Hello Trek

It's 3:53 and I can't sleep. Ofcourse, I was asleep--until about 2. Working third shift has got my sleeping all out of sorts. It doesn't bother me, my best work is done at night. Which, is quite unfortunate since my best sleep is done at night as well.

An amazing thing happened the other day. I've been talking about pushing myself forward, making choices that define me, figuring out who I am so that I can better live my life and serve God. Well, I bought a bike. Not just any bike, but a real road bike. It's amazing.



It's a Trek 1.5 T WSD 50 Plumage 10. What all that means, I'm not sure. I rode it around the parking lot of The Great Escape for about thirty minutes if not more trying to figure out if I liked it. It's last years model so it was marked down 250. My work is hosting a cycling program and has offered to pay 240 on a bike, so... let's just say that I got a $1,100 bike for about $610. INCREDIBLE.

I took it out yesterday. I didn't go far, just up and down the road in front of my house. I have to figure out the gears before I go off and try and travel in traffic. I don't want to kill myself. My dad said that the most important place to start is making sure I can stop. I laughed, but had to agree.

Already my butt is killing me, or rather, I should say, my "sit bones" are killing me. They are bones you don't realize you have until you sit on the tiniest seat (they call it a saddle) and hit bumps and climb hills for long periods of time. It's going to get worse before it gets better, I'm told. How exciting! ... Not.

What I am excited about, though, is this great new part of my life! I need to lose weight, and this will help. I need to find friends, and this will also help. I need something productive to fill my time--well, here ya go. I need a way to push myself physically. I feel that cycling is going to be a great investment in my life and future, and I am very excited!

pledges

I have decided to make myself a pledge, and in this way I will free myself. I have decided to call off boys. The talking about them, thinking about them, eagerness to talk to them, until the end of the summer. Granted, when I say boys, I really just mean the one I'm interested in. I don't go around dreaming and thinking of tons of boys. hahaha.

In this way I have promised myself a time of focus. I will focus on me. Where I need to go with God, what I need to process through. I will focus on my paintings--I have a lot to learn in this area and I finally have tons of time to do it. I will focus on my writing--an area of my life which I love, but I am horribly lacking in.

I have realized I have so much to offer the world, myself, and God, but I don't focus on it. I don't work with it to make it better, and because I do this, I am doing a disservice to us all. Not that I'm all fabulous and the only one who is amazing. We all are--if we push ourselves to be completely ourselves. If we aren't pushing then we are all doing a disservice to everyone else.

So, I've made myself a pledge to push. A pledge to stop spending wasted effort on guys or self loathing, on watching a zillion movies and doing nothing. I pledge to push myself to figure out myself, to make the world better because of what I put into it. I pledge to be creative and spend time with people who make me feel great about myself. I will open up and really try and get to the root.

The root is where it's at.

i am lovely

In this silence I can hear myself think. The low gentle humm goes in and out like a deep breath that gives life. The rumble and melody of my fingers against the keyboard is like a song so gentle and sweet.

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I had a talk today with a very dear friend of mine--Kristie Koll. She is one of the rarities in life--a true friend, to the core, to the quick. I know she would die for me, and I would die for her, and to me, that's what makes a friend a real true friend.

She gets to me in ways no other friend can. God uses her to speak to me, so quick, so clean, like a piercing dagger stretching to the bottom of my heart. Through a conversation that lasted an hour and a half God used her voice to open my eyes to see that I need to do a little journeying. I need to take a walk within myself. I need to notice every nook and cranny. I need to see myself the way God made me, not the way I made me--not how I, with my skewed pathetic view, see myself, but how God Almighty with love and care, and intricate design, sees me.

I began a painting tonight. I am painting what I think God sees when He looks at me. Not the me that is skin and flesh, mostly pink with a little yellow. Not the me that is scarred by life's cruelty, it's repeating hatred and scorn. But I am painting the me that God, in a moment of true brilliance, spilled forth in my mother's belly. The me that was brand new, the me that will be again once I die, the me that lies within this flesh, shrouded always by humanity. I am painting the me inside me. It's invisible to my eyes, but there. It is beautiful, and soft, holy, and happy.

I have never before painted anything close to this. I've always painted things that were about other people, other issues, other, other, other. I have chosen to paint things detached from who I am. I did this unconsciously. I didn't realize I was avoiding me. I was too scared to paint me. What would you see when you saw it? You would hate it, I hated it, and I knew that if the world saw it they would burn it. They would burn the most precious part of who I am. That little treasure of self that sits inside, barely known to even you, it is so secret and beautiful--how could I share that without fear of it being torn to shreds and corrupted forever. Safer to keep it hidden, my subconscious told me.

But now, through God's revelation, I realize what I have done. I realize that through fear I have let myself be buried. I realize through trepidation I have resolved to only show shades and hints of who I am, testing the ground to see if matches have been laid.

I am learning. I am learning how to find myself and when I do to show others who I am. I am beautiful. I am honored. I am cherished, ravishing, and lovely.

I will paint this. I will paint this for you. I will paint this for me.

the harlot

I have this problem.

I call it my harlot heart. It's not something I like about myself, and even though I try and change it--somehow it never seems to go away.

Outside of emotion and longing, I know without a doubt that the love of God is the most incredible, amazing, trustworthy, never failing, beautiful love I will ever have. It fills me up to the top and spills over making my heart, and my life, and my dreams come alive in ways I couldn't have ever imagined. It is part of what keeps me content, it refocuses me, grounds me, gives me purpose. It's priceless--and it's mine, forever!

Some days this love, so rich and true and deep, is enough for me. In truth, it is always enough, but some days I don't feel like it is. Some days I want a love story in this world, this life time, so bad I cry. My heart seems so lonely and sad, my dreams unfinished, parts of myself are abandoned by the rest of humanity, and I sit alone wondering if I will ever take part in a love story of my own.

Weddings and babies pour through my homepage. I am genuinely happy for these people. They deserve it, just like I do, and they've got it. They've got precious people to hold onto for the rest of their lives. People that everyday play a part in their story of life, bringing joy and depth, sorrow and kinship. I long for a love story, but mostly I long for someone to be in my life--with purpose, passion, sincerity, and loyalty.

As I live, with part of me waiting--the part that will love like a wife, and care like a mother--I feel like a harlot to my God. I know I could die today and never care that I never married or had children, but as long as my life rumbles around this world, part of humanity, part of existing, I will always long for it.

I pray that the days where the love of God is stronger than this desire will outnumber the days where I feel the vacancy so strong it hurts. I feel complete when I'm not paying it any attention.