Ready, set, go.

You know, God really rocks. He does. I'm trying to make more room for him in my life lately, and I'm beginning to see him everywhere. In my conversations, in my assignments, and just in general. I see him in my conversations with Asia about relationships and how difficult it is to wait for the right person, I see him in the encouragement I get from my friends, I see him in my cup of coffee+dark hot chocolate every morning, and I see him between the lines of my meditation book from Valerie. It's all kind of starting to make sense, my life. In a really discombobulated, chaotic, dysfunctional, perfect way. Because right now, I feel like my life is kinda like a crazy, tazmanian devil whirling dervish of emotions and thoughts and exhaustion and schoolwork and jobs and drama and far too little sleep. But that's how God works, he fits into the gaps in the weirdest, most unsuspected places. I was on a "holy-crap-i-am-going-to-jump-out-of-my-skin-if-i-don't-do-something-right-now" adventure run on monday, and in the midst of my "adventuring," I got soooo lost. Like, I ended up on a back road with no sidewalks and dangerously sloping embankments and fast oncoming traffic. At first I was angry, thinking stuff like "wow God is laughing at me right now, I am so pathetic, I can't even go on a 3 mile run without getting lost," but then it hit me. That whole situation, me taking weird turns and ending up stumbling rather than running along a road with cracked pavement and crazy opposing traffic, is exactly how my life is right now. I'm trying to swim against the current. Im trying to run without sidewalks on a congested, narrow road. I'm trying to take too much control over what I CAN'T control. I'm trying to do everything without God. That's how it feels. Like struggling against a current that's impossible to beat. God is way too big to tackle, you can't reverse oncoming traffic no matter how fast you're running in the opposite direction.
I need to stop running. I need to stop fighting. God is sending me so many signals and I'm ignoring all of them. He's begging me to take a breathe for once. To just stop and LISTEN instead of drowning him out with all the noise in my life and expecting to hear him over all the commotion. It's time for me to cool it. It's time for me to realize that it's impossible to keep trying alone. I don't have to be alone-- I'm NOT alone.

I need to be crisscross applesauce on Valerie's kitchen floor, pouring my heart out to her while she makes me one of her trademark grilled cheeses.

I want to be laughing hysterically and unstoppably at absolutely nothing with Renee and Katie on Katie's basement sofa.

I want to sing "O Magnum" with the Chamber Choir again. I still have it memorized.

I want to sit on my front porch with my legs stretched out and crossed on the banister and swat away mosquitoes in summertime dusk.

I need to realize that I am capable of changing my mind. It takes will. It's not enough to haphazardly wish things were different. If you actually WILL it, God will flood like a ribbon through your life. I think I will it. I want to be all out for him. Seeing Valerie's pictures of Haiti made me cry, a lot. And reading the journals she wrote there and everything she learned... it's all in my heart too. I feel it ALL. But I haven't voiced it. I feel like people, especially here at college, don't know my heart. They may know me as a sweet, nice person who's easy to get along with and laughs alot and has crazy hair and a cool eye and a weird middle name, but they don't know my heart. And I want that. I want people to know ME.

I find extreme beauty in really simple things. Like the sunrise. And sand.

I am a really internally emotional person. I don't show it very often.

God really is the love of my life. I need him, I am empty without him.

My parents taught and gave me an INCREDIBLE disposition in life. I still don't understand how they do it, they're amazing. I have the guiltiest conscience in the world, I know how to pray, I know how to love because of them.

I love being alone. Especially when I'm driving.

I write when I'm stressed out. Poetry, or rambles like this one.

I love to love. I think I'm good at loving people. I've figured out that it is very, very possible to love someone and not like them at all. Love is not all rainbows and butterflies, it is work, it's miserable sometimes. It requires humility and sacrifice of self in order to love other people the right way. I try to though. I am by no means an expert though. My mom is.

But really, she is.

And Valerie.

I want to lay it all down, love foolishly, hold nothing back, not let myself be tied down by things that won't matter in five years. I want to be preoccupied with what will matter FOREVER, my heart and my soul. My lack of sleep and excessive caffeine intake and my frustration with professors and stress about tests do not collectively amount to the power that actively loving does. It moves mountains. I wanna move a mountain. Readysetgo.