I'm not gonna lie.

There are certain actions and things in the world that make me feel low.

I'm an honest person, but I never want people to fell bad for me when I'm in a low place. So yes I rant. I get annoyed.
But I also undermine the situation. I say "I'm fine" a lot when I really am mad beyond the point of talking.
I worry that my depression might come back and that I can't fight it or make it go away quick enough and people will notice and suggest things like a counselor or medicine. It happened last time and I hated it.
But it took years for people to notice. But once you notice something the first time, you're always on the lookout for it to happen again.

But I'm not going to lie.
As low as I have felt, I am trying to be hopeful. To get over my lack of motivation and do things that I seriously need to do.
To get past people being mean and hurtful and forgetful. Past that things are very far and very different from the way I always imagine or really think how they'll turn out.

I have to say it though, what's making me feel low.
Friends. Close friends leaving me out, by chance or just due to not wanting to hear what I have to say. Who act one way somewhere and are different somewhere else. Some days I understand and accept that I'm certain people's lives to kick their butt's and tell 'em they need to stop or go or whatever, but other days, it just stresses me out to the max and makes me not want to talk ever again.
Myself. Me and my gross lack of motivation to do anything. I don't do much now and feel busy. Maybe because i always think. Always over-think and go past point of real reason and understanding and it just gets screwed up in my head. It becomes a spiritual battle of me screaming at the demons saying "I fully belong to God. Both heart and mind."
Other than that. Its not much. Just the things closest to my heart.

I'm out. I need to do things. I'm sick of the teenage mode and procrastinating.

"Well done is better than well said"-Benjamin Franklin

'If you love her let her go...'

(Listen to these songs while reading)





I am sad.
I am sad for myself and for those I know.
Mostly, I am sad for those who can't let go.
It's one of the hardest things in the world in my opinion. To have horrible feelings mixed with good, not wanting them, but not wanting to hand them over to anyone. ever.
The best example would be after breaking up a relationship with anyone. Mostly romantic relationships, but I've seen it between family and friends too. You know someone for a while. Some good time period where you become close and bonds are formed. But also, you learn the dark sides. The bad-the things you don't like about them. Or maybe you don't.
The next part happens in more romantic relationships than anything else-it breaks. Life happens. Either you grow up, a event in one of your life's show something that the relationship cannot work with or around. Someone maybe died. Maybe someone moved.
Whatever happened-the relationship is trained and eventually broken.
What now? You have all these wonderful brilliant memories of a this person tainted by hurt.
You hate how you're feeling and wish it were all different-somehow back to how it had been.
But it can't change back. And you know you have to let go of it. But that would also mean letting go of the love you each shared and the friendship you both had possessed.
It gets to be almost this limbo thing. You are not wanting to let go but knowing its the right thing to do.
At the end of 2007, I came back to God after a decline of falling away for a few years. The big weekend that it did, all that my life had been the past year or so crumbled. I had thrown out everything taught to me as a child and had been in an unhealthy relationship and less than ideal school situation.
I will never forget that feeling. Lying on a convention room floor crying my eyes-my whole shuddering, clinging to my best friend while all our youth leaders started to pray and lay hands on us. I could hear God so clearly, at the same time feeling him break down all the lies my life was now based on. I went home and broke up with boyfriend and then proceeded to be at church three times a week every week-crying anytime we got into prayer or worship.
The walls were broken and now the rubble was being cleared. I was being rebuilt. But I had to let go.
And I still am. I always feel as if I'm still in those beginning baby steps of letting. Like the repeated mixed up process of breaking up with someone. All the emotions you feel afterwords.
There are days I'm overwhelmed by everything I have to deal with. All the past things in my life that I would rather not think about or remember. And there are times I can forget them or feel better and lighter.
But tonight I was reminded deeply of what it felt like to not let go. To hold on so strong not caring how deeply it's wounding you. the weapon you get to hurt someone else but it burns you more instead.
Why? Why can't we let go of things that scar us so deeply? The things we sit and complain, the things that make us cry because a movie or conversation reminds us of it?
Is it simply our want? To not forget the good that was? Ive never forgotten that part.
Is it not listening to God? My relationship with him has grown over and over in the past year simply because he asks me to let go of some things and while I don't always do it right or I fail in trying, I still set out to let go of something wounding me. God never ever wants things to hurt us, esp ourselves I think.
But our vision in those relationships become blinded. We think we're not good enough for him and cant run to him, finding we cant do this, we cant let go by ourselves and nobody else can truly help us because nobody else has lived our exact lives to really know what it feels like to us.

I think we all know somebody who needs to let go of something. Maybe its ourselves, maybe its a friend or family member, but the fact is its in the world and its abundant and thats so sad.
I pray for you all, you know who you are.

