bus stops

I had something all started and ready to be elaborated on from last night. Thoughts about my past week and how if I had a camera crew following me around from the 13th of August until the morning of the 23rd, I'm confident I would be retiring early. I had written out four different segments about four different chunks of my life. Work, faith, friendships, and boys. All which have brought me to a very real and clear limit in the last 10 days. In these short stories, I had included some particularly sweet nuggets such as my physics final and the bird that somehow defied physics entirely and managed to poop inside my car after it, being a bridesmaid in my 6th and 7th weddings respectfully, and bringing a grown man close to tears while he watched mine fall on 62nd street in West Seattle. And this is definitely the short list of happenings I had originally written out. I have had ideas brewing for a week about how I would go about writing each circumstance and what themes were being woven between all of them and about sitting in the absurdity that my life has seemed recently. The seedlings of these stories were comedic, genuine, and very honestly simply my life.

But this morning I had a change of heart.

I took 3 pages of thoughts and deleted them with one foul ctrl A, delete swoop.

Though my end goal would have certainly been to glorify God, and I think I would have wandered my way to that point eventually, I decided to skip straight to the glorifying part this time around.

I had a rough week. Who hasn't? I felt lonely at times? Who doesn't? I haven't been so overwhelmed with so many complicated situations in a very long time; I am certain that being 26, much more difficult situations await me. And so do more decisions and choices and overwhelming things. But there is still that ONE choice that is always there waiting to be made every morning, every night and virtually every moment in between. It is the most simply difficult decision I've ever made or will make. It's been so present in my life this past year, I think I'm finally catching on to something. To choose His peace. To choose His joy. To choose to rest in His plan for me. And spewing and vomiting all my past week's mishaps would be comical, sarcastic, personable and in this particular case, absolutely unnecessary.

I am living a wonderfully free spirited life. It's not perfect because I am not. It's not consistently smooth because my path has yet to be completely paved, it's not what other people would want and at times, not even remotely close to what I want for myself. But my life is gloriously, beautifully and wonderfully, not my own. It's on lease to me by my very kind and very funny Dad.

My friend wrote this little tidbit on my facebook wall after one of my wedding appearances on the dance floor; “you.are.out.of.control.and.i.think.i.like.it.”

Tim, you are absolutely right. I am freely and lovingly out of control.
and.i.like.it.too.

Philippians 4:8-9
Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.