Friday, October 26, 2012
Journey junkie, i guess that's me.
And here I am. I can't stay on task, I can't stay focused. I'm in my 3rd job in less than year, I'm taking classes at my 5th college, I've been single and mingling for well over 22 of my soon to be 24 years. I still change clothes threes times a day. Yesterday I had one of those "I want to run, I want to leave all these commitments and I want to be in Iceland, right now" - what?? .... I want to run from my commitment of my dog and online classes and awesome roommates, all of which I have had for less than 5 months. What do I want to run from? Or rather do I just want to run from myself because I'm becoming settled again (and 'settled' has a very stretched definition in my world and it tends to look much different than the rest of society's)
So I decided instead of wasting more time, trying to think of a single topic I can focus on and write about day after day. I will just embrace my current title "journey junkie". This journey I am currently on, whatever that is. This journey of a 20-something-year old trying to find herself, her God; the things she desires and the things she detests. I am trying to become the person I want to be, the right person; while it seems like everyone else around me is looking for that right person. So, maybe I am on a selfish journey, maybe I am on an immature one looking for maturity, or a journey trying to avoid adulthood with all I can. It's a journey I guess; always has been and always will be.
And here I am a junkie. every day, every single day, I'm a junkie. I have compulsive habits and these obsessive dependencies on the most ridiculous of things. I'm addicted to changing, growing, moving. I'm dependent on relationships and my independency. My habits are every where from popping my knuckles, to profanity, from face masks and sleeping in fields. To drinking tea every night before bed, to splurging on sugar every time I'm stressed. I'm addicted to living life fully, to loving people with my whole being, to desiring to be an emotional wreck just to feel. (even though the tears have had a hard time coming lately)
So here I am. A junkie on a journey. An addict on an adventure. A pilgrim on a path. However you want to look at it. I'm broken and I tend to be an ugly mess, I have permanent bruises, physically and emotionally. And I am going, constantly and consistently, going to try to become a better woman, to try and become the lady, the friend, the leader, the achiever, the servant, the lover, I've always wanted to be.
So read along with me or not. Thats ok. One conclusion my twenties have finally brought about, I am writing not for those reading, but for my spilling soul to reach a resolving reconciliation with itself.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Finally...
Saturday, March 10, 2012
A Danish Dame
Right now I should be cleaning, or running. Granted I feel as if this need of being productive is a hovering cloud that never decides to leave my presence. So instead of doing something good for my flat, or good for my body - I'm going to write... then again, writing is good for my soul.
Monday, February 27, 2012
no time for reservations
Sunday, February 19, 2012
::Carving Waves::
Today my face is red from a wind/sun-burn. My calves are sore, as well as other body bits of mine. But it truly is a great feeling and it is caused from being on the mountain yesterday, on my board. Yesterday I got to go snowboarding, I never played in the snow in South Africa, so Saturday was my first time back in over a year.
Took me one run to get myself comfortable again. But that second run was so sweet to taste. The second half of the run, you drop down a steep incline, carving down the bank I mainly stayed on a straight path, picking up my speed, gliding effortlessly in my turquoise snow-pants and purple beanie. With the Ponderosa Pines on both sides and the sun shining directly on the revealed skin under my goggles, I had fun carving hard up and down the steep banks on the outer edges due to our lack of snow. You come right, it curves left into the bend and turns back dumping you out right, so you make an S formation. Coming out of the bend, with reggae in my ears, I was on my heels, riding the back side of my board cutting straight left. move my feet –barely – the board goes parallel to the snow, move my feet – barely – all my weight on the balls of my feet, the board cuts deep on the toe edge, able to curve smoothly, sharply – with my whole body leaning into the land, I’m able to swipe a hand against the hard, cold snow before popping back up – gliding the edge that falls 15 feet into powder and ponderosas, and back to heel edge, back to carving this ice, that Flagstaff people call snow.
The thought that came to my mind while I was doing one of my runs was, “I wish I could feel this on a surf board.” It’s almost as if my snowboarding got better as I went away from it for a year, while my surfing is still at a stand-still, such a mediocre level of wave-catching. I would love to carve the waters, the way I carve the snow. So I spent my time on the chair lift thinking of the science behind boarding these two different elements – coming only to the conclusion that a board on a wave gives you a type of feeling that snow never will (the closest you could get would be riding an avalanche).
