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.

:)

:-D

I know I exaggerate a lot. I get excited about things and people and ideas, and they suddenly become the best or the most wonderful or the end all and be all of the human experience. I will make no apologies tonight, though I am considering it in the future. For now, I'm just going to do it again.

I heard my former youth pastor give THE BEST sermon I've ever heard him give a few months ago. This comes from almost seven years of sitting under his ministry, and he's a good preacher. I remembered it today, and I want to share it with you. The main idea--God often describes people in the Bible in one sentence or a few short verses. David, Abraham, Jabez, everybody in Hebrews 11...

God rarely sees in us what we do. He knows us, from the beginning of time to the end of eternity, and doesn't judge with our standards. If God were to sum me up in one sentence, I'm not always sure that I would like it. But I do know what I want Him to say:

THAT woman makes me smile!

Maybe it's because I consider joy to be of great value. Because when I found it, my life changed. Because I know how much of an impact it makes on just about everyone. If the entirety of my life, from God's perspective, became a source of joy for him...if my words and the meditations of my heart are pleasing...if my character and integrity made him proud...if my life reflected such purity that my offerings were sweet...if something about my heart so touched his that the only response was a smile...

Jesus, let me live my life that way. Help me wholeheartedly pursue your satisfaction with me. I miss it so many times, but I believe that the measure of my character in your eyes is in how quickly I get back up and how good I am at walking around that same hole next time I come to it. Help me live so close to your heart that I know when I'm breaking it and when thoughts of me make you smile.

not hoping for the future, but hoping in spite of the past.

This is such a fantastic post to follow the previous. God balances me sometimes.

I know we are broken people, in a broken world, with all kinds of scars and baggage following all of us. But there are days when I would just rather forget mine and pretend that I don't know so much about everybody else's. I want to pretend that we're all just so "blessed with the joy of Jesus" and that nobody has to glue a smile over all the memories of where they came from.

It never ceases to amaze me how degraded and...well...human we are. I forget that the people I laugh with have cried, that those I wrap my arms around have been hit by someone else's, that confidence can be a way to escape the knowledge that they actually hate themselves for their mistakes. The truth is, I know so little about so many people. I know who they are and who they've been since I've met them (a little of it at least). I know what they tell me. People know of me what I tell them too. I don't know how God deals with all the pain we feel ourselves and cause Him as well. Everybody has a story. And we've all wanted to rip pages out.

I will never look down on you because of your history, because I am far from perfect and put together. I will never not want to know your story, because I've met a healer beyond my greatest comprehension and I'd love to introduce him to you. He has rescued me from myself, cried with me, loved me, freed me, and has ever since been restoring my life to me in ways you could never imagine.

Well, actually... maybe you could. We're just not that different.

hope

Sometimes we Christians use a lot of words that we just vaguely understand the meanings of. Powerful, life-changing words that get overused and watered down. I think I finally got to understand one of them this week.

HOPE.

There's something so different about the lives of people who have actually surrendered them. The more people I talk to who are heading into major transitions in their lives, the more I notice the difference. The overwhelming Jesus-following answer to the question of "what are you going to do now" is, "I don't have any idea, but I'm so excited!"

I have absolutely no idea where my life is going. I don't know where I'll be going when I graduate or where I want to work or when I want to have kids or what degrees I'll be getting or what friends I'll have living close to me. I just don't know. What I do know is this: I've never been this excited or had this much peace about anything in my life.

God wants to give his kids big dreams. He can come up with more than even the craziest things I can imagine. It will probably be way out of my comfort zone, and way past what I would have picked for myself. I can't guarantee I'll be happy all the time, or that I will always know why. But there is this underlying hope inside of all of it that makes me know that it is going to work out. Not knowing becomes exciting instead of frightening. I can dream big and not worry about reality getting in the way. I can take chances and not worry that I'll come crashing down with nobody to be there.

Hope, then, is not a comforting excuse for complacency. It is a safety net that gets better the higher you climb. The more you have to lose, the more God can do with you. My hope is built on the only eternal thing, and everything else could and will fail me before I'm through. So I'm confident in that one thing, knowing that even my biggest failures won't matter in 100 years. I'm planning to set myself up for some of the best failures or successes because if I'm going to have them, why not get something great out of them?

Run farther, think crazier, listen more, fall harder, be passionate, follow through, worry less, trust more, forget the comfort zone, just have this insane hope that your future is only limited by the one who created it and HE usually stays just a tad bit outside your box.

anyway

"People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered...
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives...
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies...
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you...
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight...
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous...
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow...
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough...
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; IT WAS NEVER BETWEEN YOU AND THEM ANYWAY."

for those who raised me...

There have been many times in my life when I've thought, "I never want to be like my parents." I've gotten frustrated, hurt, or angry at some points (whether I had a right to or not). Now I'm not so sure I feel that way any more. I'm almost positive that I don't.

No, I don't want to BE my parents. I have different expectations for myself and for my life than they do/did for theirs. My environments and experiences have given me the opportunity to dream differently (maybe not really bigger in every sense, but very very differently). I don't want to make the same choices in certain situations or follow their paths exactly. But I wouldn't mind at all being like them.

I want to work hard for what I have. To be dedicated and stable. To have common sense, not just intelligence. I want to raise a daughter (or son) who wants to call me to tell me about her life, even when she's in college. Who appreciates me. Who doesn't have it all together, but who does at least have most of her major priorities straight. I want to raise kids I can trust. To treat them with all the love and support that MY parents have treated me with.

I am who I am because I have overwhelmingly loving parents. They've overcome a lot to be the great parents they are. They make mistakes, but they apologize and we move on. They let me make mistakes and love me when I make them. They let me know all the time how proud they are of me and THAT makes me want to make them proud. They don't always understand me, but they do trust me and show me that they do. I've been infused with so much more love than I deserve. I want to be a person like that.

If you two are reading this, THANK YOU. Thank you for everything. I know you're not perfect, but you have done a great job in my eyes...

and I LOVE YOU more than life.