You Can't Stop Wishing if You Don't Let Go

So simple, so obvious, so out of reach until Jack Johnson said it so poignantly. I have heard this song a hundred times and never heard this.

You can't stop wishing if you don't let go.

I am a holder-on-er. I love adventure and spontaneity and thrills; I despise change. It is mostly out of fear, because I am so darn afraid that I will not be able to readjust to my new circumstances. Example: I have worked the same job on and off for five years as jobs are available, and every time I am at a new location I almost don't go because what if they won't let me in or there's no parking or my boss has his phone off and I can't find them or I have, in this new setting, suddenly forgotten how to spin a crepe? I like reliability and time-proven examples to show that I am capable of something. I would rather pick up and move across the country on a whim than try a new sandwich place that is not Subway. All this to say that I hold on desperately to what I know and what is comfortable. For me. Like I said, moving across the country doesn't scare me as much as ordering a coffee at Blenz instead of Starbucks.

You can't stop wishing if you don't let go.

My memories are the same, as are plans and fantasies and goals. Easy to maintain, hard to exchange, and impossible to eliminate with nothing to put in its place. I am in the process of changing/rebuilding a lot of my dreams. Sometimes, though, I find myself caught up in the old wishes, almost out of habit.

You can't stop wishing if you don't let go.

New wish: I want my life as a whole to be an adventure. A year ago I would have told you that I want to do the same thing for the rest of my life, but now that seems so mundane. I want to spend three years in Cuba as a missionary, followed by two years working at Booster Juice to afford booster seats and cribs in Surrey, then five years at a new church plant in Winnipeg until it's time to travel around doing conferences and seminars for people who have the Bible all wrong. Or something to that effect. I don't know. That's not even what I want; what I want is to convey that I am so thrilled by the idea that I don't know. Which is strange. I am exchanging set dreams and goals for nothing, and I have never been so (scared) delighted.

I am letting go. No more wishing.

Dangit! I Wanted to Post One More Blog in May!

On Sunday I will leave on a roadtrip. To clear my head. To be alone. To just...drive.

At first I had my plans all figured out. Option A: Drive down to 6 flags, continue on to Vegas, go to Albuquerque just to go, and come back through Boise. It will take 5 days. Option B: Go with my mother to Whistler and stay in a condo and just relax; alone or together, I will still get to be away.

I need to get out of here.

I need to escape the expectations and the problems and the phone calls and the text messages and the concern and the lack of it and the hopelessness.

I need to drive and drive and drive until I feel human again.

So Close, and Yet So Very Far

This isn't quite it, but it's almost the truck from my dream last night. In it (the dream, not the truck), God laid waste some of my biggest, most secret hopes, but also gave me the closure I've been longing for. How often do you get to say goodbye to someone and have them say it back without the repercussions of them remembering the time spent together? It was beautiful and heartbreaking, left me waking with real tears, but was exactly what I needed.

Today I got incredibly sunburned; it was so worth it. Lounging in the sun on a blanket doing homework, I remembered a day almost exactly a year before when I felt exactly the same, and, somewhere in the cavernous recesses of my heart, I knew that things were going to be just fine. Taking in the glow of the September afternoon, the world was suddenly transformed into something beautiful again.

Tomorrow I will probably awake to less peace than I feel right now, but that is okay. I will be able to look back on this entry and know that, at least for a second, my heart was happy to simply rest in God and trust that He knows what He's doing.

I feel as though I am dishonouring memories when I let go and the pain gets easier and easier to handle, but I am finally starting to realize that life must go on, or it will run along without me and I will be left with nothing. So bring on tomorrow, with all its pain and tears and mysteries and excitement. I'm ready. I don't know why and I don't know how I got here, all I know is this: I love God, He loves me, and in this moment that is all that matters in the world.

Anywhere But Here Without You

There are so many new things to say! How to say them all?

I have a boy. It has been a month, minus a day. We're getting better at being ridiculous in a good way. I also get better at being less dramatic and confrontational...well, I'm trying to get better. Somehow he forgives me every time, and his patience never ceases to amaze me. He doesn't know this, but he inspires me to be better, and heispatience makes me want to be more patient for him.

I'm almost done my first year of college, only two weeks left, and I don't know how I feel yet. I'm excited and scared and nostalgic and it's beautiful outside. The sunshine and warm wind coming through the window has been a constant shift-changer in my life, and I'm subconsciously preparing myself all over again. I don't want to let go, but I also want to embrace the new. Letting go of certain people will be harder than they know, especially the people who will never know, but there's nothing left to say. C'est la vie.

God is working inside me in amazing ways. I LOVE the way He loves on me. Today, Sarah came to me in chapel and just spoke the perfect words over me. It was exactly what I needed to hear, and I never even considered asking Him for them. But they came anyway. I want to eat up the Word and live, breathe, think, beat for Him. That makes me smile. It makes me believe that He will care for me and that, maybe, I can let go.

I've been learning that if I hold onto the little that I have too hard, I will crush those things and have nothing left. But if I just release, God will let me keep some of it. Some He'll take, but that's only to replace it with something better. I need to trust in that.