be brave

I am not good about keeping up with new year resolutions. Actually, I kind of hate the idea and I know I am far from alone in that. So I tried something completely new last year and ended up really enjoying the way things played out for me. I picked a theme word for 2012 - Explore.

During the year I was intent on exploring myself. In the early months of the year I was exploring beautiful things about my personality, my likes, my dislikes. Having just come out of a relationship it was a good experience for me - exploring myself as myself with just myself for company.

The middle months of the year became about exploring the transition from being independent and on my own to moving back into my parents' household and starting my last semester of college - student teaching. There were a lot of challenges, some that I had foreseen and some that caught me completely off guard.

Towards the end of the year, as graduation drew closer and then became just a memory, life was more about exploring what happened once school no longer ruled my life and homework was nonexistent. I also started to explore myself again in a relationship that I originally didn't realize would last as long as it has.

Now 2012 is over and I am in need of a new word. I'm partially tempted to pick the same word because "explore" worked so well for me last year. But this year is starting off with some issues I've never navigated before and I'm struggling to find a word that will help me get through all of this.

I threw around words like trust and acceptance and create. Discover, hope, or dream? This year is the first year since I was a child that I have not had to go to school. Worrying about report cards and passing tests is a thing of the past. Now I worry about having to pay back all my student loans and cover the cost of my car insurance. So the word I choose has to be challenging and different, because that's what I'm staring in the face with all these new obstacles.

At first trust seemed like the obvious choice, since, you know, things. The more I thought about it though, the more I became unsure of whether or not that was really what I wanted to challenge myself with this year. It's something I need to work on, but I don't know if I want to give it the confines of 365 days. Which just sort of left me floating with nothing really to fall back on.

Being at a loss for what to do next, I looked up the word trust on thesaurus.com just to see what would happen. I found the word confidence listed among the synonyms. Confidence was a good start, but not quite all the way there. So I clicked on it, and that took me to a list of synonyms for confidence. Which is where I found the word courage and this little light bulb went off in my head.

Courage.

I need to make this year about having the courage to do the right thing, the necessary thing, the different thing, and sometimes even the thing that I don't want to do. I need to have boldness and braveness when it comes to making decisions about my life and my future. Right now this year is full of possibilities for me to be brave and opportunities for me to show courage.

Whether it's having the guts to take a blind leap of faith or just being confident enough to go through life with a purpose, I need to have the courage to do things and stuff and the like. I know there is a purpose for me and for my life, but I just haven't found it yet. So let this year be about becoming a courageous person who lives life on purpose.

explosion

I'm going to be real and honest in this post, so just be prepared.

I am scared of a lot of things. I am scared to give people the opportunity to let me down. I'm scared to trust God and have faith in the next steps He gives me. I'm scared that I'm so screwed up I'm beyond saving.

But then I'm just putting God in a box and saying "There's no way He's powerful enough to forgive me for what I've done" which is stupid, because He created me and this beautiful world I live in. I look back at all of the things that have happened in my life that cause me to believe that there has to be a god out there somewhere, but right now in my walk with Christ I feel pretty far away. Sometimes I wonder if He's really even there or if I'm just praying to the molecules of air floating around my bedroom.

My parents are wonderful examples of not only what it looks like to live a God-honoring life but also to have a God-centered marriage. They stick their fingers in my life and poke around because they care about me and about how I'm doing, even if sometimes I don't want them to. But here, where I live, they are really the only ones doing any sort of caring because no one cares about Natalie.

I'm so terrified that people aren't going to choose me over other things because that's how I've been treated in the past. I'm not really that important to other people - or so I've been made to feel. So I have a lot of issues with trusting people that happened before PC even met me. From those experiences I learned to just not give people the opportunity to let me down. Therefore when plans change I try to be more than accommodating. You can't come up for the weekend? No problem, I will come to you. You can't be here at this time? No worries, I'll figure something out. I just shoulder all of this responsibility because I don't want to find out if people would ever put their lives on hold for me. Because I am not that important and no one cares about Natalie.

