what i was trying to say

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” -C. S. Lewis

How can someone who died thirty years before I was born perfectly express the feeling of what I was trying to say last night?

with my whole heart

I don't know what it was, but today something made me realize that I am not living with my whole heart. I've heard people say that scientists tell us we only use a small percentage of our brains. That may or may not be true, but I know that in everything I do, I've only been using a small percentage of my heart. I don't really know how to explain it, but I know that when I worship God, when I laugh with friends, when I sing in the car, when I serve others, when I love someone - I hold back. And what I'm holding back is not just a little bit, but a lot of my heart. I keep it to myself, holding it close so I don't get hurt. And honestly? It hasn't saved me much. True, I did not feel as heartbroken when people ignored me and hurt me and used me...but it wasn't much less. And the amount of what happy moments and situations God could have used me in was overwhelming.

A friend today asked me why I thought it was that I am so quiet and introverted. I told her, basically, that I'd gone through a long lonely period in my life and also had been hurt so many times that...well, I didn't really say it, but I don't trust people. They can hurt you, plunge the knife in and twist it and twist it and then walk away. I have experienced rejection, loss and broken trust in almost every form possible and the things people have done to me in the past are forcing me to reject not just them, but everyone else who tries to be a part of my life in any way. I hold back because I'm afraid of hurting, but hurt comes anyway, and the holding back is what ruins what good things that could come.

I don't love God as I could and as I should, I don't love people as I could and as I should, and I don't give everything to my God or to my friends.

I think what it really comes down to is do I trust God enough to live with abandon and recklessly open my heart to whatever he sees fit to let come in? And why would I not trust him? The question I keep asking myself is why would I hold back my heart from my God?

I want to live with all of my heart.

i know you're there

This week God has shown himself to me in an incredible way. A few days ago, I had reached a low in my life and I asked God why he had never answered one of my prayers. The next day (the very next day!) God tapped me on the shoulder and handed me what I had been asking for, kind of, for many years. And he worked through a person. I don't really want to be more specific than that, but God definitely used this person in an incredible way to show me that he is there and he listens when I pray to him.

i always knew that my life would change

Tonight it hit me that I have only two more months of the life that I know now. Then everything is going to change. All summer I'll be in countries I don't know, sometimes with people speaking languages I've never heard, seeing incredible sights and learning new things. After that, I have three weeks of shopping, packing and preparing for college. And then I'm gone. Though I'll probably be back for a weekend or two occasionally, breaks, and part of the summer, the lifestyle I live right now will never be something I'll have again. Some of my friends will be away at college. Some will be right here studying at Wake Tech, and some will still be in high school. But while I'm gone for large periods of time, their lives will change and I won't be here to see it happen, so we'll grow apart. It will happen. My siblings will grow up in different ways, and I'll just have to notice it when I'm home for a visit. And no longer will I have my parents to blame if something in my life goes wrong. No, everything rests on my shoulders.

I've been looking forward to this for years, but now that it's about to happen, I'm nervous beyond belief. Why?

Two more months till everything changes.

to be content

Occasionally, I'll have an amazing day and think that I have everything I'll ever need, and then I'll see something someone has that I want, and it makes me discontent. When I say something someone has that I want, it's not normally a material thing. No, instead I see that someone has an incredible relationship with a boyfriend/girlfriend, popularity, good friends, beauty, freedom, decisiveness, a great personality...and I won't be as happy because they have something that I don't.


Sometimes it's hard to be content, even though I know I have it better than a large percentage of the world's population.

i've got sunshine on a cloudy day

Today I feel deeply happy in a way that makes me want to do something unusual and dance around the room or roll down the car windows and sing for everyone on the road to hear. I know that God loves me, and I want to share that with everyone. This joy that I have because I know Christ is something not everyone has and I want them to know that they can have it too!

a true friend

Lately I've been thinking a lot about friends and what makes someone a true friend. Of course the standard answer goes something like, "is always there for you, walks in when the rest of the world walks out, loves you unconditionally and knows you better than you know yourself." That definition is great, but honestly? No one lives up to it. I mean, I may have just had incredibly bad luck in friendships but I've never had a friend who has always been there for me. At one time or another, I've been in a situation where I really needed someone and they let me down.

