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 months ago, and dug it up while I was deleting things from my mac)

On the peak of this typical Summer day, you won’t find where all the blinding lights are coming from, as the sun is shining too bright for you to look farther past the climbing tree lines. Painfully, almost all you can see is white, white, white, beaming from the skies and the reflections of water, finding all the angles to drench every inch of your skin in warmth.

Lucky for me, I had other things to search for. My overalls saved my dragging legs from splinters as I laid flat across the edgeless 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, so he’d know when to scoop me back up into his arms. 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 D.C. I never cried or complained about the half hour drive in the seat-less back of my father’s stinking station wagon, even if I had to share the 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.”
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 salty hot dog – you know, from one of those sweaty venders that seemed to sell more food than their mini trailers seemed to hold – so I grabbed on to my cousins’ shoes and silently waited through the trip for my juicy reward. Secondly – I knew that I’d get to lay on the bridge to stare down into the pond and look for my mustache monsters. Yes, 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, and flicked 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. Silly duckies, they just want ‘nom-nom’s like you do, I thought.
This vivid memory was retraced 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 without knowing its significance, after sharing an uncomfortable cup of coffee together at a nearby Starbucks’. I laid where I had always laid before, but this time, my feet reached past more than half of the bridge’s width, and below me – no matter how many 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.”
It was well below freezing that night, but my mind was too lost in the dark skies in the reflections of the pond – what used to be a green glass that I looked through to another world of mustached-monsters and other creatures waiting to surface to the irresistible honey wheat – had turned into a simple, cold, black pool of a world that I already knew.

When will I wake up?

I almost killed someone today.. and myself.

I drove down lee highway reading my pledge book for my next meeting, and I ran into a pick up truck infront of me.

We’re fine.

But I can’t help but think that if I was going any faster – I could have killed someone.

I could’ve killed someone.

I’m so stupid. I can’t think right now.