Plus, I make myself believe that my struggles and my issues aren't as big as other people's problems. I tell myself that whatever I'm going through I can just suck it up and move on with my life because it's not that bad. Honestly I really feel like a lot of the things my friends deal with pale in comparison to the "dumb" things I go through. It's as if my problems aren't big enough to be considered problems and no one needs to know about them. Even now I'm reading this thinking to myself that I am being ridiculous and I am fine and it doesn't matter. I don't know if it sounds like I'm trying to make myself sound like a saint or something, because I'm not, that's just how I function. I have to work to convince myself that my feelings do matter and what I'm going through is not nothing. It's like I'm just out here floating in this sea of life and no one is there with an extended hand and a soy vanilla latte to rescue me. Life is hard and it's harder when you feel like you're facing it by yourself.

Friends don't come that easily to me, so the friends that I do have I would like to keep. I would do almost anything for my friends except give them the opportunity to be there for me. And I hardly ever open all the way up and talk about how I really feel about something. I'm so passive it's almost boring. Where do you want to eat? I don't care, wherever you pick I'll be fine. What do you want to do today, Natalie? I have no idea - whatever you want to do is okay with me. I'll be happy with whatever.

I don't know exactly why I have such a hard time saying that this is the place I want to eat at or this is the thing I want to do. I just don't want to impose something on another person that they won't enjoy and I have more fun when those around me are having fun as well. I never want to be burden to anyone, so I try hard to be this person who is always up for anything. Most of the time I truly am up for anything - I like to be adventurous. But I don't want to want something just to be disappointed. I got tired of getting my hopes up just to be let down, so I quit wanting things.

Getting my dog Charlotte and my macbook pro were probably the biggest surprises of my entire life simply because I had resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to have those nice things unless I bought them for me. I couldn't afford the macbook and I didn't know if I would have any way to buy the new computer that I needed any time soon. I gave up on Lottie because I didn't feel like I was in a good place to buy her. And for some reason, my parents got them for me anyway.

But unfortunately, things like that almost never happen to me. If ever I want something I have to go make it happen or nothing will come to fruition. Which, I suppose, isn't all a bad lesson to learn because you do have to work for things in life. Not everything is handed to you on a silver platter with a smile. And then I think about this job I have now too.

Working in the library was a position that was basically thrown into my lap. I couldn't have orchestrated it better had I tried. It's like God put me at this high school for a reason and he gave me a job there after my student teaching was finished. I'm still trying to figure out why I'm here and what reason is behind me holding this job, but I'm glad to have it. The income is nice and it's good resume experience.

I just have to sit and wonder sometimes at why God put me here, in this geographic location, with these people, and through these experiences. I have messed up a lot and yet here God is, loving me and providing for me anyway and I repay Him by wondering if He's even there? But that is the honest truth, folks. Deep down inside I know He's around, I know He's there and I know He cares. At the same time though, I wrestle with trusting Him completely and letting Him show me the path I should take.

I'm frightened and fearful right now that He will call me to do something that I don't necessarily want to do at the moment. I know from experience that He always has the best in mind for His children and all I have to do is take the steps He puts before me.

Walking this journey isn't easy and sometimes it feels like it might just be easier to give up completely, but I can't do that. Instead I need to pray for guidance and discernment and that God will help me becoming willing to do whatever it is He asks me to do. Because whenever I try things without Him they are always messy, I mean, right now? Hello.

Change is not going to take place over night and I can't expect to wake up tomorrow with a completely new resolve about life and people and things in general, but I can make small adjustments that will eventually lead me to a bigger picture. I just have to be willing to do what's necessary to make the right decisions. I need to pray that God will help me find some friends here, some good friends who genuinely want to be there for me and who are closer in proximity. I'm not going to leave my current friends behind, but my relationship with them needs to evolve a little bit.

