Immersed

I’m sitting down on the couch with golden light streaming in, about to start a book. Like usual, I nestle in to read someone else’s life, someone else’s story. I’m enthralled with stories, with people, with the human condition. Why do they do what they do? How do they become the people they become? What are their greatest triumphs and fears? It’s why I was too curious for my own good as a child. It’s why I can spend much too long on Facebook tracking statuses, photos, wall posts. Even the smallest moments make me smile. The pictures that tell a thousand words have me clicking away. It’s why I subscribe to a couple hundred blogs—most of them regular, daily life blogs. Tragedies, achievements, joys, concerns—I’m obsessed with them all. I live for stories. It’s why I want to be a writer. It’s why I want to be a journalist--a newspaper reporter. The most basic of all storytelling covering the important, the minute and everything in between.

But this fascination is limiting. It needs to be reigned in at times. It needs to be molded and crafted. And most of all, it needs to be paired with the most important thing of all: passion for my own life. What good does it do me that my heart weeps over every house fire, every drowning, every sad story? I’m fierce with my emotions and my love for other people. But how can I honor lives that have been cut short unless I fully live my own? I love to read these stories. I want to impact people by writing them. But I need to stop looking around and look at myself sometimes. I need to be similarly obsessed with finding the joy in the little things of my very own life. I need to dedicate myself to reflection on my own life experiences, not those of others. I need to LOVE my life and my story before I can truly love that of others. I need to nurture this trait of listening to my thoughts and writing them down, instead of always turning to things other people say and write or fictional worlds I can immerse myself in.

This year, 2012, I want to become immersed. Not in my work or in my relationships, as important as those facets of my life are. But most significantly, I want to be immersed in life. I don’t want to skim it's surface. I want to be completely covered in saltwater, tossed in the waves, flung across the shore. I want to live and I want to live fully. Some people have a word they decide to focus on and reflect on over the span of a year. "Immerse” will be mine. I need to take the time and the passion to live every moment, every joy, every disappointment, every celebration. I only have one life to live, and too often my attention is distracted by everyone else’s moments. These are my days. And I intend to treasure them.

"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life" -Thoreau

Today

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

"How you spend your days is, of course, how you spend your life." Annie Dillard

Perspective makes all the difference. There's something that always used to bother me about statements like "I hate Mondays" and "Fridays make me so happy" and "On Wednesdays I can feel the hope rising within me as the darkness of the week begins to fade away." Really? Every day is a gift worthy to be celebrated. If we stop trying on Mondays, those are a whole lot of days in our lifetime of being miserable simply because a week was starting.

I used to love the show "The Weekenders." That gang of kids knew exactly how I felt every Friday afternoon in elementary school--weekends meant freedom and fun. Truly, those were the days when "we lived for the weekend!"

But now as a slightly more mature adult, I realize that an attitude like that is poisonous. We should be grateful for our lives and every simple, meager, humdrum day. Not every day do we get to have amazing experiences but every day we make memories and every day we can choose to be joyful in any situation.

Today is December 1st. It's a Thursday. I'm not looking forward to a few things on today's agenda. I don't work today. I don't have plans for the weekend. These days aren't very full. In fact they are quite boring. A day of job applications, reading and dreaming. Later on I'll have dinner with my family and watch a movie.

But I still wouldn't trade these days I've been given. These days are about waiting, about expecting. I hope I will snag a journalism job soon and I'm praying so hard for this specific opportunity I have. Every day that goes by, my trust increases. I'm never without hope. And though the days may be lonely, my heart is full thanks to the one who never leaves. He continues to pour His love on me, in every difficult moment--every time I'm afraid and each time I start to doubt.

I hope to embrace this Advent season and tie my own season of waiting with Mother Mary's. I graduated in April and the months continue to go by. I'm still here--livin' on a prayer. But today I'm happy. And I couldn't ask for anything more.

"Be strong, let your heart take courage, all who hope in the Lord." -Psalm 31:25

In the House of God Forever

This is a reflection I wrote today as I sat in church for a bit. It's really connected to one of my favorite Jon Foreman songs lately and Psalm 23.

I'm a seashell by an ocean as I sit in this large church, the pews vast and empty behind me. Here I am in the House of God. Here is Jesus on the cross. Here is Jesus resurrected--my Lord, Savior, Father. Here is my beloved who weeped and died for me. Here is my everything. And I am so small. And yet I'm protected, I'm shepherded, I'm loved. I'm at peace like a child safe in a mother's embrace. This place--as big as it may be--is also very intimate. The distance between my Father and I is shortest here. The distractions are few and my soul can rest.

Here God pours his grace into me without interruption, strengthening me so I may go out and be Jesus to other people. So I can be a light in this world. This cold world with it's video games and guns and inequality and hate. Here I can retreat with the one who knows me the best for as long as I need to. Long enough to quiet all that I am so I can hear what he has to say, enough to get out all my whines and tears and "what-if?"s out so that I can hear him whisper: "I love you. No matter what, faint not. For good reason, there is joy in your heart. Do not let the evil one and his lies come at you. I am with you, even in the valley of death and suffering."

