I leave for Mexico tomorrow, and I’m sure it will be the biggest adventure of my life, thus far.
So, prayers would be nice…!
Details when I return!
Love.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
When I read this as a child, I used to wonder how I’d ever be able to give someone else a love like that, whether in friendship or a romantic and spiritual relationship. How could I learn to control my sinful tendencies (i.e., jealousy, anger, selfishness, impatience, etc.) and experience love as God intended? And, if I were to encounter such a love, shouldn’t suppressing these emotions come without effort? Shouldn’t they be a part of the purest love?
Now, I read this verse and see these qualities in the relationships I hold closest to my heart. They aren’t perfect, but I am getting better at giving and receiving the love modeled in 1 Corinthians.
There are days when I believe love is all I could ever need, when I look at the people around me and feel in my heart that their presence, their influence, could become my beating heart. There are days when I feel so FULL that the world falls away and I see with my own eyes the truth and honesty of the relationships I am blessed with.
But there are also days when I feel like love could never be enough to keep me full forever. Because we’re too vulnerable and the world is too cold and there’s so much hurt and it’s all just one big unfixable mess.
But I guess that’s where I remember that love never fails. And I try to experience this truth a little more everyday…because believing any differently takes the life out of it all.
It’s always been my dream to write for life.
Of course, I didn’t always believe in this dream. There was a time when I thought trying for it wasn’t a productive way to spend my time.
It was just this distant, shimmering something far out of my reach, something I would love to do but never actually thought I could. It was like skydiving or mountain climbing–an experience I knew would define me, but one that was far beyond my limits.
In fact, I only started reconsidering all these doubts when a friend of mine expressed a similar goal. She wanted to write and get paid for it.
My life goals changed that day. Because someone else shared my dream and went so far as to discuss how to make it happen, I suddenly believed in myself.
(Which is sad).
Anyway. This summer, I’ve been getting paid to write these SEO (search engine optimization) articles for an “Internet Marketer” in Atlanta. Essentially, Lee, the IM, sends me a list of keywords someone might use to search for more information on a given topic and I write articles using these keywords. For instance, Lee sent me a list that looked something like this:
1. GPS navigation system
2. GPS navigation unit
3. car GPS navigation system
4. compare GPS navigation systems
What I do is write a master article, using one of the above keyword phrases a specific number of times. I then re-write the article with all the same information and substitute the original keyword phrase for the next one on the list. These articles are published on websites that desire more visitors to boost their business’s popularity. Using common and word-specific phrases within the articles posted on these sites makes it more likely that a search engine like Google will choose to present the website link to a person searching for, say, GPS navigation units. Or hair dryers. Or vegetable peelers.
It’s as ridiculously repetitive as it sounds.
I only took the job to have a little extra cash around and so I could feel professional about my writing.
The catch? It really just makes me feel like a sellout.
I know that to dream big, you’ve got to be willing to start small. And I am willing to do that.
But is this the same thing as starting small?
Or am I just a sellout for exchanging the joy of my art for an insignificant paycheck?
1. What I want my life to mean
2. What I want to do with my life–it changes nearly everyday. Writer, editor, professor? Jewelry designer? Missionary?
3. If I really love myself
4. If I really believe in my dreams
5. If I really believe that love never fails
6. Whether I am a strong person, or I am just too obedient to challenge my own beliefs
7. If I really want what I’ve said I want
8. If my parents would support me if I decided to skip the plans for a book and settle for a responsible career
9. If I’m half the Christian I claim to be, hope to be
10. If these doubts I have hold any room for reasoning
…I DO know, however, that there is a bag of pepperoni pizza rolls in my freezer that need eating.
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Usually, I hate books about love.
I don’t feel as if anyone is truly knowledgeable enough in the trappings of love to speak for any two people involved in a relationship. And when I read these books, I tend to take everything as fact, rather than merely the author’s opinion. I become jumbled up with different reasonings and conclusions than I had before reading the book, and I start stumbling into all sorts of uncertainties about my current relationship needs.
Right now, I’m in love.
In love, in love, I mean.
To where I can’t stop thinking about him. I still grin and blush when people ask me about him. I look forward to calling him at nights, and feel thankful for the chance to end my day with his voice in my ear. Since we’re separated for the summer, I keep a mental running countdown until I’ll see him again. Each day, I encounter things I have to tell him, things I want to experience with him.
