At long last

The thing is, you caught me at a bad time. I was young and ridiculously naive. You may as well have been dating an adolescent. You were dating the mindset of a 13-year-old.
I'd had it fixed in my mind for so long that you were my one. I'd made this perfect little world where we eventually lived Happy Ever After and I nourished the thought for a long time.
It was fixed so firmly in my mind that I didn't care what we did because you were my first and last everything. It didn't matter how far we went because it just didn't matter - we had forever.
But it did matter because I knew we didn't have forever. I knew we wouldn't last. Somewhere in there, I knew you weren't my one and the times when I got upset with myself and with us were the times that that realization escaped my carefully constructed bubble of obliviousness and tried to choke me with its dream-shattering truth. I preferred to ignore the dirty knowledge that lurked beneath my pristine fantasies and continue with my happy-go-lucky ideals; and toward the end, I was - sadly - able to accomplish that with more ease.
I was stupid.
I was idealistic.
I was stubborn and I was viciously and embarrassingly and unforgivably naive. Except you did forgive me - you told me as much.
I am sorry that I subjected you to me. You know I'm sorry and I won't apologize anymore because it's over. It's not just over between me and you, it's over between me and my fantastical delusions.
At long last, love, we can call this finished.

All we need is...

This is beauty. So amazing how this is designed. Green leaf on brown tree against white clouds in blue sky.
The natural complementary colors.
This cannot be photographically captured. Its true likeness cannot be revealed through paint or pencil or any other medium. Our eyes were meant to find this beauty.
We need this.
He designed our eyes to take this in. We were made to be comforted by His sight.
Green against green against brown against white against blue.
We see this and are renewed. We comprehend what is natural and good and we find brilliant serenity.
We find hope.

Trust...or lack thereof

So I met this guy today.
His name’s Jeremy, one of Jenny’s friends and we all went to eat.
He’s a very insightful person. Very keen. He frightens me just a little.
He talked to Jenny (and, offhandedly, me) for what seemed like ever about the type of person he thought she was. They haven’t known each other for that long, from what I gathered, and he was talking about what he thought of her when they met.
He seems to be able to read people well. It’s disconcerting.
His analyzation of Jenny got me to thinking about how I am.
I determined this.
I’m not a very trusting person. I don’t have a whole slew of close friends. Veritable dozens of acquaintances, but few people I would out and out call “friend.”
The thing is, you have to work to be my friend. I know that sounds horrible, but it’s kind of true. I probably don’t let people in enough. You have to try to get to know me before I’ll put the slightest bit of trust in you. And I do mean try. You have to actively pursue me and my friendship. I need to know that you’re willing to invest time and effort into getting to know me. I need to know that you actually care. I need to be secure in the knowledge that you are not some passerby and that you have the intent to stick around. I need to know this before I let you in.
This is a fact about me, but not one that I generally spread around. It happens whether the people around me know it or not. Usually, honestly, whether I know it or not. But I got the sense that this Jeremy either had already (unlikely) or could easily (possibly) glean this little tidbit of information about me. And I don’t know this person, so the thought makes me real uncomfortable.
There are parts of me that everyone gets to see. There are parts of me that only my friends see. Then there are the parts that are strictly between God and me, because I don’t trust anyone with everything. There is no one person on this earth I feel I could trust with every part of me, no one I feel that comfortable with.
Jeremy made me think about why.
I know people with trust issues. I know lots of people with lots of issues. The difference between them and me is they all have good reason. Every person I’ve ever spoken to about trust or lack thereof has had some prior horrendous experience (or two, or several,) that has made him leery of trusting even the people closest to him.
This is understandable.
I, on the other hand, have had no such experience. I have not been deeply wounded by the betrayal of such absolute trust. I’ve not so much as been scratched. I have placed my absolute trust in absolutely no one, and so, have avoided being burned. Call it an exercise in preemptive self-preservation. If I let no one in, I can (and have) altogether avoid the heartache which I have not (yet) personally experienced, but been witness to far too many times.
I’ve seen what trust does. Scratch that. What misplaced trust does. I’ve seen the damage it causes. I am always the person who sees. I have always been the one who has to clean up the mess it leaves behind. I have always had to be the shoulder to cry on. I have always had to be the one who was ready to talk about it any time and every time, day or night. I have always had to be the person who’s there no matter what, rain or shine, up or down, for better or for worse, until your suffering doth plague me to death.
I have not been hurt by a trust betrayed, but I have witnessed far too man low points from far too many loved ones due to far too many breaches in a trust placed far too willingly and far too deeply within one entirely undeserving of such.
So why would I want to?
Having cleaned up the mess more times than I can count in my short life span, why on earth would I desire to place my trust in anyone? Though my experiences are little more than secondary, they have all been quite traumatic enough. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for those on the receiving end.
Is that enough?
Is the sight of such pain – from the outside looking in, fearing the intensity of the inside of that pain – enough to dissuade me from taking such a risk? Is learning from the mistakes of others to keep from making my own logical? Rational? Acceptable?
For right now, yes.
Right now, the fear of being in the center of the very mess I’ve cleaned so very many times is something of a paralyzing agent. I expect I’ll feel differently one day. I even hope so. To trust someone completely is a component of love and I hope to achieve that one day as well.

