how you see me

Guys, let me give you a clue about us girls: good or bad, whether we want to or not, most of us spend a good amount of time wondering what you think of us.

I wonder what my dad thinks of me. I want him to look at his little girl and be proud, to know that the daughter he raised is not just your typical average "good girl."

I wonder what my brother thinks of me. I want him to be excited that he gets to be stuck with me for the rest of his life :)

I wonder what the guys I pass every day that I don't know think of me. I want them to be able to tell there's something different in the way I present myself to the world.

I wonder what the guys in my classes (since there are so flippin many of them) think of me. I want the way I look and dress and act and speak to be respectable and representative of the person God intended me to be.

I wonder what my boyfriend thinks of me. I want him to know he can trust me and be proud of who I am.

I wonder what my friends think of me. I want them to be able to say that they respect my opinions and value my friendship.

Bottom line--I care about what you think. But only because if I try to look at myself through your eyes, I can learn a lot about who I am and what I need to change. I tend to think about how you see me because I know what I would like for you to see. And as a female who is learning how you guys see us, I am even more determined to never be anything but confident and respectable in the eyes of the men in my life. I don't want to flirt all the time or be too touchy, be overly needy or dependent, dress in a way that makes the visual battle guys fight any harder, find my worth in any relationship, be shallow or selfish, think I need to put lots of effort into how I look, or get jealous of girls who are prettier than I am. I spent a lot of time caring far too much about the world's perception of me. Now I only want to care if your experiences with me reflect the person I am striving to become.

break!

Normal people spend 1/3 of their lives sleeping (college doesn't count). Why? You're not conscious, nor are you getting anything valuable from it. God could've made us to recharge in an hour or two and get at least 20 good hours of productivity in.

But he didn't.

He made us to need rest, to burn out if we push it too hard, to enjoy the time we have that isn't spent doing anything. It isn't laziness, it's necessity. I'm definitely looking forward to my time in the next few weeks doing nothing but loving my family, seeing some of my favorite people, and...wait, I think there was something else...

Oh yes. SLEEPING.

:)