Why would anyone listen to me?
This is a thought I have had a lot recently. I have looked back through this blog as far as my pride would allow and thought about other blogs I've written and just cannot understand the girl behind them. I've changed and not changed in the few years since blogging. Facebook and Instagram keep me connected to social media at large, but I try to refrain from sharing too much personal information or opinion or reflection at all.
Sometimes it just seems like I have said too much, cue R.E.M.
There's a problem with keeping my words to myself though, a problem with trying too hard to remain impartial. I risk becoming nothing or feeling as if I have become nothing. What do I even like? I truly struggle to identify the things I care about and believe in, and that is troubling. In the past writing has always been the one medium that helps me figure out what is going on in my head. I write it all out, at times almost as if in a trance, until sense arrives. And in the past I have honestly felt that I had something worthwhile to say, that I was Called to Say it.
I have written in a journal off and on in my life but even that has lost its appeal. As a culture do we say too much? Share too much? It seems like Everyone Else is an expert on something, how to dress/cook/create/think/shop/be in relationships. It makes me feel inadequate ALL OF THE TIME. I got to a point where I felt Ecclesiastes 5:7 breathing down my neck.
"Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore stand in awe of God." (version?...that is how I remember it, and maybe that's the problem!)
Okay, so...take a break from all the talking....but
Why can't I buy that cute thing and photograph it in that perfect way and share it to get 200 likes in 5 minutes? Why do I even want to? I don't want to. Why do I feel like I should want to?
What drove me to blog and share poetry and photography on DeviantArt all those years ago? Maybe the better my relationships are in real life the less time I have to invest online. But at this time I don't feel like I have much going on in my life.
Well, marriage...work...taking care of the dog and being half of what keeps our life in balance. Is it just me or are we kind of driving each other to this same point of inadequacy? Am I writing here for you, because I have some insight, or am I here for myself? Am I a flicker in the darkness or just another burnt-out bulb? Do I have too much free time?
Can't we all belong?
Is the answer just to stay off the internet? Because that doesn't seem rational. This is a fabulous way to connect to people, to learn new things, and to be entertained at little cost.
In a little under a year my husband, dog and I will be moving into our WV Vanagon full time. We don't know for how long, or exactly where it will take us. We hope to be in a new state at the end of it all, or to rule them out and return to Florida. We have this restlessness that must be taken care of and we want people to join our journey online. By then I hope to figure out just what it is I can give to this world, because lately it feels like I have nothing to add. In the mean times we struggle to find our own hobbies, our own creativity, and by extension our own significance. I seem to struggle with this more outwardly or perhaps violently than Matt does, but we both feel it.
I need more in my day to day, whether it's blogging or creating or volunteering or getting more involved in church I am not certain. Maybe that's what I came here to solve. Maybe you can relate? I think that in the past I have had seasons where my daily life (work at the Foster Barn in Gainesville, coupled with Greenhouse Church) has been so incredibly full as to keep everything else at bay. Now, a year out from leaving those things behind, I am feeling their loss. I am grieving again and again instead of finding suitable replacements for my energy and offerings.
I think the less I write, the less involvement I have with the community I am in, the less I feel any burden to think or invest. Life must be cultivated.
So maybe I will once again write in this blog regularly, or maybe not, but for once these things have left my head and maybe that's a start.
This is not an ode to myself I hope, but rather me reaching out. And if it is an ode to myself I hope it is because it's okay, even necessary, to take the time to pay attention to your own insides.
-Hasta, Jenny
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Sunday, August 25, 2013
eyelid heavy
you're oh so predictable,
forgetting would take a miracle
the smoke in your throat, the knife in your coat
fall for a lyric under cloudy eyes
another clever piece of your cocky disguise
but how far can you run
when your shoes are made of gum
and how far could you fly
when your wings are made of lies
and how far could you ride
with a bike made of the sky
i'm asking how you'd ever drive
in a car meant to just get by
it's lacerated locomotion
you move to just escape
and hide behind a catchy beat
and call the hatred fate
but love is more than staying close
and can't be killed by letting go
what's the use in a fresh new start
if you're drowning still in a heavy heart?
forgetting would take a miracle
the smoke in your throat, the knife in your coat
fall for a lyric under cloudy eyes
another clever piece of your cocky disguise
but how far can you run
when your shoes are made of gum
and how far could you fly
when your wings are made of lies
and how far could you ride
with a bike made of the sky
i'm asking how you'd ever drive
in a car meant to just get by
it's lacerated locomotion
you move to just escape
and hide behind a catchy beat
and call the hatred fate
but love is more than staying close
and can't be killed by letting go
what's the use in a fresh new start
if you're drowning still in a heavy heart?
Friday, August 31, 2012
Trees Bear Fruit
I am not sure who, if anyone, still reads here but I wrote something I wanted to share with you all. Please pass it on if you like. I am working off my iPhone so editing is tough, so please excuse any incompletions in word or thought.