Discomfort

So we did this mission/retreat thing called Engage.
The point was to engage and affect the Ruston community through acts of service.
I prayed to be taken out of my comfort zone, to be made uncomfortable in the interest of obtaining growth. I distinctly remember praying "I know it won't be fun or easy. I know I won't like it while it's happening. But I also know it needs to happen if I am to progress toward You."
I prayed that Friday night. Saturday afternoon I got my wish, and I was right. I hated it.

We stood in a circle and called out number, 1-4, to ascertain our groups. Someone to my left starting the numbering, so I was one of the last people to speak and was, therefore, not paying much attention to who was going where. My group assembled by holding up four fingers and finding all the like-numbered persons. When we were all there, I looked around and realized I was the only female in my group.
My first reaction was blind panic. I held still while I let my eyes frantically scan the room for some kind of escape, some plausible reason I couldn't be alone in this group of guys. I found nothing. We all sat down, my heart racing, and began the discussion on which service acts we wanted to undertake. I thought here, for sure, I would have some say.
I wanted to wrangle buggies in the grocery store parking lots.
I wanted to clean dorm rooms.
I wanted to clean gas station bathrooms.
I wanted to do anything that didn't involve direct interaction with strangers.
Everyone else in my group wanted to shuttle the students from The Center for the Blind to wherever they needed to go.
I was vastly outnumbered.
At this point in time, I was miserable.
I wanted to be around girls. I wanted to be around friends. I wanted to be where I was comfortable.
It was only later that night that I realized I'd gotten exactly what I'd asked for, and that it was a wonderful thing - that everyone involved benefited in some way or another.

When we got to the housing for the blind students, I met Mrs. Kathy. She needed to do some shopping at Mal-Mart and was in desperate need of a female's help. As the only one in our group, the lot fell to me.
We piled into cars (I rode with Devin - not only a guy, but a guy I didn't know - and once at Wal-Mart, I was left alone with Mrs. Kathy.
I can't even begin to describe how much fun we had.
I described cuts, and colors and styles to her while she told me about herself and her family. She is, by far, one of the most interesting acquaintances I have made in a very long time. She told me she used to live in Ormond Beach, the place where my Uncle owns a beach house and where I spent much of last summer.
She told me about her three children who have remained close over their years of growing up and who, somehow, all wound up living in Atlanta.
She told me she was shopping for clothes to wear over Easter when she would go to visit them.
We met back up with the boys after a long hiatus in which we got lost, they got lost, they lost us and a mysterious cab driver showed up just in time to save the day.
Mrs Kathy and I exchanged phone numbers and e-mails and I've agreed to take her shopping whenever she needs it.
The woman is so interesting and the day was so great and once it was all over I realized it all stemmed from major discomfort that I was forced to deal with.
If I hadn't been trapped in that group of boys I would not have met Mrs. Kathy. If I hadn't met Mrs Kathy, I would have missed out on an awesome acquaintance.
The whole experience was stressful in the beginning and for most of the throughout, but so much good came from it.
Discomfort and growth do go hand in hand.