i may have just picked the best township EVER to live in.

may have.

well except i didn't pick it. He did.

and no folks, this is not a sarcastic comment.

i know that's hard to believe.

but i don't know where else i could walk, that's right walk, 15 minutes through apartment complexes (that disgust me how they are piled on top of each other) to a hiking trail and happen upon a wide open field with 5-10 deer grazing at dusk. or drive 15 minutes north and be in a bustling metropolitan city filled with arts and a university and inner city children and so many needs. or drive 15 minutes west and feel like i'm in the middle of nowhere with farms and one lane back roads. or drive 15 minutes south and be in a whole different kind of college town that some times makes me briefly feel like i'm in paris. or drive 30 minutes east and be at the ocean. or hop on the train and be in nyc in an hour. folks, its official. i can have my cake and eat it too.

i finally have found a place that is still accessible to the rest of the world...which i love most of the time. and yet allows me to be completely alone and outdoors when i need it to keep my sanity. and it's so close. while i still miss chicago, i have to say, since i am a person who likes my options, this just might work.

it just might work.

it's been awhile.

many things have happened.

life caught up to me and in a very dramatic way.

as a result things have come into much sharper focus.

and the sun, green trees, and fresh, warm air help as well.

i felt like i was supposed to write an email--one of my mass random ones--last week. but life got in the way. so it didn't happen. i sat down once to write it and the draft still sits in my email. it just wasn't coming.

i have been struck by an overwhelming sense, deep down, that life is good. hope seems to be taking root. and when i say taking root, i mean, burying itself deep into the fiber of my soul and giving life, full life. it is deeper than i've ever believed anything before. i'm not capable of such belief. i know, it's not me believing, but Him believing for/within me that there is hope. it is drowned out easily. a still small Voice quickly overrun by the voices of others. doubt assails, screaming, clawing for my attention and it wins for awhile. before this last week or so, it triumphed because i was too busy listening to others. but somewhere in the chaos, somewhere in almost having my very own life ripped away from me, God has given me peace like a river. even though i am suffocated by my job, left with a relationship i had wished would go somewhere but has not, and witnessing a great deal of brokenness around me, there is hope.

i think it is a result of what i was originally going to write my email about. a devotional was given at work about 1 cor 15 and how the hope found in belief in Christ's resurrection and of our own resurrection shows we do not labor in vain. that without belief that there is a life to come, that there is something much bigger than ourselves, the vanity of our labors inevitably leads to despair. that the promise of a new heaven and a new earth puts in sharp contrast how temporary and fleeting our screwed up world is.

now let me tell you. i labor. i'm the empress of labor. i'm a get 'er done kinda person. i revel in a project completed, a child's life changed. but my current job is an endless list of mindless minute labors. i find it so hopeless. so utterly and completely in vain. but at least in that i know and have known from the beginning of taking this job that it is for a time and God has made it very clear, it is exactly where He wants me. though i scream on the inside sometimes because my patience wears thin.

but the one area of my life i have keenly felt that i labor in vain and have truly struggled to believe otherwise, is in relationships. most keenly, my desire to have that one person to share life with, i have declared vanity time and time again. and i have declared my previous painful experiences and humiliating emotions in search of that person vanity as well. i do not trust that God uses them though i've stared the progress He has made in my life quite often squarely in the eye. i have not been listening to Him so He had to wait until i was broken, weak from my struggling to run away.

Then God spoke truth into my self-proclaimed darkness.

He spoke light into the crevices of my soul.

And hope has begun to grow.

though i'll admit i still feel a little like a 4yr old looking at her daddy with a puckered lip saying but why? i know you love me but why? sigh.

He is not done with me yet. thank you Lord. and He has left me here on this earth for awhile longer so surely there must be more He wants to do through me as well. and for that i am very grateful--and hopeful.

sometimes life throws us curve balls.
sometimes they're bad.
and sometimes they're good.
but either way they're still curve balls.
and they often leave us reeling.

overwhelmed.
and single.

i am overwhelmed.
and i am single.

something in this whole apartment thing has really brought out both. it's not that there aren't people helping me. it's not that i feel lonely. or even alone. i just feel overwhelmed by the details. and single in how i am dealing with them.

you know it's all well and good to be a strong independent woman when the details of life don't overwhelm you. but it's the details that make me realize i don't really want to be like this forever. i don't want to have to figure out my electric bill on my own...or how to set up my internet....or why my water heater isn't working.....or how i'm going to pay my bills....or setting up my place....by myself. i'm over it. if this is what it means to be independent, well i don't want it anymore. i don't want to take care of all of these things by myself for the rest of my life.

