Aren't Torn & Content Antonyms?

Tell me, how can someone love a place so deeply, yet be so restless it keeps them up at night?  I never imagined I could be so torn!  I don't understand myself.  But then when do we ever, right?  That's why some of us write.  Is my journal my psychologist?

I'm never able to predict the crazy places I find my heart in with each new turn of my college experience, this semester being no different.  Guess my surprise shouldn't surprise me.  I woke up to my last semester with a sudden awareness of not just how drastically I've changed in 5 years - blah blah, we know - but the value of that journey.  It ain't gonna do no one any good if I don't speak up.  (Sorry, I've been reading The Help.  They talk in accents).
Let me explain.
     I never have any idea of what the heck I'm doing and have no right to assume that I can benefit anyone else because I'm "better", but you know what I mean when I say God has planted something in my heart, brought me through a journey, and included a boldness and confidence to share that is in Him, and not myself.  So yes, I know for sure that He is calling me to pour into the girls I can with the precious time I have, because although I may stick around, opportunities will be different when I'm no longer a student.

Example:

It dawned on me that something I've rarely heard addressed or openly encouraged by girls and women in my immediate world is their physical purity and encouraging a culture of waiting.  Not just waiting to have sex until after marriage.  But the virtue and beauty of reserving one's heart and all that goes with that.   (Come on gals, we know our heart is tied to our physicality differently than a guy's!)

RELAX.  I'm not revving up to preach a "purity" message.
The truth growing deep in my heart that I want to do my part to stand for is an understanding of the sheer value of our hearts as women.  No matter how broken, no matter how much or how little is left of it, God's view of it has never changed and it is worth cultivating... and then worth waiting for a man who has done the same.

Yes, it's hard.  Um...really hard.  Virtue is not an easy path to choose.  Put it's possible.  We will all mess up to some degree, and have to start over.  His Grace... it truly knows no boundaries.

We need support, we need other men and women encouraging each other, and we need a deeper understanding of the beauty and value of our hearts.  That understanding is what changes everything.

So why not speak up about what we are passionate about instead of journaling or blogging about it?  How many people see my blog?  A handful plus my mom?  I'm starting to give God permission to open avenues for me, as a test, (always a risk... ha!) to see if this is an area He wants to use me to encourage girls around me and help set a standard.  I'm not sure how many of us are on the same page, or who needs support and someone to talk to, but let me know.  Talk to me and let's have coffee or something.

I may be torn between a love for my home and a desire to experience the world outside the only one I've known, but I've been strongly convicted of my investment in the lives of women where I currently am.  If you would like to visit, I'd be honored!

Bona Fide

In elementary school there were some specific, enviously womanly things I strived for that I saw in those girls who had it together.  We all know who I'm talking about. The chicks with smooth hair, or the perfect roundy bangs, cute clothes, (ahem: short-alls, butterfly hairclips and headbands, people), and everything in the store looked like it was made with those cute girls in mind anyways. I was chubby, had crooked teeth, and cow licks that defied gravity in a way Lady Gaga dreams to afford.

But oh, I knew that far off, surreal day would come when my assigned grow-up-fairy would wave her wand and I'd be one of them: straight, pearly white teeth, hair that landed itself into a smooth pony tail, bangs that reached for the sky and curved aaaallll the way back down to my eyebrows flawlessly, nail polish inside the lines of my right hand's nails, white shirts without stains, aaaand I'd be able to wash my hands without rolling up my sleeves first.  Only real, accomplished moms could do that.

I remember thinking "If I could just get braces.." cause my friends with braces made them look cool.  I'd be a bona fide teenager.  (teeeeeenaaager).
Then the magical day came.
Why oh WHY did they have to stick out like that and make my lips not fit my face?!  Smiling was always a gamble- you never knew when your lip would catch on that one metal-y spot and prevent your lips from closing after a smile/laugh/comment.  Attractive!
2 chewy food and candy-deprived years later, when I'd survived only by the knowledge that Movie Star Day was coming and they'd soon be off, I endured 2 solid hours of scraping, chiseling and shaving that resonated into my skull only to walk out with slimy-feeling, yellow teeth that hadn't seen the light of day under all that glue for 2 years.  Oh but they were straight.
(the next time you enviously judge one of us post-braces people, think of our story. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. And chances are we're still paying for them).
I just knew that when the day came that I accomplished those important milestones, I would be a bona fide grown up woman.