So in reality, it's not that no one cares about Natalie and it's not like I'm so messed up that God can't fix me, but I am broken and I am hurt and I am struggling to make Him my number one priority. I said this post was going to be honest, and this is how it is. I have trust issues that creep into my life more prevalently than I would like to admit. I need some friends who live closer to me than an hour and a half and I need some friends who love Jesus. Because, guys, I am lonely here in my parents' world. With the exception of my family, there is no one here who cares about Natalie - I mean who really cares. And before that can even happen, I have to quit jumping before people can show me that they are willing to come to me when I can't come to them. I have to give people the opportunity to take care of me instead of just telling everyone that I'm fine all the time. I'll get there someday, but it will take a lot of time and prayers.

So, my name is Natalie and now you know just how screwed up I am.

a little trust goes a long way

I was thinking the other day about all sorts of things that roll around inside my wonderfully messy head, and sometimes when I get to thinking, I do way too much of it and get way too anxious about stuff and things that shouldn't really matter as much as I make them out to. And then I think, but don't we all?

My heart starts to beat really fast and my palms get sweaty and then I just get a little bit more agitated than I should be when I find myself thinking about certain things. Most of the time it deals with trusting people, or making sure that I get this turned in on time, or remembering the order of upcoming events. Usually with the latter two is when I start writing things down, making lists so that I can see in a visual manner what exactly is happening. It never seems to turn out as bad as I convince myself that it is, so there you go.

But then I find myself not writing about the other things, the things that I once wrote about when no one read my blog except my aunt and some anonymous internet souls and I didn't feel the need to really sensor what words flew from my finger tips. Now I find myself avoiding writing about certain topics because once I write them, I kind of let myself move on a little bit and I don't want to necessarily have a conversation about them later. I mean, unless I start on the topic myself.

To get to the point of this post though, I realized something on my drive home from work the other day. It's probably something that I should have realized a long time ago, and maybe part of me did, but I never put words to it until recently.

Worrying about something that may or may not happen is a total and complete waste of time. If that something was going to happen anyway, spending time and energy having a great deal of anxiety about that matter isn't going to do any good for anyone. I have no control over it. None. Zero.

To back track for a second, I used to worry about PC all the time towards the end of our relationship. I would sneak into his phone and read his texts because I knew he was hiding things from me. I knew he was lying about things that he didn't want me to find out - and it mostly dealt with his feelings for other girls. I think what hurt the most out of that was the fact that he couldn't just man up and tell me what was going on - he kept lying to me. Saying things like "no, I don't like her like that" and "we're just friends" and then when I found out that wasn't really what was going on, I was devastated, That's when I finally just quit talking to him and promised myself I would never do that in another relationship.

Consequently, those feelings have followed me around. They tucked themselves neatly into this little dark corner of a dusty old suitcase and stayed put. When I was with SVI they never crept back up because that relationship was so not serious that I really wasn't affected by how he felt about other girls. But lately I have been struggling to keep those pesky little emotions in check. I find myself making small jokes about "don't hit on too many girls while you're out tonight" in order to get a little reassurance that I feel like I should be strong enough not to need.

But I found myself in the car on the way home from work thinking about what all I've gone through in life and relationships and how they affect me, and I came to this conclusion: there's nothing I can do about the actions of other people. I don't control them. Not like I try to control other people, I am actually a pretty laid back person almost sometimes to the point of annoyance, but I just let worries about the future occasionally bog me down.

So I decided something. I decided that I'm not going to let fear of being lied to control my life. If something is going to happen, no amount of my worrying is going to change that so why waste my time? Instead I just want to relax and enjoy the events that happen in my life. I have to relearn to trust people again, but even though it sometimes feels incredibly difficult, it's not impossible. And once I decided that, I felt a lot better.

Ultimately God is in control, whether you choose to believe that or not. It's sometimes hard to have faith in His timing or see why certain things are happening to you, but in the end it somehow always works out for the better. I seem to wrestle with trusting Him and trusting people a lot more than I should, but if I just let things go, not only am I a happier person, but things always seem to find a solution. It's not an easy walk, but always worth it.