomach muscles clench so hard because you are laughing so hard. Let your laugh be and don't be insecure about it. God smiles when you laugh.

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.