Family?

It's hurting. Why did I ever move away from home? Why did I ever have to have an adventurous spirit? My family thinks I am running away or building walls between me and them. The more I feel their disapproval, the more I feel I have to protect myself. I'm forgetting what it's like to have a family. I don't even know who they are anymore. And they don't know who I am. We are like complete strangers, strangers who somehow I'm strangely related to.

I can't live in my parents' house forever. I can't structure my life based on what they think of me. I love them, but I've hurt them. I've been absent in their lives, and it's eaten away at our relationship like an undiscovered cancer. You wake up one morning late in the game, only then realizing that the effects are irrevocable. I didn't mean to, I didn't want to-it just happened. Who am I and where do I belong? I feel like an orphan. My life has been so full, yet I feel so empty. What am I supposed to do?

Indian Summer

The last of the most brilliant-colored leaves have fallen to the ground, leaving behind a set of deeper, purple hughes among the thinning branches and evergreen pines. A crunchy brown carpet announces my arrival, causing squirrels to scamper away with the last of their winter store and tiny birds to flit in and out of red berry-laden trees. Geese honk the last call for their journey south. The sweet scent of pine fills my nose as I walk underneath a low-lying bough, and my footsteps are suddenly muffled by the soft needles on the path. This is Indian summer, a brief respite from the first chills of autumn before the real frost sets in, which will soon shut us indoors for many months.

Relationships & Communication

So this post isn't as whimsical and poetic as most of my previous ones, but I just want to get it out. I've always heard how crucial communication is in a relationship, but I've never had to really practice it...until now. I always thought I was the easiest person in the world to get along with, that is, of course, when it was just me. But now that I'm in a relationship with a significant other, I've realized quite a few new things about myself.

1. I tend to keep my thoughts to myself
2. I tend to keep my thoughts to myself...until they build up
3. When they build up, they tend to come out at the most inconvenient times in the most unpleasant sort of ways
4. I don't like thinking I'm at fault
5. I want to memorize Philippians 2 again

Okay, maybe those aren't hugely new revelations to me, but they're just in my face a lot more nowadays. This has been a sort of learn-as-you-go-along experience for me, which totally does not fit in with my organized little personality! My life isn't "perfect" anymore, but maybe if we learn to let "iron sharpen iron", we will come out as genuinely better people than the "perfect" people we were before.

Death Is In The Air

Red, orange, and yellow autumn leaves are swirling around outside my window, laughing and calling me to join their dance up…down…around. Fall is here, and while it is beautiful, a slight twinge of sorrow in my belly reminds me of what this season is signaling. Death is in the air. Everything that was once fresh and full of life is coming to an end…again. Funny how the literal seasons often reflect the seasons of a soul. Stranger still is how God uses sorrow, death, and distance to make us hunger for Him even more intensely. Death is in the air. But it is good, because with death comes the promise and hope of new life.