Here the pain seems far away and I've emptied myself enough to make room in my heart for truth, beauty, love, joy, goodness, purity, grace and courage. Here, the King of the Universe holds my heart. And here I know, sitting in the pew, that God sees me, even as the sinner I am, as beautiful, precious, beloved. Though I may be just a number in this world, though I may take up only one kneeler in this church, he holds me close and his love for me is strong, unique, infinite, as if I were the only daughter he ever created. And this is home--the place where I belong.

In the House of God forever.

First day of fall

Today was the first day of autumn, which is my favorite season. I'm already dreaming of coats and scarves and skirts with leggings and boots and curls and the leaves changing, even though it doesn't really get chilly 'til November. Today was a stormy, blast Hello Hurricane in the car, gorgeous sunset kind of day with a bunch of treasures.

Friday treasures:
Candy Corn!
Giving my teenage brother unsolicited advice
Making brushetta for dinner
Going to Target with my mom. There's something about that place that makes me positively happy.
Ghirardelli dark chocolate squares with raspberry filling
Action movies
Pre-ordering Switchfoot's Vice Verses and the live version of the Hello Hurricane CD
The feast day of Padre Pio
A wedding to go to tomorrow

This song:


This view:

This verse:
"I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me." -Gal 2: 19-20

Hello hurricane, you're not enough

In tennis, players stand in a position with their knees bent and their tennis rackets in front of their stomachs--ready to jump left or right and to swing at a moment's notice.

Sometimes things come at us and we have to be ready too.

There will always be storms in life and there will always be surprises. No one is immune to the unexpected. Family emergencies, crisis, friendship struggles, periods of unemployment, natural disasters, heartbreaks, daily disasters and a myriad of other issues can strike us at anytime. These are hurricanes, with the potential and the power to break us down, despair us, shatter us.

But there is always the flip side of the coin. There is always grace. There is always Christ. And therefore, there is always beauty, love, light, truth, hope--even in the midst of trauma.

"Hello hurricane,
You're not enough.
Hello hurricane, you can't silence my love.
I've got doors and windows boarded up.
All your dead-end fury is not enough
You can't silence my love." (Switchfoot)

When I've faced personal crisis in the past, I've tried to focus on the words "Jesus, I trust in you." I've repeated them over and over until my heart can be steady, until the tears dry, until I can move forward again. I have to remind myself. We have to remind ourselves.

God never panics. God never leaves us. God always loves us. And He holds us in the palm of His hands.

When we're faced with uncertainties, roadblocks, suffering--we have the choice. We can't choose our situations but we can choose what we do about them. We can choose to board up our windows and focus on the one who is "strong enough to save" and choose hope and allow ourselves to be open to his grace and love Him in return. We can trust that Jesus rose from the dead, that he performs miracles, that he makes all things new. We can trust that "he makes beautiful things out of the dust."

Recently, God has knocked me down and humbled me when I least expected it. Curveballs have hit my smooth, familiar routine.

Today, I'm reminding myself that God is stronger than any storm, that He is always in the boat with me, and that His love sustains me and His grace truly is and always will be enough.

Friends and football

After a weekend of Rockin' the Universe with a group of girlfriends from college, I was kind of sad to go back to the regular grind this past Monday. I looked forward all week to a lunch date with a sweet college friend on Friday. We spent the day chasing after her wild puppy and taking him to Panera with us as we both got broccoli cheddar soup and had some much-needed catch up time. Surprise chats with a few other friends brightened the week and Saturday's Gator victory over the Tennessee Vols made my heart happy.

Having graduated just a few months ago, I live with my parents now and the sting of faraway friendships is felt so much more. I miss the college days with their relative ease of seeing friends--meeting at Chick-fil-a on the weekdays and going out on the weekends. I get e-mails from Redbox often and they make me miss all the movie nights of those days. But I know this is just a step in the journey and I cherish the alone time I have to pursue things I never had time for before, like this blog. And those chats, phone calls, Facebook posts, Skype dates and real life get-togethers are such blessings.

I know I wouldn't be where I am today without the guidance, love and support of so many people in my life.

And so, in honor of friendship, I will link to this song which is from my favorite childhood show, Saved by the Bell. :)

The beginning

Welcome to my first post. The inspiration for this blog came from an exercise a friend told me she learned on a church retreat. She was asked to take a walk outside and find three treasures that reminded her of God. The items could be anything--big or small--that evoked joy, led to a memory, or triggered her faith.

I think we lose sight of the beauty in simplicity and the majesty of the everyday things. Like a sort of gratitude journal, I hope to jot down treasures of the day on this blog. My wish is that this becomes a sort of trove for me--to remind me of the many blessings that inhabit my days.

I hope you find this blog to be a respite from stressful days and a place to find some light to shed on your own set of treasures.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be." -Matt 6:19-21