It’s a whole kind of love. I fall harder everyday.
(Stop gagging, I’m moving on…)
With all this good, amazing love drenching my heart, I was afraid to read Sex God. Afraid I’d discover that something was going terribly, horribly wrong in my relationship that would make me want to break it off.
This was, of course, ridiculous.
And I knew this.
So I borrowed it from a friend, and I started to read.
I wasn’t wrong–since starting the book yesterday evening, I’ve discovered so many things about the relationship I share with Shaun. But they’re wonderful things. Spiritual things. Things that have only encouraged me to keep reading, to keep loving. In fact, it only affirmed my beliefs that this love we’re building truly is a beautiful, blessed gift.
And, as Rob Bell points out, that’s what many people fail to notice about their relationships: that they are to be treasured. That they are a rare and precious example of the love God showed to us when He sent His Son to die for us. And when entering a marriage or a relationship, we should understand that the person we’re with is worth dying for, that someone has already died for them.
It’s beautiful, strange, perfect.
It’s love.
I consider myself an awkward person.
Well, okay, maybe, as a person, I’m not all that awkward, but socially-crippling situations and I seem to exist simply to collide with one another. It’s actually quite entertaining, being me. There’s always something sort of quirky and crazy to laugh off. And I MUST laugh it off, otherwise the awkwardness builds and then, well, people begin to avoid me.
I also consider myself a pretty music savvy gal. I think I have great taste in music, and I listen to pretty much anything apart from unnecessarily angry or violent stuff, such as scream-o or some rap. I religiously download the Singles of the Week iTunes offers to its customers, and I also like to pick up Starbuck’s weekly free downloads that are released every Tuesday.
About a week ago, I very innocently picked up a free music video download card from my regular Starbucks, assuming I’d like it as much as the other downloads I’d gotten in the past.
Needless to say…this is probably one of the most awkward music videos I’ve ever viewed, and that really sucks, because the song alone is pretty stellar. It’s by an artist who goes by the name Sia, and the song is “Day Too Soon.”
See what I mean?
I’m all for artistic expression. I attend an arts school. I’m a creative person.
But, really?!
What’s the significance of the people crouching behind trees, or the colorful dots painted under her eyes that were coordinated with the colors of her strange clothing? And what was up with the part where she’s dramatically splayed out in the grass? Why the awkward run-and-dance scene in the meadow, where she sort of frolicks around with the camera? And the hands reaching out from the trees? AND the huge goose/duck boat on the river? The limb-flailing dancing?
Did she TRY to make the video as awkward as possible?
Poor, awkward Sia.
Anyway, since I’m so good at crashing into all things awkward, I thought I might, from time to time, post the most awkward situations/people/media I run into. I’ll call it the Awkward _____ of the Moment, since I don’t know how often I’ll be updating.
Should be fun, right?
Oh, and many thanks to Sia for letting me start this project off with a bang.
I can’t sleep.
It’s 3:23 in the morning.
I’m not sure if what I’m going to write next makes much sense. I hope so. But in the event that it doesn’t, I apologize.
Lately, I’ve felt softer. Deeper. Connected.
But it’s not new. No, this softness is an old familiar friend. A once constant companion that made me the impressionable young woman I am.
Or, rather, used to be.
I don’t think I’m soft anymore.
I think, over the past year, a lot of things happened. Not bad things, but…worldly things. Things that hardened the fragility of my small self. Maybe it was the city. Maybe it was college. Maybe it’s just what they call perspective.
But it can’t just be that, because I never noticed my own impressionability. I was just me. But now that it’s gone, I can see how I have changed. I’m different.
There’s a verse about this in Proverbs that I love:
Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.
Whenever I read this verse, I think of hands. Big hands, cupping my precious, soft, tiny heart inside the protective cove of bent fingers. And I think of how those hands are God’s, and He’s holding my heart for me. He’s keeping me, protecting me. He’s trying to save me.
But everyday, I choose to take my heart into my own hands. He lets me have it, because He knows I’ll have my way, but at the close of each day, I always come back to Him. And I place my heart, now a little bruised, right back into His hands, because I know it’s safer there. It’s guarded.
The bruises take a long time to mend. And sometimes, the softness can’t return. But God never refuses my heart. He always takes it back, and holds it in His hands, and loves it. Loves me.
Amazing.
