"I am only one, but I am one." -J.R. Miller

I was looking for something specific but found it not. mostly because I got distracted by other ones. Ones about you know what- not the ones I was looking for. Either way, I enjoyed reading through them. It is strange to still be able to see two-year-old tear stains on journal pages and to read through life goals that are still just as blurry as they were then and through sin and temptation struggles that are still just as prevalent. On a lighter note, the same little things still excite me. And I have written the same three disney princess song lyrics at least five times in the last seven years and they still woo me and get stuck in my head just as much as they did when I was 17. I actually wrote some pretty deep stuff when I was in high school. Those journals are usually neat to look at. They alternate Jesus fanatic journal, boy-crazy journal, good research and lots of Bible studies journal, boy-crazy silly-girl journal, prayerful and thoughtful journal, day dreamer girl journal. It's like that merry-go-round in Caldwell city park; a different color on each slice of the ever spinning metal pie. Luckily I don't get nauseated. Almost all of the old ones are quite creative. I decorated the exteriors myself and filled them with colorful sketches and magazine clippings, and bold markers emphasize inspirational quotes or personal thoughts. 11th grade. "I am only one, but I am one." -J.R. Miller. me: I can't do everything, but I can do something; what I can do, I ought to do, and what I ought to do, I will do." I guess now would be a good time to go read The Purpose Driven Life, but I'm not going to. I can apply that thought to how I choose to approach working at camp this summer and, of course, to my teaching next year. I will not be able to do everything for all of my students. But I certainly have my place doing something and I ought to do that with all my might without expecting it of myself to do everything. I tend to expect that and then I end up feeling this guilt and inadequacy that is in every way detrimental to my actions, choices, and inner being related and unrelated to both- that is if you look at the subsequent actions and choices as results of the inner feelings. I can't determine whether the inner ones are conscious or subconscious, and I think they are purely neither but partly both. Certianly, I could do a better job of consciously choosing not to. Anyway. So I feel like a person about to be drawn and quartered between four Quarter horses. No, let's make one of them an Arabian. A white arabian horse with some ugandan name like Tito or Yuwer. Don't get me wrong, I am excited about teaching in Dallas and being here with my family this school year! I feel vonderful about it, but I don't think I want to stay here- do I? Tito pulls me to an unknown and uncomfortable place where I can live like mother Teresa and not care about men and being held by one or attended to emotionally. (honestly though I don't think i was programmed that way and i think that there is a reaso for that) Then there's Stanley, a brown Sorrel (solid colored light brown), he doesn't pull but just stands still and stubborn (more like a fat-butt mule)and holds me here in dallas for years to come and lills me into a semi-longing to find my niche in a little community and drink coffee with the same five people every morning for the next ten years. I fear that. Maybe some day this life will satisfy me- it sounds safe but do I want safe? After watching the movie, Into the Wild today, no, I don't want safe. But I'll feel differently tomorrow and differenter the day after that. If I have learned anything the last three months, it's how different my differently is from the differenter differents. Professor Higgins is half Thoroughbred. Those are tall, slim, English horses mostly used for racing. I want to move to england or scotland and be a tour guide in some city that sparks my creativity and artistry and love of tea and coffee and poetry and literature and Music. I would travel around and practice all those accents and meet people and wear my British caps and layer cardigans in the cold. I'd get lonely sooner than I think I would. Sometimes I crave-long-ache for a companion to make these decisions with. I've been reading Tolstoy's "Family Happiness" Part 1 Chapter 5, "He said to me, 'Now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor -- such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps -- what more can the heart of man desire?' 'It should be enough,' I said." Sometimes, I don't mind the idea of being just me and exploring myself a little longer and serving God in a very different and less restrained way like Paul talks about in what, 1 Corinthians 7? I suppose it really doesn't matter what I want because companionship is not the decision of one person but of two and if the second party is not interested then you are alone no matter how cravey your consciously or subconsciously choose to be. My grandfather said the other day, that he doesn't understand love. That it comes up whether you want it to or not with a person that you want it to be there with or not and once you get it , you can't shake it off like nothing. It's like pullin all the fibers off a cotton seed or suckin all the cotton candy residue off your fingers then gettin the rest of it off of the roof of your mouth with your tongue. The first one will make your hands bleed and the second one is a plague of stickiness. I haven't told about the forth horse yet. She's a quarter horse and she tugs west. West. To an American, west doesn't mean just "west" it means frontier, discovery, and the uncomfortable unknown and adventure and probably a bit of a hard time. I KNOW i want adventure. I know that I know that what i am wanting is adventure. what the heck is adventure? well the truth is i am really not sure. i guess that it is something that i feel like i am not having right now. well what is that? certainty? I have been living in uncertainty for so long and I still felt this desire throught that. Is it to be out of Texas? is adventure in Santa Fe or in some Utah national park or ski resort. i see, it must be outdoors. yep. When i think of adventure i think of rock climbing and hiking boots and tank tops and highway 1 and tall trees on tall mountains and the cold pool at the base of a secluded waterfall and my bouldering pad laying on the ground next to my clothes by the water. I want to tent camp on the beach north of Bodega Bay, walk deep into the narrows in Zion Canyon till i'm too tired to walk all the way back but do it anyway, to hike into those hotsprings south of Vegas and try lead climbing on a eagle shaped rock in Yosemite, i want to kayak somewhere anywhere and watch horses canter over slopes where the wind makes the yellow grass look more like water to launch that kayak into, then make pottery in an old tshirt at night when the crickets are churping so loud that you cant hear the one and only car horn in the distance, surrounded by photos of people i love doing crazy things and sketches of odd things that I saw or thought up. I want to watch thunderstorms from someone elses covered porch and listen to stories to tell my students when I am an old teacher.
Can I do it all? I want to live several lives. I doubt I'll be drawn and quartered. Will i stay in this state of limbo for years to come? This year, maybe. Soon, one rope will yank me harder than the others and that is the direction i will go. a few years later, will i look back regretfully? Or will i be glad? Oh does it matter? I will be glad. And you're right, I do have a lot more life to live than I seem to think I do. Just don't strap myself down. I know this is going to sound completely different from what i just wrote and it is going to make it all sound so faithless and silly, but here's some John Wesley. Advice to self perhaps. "I found that the chief purpose of prayer in determining the will of God is to get my will in an unprejudiced state about the issue at hand. Then, when my will is unprejudiced, I find that God suggests reason to my mind concerning the proper course." Strap yourself not to a horse or a mule. Psalm 32:8-9.
please give me a comment on this one.