This is a small summation of just one element of something God has been teaching me this year, and boiling out as I am on this trip. I think getting out of Gainesville has been really good for me, I love that city but oh the distractions! Here I may find myself lost in a crowd or on a train in solitude, but still I am a free agent, hearing and seeking unbound by the unseen forces one's homebase often has.
So today I am reading and meditating in a town called Rueschlikon, near Zurich, Switzerland, and I just began typing this. Now, I will share:
"Trees bear fruit"
My problem is often letting go. Investing in something, a relationship for instance, requires sewing bits of ourselves into it, and the growth and fruit becomes our reward. When we invest in something while ourselves being in the nature of Christ, a never ending source, no matter what we give we will receive and find renewal in time. Outside of the nature of Christ, investments become more about ourselves and our motives and are less renewable. Without God we are a race doomed for extinction.
Yet either investment can and often will come to an end before we are ready, and separation from the work put into the growing season can be very painful. We want to move on, find new land perhaps, knowing by rote that this is "what's best," but we also fear what, unseen, lies ahead.
Those investments with less or even none of Christ may sink, taking parts of ourselves along with them, and in this situation continuation of the journey seems bleak. How can I step when I do not know my own feet? (They aren't your feet, they are God's feet!) Yet while we ourselves remain in Him we will be renewed. The more we sew in Christ, the higher our chances of return, but that does not mean we will receive what we initially desire. I've yet to meet a human who truly knows what they want outside of eternity. (yet even then, what a man desires is unfailing love, therein lies eternity or vice versa)
Yet despite any desire to remain, it is our nature to continue and create, as we mirror our Creator. It isn't in returning that we grow, unless by some lapse of maturity we are forced to circle back to some sort of origin. But we should trust the lessons God has already taught. Nor are we to leave disaster in our wake and proceed blindly in our way, for we are at every moment a witness.
There is a narrow path in the light of Grace on which we must situate ourselves and continue, step after faithful step, no matter what we have left behind, knowing that God is greater. Maybe not always feeling it, or thinking it, but knowing and believing what is true.
Phil 3:14
We must chose our investments wisely and sew accordingly, for many people depend on our fruit. It always matters, and as such we are urged to pursue wisdom. While we cannot change the past, we also cannot allow ourselves to constantly replant every seed or fixate on what could have been done.
We cannot always know the fruit of our labor in one season. We scratch the earth waiting for mere seedlings on our own time while God wants us to continue in faith and await the trees.
This is a small summation of just one element of something God has been teaching me this year, and boiling out as I am on this trip. I think getting out of Gainesville has been really good for me, I love that city but oh the distractions! Here I may find myself lost in a crowd or on a train in solitude, but still I am a free agent, hearing and seeking unbound by the unseen forces one's homebase often has.
So today I am reading and meditating in a town called Rueschlikon, near Zurich, Switzerland, and I just began typing this. Now, I will share:
"Trees bear fruit"
My problem is often letting go. Investing in something, a relationship for instance, requires sewing bits of ourselves into it, and the growth and fruit becomes our reward. When we invest in something while ourselves being in the nature of Christ, a never ending source, no matter what we give we will receive and find renewal in time. Outside of the nature of Christ, investments become more about ourselves and our motives and are less renewable. Without God we are a race doomed for extinction.
Yet either investment can and often will come to an end before we are ready, and separation from the work put into the growing season can be very painful. We want to move on, find new land perhaps, knowing by rote that this is "what's best," but we also fear what, unseen, lies ahead.
Those investments with less or even none of Christ may sink, taking parts of ourselves along with them, and in this situation continuation of the journey seems bleak. How can I step when I do not know my own feet? (They aren't your feet, they are God's feet!) Yet while we ourselves remain in Him we will be renewed. The more we sew in Christ, the higher our chances of return, but that does not mean we will receive what we initially desire. I've yet to meet a human who truly knows what they want outside of eternity. (yet even then, what a man desires is unfailing love, therein lies eternity or vice versa)
Yet despite any desire to remain, it is our nature to continue and create, as we mirror our Creator. It isn't in returning that we grow, unless by some lapse of maturity we are forced to circle back to some sort of origin. But we should trust the lessons God has already taught. Nor are we to leave disaster in our wake and proceed blindly in our way, for we are at every moment a witness.
There is a narrow path in the light of Grace on which we must situate ourselves and continue, step after faithful step, no matter what we have left behind, knowing that God is greater. Maybe not always feeling it, or thinking it, but knowing and believing what is true.
Phil 3:14
We must chose our investments wisely and sew accordingly, for many people depend on our fruit. It always matters, and as such we are urged to pursue wisdom. While we cannot change the past, we also cannot allow ourselves to constantly replant every seed or fixate on what could have been done.
We cannot always know the fruit of our labor in one season. We scratch the earth waiting for mere seedlings on our own time while God wants us to continue in faith and await the trees.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)