THE END

I’ve moved to a different page, if you want to keep reading then you can ask and I’ll give you the link if I don’t mind you reading.

This is to weed out the people I don’t want reading this.

Hosanna

I’ve never been the type of girl to give up on challenges, until recently. I feel this past year has been so draining, with no real break in sight, that the more I’m falling, the less I find things to hold on to, when it used to be the other way around. I feel I’ve become more lazy, that I’ve made more excuses, pitied myself more, cried alone more, and ultimately just been so much more afraid that I used to be.

I’m still broken and confused in so many ways, but it wasn’t until today that I found a little piece of me again to revive my old self.

Lately, I’ve been wrapped up in my own problems, trying to figure out which step to take next, too afraid to really take a step at all, until I finally decided to go back to church today, after an entire year of avoidance.

Before, when I was dragged along by my friend to go to church with her, I’d sing the songs, I’d say ‘amen’ to everything – but this time, I said nothing. I sang nothing. I agreed to nothing. Not because I disagreed, but because this time, I needed to understand everything before I sang the songs, and prayed the prayers. Anybody can sing the songs, and pray the prayers, and nod at the pastor – but when they step out of the church – who really remembers it? I’ve been to church many times, but never really got it.. so I watched, and read and paid more attention this time and saw that there was a piece of me here, that I never went back to, that had been waiting for me to guide it back into what once was the foundation of my beliefs.

My life this past year, has been filled with so much anxiety, paranoia, selfishness, indulgences and just so much that had nothing to do with once was my purpose in life – to love the best of my ability. I’ve been trying to fill my life up with so many things that didn’t matter, trying to dig a hole for a well that never stored any water at all. I dug new holes here and there, and didn’t even realize that no matter how many holes I dug, no matter where they were – they were pointless without love. Whether it was shopping, or getting a new tattoo or ear piercing or tanning or getting a new job or whatever I did to make myself happy – it never filled the well.

I’ve been making many excuses for my failures, and too many excuses to not get back up again. I say that I’m too afraid to be shot down again, that I’m too tired to keep going if I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, that I deserve a bit of time to just do what I want.. but this isn’t, and hasn’t been me, and is the only reason why I’ve been so empty lately.

I was reminded of the love that I once had for people in church today, but I still felt a bit of uneasiness after I left, because I still didn’t know where to start again, so I went home to wait for a friend to come by – who took over an hour to arrive, so I finally left on my own, to do some thinking. I parked by a lake, and set an alarm for 20 minutes, and replayed everything I had learned again in church, and wondered what I was supposed to do from here. One thing that I learned was that God is a being of peace, and that he never really compels you to do anything.. so when you feel the sudden urge to get something done – it most likely isn’t his calling. So I sat back in my volvo, turned off the car, cracked my windows, and closed my eyes as I held on to the cross on my necklace.

Suddenly, two german shepherds started to horrendously bark at a lady who was walking by with a child in her arms, and I sat up to see what was going on. The two german shepherds were being held back by a woman in a cap who was taking her dogs for a walk, when a mother and her starfish of a child was walking by. The little girl looked to be about 3 years old and was flailing her arms at the dogs yelling “BA! BA! BAAA!”, trying to pet the dogs as her mother was swinging her in the other direction before one of the dogs could bite a limb off of her. The dogs stopped barking, and the girl kept trying to pet the dog, but the mother wasn’t having it, so the dogs walked along as the starfish kid kept swinging her little twinkie arms and legs, making noises at the dogs, hoping that she’d get to pet them.. and I couldn’t help but think – here’s a completely fearless child who just wants to pet and love this huge animal that could easily tear a limb off of her, who doesn’t even consider the poofy dog’s capabilities in seriously hurting her. She just wants to hug the animal, and hope it loves her back. – And then here I am, so jaded and tainted with people who’ve lied and cheated and decieved me, that I’m too afraid to love anything at all.

It was a bit of a slap and a wakeup call.. so I sat and waited for anything else to happen, and these two kids climb under a little metal fence and start to use their tennis rackets as guitars, plucking the net and pretending to sing. Their mom followed after them after a couple seconds, and they walked toward me, and I swear.. this is exactly what the mother said as she walked by my window, and I heard nothing less and nothing more than just this..

“There’ll be no more ‘I’m sorries’, no more ‘Let me try agains’ or ‘no more I’m hurt.’ just ‘no, I will.’” ..

This woman may have been referring to her kid’s tennis lessons earlier that afternoon, but this segment of her speech seeped through my window, and it was all I heard, and all God intended for me to hear.. and I feel that he wants me to finish with the excuses, the ‘no, I’m too tired’s, or the ‘no, I’m too scared’s, but instead – get up and say that ‘no, I will’ make a difference, because I wasn’t put on earth to go to waste, huddled in fear in a corner – today, I know, i know that God has meant more for me – that God has chosen me to get up and be more than what I’ve been.

The pastor at the end of the Sermon challenged us to love people more, because truly – that’s what life is really about. There’s a place in everybody’s heart that nothing else can fill, but love.

My 12.

I’ll make my own promises this time.

