i've definitely been procrastinating about writing...
maybe it is out of fear... fear that once i start writing i won't be able to stop... or the fear of having nothing to say...
maybe it's out of laziness... writing takes time... and sometimes, it sort of feels like cleaning my room (which i mostly hate to do)... sorting through what needs to be kept and what needs to be thrown away... clearing out the junk and spending time on things that mean something...
maybe because it hasn't been a priority... hanging out with people has taken priority over hanging out with a computer...
i'm not sure the reasoning... but today i sit, good music playing (one of the best mix tape cd's ever - thanks, amy)... and feel that now is the time, whether i have anything to say or not, whether it takes all day or 10 minutes... i'll take the time... to clean out the junk in my mind, censoring only what is necessary, which may be more than i would like to be...
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to try and sum up the last few weeks and months would pretty much be impossible to do... so i'll attempt, knowing i'll probably fail... but i'm still going to try... but i'm only going to deal with august...
i spent the first week of august in new orleans on a high school mission trip... the trip could probably have its own entry (or 5)... but i'm going to sum it up in one word...
humbling
as we pulled into the city, i was immediately broken. i was thankful for oversized sunglasses that hid my teary eyes... i know people who were directly affected by katrina and rita... but i wasn't directly affected... so before driving into the city, it had just been something tragic that happened in our country and in lives of people who were close to me... but it wasn't necessarily real to me...
my kids aren't always the most sensitive in the world... and after a couple of not-okay comments, i snapped... not necessarily out loud, but mentally, i lost it a bit... i was sad for my friend alyssa's family who lost everything... and my mind starting working overtime... and i began to think about storms in general... and how sometimes our lives can be compared to weather patterns - whether we are in times of quiet or times of storm...
sometimes i think i've become so used to the storm that i'm terrified of the quiet... like the storm becomes the thing that is familiar in my life and i don't want it to stop... maybe it's because the storm has become the thing in my life that i can blame... and when it stops, i don't have anything else to blame if there is junk in my life that shouldn't be there...
my words today won't do justice to what i was feeling in the short amount of time after we entered new orleans until we got to our hotel... there was a lot... now, it just seems as fragments of ideas...
after that experience, the rest of the week continued to knock me back into my place with surprising force...
i worked harder than i had worked in a long time, doing work that is not pretty or glorious... i smelled bad... i was dirty and gross and it seemed the perfect analogy to sin in my life... we cleaned up houses and yards... and i know that the storm caught many off guard... they didn't have time to clean their houses and even if they had, it didn't matter... the storm left them, their lives, and their junk exposed... for all the world to see... i don't want my inadequacies, my sin, my junk to be laid bare for the world to see... i want to clean it up, package it with pretty paper and a bow so it doesn't so much look like sin... but that's not being truthful about what sin is... it needs to be exposed so that healing can take place... maybe not in a huge public arena... but to one another so there can be accountability and repentance... i don't like that part sometimes...
toward the end of the week, i grew very tired... exhausted, actually... and i saw my kids notice and it bothered me... i felt like i wasn't putting on my game face enough... like they shouldn't know that i was tired... they kept coming up to me and asking, "what can i do? you look so tired..." and it made me sad... matt said that it's because they cared about us (i guess they were saying the same thing to him) and it was because they cared about us and wanted to please us... and that was even more humbling... i feel so inadequate to be working with these kids... i know that i'm not where i'm supposed to be, spiritually (and probably in other areas, too, but especially that one)... and i'm thankful that God is using me, but it's scary and humbling... i'm thankful that He chooses me, though i don't know why He does...
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i'm not sure what happened the week after new orleans... i'm sure something did... but i can't remember, because it's a week that was sandwiched between two that stick out... so whatever happened that week will forever be lost in the recesses of my mind, i think...
the third week of this month started out fine and by tuesday, started unraveling... there were 3 deaths that happened surrounding my life... it was no one in my immediate family, but they were 3 deaths that were too close... a parent, a grandparent and a student... it was one of those weeks where i was forced to stop and re-evaluate a lot of stuff about my life... does my life make a difference? would people come to know Christ as a result of my death? would there be any lost people at my funeral? am i doing everything i can to share Christ with those that don't know? where's the sense of urgency?
the sad part is, i don't think anything has changed as a result of it... i would like to think everything would have, but i don't think anything has...
immediately following the funeral on friday, i came home to deal with a big mess... it's one of my censored stories... but it caused an important discussion, starting with the statement (said to me)...
"you wear your emotions on your sleeve. you need to toughen up..."
which is true... but how does one go about "toughening up?"... just curious... so i'm working on it... even though i don't know how... i cried a lot in august...
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last week was such an up and down week... but i had one of the best mornings ever... tuesday i walked out the front door and it was the first day that wasn't HOT... so i definitely sang and danced my way to work, windows down, sunroof open, flying down the back roads that bring me to work... huge grin on my face, hair all crazy from the wind, nearly skipping across the parking lot, i walked into work... and if anything tried to get me down that day i would say "i AM walking on sunshine..." (yes, out loud...)
this morning was a lot the same as tuesday...
i'm happy i've had nuggets of good and even great in what could have been an incredibly crappy month...
if you've read this far, i commend you for your diligence... thank you and good night...
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