meddled cobwebs

It's funny as you get older (wiser) ;o) ...how one's perspective changes...the older I get the more I realize I don't know. It seems in college I lived by such absolutes with not much room for grace. And as the years have gone by, and as I have "experienced life," I find myself giving the humbling answer to life's difficult questions, "You know, So-and-So, I just 'don't know.'" I also think as we get older, and I am sure that you would all agree, that our priorities change. My attitude has changed about many things. I think that a lot of my motivation behind my actions in my formative years were to please others. I don't think, I know. I lived based on expectations and a lot of that stems from my childhood and the dynamics of the relationships with my mother and father. Whether it be my role as an athlete, crazy personality, artist, teacher, coach, youth director...my life was under constant scrutiny (or at least that was 'my perception'). Being an extrovert to begin with and then going into teaching and youth minstry really effected me in the long run because I eventually burned out. After five years, I "gave up." The expectations that I placed not only on myself, but the ones that were placed on me by my friends, family, kids, and their parents closed in on me causing me to question my motives and really who I was as a person. Of course as we get older, we mature, and I know it's hard for some of you to believe that I could become mature, but it's true. Marriage has sedated me. There are no words in the English dictionary to describe how much I love my husband and our marriage. In these past few years, I have been learning and David has been encouraging me how to live my life as 'my own' and not for students, parents, youth group kids, my parents, teammates, peers, boys (pre-marriage days) ...and it has be really, really DIFFICULT. For a person who naturally wants to please and perform and is a perfectionist, I am having to learn to do a heart-motive check and often re-form that energy and learn how to turn it into an act of worship to God (which ain't always easy my friends). My heart's desire is to be "real" and to be "honest." I have so many masks that I wear and so many roles that I play that I am confused and am trying to figure out who I truly am in Christ. I definitely feel like I am in the wilderness at times...sometimes a journey...sometimes a holding cell...sometimes solitary confinement...I get glimpses, but I am still in search. The Lord is working. I feel Holy Spirit. It is good, but so much to meddle through.

a friendly regret

i regret not being friends with angela in college. i don't have many regrets in life, but i have come to the conclusion that i want to add this one to my list.

reunited

you know you live in a small town when....we were attending our local downtown constitutional square festival and decided to take martha with us. we were perusing the booths and enjoying the sounds of joy that filled the air. the smell of fresh kettlecorn laced the square while children were carrying on with their wooden pop guns. while david was in conversation with a lady who had her pottery on display, i turned around to notice a puppy that took interest in ours. much to my dismay, i took a double take and grab david. the owners on the end of their dog leash looked at us at the end of ours and we both knew that they were "sisters." when we picked martha out at the humane society, we were trouble with deciding between her or her sister. we had originally picked "mary jane," but after a long debate, we went with martha. david and i grieved over the decision and hope and prayed that little mary jane would eventually get adopted, after all she was our first love. after being home with martha for a week, conversation would drift to mary jane, and david and i would express how much we hoped that she was ok and that she'd be adopted into a good home. they both came from an abusive background and pretty poor conditions. so to be in the midst of hundreds of people in a town of thousands on a beautiful saturday afternoon and be reunited with your sister, is a pretty cool story to me. the two girls licked each other in the mouths and wagged their tails (all other encounters with dogs have been WAY different for martha). it was more of an emotional experience for us humans i think than for the dogs. it ends up that the family that adopted mary jane lives about a mile from us, so we exchanged phone numbers so the girls can get together and play.

almost two months

we've been official danvillians almost two months now. it's hard to believe we've been here for what seems so long...yet on the other hand seems so short. i miss my friend, erinn. i miss her sam and her pregnant belly. i miss her beauty, honesty, and touch. phone conversations don't do our friendship justice. she told me she was pregnant with twins a day after we arrived in danville. i wept. i haven't experience but maybe twice in my life such joy that it took me to tears. we talked late last night, and i felt her prayers all today. the lord is good to me.