The Pond

(I wrote this a couple years ago, and dug it up while I was deleting things from my laptop)

On the peak of this typical Summer day, the sun shines too bright for you to see where the blinding lights begin; too bright for you to see past the climbing tree lines, and your eyes are constantly at a miniscule squint. Painfully, almost all you can see is white, white, white; beaming from the skies, beaming from the reflections of water, finding all the angles to drench every inch of your skin in bronzing warmth. These were the days that smart adults lathered themselves in sour smelling sunblock, hid under hats, and searched for shade and cooling shelter.

But I was five, and had other things to care about. My blue jean overalls saved my dragging legs from splinters as I laid flat across the borderless wooden bridge that hovered over a thick, green pond. My little feet only reached a quarter into the width of the big brown bridge, so my dad would always look over my way every now and then to see if any tourists had tripped over me or stepped on my toes. Yes, my family left me alone there. No, not to die, or to be kidnapped, or to be scared into behaving properly that afternoon – but because laying on that bridge was my favorite part about going to DC. I never cried or complained about the half hour drive in the seat-less back of my dad’s nauseating station wagon; even if I had to share the stuffy shoebox of a space with five other cousins and a car-sick brother.

“Jenny, you get the backdoor seat.”

“Whyyy?”

“Because you’re the lightest, so you probably won’t pop the backdoor open and fly out like the rest of us would.” My cousins told me.

And with that, I’d always imagine that so help me God, if I leaned as much as an unbalanced knee cap on that backdoor, I’d be sent flying out into the blinding whites to never be seen again by my wide-eyed cousins for the rest of their cramped, wagon-riding days.

But I knew that eventually, somewhere along the trip, my dad would buy me a hot dog – the sketchy, but delicious ones from one of those sweaty metal boxes that pop out ice cream, pizza and hotdogs that seemed to sell more food than their mini trailers seemed to hold. Secondly – I knew that I’d get to lay on the bridge to stare down into the pond and look for my mustached monsters. The grayish looking fish that were half my size, and always popped up amidst the swarm of ducks that fought over the bits of bread I’d drop every couple minutes. They would slowly emerge from the abyss of the thick green pond, and flick their little tube-like mustaches before sinking back into the green again. The ducks would always wiggle away when the monsters revealed themselves every couple of minutes to steal another wad of honey wheat, and I could never help but giggle when the ducks fluttered away like something horrible was going to swallow them up. I always smiled at this, and the cycle of dropping bread, waiting for the fish to emerge, and watching the little ducks swim away would repeat over and over until it was time to go home.
I retraced this vivid memory as I reminisced, laying on the same exact bridge fourteen years later, under the beaming whites of the moon light. I was accompanied by a near stranger who took me back here, completely unaware of its significance to me. An hour before we walked over to the bridge, we shared a cup of coffee and an awkward exchange of small talk. We took a walk outside, and being under the stars in the dark made the walk a lot easier being accompanied by a boy I barely knew. We ended up at the bridge I used to love, and I laid where I had always laid before. This time, my feet reached past more than half of the bridge’s width, and below me – no matter how many soup crackers I dropped, there were no monsters or fleeing ducks – just an abyss of gentle, black waves that shook my reflection.

“Jennie, aren’t you cold?”

“No, I’m-“

“Take my jacket.”

He threw his heavy wool pea coat over my back, and I continued to stare into the pond, as he walked around, wondering what I was thinking; offended that I paid no attention to him.

It was well below freezing that night, but I was lost in the unfamiliar reflections of the pond. What used to be a green glass gateway to another world of imaginary mustached-monsters and other hidden creatures had vanished into a cold pool of black, reflecting a pair of hollow eyes that stared at me, being shaken back and forth by the dull waves of quiet nothing.

____________________

Merry Christmas *

I brought my boyfriend with me last night to my grandma’s house to celebrate Christmas, and the whole family played a raffle game, where you picked a yellow piece of paper, and if it was blank – you’d have lost, and if you had a number on you paper – that’s the amount of money you won. (:

When my aunt came around with the Christmas bag of yellow papers, I prayed really hard that the winning number would skip me and go to Vee, so he’d be happy and feel a little more comfortable with my family (: . I just wanted him to have fun and be a little closer with my family, so I figured I’d rather have nothing and increase his chances of him getting something. (:

When we opened our slips of paper – I won the single $100 prize, and he won one of the four $20 prizes.. so we both won (:

It reminded me of Freshman year, when I ran for SGA office. After all 11 of the candidates gave their speeches, the freshman class was held in the auditorium to cast their votes on a piece of paper. They had to put a check next to 5 names. At the end, the candidates asked eachother who they voted for, and every single one of them started out with ‘myself…’ and then ‘john, camilla, lauren.. (etc)’ and then when it came to me, they were all surprised when I didn’t name myself. I decided to vote for everyone else, because if I was going to win – I didn’t want to think my one selfish vote was what made the difference.

And a couple days later, I was announced as the SGA President of my class (:

It’s little things like that, that let me know a little bit of selflessness isn’t unseen – atleast through God’s eyes.. and that’s enough for me (:

Merry Christmas!