always planning

I think it's so weird that girls are always planning their wedding. I was just thinking the other day about why people get into relationships. Obviously i know there's going to be exceptions, so I'll just speak for myself & those who were around me.

When i was in 9th grade, I made my little list about the qualities I wanted in a husband, blah blah. From that point forward, I felt like i needed to justify every relationship I entered into by finding some "marriable" qualities in him. As a side note, I am a pretty firm believer in dating people with marriable qualities, but at the same time, I don't think you can know the outcome from the beginning. All of that to say, it's like in every relationship, I've always found myself taking notes - does this mean he'll always be this way, is this a habit that i can live with, etc. It's like constantly evaluating this person, like they are under the "perfect match magnifying glass" & when I realized they just weren't going to work out, I cut it off. They probably entered into a relationship with me because they thought I was fun or pretty or just wanted a girlfriend, who knows, definitely a simpler reason than mine.

This isn't only with dating relationships. I've been making & re-making my bridesmaids list since high school, trying to tailor it to the number of people that the person I'm dating would be able to have & re-evaluating who "makes the cut" or who I've lost touch with. I don't know why, but it's just like this distant huge turning point in my life that it feels like I've been constantly preparing for for like 10 years, yet feel no closer to or any readier for - why am i wasting my time? Why do i need all of these things figured out? It's so weird because it's not necessarily like a need to be married now/soon or even that I think I'm ready to be married. I guess it's just this feeling that I need to be as prepared as possible when the time comes so I have fewer decisions to make? Who knows.

I was just thinking about an old friend today & caught myself thinking, "We don't really keep up much anymore, I wonder if it would hurt her feelings if she isn't a bridesmaid in my wedding?"

............what?!?!

Am I engaged? No! Am I close to being engaged? No! Where do these crazy thoughts come from? I think part of it has to do with summer, also known as "wedding season". Summer always does weird things to me - too many people get engaged & married in the summer. It takes me a while to recover.

Anyway, this thought pattern kind of falls into what I've been trying to do lately: live in the moment. Not in a crazy way, but in an actually enjoying life kind of way. I want to enjoy my friendships & relationship as they happen, as they unfold, not be focused on what hasn't happened. If I let myself, I can get totally caught up in my mind & create conversations as I imagine they would go, create scenarios as I imagine they would go, set up expectations for other people's words/actions, get angry at people for what I imagined they said, and basically set myself up for a world of disappointment, all the while missing out on what life, or the Lord rather, is offering me now. It's really a horrible pattern. I think girls deal with it a lot because it's so easy to get caught up in that you don't even realize you're doing it.

I recently met with this girl & we read a book together. She's like 5 years younger than me & we were kind of getting to know each other the first time we met when she was talking about her boyfriend. She told me this wonderful story about how they started dating, etc. Then she mentioned that during the summer, he was being kind of lazy, not spending his time wisely in her opinion, etc. & she wasn't sure what that was an indication of. I knew immediately we were kindred spirits, as Anne of Green Gables would say. :) So I asked if she was worried that if they got married that he would be sitting on the couch all day, drinking beer, jobless, and making her go to church alone? She gave me that "how did you know" smile. Well, because I've been a professional life-imaginer my entire life! It's amazing how you can take one little thing & in 30 seconds have figured out how it's going to affect the rest of your life. So exhausting. It made me so happy to be able to share some of my new findings, mostly about men & women relating, with her. It's so fun getting to share things with people that you just figured out & that may help them avoid some of your pitfalls. By the way, I assured her that it means it's summer & he's just relaxing before having to enter the real world & that it has nothing to do with the failure or success of her future. ;-)

I have also decided that I'm never going to fully figure out why men think the way they do & how to get them to understand the way I do (also that i need to be ok with not understanding). Neither really makes sense all of the time. I will hopefully choose to see this as an adventure of discovery & laugh about misunderstandings along the way instead of letting myself get caught up in them.

heavy clouds of thought

I feel heavy today, not physically heavy, but burdened with a heavy feeling. Some things around me are affecting my mood: friends who have been falsely accused of abusing their children & are fighting to get them back, friends who can’t have a baby, friends who were great parents & their son still committed suicide, a sinking feeling that things in the world are getting worse when I hear of new things closely lining up with prophecy I’ve read in the Bible, and, finally, knowing what to do with myself in my own life.

I’m not complaining, just sharing a plethora of thoughts adding up to a little cloud hovering over my head. At my church, we’re doing a study on Habakkuk & learning “the reply to why”. Basically why do bad things still happen to “good” people, etc., etc.? It’s so interesting how many times in the bible that God gets glory in the end through evil, like wiping out nations & just allowing things to happen. I’m not so naïve as to think He doesn’t allow these things. There’s so much I don’t know, but a few things I do know to be true: I know that we have victory in the end; I know that this is a fallen world; I know that Habakkuk cried out to God asking him why he tolerates the evil in Judah & God’s response was that he was raising up the Babylonians to take them over. Using evil to get rid of bad?!

It doesn’t really make sense. But then I think – does it have to? I’m the kind of person who wants to understand everything, but when it comes to the ways of the Lord, I have to just make myself accept that I can’t always understand. So then what am I supposed to do now that I’ve accepted the fact that I don’t have to understand? I still strongly believe that I shouldn’t just be ok with everything that's happening. I want to be the kind of person that cries out to the Lord about the injustice I see surrounding me, to pray with boldness for answers. Our pastor made the interesting point that the cross is one of the worst torture devices in the history of man, used by one of the most corrupt governments in history, and ultimately that’s what gave me my salvation. Why do people walk around saying that God wouldn't allow terrorism or even worse natural disasters than we've already seen? Definitely something to chew on.

