Busyness

I've been so busy lately. I think I tend to fill up my life with busyness so that I have an excuse to ignore the things about my life that bug me. Those things still bug me, I just don't have time to think about them often enough to deal with them. I'm not sure that this is a healthy approach to life. Ignoring important personal issues has come to bite me in the behind in recent days. . . you'd think I would have learned my lesson by now. . .

Hallow

I thought that hallowing myself out would leave room for One loud voice to resonate, but it's looking like absolutely everything is echoing off my hallow insides, things that I couldn't hear before are at the forefront now, and I really really wish that they'd go back to being dampened by all the stuff that I hallowed out.

Believing the words I sing

Ever find yourself singing words to a song that you don't believe but so desperately want to? Ever find yourself singing those words louder and louder hoping that your heart will hear them and believe them? I have.

ENOUGH

- Chris Tomlin

All of You is more than enough for all of me

For every thirst and every need

You satisfy me with Your love

And all I have in You is more than enough

You are my supply My breath of life

And still more awesome than I know

You are my rewardworth living for

And still more awesome than I know

All of You is more than enough for all of me

For every thirst and every need

You satisfy me with Your love

And all I have in You is more than enough

You're my sacrifice Of greatest price

And still more awesome than I know

You're the coming KingYou are everything

And still more awesome than I know

More than all I want, More than all I need

You are more than enough for me.

More than all I know, More than all I can say

You are more than enough for me

My Nephew Lucas

The Little Diva is a Big Sister.

Auntie Diva is in love again.

08/08/08

So this was the fortune in my fortune cookie today. When I first looked at it, I had to laugh because that's exactly the philosophy I've been trying to instill in myself this past year. . . But when I actually saw it printed in black and white on that little white piece of paper from the far East Fortune Cookie Co. it just made me so sad. I really can't imagine having no expectations whatsoever. I guess I equate expecting with hoping and I just can't imagine my life without hope. I think if I wrote the fortune I'd write this:

Expect nothing from noone but God

and never be disappointed.

Vulnerability

Making oneself vulnerable takes not only a lot of energy, but also a lot of trust. Whenever I make myself vulnerable it feels as though I've deliberately set off enormous sticks of dynamite blowing up my security walls into a million teeny tiny pieces; The security walls that I tend to build up around myself to protect me from pain and judgement.

Vulnerability requires a swift KA-BOOM!!! A willingness to suddenly stand with no walls to hide behind. Just me, with all my walls crumbled to the ground around me, With nothing to protect me from the shots that may come my way. The explosion leaves me standing there long enough for the rest of the world to peek out from behind their own walls to see me.

As an artist I suppose I see it as part of my job description to explode my own walls. In my opinion the most powerful art comes out of vulnerability. Really though I know it's not just my job to be vulnerable because I'm an artist, but more so because I'm a human being.

I wonder what the world would be like it we all regularly blew up those walls with dynamite or dared to NOT even build them in the first place. I don't put a lot of hope in that though, because apparently dynamite is not easy to come by. And bricks are produced in surplus. For some reason though God tends to hand me the dynamite quite a bit. Not only does He hand it to me, but He asks me to light it and watch the walls that I've worked so hard to build crumble.

More Running Reflections

> One of my friends who gave birth last week was trying to describe the labour process to me. She compared it to Running. Same exertion, only during labour there's no indication of where the finish line is. She said, "I knew what my finish line was, seeing my baby, but I didn't have a clue when it would happen." When I'm out on a run I have the advantage of knowing where the finish line is, which for me is home. I also use my stop watch to tell me how much time I have left. I suppose the analogy of running without knowing where the finish line is, is a great example of life. Isn't that what I'm doing in this life? Running a race knowing what the finish line will be, eternal worship of God -but not knowing when it will happen.

> I'm finding there to be a nice little camaraderie among runners, well runners on my regular running path anyway. Most of the time when I pass another runner heading in the opposite direction there's a lovely little wave exchanged. I like those little waves. It's like we're saying to each other "You can do it!! I know what you're going through." I find it encouraging.

It's nice in life when someone who is enduring the same race gives a little wave. Although I've learned the hard way that sometimes those little waves really mean nothing. It's those who have stopped heading in their own direction and have turned around to run beside me for a bit who have really encouraged me to persevere.