I'm not trying to be mean, but.../Food poisoning

Two things to talk about!

1.
I'm not trying to be mean, but...I'm really sick of all the inauguration crap.
It's not that I don't like Obama. Well, I mean, I really don't considering I'm republican and voted for McCain and all that's Obama does basically does just bugs me but it's not cause of that.
It's not because he's black. yes, I get that it's a big important piece of history. But, as my mom puts it, "and would there be this much coverage of it if it were the old white dude? no."
Maybe it's all the coverage and media. A lot of it seems to be coming from who's covering and talking and how much ya know? (again-really good site- HowObamaGotElected.com)
Maybe it's a combo of all it or just that I never really get into the political side of things.

And why should I? I've passed the high school courses that dealt with it. And yes, there are leaders in the church as in politics but there is no election. It is not like the world and countries and are filled with corruption rotted officials. And as good as our government (USA) was set up back in 1776, it's still not the best.

That's mostly all I had to say about that.

and...
2.
Food poisoning? Didn't happen to me..but it's in the news. Why am I blogging about it? The Salmonella poisoning is apparently coming from peanut butter.
So of course I don't have it, cause I don't eat peanut butter. Go me! Haha.


Okay I'm done. School tomorrow. and then getting to see "my youth" baptized. at least some of them. I miss those kiddos.

Ehhhh.

I can't sleep. Somehow this always solved by wrting or reading.

Whatev. So. I've been in a weird mood lately. Really kind unmotivated. I hate it cause when I came back from Oregon and then the new year started I was very into Ima gonna do this and this and this and then...I got sick.
What bugs me most about being sick is there is never a temperature and not throwing up. It's odd. I dunno. But even though I'm over it (mostly, I feel slighty icky), I'm still very unmotivated. Sleeping a lot. Not doing too much but being very excited to do small one a week things.
It scares me because this is kind of what I was like when I was going to counseling and on meds. I'd hate to think I'm anything like that girl again, you know?
But I think it's more kind of spiritual testing--mostly cause i did put my faith first in my life and whenever that gets a little stagnant, the rest of things tend to too. But I'm trying to just be hopeful and put on a good attitude.

But here's a song that, for whatever reason, makes me smile and feel soo much better everytime I hear it.=)

Time just flies by..

Today, okay technically yesterday, has been six years since I had back surgery. The surgery was to correct my scoliosis (born with it) by attaching metal rods to my back. It's permanent and I've lived with it since.
I think the only big things about it to are the fact that my scar makes me feel like my back is cut in half and that I'm not a hunchback because I did have this surgery.

Whenever this turns around, I always start thinking about where I've been in my life since then. And it's been crazy. But maybe that's cause its been my teenage years. I mean, I was a month and some days from thirteen when I had this surgery. I was young, but not too scared. I think it's something about that age of twelve. I wasn't scared. I was as courageous as could be and knew I'd be fine. If I had had that surgery done at 16, 17 I've wouldv'e been freaking out. I mean, those were years my faith was not as strong. Those were years I wasn't sure of almost anything. Twelve, thirteen, I was just this kid that believed and had faith and worked hard.
Then enter high school and the summer before that, my world almost just crashing completely changing in every way it cold.
From that summer till Nov of 07 is such a blur of me fighting change and just not knowing anything. And then at 17 years old, I went back to whop I was at twelve. But more grown and evolved. And now I'm almost nineteen. I just got the concept of 18! Yet I'm growing and changing, as is many parts of my life-school, getting a job, friends moving, church changing.
It's crazy.
But it's really the first time since that young age in that hospital room that I've been content and happy and knowing everything is going to fine no mater what.
It's a time where my faith is strong and it's not breaking or hiding but I'm wearing it proudly and fighting those spiritual battles the way I need to and am supposed to.

It's a strange time.
Each year gets more challenging but better too. Last year, 2008, I could look at one way and say I lost a friend and a grandfather. And God had me doing stuff I was scared out of my mind to do. A lot of people I loved either left my church or moved away or went to college for a while. It was a big year. But big in happiness too. I am so much closer to my mom. And my friends and I are tight. I finally finished high school, a semester late but i did it. I moved into college group, knowing someday maybe I'd be back in the youth group in a different way. I got to have a white Christmas! I got to visit my aunt and uncle in Arizona and my grandma up in Neveada, and had the chance to say goodbye to my Grandpa for one last time, something i didn't get with my dad's dad at fourteen.

Life is insanely crazy, but even just two weeks into this new year, i know it's gonna be amazing.

To be one of the Butterfly People...

So I came across this story. I did not write. My friend who posted it on the boards (http://s11.invisionfree.com/LandOfBrokenHearts/) did not write it.
But I wanted to share it.

