I'm falling in and now this feeling's getting stronger

My spring semester is finally finally finally over! All of the stress and papers and tests and packing and fitting in last times with friends...ach, I get a little stressed remembering. I'm so glad to be done, but in all of the busyness I didn't really let myself think about the summer and what it will look like. It's like a big...void almost. I'm going to camp with my church for a week and to Florida with my family, both of which will be super amazing, but the rest of the summer, I've got nothing definite. Nothing but free time. Hopefully working, doing respite work like last summer, but even that's not very sure right now.

Even when I was at school, even when I was counting the days and the tasks and the hours until I could be done, I didn't even really want to come home. I love my family and I'm so glad to be able to see them, to hang out with my sister and to see Becky and Charlotte, but all of them have other things to do where I have nothing. Becky's life is basically here, Charlotte has work and things, and my sister has a way more active social life than I ever have. That sounds more self-pitying than I'm actually feeling. I just...I don't quite know how to explain. Or at least explain in a way that I'm theoretically okay with anyone reading. There are some things I won't share over public blog. 

Maybe this is just because it's night; I tend to be more emotional at night or right when I wake up. This afternoon I had fun with myself, unpacking and playing good music loudly. Then Allyson and I went to Bashas and got food, because our parents and Zach were gone, and made some pizza bagels and rented The Lovely Bones. And it was good. It wasn't until I got tired and bored that I started being so melancholy. I don't like melancholy. I need something to do. I'm going to go crazy sitting at home all summer. I think it goes back to my last blog and feeling like I don't have a place to rest. Everything is uncomfortable or stretching or...I don't know. I explained it well to my spiritual director but I cried then thinking about it and I'm sick of crying too so I try to avoid thinking about it. That's a totally healthy way to deal, right?

I'm not a fan of uncertainty and this summer is going to be different than either of my summers in college for a few different reasons. I'm working on holding to God, really knowing that He is here with me. It's a long, slow process of learning and relearning.


Now I'm trying to get up, I'm trying to retrace
My steps back to wherever I messed up

Is forever enough?

I'm holding on...

I know you'll be there whenever I wake up

Let it go, let it be and brick by brick we can be free

Does everything in my life have to be a stretching and growing experience? This semester has definitely been one whee I've grown the most, spiritually, in friendships, in expressing myself, and in resolving conflicts but sometimes I wish some areas of my life were just areas that I could be comfortable in. Like, if I'm growing a lot closer to God and learning to depend more on Him, which is something outside my 'comfort zone,' can't I be comfortable in times with my friends? Why does being in community have to feel like a discipline and something I have to stretch myself in? When I spend time alone, I feel lonely. It just happens, quite a bit actually. Can't I just have peace and rest and comfort in that area of my life for a little while? I feel like I'm explaining this badly, but last night I was thinking about my conflict resolution skills, or lack thereof, and knowing how much I have grown this semester or even in the past couple of years, but how far I still have to grow. I guess in a way I want to not grow in things, to be unaware of my deficiencies and not trying to stretch past my comfort zone so often. I don't want to have to consciously tell myself not to be jealous or passive-aggressive or focused, whether on homework or friends or whatever. I want things that are supposed to be fun to actually be fun.

This past weekend, I went to Rocky Point with my family and it was awesome. I didn't take my computer or any homework things homework and I think I needed that. I had the weekend to chill out and go snorkeling and sit on the beach and eat burritos and wrestle my sister/break our camper. But then I didn't get a whole lot of sleep so I'm entering the worst week of my semester sleep deprived and thus less motivated and more emotional than usual. Any time I think about things I have to do on top of schoolwork, I get panicky. Even just thinking about having to pick up and fill out a job application, meet for a meeting/test for a different potential job, pick up/return library books, see how I like my new nook, hang out with a bunch of different friends, get people to sign my birthday present mug from Charlotte's mom, pack, study for finals, go to Disneyland, go to the beach.

I just started reading Ruby Slippers, and it's so awesome but also eats up my time and I feel guilty for not doing homework or hanging out with people that I won't get to see in a couple weeks or not trying out my nook and I just need something I can enjoy, like I said earlier. I need something I can just purely enjoy and I can't find anything.

I'm so exhausted. I'm so ready for this semester to be over. I've skipped my devotions for the past week or so because I just plain need that extra time to sleep in the morning and I'm too busy or distracted during the day. I'm just plain worn out from this semester, with my class load and thinking about the future and major changes in my life and Mickey dying and reflecting and just...life. I desparately need sleep and free time and...summer. God, be with me. Get me through and give me strength until I can finally rest.

Vaya con Dios.

I'm broken inside, but all I go through it leads me to You

I should not read the Christy Miller books. Seriously. Especially the later ones, they hit too close to home for me. Never mind that her college is based on Biola (the author went there, met her husband there, and one of her sons was an RA here), but at least in some ways, her protagonist is way way too similar to me. She's shy and not too confident and reserved and loves kids and...ugh. The storyline fits too closely too. In the penultimate book of the main 12-book series, she breaks up with Todd, the guy she's liked and been sort-of dating for the entire series so that he can follow his dream and God's call to go off and do jungle missions work. Since it's a Christian series, obviously everything works out in the next book and the two of them eventually get married. But reading the scene at the end of the 11th book was different than when I read the series when I was 16. I cried when I read it yesterday. I was anticipating that scene and my reaction for the past couple days, because I knew it was coming. It was one of the scenes that's stuck with me the most since I read the series so long ago.