All of this came to me one afternoon as I took preventative measures against spilling my water from my water bottle, and still watched myself dribble onto my shirt.  No amount of bendy straws or proper lid-screwing ever seems to spare me that shame.  My 23 year old self paints my right hand's nails and still thinks "Whoa! Check it out!  I can paint just the nails now!"  Sometimes as I'm throwing my hair into a pony tail and it all lands just right, (thank you, "Fine-textured" hair for always falling together; it's good for the polished look, but makes the awesome "messy look" really difficult. So backwards), I think "Hey. Hey. Lookit.  It's magic. It's called being grownup and I don't know when it happened but the grownup fairy came and now I can make ponytails."  The best, and least mature, is when I'm at a public restroom sink and watch the kid next to me shoooooving their sleeves to their armpits as I casually put my hands under the water.. arms fully sleeved.  And then I walk away.  Arms still fully sleeved.  Dry.

  I love learning about health and how to eat right.  I've spent many summer hours googling the health benefits of every food in our house.  But my childhood was one filled with suspiciously green smoothies in the mornings, forbidden from delicacies like Captain Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, and [God forbid] Reeses somethingerother.  ("Part of a balanced breakfast," my foot.  Only if the rest of the breakfast was raw vegetables and the kid happened to be dying from low blood sugar).  Try putting yourself in the mind of an 8 year old looking at a 12-oz cup of GREEN LIQUID. With lumps. LUMPS!  Worse, I had to finish mixing it myself!  Might as well make the condemned man hang his own noose.
     At "fruit break" at school, while other kids chilled on the playground with their gushers and fruit roll-ups wrapped around their thumbs, I broke out the raw carrots, boiled eggs and pickles.  Trading games never worked out too well for me.

     These days, I ruin my dinner with snacks on a regular basis. I get an odd amusement out of eating at non-regulated times of the day.  Orange juice with dinner?  YES.  Dessert before dinner?
Whoa, whoa. I still remember the day I did that for the first time, and the moment of choice I saw before me.  I literally paused to reflect on what I was doing before digging into the bowl.  My favorite thing to do, however, (mostly because I can hear the outside world gagging and shaking their heads at me) is... wait for it.... waaaaait for iiiiiit....... leftover sushi for breakfast.

You cold-leftover-pizza-for-breakfast peeps can take a hike! I got you beat.  Or maybe this just means I will be the weirdest pregnant eater ever.  Who would have thought as a kid that big grown ups think like this.  (others do too, right?)  If only I'd known!  If only I'd known.
I'm going to love being a mom.

Never a Dull Moment

I can hardly sit still with excitement.
     With blog viewers, my journal, and God as my witness, did I not just mention yesterday the sense of change I felt and the realizations I've been coming to regarding piano/ministry?  If you need assurance that God is moved by our obedience and hears when we call out to Him, read on, dear friends. Read on, because today did not happen by accident.

     First of all, my desire to experience/serve in another country has only been building in the last couple months, and in the last week it's been nearly driving me crazy. It's reached a point where it is on my mind every day.  Today, in the car, I asked God to open doors that would finally plant me in a church as well, because that road has been a tough one up until now with my school schedule.  My heart has always been toward The Father's House, (as I posted in a blog probably over a year and a half ago), back when my family wasn't attending. Long story short, my family is now deeply involved and growing like mad and I've been the one forced to watch from afar.  Ha!  Fuuuunnnnnny.  But it's a huge church.. involving myself in music ministry there has seemed like a biiiiig mountain I didn't have the resources or connections yet to climb.

     I decided to shadow my siblings at their internship at TFH today for the heck of it, sitting in their classes and volunteering at The Storehouse, which is a ministry owned by the church that distributes free food, clothing and most necessities to low-income families in the area. Everything is donated. There are pallets of donated food.  The line is out the door two hours before it opens.  It's incredible.
I'm behind the counter with my sister and decided to sing harmony with the worship song that was playing in the background. I turn to see Pastor Dave (who I had yet to ever meet) standing there, singing along, and he says "Lookie there, she jumps on the harmony!" Thus began a series of questions and a conversation that I never thought would happen.  (I mean, they're a massive church loaded with resources, right?  I'm just another girl that can play a piano and sing). But here I found myself face to face with the pastor.  Ya know.  God doesn't half-ass stuff. (What? Yes. Yes I did).
     Put it this way: He now knows I exist, he seemed pleasantly surprised with each of my answers to his questions, yes there IS a need for me, and "he knows the worship pastor." (he's his son in law).

