I feel as though my life is a book I've previously read.

I am my own, unique person.
Whether people want to love me or not is out of my control.
My duty, my call is to simply love them
Whatever that takes.

If people forget about me
Or leave, and never call
That's out of my hands.
As long as I do all I can to keep up my end.
The phone rings both ways, after all.

There are certain people I'm called to reach
Also, certain ones I'm not called to reach.
That doesn't mean I can't still be friends with them or anything.

I shouldn't get upset at what I don't have.
Instead, I should be grateful for what I do have.
And the beauty that's around me.

:)

Thoughts from the gelato prep table.

Have you ever wondered what your last day will be like?
I mean, everyone will have one.
It's inevitable.
Death and taxes, the two things you can't avoid.
Even if you did avoid death, you'll still have a last day.

Will it be one of those where it seems fairly normal?
Wake up, go to work, go for a run, see a few friends
Or will it be a special occasion?
Will you be alone that day?
Or just have a full day of classes?
Will the last thing you eat be leftover spaghetti from two nights ago?

Well, I do.
I wonder.
A lot.
About many things
Generally all over the spectrum.

I like wondering
It makes you feel like you have potential.
Like you have something to offer the world.
Like you can change it.

I have found recently that I just want to be in the presence of the Lord.
I don't know if it's because I was at the burn for the 18 hours, which I've never done before.
I only left to get canvases and pillows.
I'm really not sure what has brought this on
But I long for it.
I don't think I've ever yearned this much.
Not like this, at least.
I think the last time I got this close was TBI my first year.

I mean, I've wanted to be in the Lord's presence
But I don't know if I've ever longed and yearned like this.

I'm so glad that He's with me wherever I go.

Certain people have weighed heavier on my heart.
Including my co-worker, Liz.
I really want her to know Jesus like I do.
She's my favorite co-worker.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I like the people I work with
And they're all pretty great
But, there's something about Liz.

Maybe it's the potential I see.
That her life is more than her.
That she can really accomplish huge things.
The fact that she's faithful, and puts her whole heart into things.
She's thorough.
I don't know
But, I pray for her a lot.
Maybe I'll get an opportunity soon to feel her out more as to where she is with God
What her thoughts are, and all.

Jesus, I long to know You more.
I long to feel You with every breath.
I long to share You with every single person I come across.
I long to show them this love.
Jesus, I love you.

Hopes and Dreams.

I was at a friends house the other day, when she decided to play twenty questions on me.
The first one?
"What are your hopes and dreams?"
Seems like and easy question, right?
I mean, I am quite the dreamer.
Yet, for some reason, I found myself without an answer.

I told this situation to a close friend of mine yesterday
her response,
"Well, what are your hopes and dreams? Surely you have some"
Still, I'm without words.
"What do you like doing? Besides photography"
"I don't know... I just like life"

I've been rolling over this question consistently now.
Hopes and Dreams.
Why is this so hard for me?
Maybe because everything I do is based on what God tells me
But, surely I can still have hopes and still have dreams
one of my favorite verses is one given to me during my first year at Bible School
Hebrews 10:23, "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, because He Who promised is faithful."
My favorite part of the scripture is the fact that is says hope, not faith or any of the other words commonly used.
Hold to the hope.
Well, my hope comes from the Lord...
Not to sound cheesy, or super-spiritual or anything
but, really.
Life is disappointing, but if you look to Jesus, and put your hope in Him, you find purpose, you find a reason to keep going with the day to day nonsense.
You see the reason behind it when you don't look with your natual eyes.

So, maybe one day I'll have an answer that makes people happy.
But for now, I just keep living
Hoping in my Lord, and dreaming of the day all my dreams come true.

That's answer enough for me.

Soothe.

I made gelato practically all day today.
It was very draining
And for some reason, I just felt like crying.
I still am not one hundred percent sure why.

I ended up leaning my head on the machine
To my surprise, it made me feel at ease.

I guess it's the shake of the machine.
It makes you feel like when you were a kid riding in the car while your mom was driving around town. How the motion of the moving vehicle just seemed to soothe you.
Or the feel of sitting in the middle of a rain storm.
When the rain is just completely dousing your head and you're soaked to the bone.

What is it that's comforting about these things?

My co worker walked into the back, and when he saw me, he just laughed.
I'm sure I looked absolutely ridiculous.
But, inside, I found peace.
Peace in the familiar that I found in the new.

It very well may have been the highlight of my day.

Thought.

I bet you if I actually had confidence, I'd be a force to be reckoned with.

Just a thought.

I heard this song on the radio sometime last week.
It was some Valentine contest thingy that people wrote to the radio station and the winner had Matthew West write a love song about their story.
Well, he picked a winner, but there was a second story that gripped his heart so much that he wrote a song for them too.
It was a military family story, you know, the typical, heart-wrenching thing that makes you want to change the station before you cry but you are somehow intrigued enough to keep the station set and fight the emotion.
A thought really hit me that I've never really truly thought about before.
I had the thought about the imagery the song painted depicting the fact that the dad missed so much of his kids life.
You can't get that time back.
You're kids only grow up once
And now, here he is facing retirement, love is finally coming home...
...now what?
your life is mostly over.

I only get one childhood, and I have been blessed with one filled with great memories.
I only get one set of teenage years
I'm only a young adult once.
I'll only get married once
If I have kids, they'll only have one childhood...
...and so on.
You only have one chance at this.
There will never be another February 17, 2011.
Ever.

I can't really wrap my head around it.
In a sense, it seems like childhood, teenage years, young adult-ness never ends
Because we can always bring the memories back to the front of our minds
We can look at pictures, tell stories with friends, think about it all we want
But the truth is, it's over.
You can never get it back.

Last night I found myself at some friends house that I haven't seen in a while.
Like, at least a year.
So, we were sitting there, catching up on life, when I just kinda sat back and realized who I was with, where we used to be, where we are now and where we are going.
It's a funny thing.
One of them I grew up with. I've known him since I can remember. He is one of the few people I can go back on all those old, great memories from when my age was in the single digits.
The other one I met at Bible school. When we met each other, we had wrong impressions, and didn't really like each other, but as the year went on, we actually became really great friends and realized that we are very similar.
So, here I sat, with blast-from-the-past friend I used to crush hard on when I was 7, and his wife who was there for a pretty difficult part of my life.
I'm pretty sure we used to sit back as kids and wonder where our lives would take us
And here we were, with the answers.

We're adults.
When did we get here?