L'avenir

I do a lot of worrying about the future. Worrying may be too strong a word, but I think about it, muse about it often. The fact is, I'll probably never be the kind of person who is settled, who has a good idea of where they'll be in a couple of years, who they'll be with or what they'll be doing. This makes that kind of worrying inevitable. That's okay to me because I don't want to be that person, and the worrying is a price worth paying.

I find myself, when I have nights at home, thinking about the changes inevitable in my life and dreading them. However, this is what keeps life exciting. The never knowing, the never even thinking you know.

But the great thing about all this worry is that I know the reason I worry is because my life is pretty great now. Actually, pretty fantastic, almost without flaw. Even though I have some concerns about where my life is taking me, I know there are years of exciting adventures ahead of me. I'm enjoying these days and looking forward to those to come.

Hope

Okay. I'm gonna be honest with y'all for a minute. It's been a rough couple of days. We all have them. The days where you just get into a funk you can't get out of. You forget everything awesome about your life and focus on the one thing that's not perfect. You close off, reject God's blessings, God's will.

That's over for now thanks to the amazing blessing I just received in the form of my small group.

I had been undecided about how I fit into this group. Sometimes I loved it; other times I wasn't so sure. Tonight was just amazing. I made a decision to not think about the time or what I was going to do after. I was present. I stayed after to socialize. I think I'm on my way to a Godly relationship with these people. Praise Him for that. He knows I need it.

I opened up. The topic this week was suffering and how Satan uses that to take us away from God. See, God can give us clarity and wisdom in tough situations, but if we push Him away, we are left with Satan, who purposefully blinds us to bring us to his side. I told them about when Josh died. My anger and sadness. I became totally vulnerable with them for the first time. I was scared, but it was so rewarding. I feel so close to them right now. This is one of the most amazing things God has done for me.

I've been feeling a bit alone. I have some great friends here in Chicago. Close friends that I feared before moving here that I'd never have again. I have nothing to complain about in that area. But now I have a Bible Study. One with whom I'm vulnerable and get support in return.

One of the questions was how does God give us clarity. I told them about Sarah and how she's always honest with me and how God uses her to help me see the truth. I told a story about my pride and tendency for the dramatic emotions, and they laughed like the girls in my CRU Bible Study used to. I'm glad my storytelling skills are not lost on yankees :)

I am just so thankful right now. I feel blessed even though I don't deserve it. I've been accusing God of abandoning me. What was I thinking? He led me here, and he led me to these people. Most of them have been here less than a year. We all need each other. For those of you who I confide in, thanks for your prayers. Things are looking so good.

Bowling Green

Sometimes I just don't know what's the matter with me. My life is good. I have so much to be thankful for. But that hasn't stopped me from being a total wreck lately. It's not that I'm miserable all the time. It's just that the slightest thing can make me totally sad. I'm so emotional, even more so than usual, and I'm having a difficult time hiding it.

I feel like I left myself in Bowling Green. You know, like my real self, and my Chicago self is just a shadow of the me I used to be, the me I used to like.

In Bowling Green, I was confident, secure, self-assured. A night in alone didn't mean I was friendless; it meant I was having some much-needed Savannah-time. But now, I feel like so loserish because I'm home at 10pm on a Sunday and I don't have to work tomorrow.

In Bowling Green, I was good. I prayed. I read the Bible. I had a ton a Christian friends who held me accountable. Here I feel so alone in my walk. Here I pray and read the Bible but not nearly as much as I did. I go to church more, though. I do have some church friends, too, but not ones that I see outside of church/Bible study. It's just, cultivating relationships with people is hard.

I could try to look back and understand when the chaos of emotions started. When exactly I started acting like a constantly pre-menstrual basket case. But I think I know the answer. My life here isn't God-centered. It's Savannah-centered, or more accurately, fun-centered. I'm always looking for a good time, never really thinking about anything else.

Whatever. There's a sociologist, Georg Simmel. He wrote about the effects of cities on the psyche. He said that in small towns, there are fewer people, so they are emotionally closer. There are fewer boundaries that one must cross to become close with others. In the city, however, emotional relationships don't exist. One is thought of mostly as a consumer. We are bombarded everyday with adds and stores and sales. They don't want your name. They want you to buy stuff. Because of that, we feel dehumanized, subconsciously, of course, because nothing really happens consciously anymore. In cities we live so close together, we are forced to set up boundaries because we can't let everyone in. We live in small spaces; we are consumers; we are anonymous most of the time, most of our lives spent with our heads down, never knowing those people passing us, knowing we'll never meet any of these people. So we close off.

Maybe it's the abrupt change from small town to big city relationships that has me thrown off. I used to dream of the day I'd be anonymous. I remember complaining about that everyday in high school. Now I'm not so sure I like it.

I know what I have to do. I have to channel the Bowling Green Savannah and bring her here with me. She's independent, confident, beautiful, hilarious, some people love her, some don't care for her, but that's okay, she knows what she wants and how to get it, she is motivated, in control. I worked to make myself this, and I lost a lot of it in the move. But I know she's still boxed away somewhere in storage, and I'm going to find her. I loved her.

Proof

Last night was kind of weird. A mixture of pms, whiskey, and talking about my family a few hours before had me in a mood of the worst kind. The cold and rain didn't hurt either. I had plans to take pictures with Wes and John Mark and assumed we'd hang out after, which we did. I didn't feel like talking; I didn't feel like dancing or laughing or having fun. I was feeling so sensitive. Looking back on it, obnoxiously so, although at the time, I blamed it on them. I eventually got my mind off of it for a while and had a good time.

