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| In my heart I have had a place for the homeless, the part that is sad when people just walk by them without a look, let alone a thought, and rejoices when I spend an hour with them in the streets, simply talking. Despite all this, I have have come to the conclusion that having a homeless heart is dangerous. What makes a homeless heart, you might ask. I define it as a heart that is struggling to determine what to love, and what to fight for....what its passion in life is going to be. I'm not saying that you have to know what you are going to do in life, but you can choose what you are going to love, and that should be made with a good sense of finality, so that you can do it with abandon.
"The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating – in work, in
play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal
critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around
as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier
to your life."
- Anne Morriss
At the moment, my heart feels a bit homeless. I need to love God, to determine to follow him with all that I am, whether that be at home working with teens, which is a growing love in my heart, or be it overseas, where a piece of my heart still waits for me to pick it back up. Choosing when to love others is a more tricky situation. I have failed to choose to do that more than I would like to admit, and am still paying the piper for that. There can be many reasons why we choose to stop love, we are afraid of commitment, we are to selfish, or perhaps we even fear that the love is wrong, and God would have you love another. It's confusing, I'll never figure it completely out, but I do know, that all our actions should stem from the grace and love that God has given us, and no action should be completed without it.
Starting over is such a achingly painful process. To slowly unravel the roots that your heart has put down, and lay dreams down in faith that God will give you new ones.....I have to admit that I've cried every week for the past three months, over regrets, over loss of direction, over the mistakes of my past. But you know, its not the end of the story, and just as God is capable of bringing the sun up every morning...I trust that he can mould my life into something that glorifies him, even if its a dinner plate. Sometimes its almost exciting :)
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| This year I didn't make any resolutions, and it wasn't that I have no thoughts about it, or did not plan for it, I just simply forgot, and before I knew it, it was January 1st, way past midnight and the proper time to establish my plan of action was long gone. So instead I decided to make a top 20 (although I only have 19 so far) list of things to do in life. Some of them may seem a bit unworthy, such as stop biting my nails, but others such as learning foreign languages, traveling, and living in a convent for a month will hopefully be a little more impactful (is that a word?). But you know? If am going to even get started on any of these (I type this while nibbling on my pinkie) I'm going to have to deal with a few things; my apathy and my fear of throwing myself into anything. My motivation is going to somehow have to switch from the overriding fear of failure (which can make a person exceedingly productive even if they don't care about the project itself [consider writing a paper for a class you hate just so you wont fail]) to simply wanting to please God and those around me. I enjoy being selfish, honestly, I do. I want to do what I want (which is usually hang out or sleep or watch Chuck) but there is still some God-given urge inside of me that looks on that with disgust, and wants to end up being able to say at least "I tried", make that "I really tried" maybe even "I worked my butt off" though in some wise scholarly way. I exerted my effort to the utmost? Anyhow, its back to work.
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| I am:
lonely
hopefull
determined
frustrated
overwhelmed
slacker
overworked
tired
loved
over-emotional
not emotional enough
socially inept
strategic
gullible
late
If you ask me how its possible to be all these at once....its not easy, but I manage.
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| Yeah, I know that by the sounds of it, this blog is going to be about the search for the random guy that is going to want to sashay over to the Middle East with me, doomed to live with a half veiled wife and shish-kabobs forever. Sorry to disappoint you all :)
The real basis for this is the culmination of a weeks worth of thoughts about my lack of determination and self-control. I was reading through this random site, not entirely sure it wasn't heretical in its beliefs, but it had a very important section, about the purification of our lives. I think its been too easy for me to look on my life, see what God wants to change, and acknowledge that yes, it should in be fact be changed, I may even pray about it, but when it comes to actually stopping and putting up with the pain of changing...I'm not doing so good. The sad and sickening part is that I can see how much more at peace I would be, how in love with God I could become, and how my impact on those around me could increase...and yet I allow myself to float along. Pathetic.
Ways that I want to change...feel free to heckle me about them:
Be self controlled in getting to bed and getting up for devotions.
Be self controlled in what I eat and taking care of my body.
Be self controlled in doing homework and finishing projects.
Be active in loving and sharing with people the love and reality of my God.
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| Today is brighter, things aren't as bad as everyone's emotions said they were, which I'm glad for. I've been told that I need to acknowledge my emotions and let them run their course in order to deal with them, yet I always feel like I have ended up overreacting. I'm excited about life, and I love that I'm actually excited about Jesus, and the weird feeling that I actually love and trust him, even if I can't really explain why, except that he makes it happen.
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