it's been debatable even in this week whether i actually think i can even get married. let alone have the right guy come along at the right time and actually have both of us do and say what we need to say to make it work. but today it hit me. and it hit hard.
it has to happen.
because i don't want to do it by myself.

it's not a question of capability.
i know i'm capable.
it's a question of desire.
i do not want to move again alone.
i do not want to live the rest of my life alone.
there God i said it.

it's still hard for me to imagine being married.....
but i definitely know that i don't want to be alone forever.
so i guess that means i want marriage.
i want someone to talk things out with. i want someone to help me with the details. i want someone to take care of me. i want to take care of someone. i want to love and be loved.
is that too much to ask?

i think i've hit a wall.

and it's a wall i'm not sure i've hit before.

i am tired of taking in.

i'm tired of tolerating.

i'm tired of 'being nice'.

i'm tired of listening.

i'm tired of bullshit.

i'm tired of being courteous.

i'm tired of giving in to others.

i'm tired of conforming.

i'm tired of holding myself back.

this is who i am.

this is who God is making me to be.

i want to rejoice in that.

i want to be strong in that.

i want to be free.

i AM free.

and i'm tired of tiptoeing around like i'm not.

that means i'm going to offend people.

i'm going to frustrate them.

i'm going to make them mad.

i'm going to annoy them.

but i can't hold it back anymore.

take it or leave it.

that's what it is.

and i'm not sorry for it.

but it's not in a rebellious fashion. just more of a the gloves are off, this is real sort of way. i wanta proclaim truth--about God, about me, about life. i want people to understand where i come from. i want people to get it. something has snapped. i'm tired of the old ways. i've tasted the power that we've been given and i want to do more, i want to use it to the full. i want to live life to the full. because God is. and He has made me who i am and i LIKE me! amen.

this is totally random but i just put another book on the shelf about marriage...and i just got really frustrated b.c its talking about all the hard things about marriage/not being prepared, etc. i feel like that's what i've been hearing from a lot of people. i wish someone would right a book about the good things of marriage, the joys. i know i know most of our culture doesn't get that its not like a fairy tale. but another huge chunk of our culture in response to the 'you need to be prepared/its a lot harder than you expect' is just saying well then let's not get married. it isn't worth it. can someone please tell me why it's worth getting married?! because i don't know what the reasons are. no one ever tells me. and if its so damn hard why in the world did God make it sound so joyful in genesis?? there has to be something about it that makes it worth doing.

there's something about space that i am learning.
not physical space, of which i have greatly lacked in the past.
but mental/emotional space.

there's something about a person who doesn't give space that causes me to clench on the inside. i wonder if its something connected to maturity--or personality. that they always must make themselves known. why? why do you need to make yourself known?
if i'm not answering, shouldn't that be enough of a clue?

it's rooted in something much deeper than just the words.
and it's something i've encountered before. a lot.
b.c my openness lends me to be taken advantage of, in this respect.

the need to be known is in all of us.
it is meant to drive us to our Creator, the only one who can truly know us.
when that need is not fulfilled in Him, we take from others in desperation.
those who are more open and honest in their desperation make us cringe. because we think we're better than them, and yet it is the very things that we hate in others that we truly hate in ourselves. their desperation is a mirror for our own souls. and we shirk back, appalled.

i've been getting more annoyed lately with people. some has to do with my level of exhaustion. but more it has to do with the mirror that is being held in my face persistently as i let people in my life. see the thing is...when you've lived alone and worked a job that largely puts you around children...you forget how messy adults are. we're really all children on the inside, but its those of us who refuse to acknowledge this that makes life difficult for the rest of us. because in refusing to acknowledge, we put on layers, hiding who we really are instead of being honest.

why can't we just be honest? with each other as much as with ourselves.

i'm feeling poisoned by facebook.

and tv/netflix.

and my cell phone.

and email.

yesterday i forgot my cell at home.

and i felt naked-

for awhile.

then i got over it.

it disgusts me.

i desire what is real-

even in the small things.

paper and pen.

face to face.

active engagement instead of passive consumption.

out in the middle of nowhere with no television, hardly any cell phone reception, and poor wifi, i was free.

and now i'm enslaved.

more so than i've ever been before.

i balk at my ability to assimilate.

my desire to be connected resulting in hours on facebook.

what a waste.

as i type this-

on my blog.

need to break free.

to be real again.

to taste life without this ever increasing addiction to know others through false means.

why in the world do i ever need to know what an acquaintance did today?

what a waste of my brain.

to mindlessly entertain myself.

why in the world can't i sit down and read? or paint? or anything besides electronic media!?

what a waste of my time.

i'm filled with information i don't need. entertainment i did nothing to gain.

a life that frustrates instead of fulfills.

Jesus, set me free.