One day I was picking up a few things at the supermarket. The paper butterfly fluttered past the shelves of potato chips and cookies and landed on my arm.

It is not often that I am approached in the supermarket by a crudely shaped paper butterfly. I looked down and discovered that the paper butterfly was piloted by a small child. There beside my shoes stood a three-year-old girl, pinching her homemade butterfly and looking up into my quizzical eyes.

I grinned and said, "Hi!"

This little pixie made one more swooping motion with her butterfly and again looked up at me and chirped, "I love you."

That made my day. I crouched down and said, "I love you too."

She beamed with bubbly joy, turned, and scampered down the aisle, her paper butterfly soaring beside her.

My day had been brightened by one of the Butterfly People.

We've all probably seen little kids do such things. They seem so free. To them it's no big deal to skip up to a stranger and blurt, "I love you." Somehow, it seems so natural to them.

My response to the little girl was probably pretty common for her. She's no doubt accustomed to running up to her mom and dad and brother and sister and grandparents and saying, "I love you." And they, in return, are accustomed to hugging the little girl and saying, "I love you too."

She feels free to give her love. It's part of her young life.

But I worry about her. I'm afraid she'll follow all the rest of us. There comes that time in our lives when our "I love you" gift isn't exactly warmly received. At age four or five or six we may approach a little friend and utter our favorite line, "I love you." And on that fateful day the little friend says something like, "Oh, shut up. Your breath smells like your daddy's shoes."

At that moment we learn an unfortunate lesson. We learn that love is risky business. After more painful reactions to our "I love you" approaches, we learn to carefully weigh the risks involved before offering our love so freely. Consequently, those around us hear "I love you" less and less.

Our beautiful paper butterflies have become crumpled. They're no longer free to make graceful, soaring flights through supermarkets and other places.

Now we are even afraid to risk flying our butterflies around those very people who used to hug us and respond with "I love you too." The crumpled butterfly syndrome holds us back.

But sometimes we are bothered by what our moms and dads and brothers and sisters must think of us. Do they ever sit and wonder whatever happened to the butterfly spirit within us? I'm sure they remember those beckoning eyes and that squeaky "I love you." Do they suspect that we have stopped loving them? How long has it been since our moms and dads and brothers and sisters have heard us say to them, "I love you"?

It's that crumpled butterfly that holds us back. Too many times we've reached out to another person, only to be ignored, misunderstood, or laughed at. It hurts too much when other don't respond warmly to our love. To soar with the butterfly is risky.

To be one of the Butterfly People we must give 100% of our love. We must take the risk that our love might be rejected. To that lonely new kid in the group, the butterfly within us asks us to reach out and risk our love. To that hard to love person at school, the butterfly asks us to risk our love. To the ex-friend who we've said we "hate", to the old lady at the nursing home, to that bratty little brother, to that tired dad or mom, the butterfly asks us to risk our love- 100%.

It's a natural reaction to guard our feelings, to be cautious about the risks in giving 100%. But the butterfly asks us to look beyond that risk.

God calls us to be His Butterfly People. Jesus said, "if you love me, feed my sheep." It's not enough to simply call ourselves Christians. We are challenged to live dangerously-to take the risks of the Butterfly People. Jesus said, "If you love only the people that love you, why should you receive a blessing? Even sinners love those who love them! And if you do good only to those who do good to you, why should you receive a blessing? Even sinners do that! And if you lend only to those from whom you hope to get it back, why should you receive a blessing? Even sinners lend to sinners to get back the same amount! No! Love your enemies and do good to them, lend and expect nothing back, and your reward will be great." (Luke 6:32-35)

Jesus is our glittering example of the Butterfly People. He reached out and risked with 100% of his love. And sure enough, there were people around to curse, to laugh at Him, to ridicule Him, to hurt Him, to shout for His death, and to nail Him to a cross.

But Jesus knew that His actions and His love did not depend on how His love and His actions were received. Jesus remained vulnerable. He was the original Butterfly Person. But that's not the end of the story.

He won in the end - just like all true butterflies. At Easter's dawn, He arose from His temporary cocoon and spread His wings in glorious color. The world would never be the same. And he invites us to join him in His great metamorphosis. He dares us to be His Butterfly People.

You are the butterfly people.

And I must tell you...

I love you.

I love this.

I want to be a Butterfly Person. As afraid as I am of getting hurt again.

This is what we should be. To have the wisdom of being as old as we are but to have the courage of a child, to not think about fear or rejection or sadness or pain.

God gave us that! That childlike faith and courage and then he himself was a butterfly who gave everything to us.

For me, it's not enough to just give my all to him. I want to be that butterfly I've seen since the age of four. I want to give everybody that same thing that God handed to us.

And yes, I do love you.