You'll Never Know, Dear

It is truly a pity that the majority of my teenage years were spent with my heart bound up in producing angsty, cliché poetry; I was empowered by deep emotions, but I in no way did them justice. My potential was high and I wasted it. I read back now and it is not just my embarrassment that colours previous words, but a sort of wisdom that sees more depth in recent haikus than in any pager I wrote in the tenth grade.

As part of my Christmas artsy to-do list, I want to go back and revisit the circumstances that demanded such a profoundly lacking creative statement and come at them from a new angle, thereby rewriting what needed to be said with more retrospect and less chained-to-the-bottom-of-my-humanity by every circumstance that came my way. By the end of break, I want to have an entire art journal full of what-could've-been's (but without the bitter resentment of " what if"s).

This probably sounds stupid. It might be. I am probably wasting my time, but to me it is then a necessary waste. Maybe you don't understand = perfect. No one else could possibly see the ridiculous dissimilarity between the profundity of parallel universes: that of my waking life and the one relived in print. I want to do justice to my life, not just live as one who has no past and must therefore make entirely spontaneous, momentary decisions with nothing from which to refer.

So We Can Tell Them We Did Everything We Could

I have been musing on wilderness lately, and have come to a startling conclusion: I will never get out the way I came. If my goal is to get back to the way I was before, I will fail miserably for the rest of my life. But. But if my goal is to come out changed through my wanderings and better for them, then I have a chance at succeeding.

It is not called a time of preparation for nothing. No scholar ever said that Moses in the wilderness was a waste, or David, or Jesus. What if to make my own life have meaning, this is what it takes? Then I will press on, with the actual goal in mind and not some faint nuance of who I used to be and wish I could be again. I can never be, will never be, would never want to be her again. No. There is a greater goal, a higher cause, a life that is more worth living by far.

Crunch Time

I have no time to blog, or think or eat or anything else. I have wasted the last few weeks (months?) putting off the things I need to do. Suddenly it's crunch time and I'm overwhelmed and that little voice inside is telling me "If only you had done it all when you had the time, there wouldn't be any stress now," but my logical self yells back "I didn't feel any more capable of doing it then than I do now!" Homework. I despise homework. Homework is not how I learn, nor is it conducive to making me more willing to learn. I like to teach myself and then talk with other people who have done the same. That's all. This business of attending classes and doing stupid weekly assignments and writing long-winded reports that will never apply to my life or ministry is suffocating.

I thought that deciding to not return next year would give me an energy boost to finish this semester well; in reality, it has made everything more difficult. There is no part of me that wants to do the work, except the nagging part telling me that if I were to return in a few years' time i would hate to re-take these courses. So. No desire, no real motivation, but between now and lunch (less than 2 hours) I plan to hammer out as much as can possibly be done. This does not feel like freedom, and it was for freedom that I was set free.

Beyond Where We Should Have Gone

Don't. Waste. Your. Life.

What does that even look like.

I. I am without the means to continue in the same way. If I were to stay here, stay the same...I would die. I have been suffocating for months.

For one, small, barely conceivable moment, I felt the tiniest breath of freedom. The weight was gone, the air was clean. It was but a moment. This. This is a cheesy song that everyone else laughs at but breaks my heart. The lyrics have become a haunting part of me.

Pray, pray, pray, seek, beg, pray, beg. Please please please please please fight for me I cannot fight for myself it never worked it won't work now just please please please fight fight for me on my behalf nothing I do will do anything I need You to fight please please fight.

Nothing.

...

.

I'm hanging on another day just to see what You will throw my way.

That anthem is slowly dying.