The flat I lived in, in J-bay was below a family – Roy the father of that family and my boss for CSA always blessed me with rad talks, whether about life, ministry, visions, or relationships – but honestly majority of our conversations were during Fuel TV and they were about surfing. I remember Roy describing to me the way he sees the waves, describing to me the addiction it creates because you are a moving energy riding a moving energy. And that’s why carving on snow will never give me the sensation of carving a wave – the snow stays, even powder doesn't create the energy like the amplitude of the sea.
So obviously – I related this to us…
There’s a lot of definitions for a wave – a lot of science behind it: To move freely, back and forth, up and down, a swell moving along a surface dependent on tension, a surge, a rush, a rise in activity or intensity, a succession of mass movement.
So a wave – a lot like emotions. Moves up and down, back and forth, changing form due to the environment around it. I’ve struggled with emotions my whole life, the acceptance of them, finding maturity in them, finding Godliness in them. But after 23 years, I’ve come the acceptance of them and am able to see emotions as something beautiful – as an incredible movement within a person’s soul, giving one the opportunity to express him or herself a little; the ability to bring a little more of you on the inside, outside.
Emotions, that warmth of feeling burning inside to respond to something; passion, compassion, joy, sorrow, misery, anger, love. You are a wave of emotions (although you need to look at the undulating you allow in your wave – are you even a wave? Or have you shut your emotions off to the world and God?)
One definition of a wave is: motion defined as the movement of a distortion of a material, where the individual parts or elements only move back-and-forth, up-and-down, or in a cyclical pattern. It appears as if something is actually moving along the material, but in reality it is just the distortion moving, where one part influences the next.
Are you that type of wave? You look like a wave of great amplitude from the outside, but in reality all you are doing is moving matter – whether that’s people, visions of just other emotions – your not actually doing anything. All your doing is moving ‘things’ in an aimless motion. For example, ocean waves ceaselessly arrive at the shore without piling up infinite amounts of water. The wave arrives, but the water doesn't. Is that you?
Because I must be honest with you friend, as honest as I am with myself, you cannot be that type of wave. We are not called to be waves that move material in a meaningless motion. We are called to be true waves. A wave is the progressive disturbance propagated from point to point without progress from the points themselves; the moving of energy not the moving of matter.
That means we are called to be moved, only because we are being moved by an energy outside of ourselves (the Holy Spirit) and we are not called to be a wave of emotions stirring the sand up within the sea – but we are called to move and sway as an energy of emotions in tune with our Father’s emotions so that he is the force sweeping the bottom of the sea, and kissing the shore.
So, as I sat on that chair lift, 40 feet above the ground, snowboard dangling, the Phoenix valley to my back and the Grand Canyon to the west. I had to ask myself – what type of wave are you? What energy is controlling your emotions, your movements, your actions – is it you? Or is it the Holy Spirit? … Look at the shoreline, because the residue you leave behind is your answer.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
A dedication for Lincoln (for Larson)
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Polarize yourself
I was reading just last night as I stumbled across Acts 17:6 – this is a verse I’ve read more than a handful of times. I even took Acts class in Bible College, I mean I had a test over this exact verse. But it happened to be this Wednesday night when 8 words specifically grabbed me by the cheeks and shook my soul for a still moment. Maybe I never noticed it before because this night I was meandering through the New King James version. Acts 17:6 “But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, “These who have turned the world upside down have come here too.”
I believe we all have put up a certain amount of walls, some icy barriers that have created a shield that we exist in, inside these freezing waters called culture and society. But its not those frozen, defensive walls that I care to see in you.
God hasn’t called us, you nor I, to sit stagnant. But to fully flow and ebb with the movements of his current. He has called us to “turn the world upside down.”
There is this pilgrimage that must begin, a movement that seems so contradictory to our current status – it is not one of building up walls, but one of melting the glacier that has formed. It is not a movement north or to the top, but a movement to the polar-side of this world, to the other side.
What inequities have been placed upon your life, in which you responded to in a way this world expects and wants you too? … because I beg of you, re-approach those injustices with a heart placed in the Lord (full of mercy and ragamuffin like grace, full of acceptance and true love) and melt your soul in a polar direction – melting in the direction not of the world but of the Word.
Because once we melt our souls and turn ourselves ‘upside down’ only then can we come together and turn the ‘world upside down.’