The first three things I listed that are on my mind have to do with children. Now, I don’t have children. I do desire them at some point in my life. Sometimes I almost think I wish I were in that stage now, but then I realize I’m not even close to being ready. Anyway, these problems & then the way the world is now really make me question whether I want to bring children into this world. Are they just going to be taken away from me? Will they take their own life after i've poured so much of mine into them? Am i fit to train up someone in the way they should go? What if they never accept Jesus as their savior? Will i be able to protect them? Will i be able to accept when situations are out of my control? I’m not losing sleep over it or anything, just something that crosses my mind every so often.

Ok one of the things that I started thinking about today in reference to the prophecy comment before is Oprah. I’ve seen some things recently about these new people she’s endorsing that are fairly new-agey & what I perceive to be lies disguised as feel-good truth. Anyway, one of the most alarming things is that the author of this book & supposed spiritual advisor to Oprah is head of this peace alliance, trying to start a U.S. Department of Peace. Now, peace sounds great. World peace sounds even greater, but when you get someone who is a proponent of “mind training” and a year-long self-study “course in miracles”, thinks we’re all destined to be as Jesus on one hand & that she’s a magical witch on the other, I have to start questioning. Oprah & another author are teaching a class online every Monday night to something like 2 million people. Oprah thinks that sharing this guy’s book is a fulfillment of her life’s purpose & the book is predicted to be the best-seller of all time. I guess we’ll see.

I saw another thing about this book called don’t drink the kool-aid. The title is a reference to an occult mass suicide in the 70s. This woman, a Christian author, is basically saying that this “Oprah movement” is occult-ish & that Oprah is reaching more people daily than most pastors will reach in a lifetime. She addresses Oprah’s endorsement of Obama and how it has given him an assent to power quicker than he ever would have gotten there alone as well as references the teachings I previously mentioned. My first inclination is to blindly believe everything this woman says, but then am I just as bad as the people I’m accusing of being deceived by blinding believing everything Oprah says?

Lastly, I just want to make the right decisions in my own life. I know that i can't be ok & make the right choices all the time, I do. I just desire the discernment for making the right decisions & the ability to accept & forgive myself when I don't, moving on to hopefully make the right one next time. I find myself making decisions of the moment as of late in an effort to not need to see the big picture, but be satisfied with the present. The result is a series of decisions that I’m not sure were right, but not sure if they were necessarily wrong. I want to bring glory to God. I also want to love & be loved. Emotions & rationalization can really get in the way of clear thinking.

I’m going to look up some of the prophecy I’m talking about so I can quote scripture next time instead of just a jumble of questions & general wonder-ing…ments (FRIENDS).

reading & thinking

So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently. A lot of reading & thinking. I’ve been intentionally trying to not turn my TV on in the evenings because I find that it’s either mindless entertainment or just makes me mad about the world & what’s acceptable. Not to say I hate TV. The shows I love, I really love. It’s just getting a little harder to find shows I love. Anyway, this is of no importance. Back to the point. So I’ve been filling my time with reading, some fiction & some non.

In fiction, I really like to read Christian fiction. Some may argue that it’s boring or cheesy or whatever, but I find that it’s really inspiring to me, plus relieving to know that it's basically already censored. I love reading the thoughts & situations of people. I love knowing that everyone is human & learning the struggles & victories of other believers (probably why i love reading blogs), or non-believers depending on where the story starts in the characters’ lives. It gives me a different perspective on things. I like when I can feel my mind being stretched. I often try to pull out important thoughts or lessons from the story & apply them to my life, or see where I may have made similar mistakes. I like to think about Jesus sitting next to me while I’m reading & kind of “discussing” my new thoughts in response to what I’m reading. This probably sounds stupid & I realize that not everyone thinks the way I do, but all of that to say, I think reading Christian fiction draws me closer to the Lord & expands my mind. Right now I’m in the middle of A Garden to Keep by Jamie Langston Turner. Love it. The protagonist is telling the whole story & her thoughts & memories are all over the place. I love the crazy way her mind works because, while I know it irritates & overwhelms people, I can completely relate.

Non-fiction, whether also a story or more like a life application book, makes me think in a different way. These I am reading solely for revelation about my personal life & how to improve or view it differently. Knowing my mind as I do, I have to read these books in smaller doses because I’m probably trying to absorb it a little too much. If it’s the kind of book that’s suggesting life changes, I sometimes catch myself getting bogged down with what I should be doing, which is obviously not productive. Right now I’m erring on the productive & encouraging side with What’s So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey. I started it a long time ago. I remember thinking it was amazing, no pun intended, but left it at a friends’ house for a long time & just got it back. I’m excited about picking it up again.

Sidenote about grace: a few weeks ago at church our pastor came to my small group. I think we were talking about revolutions or something, but somehow grace or giving came up & he made an interesting point I’m still absorbing: if there’s no end to the amount of grace that God extends to us, why are we willing to only extend a certain amount to other people? It’s like we feel like we’ve done our part to extend grace one time to one person in one week, but he was talking about how we should exhaust our “supply” over & over. And I guess we shouldn’t be worried about what it might do to us because there’s enough grace from God to keep filling us up. Hm. I like it. So none of this is what I meant to write about today, but I think it’s enough for one post.

Key word to remind me what I meant to write & will next time: overreacting.