Five Minute Friday: Still

A group of ladies does Five Minute Fridays. Gypsy Mama gives a prompt, and the assignment is to write for five minutes, and don't edit! I'm going to try it for the first time. Today the prompt is still.

Go.

Still. I am still distracted. After all this. I still want these beautiful things, forests and daisy fields. I still want to be better. I still think I'm not enough. Still. And then You tell me to just relax. Stop worrying about it. Just be. Still. And still I don't listen long enough. Still I don't believe You. Maybe I was made to want these things. Maybe we all were. Maybe the pine trees and the butterflies were made for all our hearts. Maybe the things we were made for are so much bigger than who we believe we are. I'm sure of it, but how do I still not feel that, believe that? Still I think of all these things that could never be, sure of it. And still you amaze me with things that should never be. Things I have said that you've directly made true. Things that have happened that looking back on, make me giggle uncontrollably (inside). Feeling still. Still feeling. Still trusting. I am still alive, with You. Still running. Still aching for beautiful things. Still watching out the window for the tomatoes to turn red and ripen, waiting for the plums to soften... Somehow I'm still waiting. Waiting still. Maybe that's the way You want it. Just be still. still be. A word with two meanings that somehow become so similar and linked.

Stop.

Grand

Today was great. FINALLY got together with friends.

Ran! with T in the morning, I made it almost half a mile before I had to stop!

dinner with friends and then we walked to the river and waded, and then we caught up on important things like guys and vacations. ;)

went to the UDF with daddy! (black raspberry chip)

There's more to life than husbands.

I changed up the colors a bit. :)

Alllso, speaking of Lucy :), I got to feel my lovely niece kick this morning. (or elbow or hit, or bump, we're not sure which.) squee!

Manage

Most days we manage well. Open the windows at night, suck in cooler air with the powerful (and loud) attic fan, shut the windows in the morning, turn on the ceiling fans. For most of the summer, it works quite well. And then there are the days that you can practically see the humidity. The days that are just miserable. It's okay, night comes with breezes and sometimes rain. And I always think about halfway around the world, how we all cling to the same air. When it is night here, it is sweltering there, and vice versa. I want to take my turn, not sit in manufactured air all the time. But some days, all there is to do is lounge and sweat and sweat some more.

I have a skin disease. Tinea Versicolor. Whatever you do, don't look at google images of it. It'll make you think I'm some sort of scaly dinosaur. I'm not. Mine is not nearly as bad as some of those people's. It's not contagious, and doesn't really harm anything, it's just a bother and it really itches. It's a yeast imbalance, but it's the kind of yeast we need, so usually people with it are completely healthy. I was diagnosed in the fourth grade. My friend had noticed that my neck was sort of giraffey. So after a mortifying trip to the doctor, it was determined that my spots were nothing more serious than this annoying condition. They said I could take a pill, which once in a blue moon would mess with liver function, or I could apply selsun blue dandruff shampoo once or twice a week for six months. I picked the shampoo. That halloween was also a blue moon, so thank goodness I didn't pick the pills. (kidding.) It went away for awhile, and then came back. And eventually, I didn't put the effort in with the shampoo. It's rather messy. I don't care much about the spots, it's the itch that drives me up a wall. It's especially bad in the summer. I'm going to start selsun blue again, hopefully to get it manageable. All the blue in this house expired in 2003 though. :)

Getting used to my random endings yet? teeheehee. :)

Deeper thoughts- it's been too long.

I don’t really know how to start this. I haven’t formatted these words in my head yet. But.

This summer, this year, I have learned, I am learning, quite a lot. About other people, about myself. I have always been a rather quiet person, I probably always will be more quiet than a lot of people. I am learning that quiet is not bad. I am learning that quiet can be incredibly useful. But my form of quiet was more like muteness. Sometimes I would dearly want to talk at school, but just couldn’t. This past winter, I was talking on the phone with my friend, and she asked me if I feel trapped. I think that’s the word she used. And I said something like “exactly.” It’s like I just can’t say what I want. Every summer I’d vow to change. “Next year I will be different” I’d promise. “Next year I’ll dress eccentrically and joke with the class and talk with the teachers.” But the next year was always the same. I might participate on the first day, but then I would mold into the background again.

I didn’t know how to fix it. I knew in my head all the right things to tell myself, but my heart didn’t believe it. So I started begging God to fix me. I guess what I didn’t realize about that was that He was going to have to show me the places that exactly needed fixing. I don’t think He often, at least in my life, just swirls in and changes my heart in the blink of an eye.

College opened my eyes to all these places I’m broken. Not that I didn’t know about broken places before, but I could hide them better. It was sometime in the fall of 2010, on a rather grey, rather chilly day that I went up to my favorite Saturday classroom, sat down, and asked God to talk. And He did. And I actually heard Him, and learned some things about myself that I probably could have recognized, but didn’t want to admit. And I realized how deeply my broken places had been affecting me.

So I started working on them, on thinking about things, on refusing the lies I have been fed and have eaten for so long.

We made progress, me and God. He showed me things and loved me and encouraged. And then I came home for the summer, and He is continuing to show me more things.

I am learning that I don’t trust well. And how can you love well if you don’t trust? How can you smash fear if you don’t trust in protection? My head says I trust Him, but my heart still worries. My brain still sends rushes of adrenaline all through my body and my heart beats too fast and I panic. Why would He fix me without me knowing what I am being fixed of, so we can smash it down in the future?

So I’m learning. If I want to live like I am loved, and I do, I need to love back. I need to trust. The goal, I suppose I should call it that, is to live like I know I am loved. I want to just be. I want to skip and laugh and cry and savor apples and peaches and dance and smell the wind and be those things I always say I want but never do. Just to be free, to live like I believe. To understand that I am loved with an undying love and love that never abandons.

So I’m learning what it is to trust and please only One. I’m learning that secretly, most people want the same abundant freedom.

My lovely friend ;) recommended a book for me. Eccentric Glamour by Simon Doonan. I know, I know, a glamour book doesn’t seem quite like my style. But I think it is less about the actual clothes and more about being who you are. I’ve only just finished the introduction so I can’t fairly say how it is yet, but I really liked the introduction. J I’ll let you know how it continues, but I like the principle of it. And it goes along with my current season of learning.

So I don't know if that makes any sense at all, or if I have just rambled for a lot of words, but it feels good to get it out :)

Learning to be who I am. to trust. to love. To understand how these things fit into my life practically. (or impractically ;) )

Thanks for reading! :)

p.s. sorry about the font change. I typed in into a word document and pasted it in, and it never formats right. bah. It's weird to me though, because I pasted the whole thing in, and it chose to keep one paragraph the same. oh well.

In Case You Think You Can't Dance

You need to go read that. :)

The comments are nice too. I like Jill's especially much.

It reminds me of 43things.com