The friend who has come the closest to always being there for me and understanding me the best is my friend Grace. Our friendship is kind of weird if I think about it. Of the 8 or so years we've been friends, we've only lived in the same state for maybe 3 of those years. We've kept in touch through email, facebook, texting and phone calls ever since Grace moved to Virginia around 3 years ago. You could say that Grace isn't ever really there for me because she lives 3 hours away, but one phone call from her is often more encouraging to me than spending hours with some of my good friends here. Grace doesn't ever make me feel like I messed up, like I just did something stupid and now she'll look at me differently. I can completely let myself go and she won't make me feel like I made a fool of myself. She's the only friend I have who really truly knows who I am, because I hold back - probably too much - with others. Though we have practically all of the same views regarding our beliefs, we are definitely individuals in the choices we make in our lives, which couldn't be more different. And Grace likes me...I know she does, because she'll make time to visit me, or call me, or at the least send me a text saying she's too busy/sick/overwhelmed with schoolwork to call, but she thought about me and she's praying for me.

Sometimes I feel like I don't really have friends - like the people I hang out with could care less whether I'm there or not, like I just tag along with them because they don't want to be mean and say, "Look, no one really likes you that much anyway. Go find a new group of friends." But even that is better than having no one, so I try to think that everything's okay...and maybe it is, maybe it's something I'm just imagining. But even I can't ignore the fact that I don't have much to say most of the time. And when I do say something, it's nothing spectacular. A friend of mine said once that he thinks I have so much bottled up inside me that one day it'll all burst out...and that he won't be surprised if one day I suddenly and loudly burst into song. I laughed because the way he said it was funny, but the truth is that I do have a lot bottled up inside me that I never say. I guess part of the reason why is that I don't completely trust people anymore. I've had two best friends dump me - one without warning and taking with her every other friend I had in elementary school, one who had drifted strangely away from me and then suddenly dumped me within the past year or so. The way they acted towards me had a lot to do with me losing faith in friends. How do I know when I open my heart to someone they won't stab me while the armor is off? And the answer is that I don't know. I'll never know. So I simply don't let anyone close. Is this the right thing to do? I don't know. That's something I'm still thinking through.

I guess it's true that I can't control what other people do. The only thing that I can do is be a true friend myself and hope someone cares and wants a friend like me.

Reading back through this, I've been really negative about most of my friendships. Probably I've been too negative. In the light of a new day, I'll probably recognize that I do have many friends who care about me and that I didn't remember them. And these friends who I don't think care about me...maybe they do and I'm just too blind to see it, or too caught up in those friendships that failed. But these are just my observations on a Friday night when I'm home sick, missing several things I could've gone to tonight. :)

one fine wire

I'm juggling all the thoughts in my head
I'm juggling all my fears on fire
But I'm listening as it evolves in my head
I'm balancing on one fine wire


Everytime my balance was fine
Well, I was just walking on one fine wire
Everytime my balance was fine
Well, I was just walking on one fine wire
And it's frayed at both the ends
And I'm slow unraveling

This song has been on repeat on my iPod the past few weeks because it basically describes my life right now. I'm walking on a fine wire the rest of my life before I head off to college. I have to please my parents, my friends, college admissions offices, and others without losing my balance and messing up other relationships. The end is in sight, but it's so far to the ground. I also have to make decisions that will affect the rest of my life - where to go to college, what to major in, career goals, life goals...all these things will affect my life and myself, who I am as a person. And these decisions are looking me in the eyes and screaming in my face, now, now, now! I have a month, maybe two, before I choose who I will be. And how will I know if I'm making the right decision? God will never give me a thumbs up and say, "Ding, ding, correct answer!" Life is never simple or easy.

And just this past year I've stepped into a whole new realm of difficulty. I realized that I no longer felt called to or interested in the career I've wanted to pursue since age 8. For a while, I was completely without a clue as to what I wanted to do with my life. For the first time, possibly the only area in my life in which I had complete confidence was gone. And now I think I know what I want to do - write songs - but I'm so unsure about it that I haven't told hardly anyone. Because I don't know, honestly, if I have enough talent or determination to make it in any career. But since I started thinking about being a songwriter, a lot of things in my life have come together and made sense in my mind. I think it may be what God wants me to do. The thing that keeps me up at night, though, is the fact that it's highly possible that I might not make it in the music industry. I could very well waste my college years working for a degree that I couldn't use. I might risk my future on something that could crash and burn. Then what would happen?

I'm juggling all my fears on fire...