I don't know if I'm being too dramatic or reading too much into it, but I've thought of that scene and if that would be me some day, if I'd have to give up someone I really liked because it was God's will. I'd rather have the happy ending that Christy does than her heartbreaking middle or the emotional roller coaster that comes in the beginning of the series. She has doubts, she dates a couple of the 'wrong' guys, she gets jealous and has petty fights with her friends. It's still definitely romanticized, but I want the romanticized love life and epic story without the heartbreak, the ups without the downs.

Right now, I'm in the middle of the first of three books set after her high school graduation. She, her boyfriend, and her best friend travel around Europe after Christy's been working in an orphanage in Switzerland for a school year. I was like...I would LOVE to do that. I want to work in an orphanage, to travel around Europe with my best friends, to be so sure of God's leading and God's will. But...do I want to do it because it sounds like a 'cool' thing to do? Except it doesn't...Christy only feels stressed and drained from working in the orphanage. She decides it's not the thing she wants to do. I want that experience, to do something crazy and awesome, but most importantly to do something.

Ach I want money to not be a concern, for me to know where I'm going and why God's given me the passions I have. I want to get my master's in social work, but definitely not right after Biola. But then what do I do in the meantime? I feel like I ask a lot of questions and never get answers; the questions only pile up bigger and bigger. I think my pile of wants and wishes does the same thing...gets bigger and bigger, even the wish that my list of questions would get smaller and that I'd get a couple answers. The only answer I have now is to wait...just wait. I'm not a big fan of that answer. I want a 'better' one, with a step-by-step plan and specific instructions. Maybe this time next year I'll have a couple answers. I think my plan now is to try, to look into opportunities in what I want to do and to try or make plans based on my desires and what I think God's will might be. God needs to be the center of my hopes and dreams and plans, not me and not anyone else. I'm working towards that...slowly.

Desparately need You

I'm very conflicted about a lot of things. Tonight, or this week I guess, Biola is doing some 'Gender Impact' chapels and things. Tonight, there was one called 'Gender Myths,' a message and discussion by Jonalyn and Dale Fincher. I really liked it; I agreed with most of what they said. I guess I'll tell you what they said before I talk about my tumbling, confused thoughts.

They talked a lot about myths or stereotypes that just aren't true and the way our culture marginalizes both genders in how we talk and think about ourselves and one another, making a path for domestic violence and rape. Those two things wouldn't come out of a culture with a healthy understanding of and respect for both genders and gender differences. They talked about a survey given to elementary school kids, in which they were asked 'what if you woke up tomorrow morning as the other gender?' Most of the girls said they'd rather still be girls but gave benefits of being boys (shooting hoops after breakfast, being chose to demonstrate a sport in PE, etc.). Most of the boys, however, were horrified. Some said they would kill themselves before they'd be a girl and said how they would do it too, whether stabbing themselves or taking a bottle of kids. Gender and differences and the apparent superiority of one is taught subconsciously and at a young age.

Ach...I have so many thoughts, relating to tonight and other books I've read and my theology class in which we're talking about women in the church and it's so frustrating. I feel so picky sometimes, picking up subtle nuances and motivation behind the phrasing of a word of the one someone uses that makes me chafe against what they say, even though I might agree with their actual point. I think I chafe against motivations behind what they say, that women should be submissive and men leaders. In my small group communication class, we talked about how the best business/small group leaders have more androgynous traits, traits traditionally attributed to both genders. It's a topic I'm interested in and have stayed up way way too late talking and debating about before. I think it's hard because the picky nuances matter. They show things about the culture and subtle ways that show what someone actually thinks and not just what they're saying. Choosing a tone or a specific word reveals cultural biases that aren't Biblical, as much as submission to God and differences between men ad women are.

I'm still not quite sure what I think and have even less confidence in my ability to articulate it correctly without frustrating myself completely or taking five pages to do so. I will say that I do believe that men and women were created by God to be different; He made our bodies obviously differently and I think He made our souls and our whole being different from one another also. I definitely don't think that means that all women are the same or all men are the same. But we reflect and show God's image differently. I think He can gift men and women equally and that we have equal access to God; it's not the man who receives God's will and the woman who follows her husband or someone that's not God. I think that God has a will for my life separate from any possible husband or anyone else. I'm still not sure if God has missions in my future or not, and I question sometimes if I'm strong enough to go alone. In a lot of ways, I look for friends and people to surround me that complement my strengths. In a lot of ways, I need someone with me who's more outgoing when I'm reserved, more of an idea person when I can focus on follow thru, more communicative and able to handle conflict. But could these areas be met in a ministry team? Ugh...maybe I should save this discussion for another time, another day, another blog. It would be another 10 pages of wondering and wandering around in circles, looking for an answer. I want to be okay in not having the answers, in being clueless and fumbling for my next step.

I want a lot of things, I have a lot of questions. I think I'm going to take them all and go to bed. Good night.