     This is only one facet of today that had my mind full to the brim on my way home.  The other side of it was the people that came through the storehouse for food, and the kids that stretched as tall as they could to get their eyes over the counter and get a peak at the shelves behind me.  They pointed items out to their moms that might as well have been leftover Christmas presents instead of wheat pasta and canned vegetables.  All I did was say a few words, smile, accept a slip of paper and hand them whatever they chose.  (Our station was limited to 3 items).  But all I could see were needs far beyond the food I could hand them, and how much I had in comparison.  It was the glaring reality that God had somehow seen fit to fill me with what they needed:
love.
acceptance.
hope.
peace.
What else am I possibly here for?  I can choose to either give it back, or do nothing and squander it.  In my mind, that is like putting it back in His face.  And here is a place within 10 miles of my own home that I can pour out and feel fulfilled.

The last facet is the opening notes of one of this morning's classes.  If you need a refresher as to the significance of this and why I reacted a little when I read it, check out my previous blog post.

"Whenever you leave the comfort of a system and structure to brave the unknown and pioneer the possibilities, a season of seeking and strategy is vital.  Lasting change occurs when patterns are broken, leadership emerges, and battles are won.  Does not everyone want to gain ground and keep it?"


That's all.  Just taking life one day at a time right now. ;)

It's been a crazy 2012.

     My piano teacher probably wouldn't be impressed by my form of "focus" during practice. My undisciplined mind reverts to two choices:

 1)"Focusing," which equals forgetting to breathe. An unfortunate habit, especially when it comes to inputing music into my brain for memorization.  Oxygen plays such a vital, inconvenient role.

 2) "Breathing," which equals setting sail on a mental evaluation of my life and those in it on a level I somehow can't manage while doing anything else. My hands take off and play the background track to my journey of thought, and I've come to my most meaningful revelations in times like those. Today's realization was this:

     I think I want to teach piano to under privileged children. Kids that are either prone to neglect or to getting in trouble. I want to give them the gift of something healthy they can pour themselves into and express themselves with, and at the same time welcome them into my home and the presence of God. I was blessed with a wholesome childhood, and instead of seeing my testimony as "boring," I'm seeing it as a gift given to me that I'm responsible to give back.  ...And as with everything else in my very particular mind, I have a visual picture along with it that involves a studio apartment of my own filled with natural sunlight, unfinished wood, flowy curtains and seafoam colors. Pillows. Photos. Flowers. Sea shells. Splash of red here and there. My dog. A kitty. The smell of oatmeal banana chocolate chip cookies.

The first half of that paragraph is the relevant part. The second is still gonna happen eventually.

     My mom says I have my dad's gift of making someone who's right believe they're wrong if I talk long enough. Though I understand that being particular and persuasive is not always good, I've evaluated it and, overall, seen it as a good thing. It's spared me from unhealthy relationships, wasting money on things I wouldn't end up using, saving money on things I could finagle a discount on, etc. (those are the conquests I live for).  But in the last few months, God has been distinctly showing me where being particular can prevent Him from surprising me.

     Even things like my drive home from Lodi the other night have contributed to this new theme.  Any 23 year old girl is up for a midnight drive on Highway 12, alone with the company of dense fog and a migraine, right?  It was a long, dark, creepy drive home and dense fog has a way of making one feel utterly enclosed and alone. (the absurd side of me kept thinking of the Hash Slinging Slasher Sponge Bob episode. Yep, THAT intense). But on you drive, slow and steady, knowing the fog will eventually break to reveal familiarity, safety, and home.
     After spending the weekend in a congested city that never sleeps, and enduring such a tense drive home, I drove slowly through my small hometown and said to myself, "This town sleeps."  All was quiet.  My driveway was silent, lit only by the glow from inside the house. Walking through my front door and hearing Gilmore Girls in the living room was like stepping into a different realm. Hard to believe that two such different worlds existed so close together.  Although relief came with the feeling of safety and familiarity, over the last few days I've realized the stifling of creativity that comes with a lack of change and stimulation. As out of my comfort zone as a city like San Francisco is, it's inspiring. It's alive.
     My small town is wonderful. I can get gas without casually wielding pepper spray. I can walk to my mailbox and smell jasmine instead of weed. Nighttime is peaceful, and it's a great place to raise a family. But it sits still. It's not that I would raise a family in a place like San Francisco, but I think while I am young and have the freedom, I want to spend some real time in a city very different from the one I grew up in. God has been stretching my definition of what I think I "want" this last semester, and situation after situation has only added up to enhance the notion that I need to be prepared for change.

     The possibilities are literally endless. I need to settle in my mind that whatever I do and wherever I go, I will be bringing ministry with me, and the notions and definitions I grew up with are not necessarily reality. Excluding my family and closest friends, I grew up in a strict, legalistic environment with little change.  Life is not as black and white as I thought. Grace has a wider definition than I ever comprehended. Jesus loved in ways that are uncomfortable for me and that I fall pathetically short in. I have a lot of mental boxes to break through. The thought is simultaneously terrifying and exciting.