This morning I woke up ready to withdraw. I thought maybe I was spending too much time with the same people. My nights are getting redundant. Same places, same whiskey, every night. I had decided to take a break from it all.

I had an appointment to set up a membership at a local gym, so I went there at noon today. After a while of touring the gym and setting things up, I had the following conversation:

Guy: I feel like I need to say something to you.

Me: What?

Guy: Are you a Christian?

Me: Yeah...

Guy: I just feel like God is telling me to talk to you.

Me: *Wide-eyed look*

Guy: It's just, when I was talking to you on the phone and now here today I got a feeling about you. Are you a creative person?

Me: Well, yeah, kinda, I'm a writer.

Guy: I figured that.

He goes on to tell me that he thinks I'm sensitive and wise. That sometimes I get upset easily because I experience emotions strongly. That's what makes me creative. He says I help people with their problems because I'm a good listener and sensitive to feelings, that I understand feelings. That I can help because God speaks through me because I open myself up to the Holy Spirit. He says he's the pastor of a small church.

Typing it out, it sounds cheap. It sounds like some kind of lame psychic reading, and I'm doing a bad job relating it.

Anyway, he talked about how people withdraw from others because of things that have happened in the past or with our families or something, but it's important not to because relationships are the most important thing about Christianity.

I can't remember all the things he said, but they all hit me so hard that I almost cried there in his office. I told him I thought the Holy Spirit must be speaking through him because I desperately needed to hear those things at that very moment. He asked if we could pray together in his office. I said yes, of course, so he closed the door, and he prayed for a while. He said amazing things. He said he felt like I was fully the Lord's, that I could help people, that I had so much love. It was one of the best prayers I've ever heard because it felt so spirit filled. I cried.

I guess God had a message for me, and I wasn't opening myself up enough to hear it on my own.

See people I won't ever meet

I've been thinking a lot lately about all the people that have come and gone from my life. Mostly the ones who have gone. Some have gone slowly, gradually, a gentle and easy growing apart. Others have gone quickly in a dramatic falling out. Usually, it's somewhere in between these two extremes.

I realize I'm always talking about being scared of change. When things are good, it's only natural for me to want them the stay the same, so I'll know they'll always be good. Right now things are great, just really great. Quite possibly the best they've ever been. So I worry sometimes, more often than I'd like to admit, that things as they are here in Chicago will change and not be great anymore.

The thing is, I'm also afraid that things will stay the same. If I thought that the rest of my life would be this, I would hate it. I would be miserable. I want to move around, never settle, but there are some things I feel like I need to hold on to.

It would be awesome if I could just have faith.

But failure one conceals

Everything had always come quite easily to Savannah Tankersley, that is, everything except for the one thing she'd wanted most of all, Fame. That is to say Fame, not celebrity. Savannah distinguished Fame from celebrity as more of an infamy, immortality. She lived in fear, in utter, shivering, debilitating fear that the last time her name would be seen in print would be in her obituary, the program of her funeral.

As her life slipped away, as breaths were fewer to come by and heartbeats simply to expensive for her to purchase, she prayed not for redemption, for forgiveness of her sins (mostly hidden in her heart besides those she'd extracted and burdened her characters with). No, not for that. She prayed instead that someone would find her files, the words she'd saved on her computer. Words were breath, indeed. That those words would affect someone. That the world would understand her message. That the nations would lament her death, crying out, "If only she had lived, the world would have had another genius." That the world be changed through the powerful whisper of her words.

Probably not, since nothing was completed, nothing fully finished.

And here she lies, actively participating in a death not even in the least bit newsworthy, leaving only the epitaph:

She lived, died, and no one was changed.

Amazed

I have spent a few days in a bit of a funk. After reading some difficult Old Testament reading, I felt confused and lost in the darkness of ignorance.

Living in a culture in which education is valued so highly and is no longer necessarily elite like it used to be, information and knowledge are readily available to those who are willing to search for it; spending time in the library or even (God forbid) perusing the Internet proves to be an effective means for acquiring any information one wants to know. From the perspective of someone with a Bachelor's Degree and currently obtaining my elitist Master's Degree (lol), the fact that there's something I want to know that I may never know isn't easy to swallow. But the fact is, this is how God intended it.

I've had a moment of clarity. I have NO reason to doubt God. I literally have the exact life I imagined for myself after my move to Chicago. Everything I was worried about, everything I desperately prayed and cried about before I moved here has proven to be nothing to have worried about. I have friends, GREAT friends. I even have a best friend. School is great. It's not too hard for me, and no one thinks I'm stupid. I have a terrific job and plenty of money.

Disclaimer: I know these things are trivial and without them, I'd still have faith, but they are answered prayers.

Point: How could I have spent the last couple of days feeling abandoned?

Sarah, Thank you so much for talking me down from this yesterday. You are the perfect friend and mentor, so selfless and kind. Even when I'm acting crazy and irrational, you try to understand what I'm going through and totally make me feel NOT crazy and irrational. I don't know who I'd be if I'd never met you, but I do know I wouldn't be this, the me I've turned into. You're one of God's best gifts to me. Love forever.

This is what I've learned this week. God is good. We know this because we just know. It's in us because he made us. Even when it seems God is unfair and His plan is failing, we rest in the faith that he is good. He will not abandon.