Maybe I should just let it be, and maybe it will all come back to me.

O January, O. I think at least once a year this happens to me. At least. Usually more than once.

I want to talk to you since I don't think you'll read this anyway. Even if you do, you won't know it's you. You'd have no idea. Why would you?

I want to tell you how I feel without really telling you. It's something I've always wanted to be able to do - tell people things without them knowing. There is a sort of fundamental need inside of me to impart thoughts on other people that only exist in my own brain. I want to be able to think so hard that it gives the subjects of my thoughts some thin fog that floats around their heads and lets them have some smaller version of what I feel.

I want it especially in this situation. For a few years I have had an idea, or maybe I should call it a feeling, that has popped into my head, but I have been unable to tell you. In fact, I've never even mentioned it. I wish now that I had but to mention it now would really do me no good.

Sometimes I think that our meetings in my dreams are real, like maybe sharing dreams is a reality and not just something in a movie. What a dumb idea, right? That eventually fades, the longer I'm awake, and I know I'm stuck with this dilemma. It's an unsettled kind of feeling that sits, dormant, until another dream, or another remark you might make to me, or not to me - maybe it's just a remark.

If something lasts for this long, maybe it's real. Or maybe I just need to get over it. I don't mean to romanticize anything. If I shared the true meaning behind my words, I think you'd call me crazy or stupid, or childish. It's a fairy-tale sort of mentality that I'm chasing, and that never seems to work out for anyone outside of fairy-tales. Cliché much? Obviously. That's what I secretly am.

Here, I've stayed up way too late rambling about nothing.

Maybe I'll see you tonight in my sleep and I can finally get some things off my chest. That's never what happens, though.

Whoever you are reading this, it's not what you think. I know what I've written may sound like something that it's not, but it isn't.

Look how cryptic and childish I am. I just might be the next Taylor Swift!

Hey, you. I love you. All of you. Really. And maybe sleep will help me fix my brain. Goodnight.

END.

See, of everyone who called, very few said, "We believe in you." The overwhelming choice said I'm just a boy inside a voice.

See, I made it out, out from under the sun.
And the truth is that I feel better because I've forgiven everyone!

The problem with me is that I forget how much love there is in the world. I forget that I don't HAVE to withhold love from everyone whether I feel like withholding it from them, whether they're willing to receive it, whether they even like me.

I think I have been living my life in such a way that I give each individual person their own value, and I distribute love like it's a big pot of food and there is only enough to keep a few people alive - here I am, choosing which ones are the most valuable.

They are all valuable! What have I been doing? I have been depriving people of something that each person deserves. What has withholding love ever done for anyone? It has produced hate and anxiety and contempt and self-loathing and fear, man, just the FEAR it has created alone is so destructive! Nothing bad has ever been a product of pure, unselfish love, and each of us is so, so guilty of distributing love conservatively.

I spend so much of my time thinking about me. I am about to try redirecting that time to other people.

We'll see what happens. If I succeed, something good. If I fail, I'll try again. That's how failure works, right? Usually I just give up.



I have oceans of love, for everyone. I need reminders sometimes.



Now I'M NOT SCARED!

So come on with me - sing along with me!
Let the wind catch your feet!
If you love somebody, you'd better let them know.

END.

Gather my insufficiencies and place them in Your hands.

I need to cling to words like this. I am so weak that I find myself collapsing under any kind of pressure. It's not even the kind of pressure that weighs heavily on your chest - this is the kind of non-threatening pressure that makes your ears pop when you go to the bottom of the diving well. It's easy to giggle and just dry your hair off once you hop out of the pool, but not if you are afraid of the water.

I am afraid of the water, so to speak. I apologize for the truly abysmal metaphor, but it's the best that I can muster right now. Maybe I should have just stayed literal.

I found myself this past fall, beneath all the fear, the anxiety, and beneath the pressure, however big or small. I learned what it meant to die and to be reborn, and I vowed that I would be a positive influence on others, that I would act like I loved everyone even when I felt like punching them in the mouth, that I would (as stated in the "religious views" on my facebook) "Do everything in love."

In a previous post, I mentioned that being reborn is so much harder than it sounds. When you are born you have to learn everything, but you don't realize it because everything is new and exciting. Sometimes learning is hard, but you grow and you develop habits, you refine your own personality based on how others treat you, what you think of yourself, how you treat others. Then you want to change yourself from head to toe, wishing you had behaved differently from the first person you met to the last.

But old habits die so hard. They really do. It's easy to endure the pressure when there is no pressure.

The last week or so has been a serious challenge for me. Student teaching is something I am not enjoying - I'm not looking forward to any aspect of it and it has already torn me apart. I have slipped back into some bad habits and I need to fight them off a lot more. I have also realized that stumbling blocks can sometimes be avoided. If God does not seem to be speaking through me, if I don't understand enough to act and talk in a way that comes across as humble and loving, then I have absolutely no right to call myself a Christ-follower with that attitude - I refuse to misrepresent God in the way that I talk about Him.

It hit me kind of hard a few days ago when I found it impossible to refrain from reacting instantly to my anger at a ridiculous facebook argument that helped no one. Another problem with this other than the obvious ones? I still feel somewhat justified in how I responded. I need to beat out this mentality.

I feel like God is really trying to teach me something here. He allowed me a fairly easy, pampered semester off, and now it's time to apply what I learned.

I'm just really bad at doing that.

I have to do better. The first step is to stop thinking about myself all the time. I had gotten out of the habit of doing that as much as I used to, but it is now coming back with a vengeance.

I felt the need to purge a little bit on here. This is probably completely disjointed, but it is late at night and I care very little and will probably not even edit.

I just needed a reality check. And tomorrow I must force myself to be the person I want to be for God's glory, rather than the person I have become.

Step 1: concern myself with God and with others - stop making my own feelings the priority.

Wish me luck.

END.