Rilke

Angel!: If there were a place that we didn't know of, and there,
on some unsayable carpet, lover displayed
what they could never bring to mastery here--the bold
exploits of their high-flying hearts,
their towers of pleasure, their ladders
that have long since been standing where there was no ground, leaning
just on each other, trembling,--and could master all this,
before the surrounding spectators, the innumerable soundless dead;
Would these, then, throw down their final, forever saved-up,
forever hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid
coins of happiness before the at last
genuinely smiling pair on the gratified
carpet?

hurt

Family is probably one of the closest things to my heart. It is with my family that I feel the most comfortable and peaceful. It is also with my family that I feel the most annoyed, irritated, confused, angry, unnerved, disappointed, and trampled on. No one knows how to push those buttons better than my family.

And no one can hurt me quite as badly as my family.

See, for some inevitable and unexplainable reason we are all connected. I'm pretty certain there is a metaphysical reality in which we're all somehow tied together permanently--shackled to each other for eternity so that nothing we do is without consequence to another. And it sucks when you find this out the hard way.

Something Beautiful

In your ocean I'm ankle deep,
I feel the waves crashing on my feet;
It's like I know where I need to be
But I can't figure out,I can't figure out
Just how much air I will need to breathe
When your tide washes over me,
There's only one way to figure out
Will you let me drown?
Will you let me drown?

Hey now, this is my desire:
Consume me like a fire
Cause I just want something beautiful to touch me -
I know that I'm in reach
'Cause I am down on my knees
Waiting for something beautiful.
Oh-oh... something beautiful.

And the water is rising quick,
And for years I was scared of it.
We can't be sure when it will subside
So I won't leave your side,
No, I can't leave your side.

Hey now, this is my desire:
Consume me like a fire
'Cause I just want something beautiful to touch me -
I know that I'm in reach
'Cause I am down on my knees
Waiting for something beautiful.
Oh-oh... something beautiful.

In a daydreamI couldn't live like this
I wouldn't stop until I found something beautiful.
But when I wake up
And all I want, I have
You know it's still all I need -
something beautiful.

Hey now, this is my desire:
Consume me like a fire
'Cause I just want something beautiful to touch me -
I know that I'm in reach
'Cause I am down on my knees
Waiting for something beautiful.

Hebrews 4

"Satan does not tempt us to do wrong things; he tempts us in order to make us lose what God has put into us by regeneration--the possibility of being of value to God. He does not come on the line of tempting us to sin, but on the line of shifting the point of view." --Chambers

Confession

I have a confession to make.

When I brush my teeth sometimes I forget I'm brushing them. No longer is the brushing about the cleanliness of my teeth. The act of brushing becomes an intimacy between my mouth and the minty brushing sensation. That is the point where brushing my teeth is no longer a duty or a hygenical ritual. It becomes more than that. It becomes something pleasurable.

Waiting

When I pictured myself graduated, I didn't expect my life to be like this. Summer school every day at 7:30. No job. My housemate still hasn't moved out of my bedroom, and I have nowhere to put my clothes. I'm still living out of a suitcase.

In his book Flabbergasted, Ray Blackston says, "We spend vast amounts of time and energy crafting a thesis in our heads of how life should play out. Then Almighty God spends an incredibly brief amount of time blowing our thesis to bits."

How freakin true.

I don't pretend to know what God is doing right now. I do know that every time I try to make plans for this part of my life I run smack into a brick wall. So I've stopped. Kind of. Sometimes I try again. But for the most part, it's easy for me to wake up with no expectations.

But waiting? I detest waiting. I'm not a patient person. I even expect my friends to wait on me, but I hate waiting on them. I can't remember the last time I was jobless. I've been working since I was 14. And now I'm supposed to wait for a job? I'm supposed to wait for my diploma? I'm going crazy here.

Waiting is probably the hardest thing I've done.

Update

Tonight I finally have breathing room. I finally am able to take a breath and look back.

School consumes my thoughts, my life. I guess it's supposed to be that way... I'm just focusing on making it. Yes, 32 more days and counting.

And I swear, if one more person asks me what I'm doing this summer....

I like to live life without a plan. Wing it. It's so stress-free. Until some "friend" here asks what I'm doing when I graduate in 32 days, and I say, "Oh, I'm not sure yet." Then comes the inevitable lifting of the eyebrows and the exaggerated "Ohhh ok." And I can read their stupid judgmental thoughts. And I hate them.

[This is not a reflection on Courtney, who actually asked me that a couple of days ago.]

I barely have time to think about today, and definitely not this summer.