chaos theory

today has been one of those rare days that you get in college sometimes - I didn't have to go to the first two of my three monday classes. it was bliss. I had a few extra hours to do absolutely nothing, so what did I do but, like any other college student, pull up my mom's netflix account to watch a movie.  I had found this movie called Chaos Theory a few days ago in my netflix browsing.  all I needed to know about it was that it starred ryan reynolds and was a romantic comedy.  perfect for today.  except that it was hardly what I was expecting.  seriously, romantic comedy is the entirely wrong genre to throw it in. where do I begin?  I suppose by telling you that if you really want to understand any of this post, go watch it.  it is well worth your time.  (and ladies: ryan reynolds...what more needs to be said?)  because I refuse to waste space by explaining to you the plot, here's a good summary: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460745/.
essentially, it was one of those movies that awakens nearly every emotion you have. one of those movies that makes you want to yell at the screen because things aren't going the way you know they should.  it made me angry, made me laugh, made me (almost) cry, made me realize the complexity and depth of lfe. at least that's how I felt, anyway.  maybe it was just because I was entirely ready to feel all those emotions again, you know, those ones that have been escaping me so much as of late.  whatever the reason, I felt them.  and it felt so good. there's something about emotions, the way they bind you to the rest of the human race.  when I am at a shallow emotion point, I have a hard time relating to people; but when I'm emotionally awake, I can feel other's emotions well again.  it's funny what a movie, a movie you expected to be silly and quite nearly pointless, can do to you.  but I feel like life is at it's best when it's completely unexpected.

when life is expected, when you act in a premeditated, expected way, there will never be any surprises.  that sounds too obvious to write, but that thought rarely occurs to me when I'm living my predictable life.  I want to be less predictable, I want to do what I feel is right, not what I've rationalized out and determined to be right.  I feel like life is more full when we don't do what everyone assumes we are going to do.  the chaotic life is the beautiful life.

today's to do list: be unexpected.

mess

mess (noun) - a dirty, untidy, or disordered condition

that is probably the best way you could describe my current condition.  I mean typically I'm a bit of a mess, but it's worse right now; it's a deeper kind of mess right now. it's 3:24 in the morning. blogspot won't tell you that because my timing is off on my blog. but as I am writing it is nearly halfway between three and four am.  and I don't get myself.  even before I left texas I was feeling a bit of a disconnect with myself. I don't know if you're familiar with those, but I am well aquainted with them.  but now it's like there is a wall there.  a wall between the me I show everyone and the me I am underneath it all.  and I can't get through to her, the one underneath it all.  I've been reading my favorite quotes and my old blog posts and trying to remind myself who I am, but I can't feel it.  I'm not in touch with those deep emotions that inspire me to write and love and believe.  it's like I know who I am, but I can't feel it.  this will either make complete sense to you, or make me sound like a lunatic.  take it as you will.  perhaps it's that creative gene in me, right?  that's what we all tell ourselves to help us sleep at night.  but I think it's really more me running from God.  and I really don't have a reason to.  because when I'm in line with Him, in love with Him, I am perfectly in tune with the woman He created me to be.  I feel deeply all the time; I have things to write about; I'm able to see what's going on beneath the surface.  but something is keeping me from Him.  and I've been analyzing every part of my life trying to figure out what it is.  I thought it was maybe something that I wanted to do that I knew wasn't His will for me, but I've stopped wanting those things I used to want so badly.  I'm cleaning up in terms of the things that I do.  so I don't think it's that.  I haven't been reading my Bible much at all lately and I haven't been sleeping at good hours and I'm ten hours away from my family, from the people that know me and understand me and love me anyway, for the first time in my life.  but I just can't convince myself that that's it either.  the desire to read God's Word is usually a physical manifestation of loving Him and being in tune with Him (for me, at least).  it goes deeper than that.  and I have no idea where the root of it is.  so I don't know what to do about it.  I mean there is actually nothing I can really do about it.  the only thing I can do is let go and let God sweep me up into His arms and remind me that I'm not alone, on my own.  but it is oh so hard to do that.  I like my control.  I like being able to determine problems and fix them myself.  but it is getting harder to keep up this exterior, to keep up appearances, to fake it 'til I make it.  I am a mess.  but only as a mess can I demonstrate to the rest of the messy world the glory of the God that takes wretches like me and turns them into beautiful masterpieces.

"I wait until my life has become so completely unlivable and the person I am has become so deeply unmoored from reality and hope and goodness, that I break down and pray." - Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines. I'm there, God.

scared

it has been far too long since I wrote last. I completely lost all will to write - I suppose you call that creativity - for some really, really crazy days. but, what do you know, that little spark found it's way to me again...at 1 o'clock in the morning (as per the usual).  and even though I have class tomorrow morning and reading that I really must be doing for my english class, I can't fight it because I've got something to say.

I'm scared.

there, I said it.  it's out there and I can't take it back.  and it's completely true.  I am scared.  most of my fear is caused by people.  don't take that the wrong way, I truly love people.  I love my family and friends, I love meeting new people, I love being around big groups of people.  but they make me nervous sometimes.  I think it is because I am constantly worrying about what they think.  it's terrible, I know.  I shouldn't care.  and it isn't really that I care, it's more that I just wonder.  the semester just started and so that has brought a lot of brand new people into my life, mixed in with the old ones, and I'm alone for really the first time in my life because my family moved to a different state over the break, and sometimes in my head I'm still that awkward high school girl who isn't, you know, really a superstar or anything special like that.  I'm still awkward, of course, but I used to just think I was kind of boring, a bit of a plain jane, that there was nothing really special about me.  since then I've realized that there's something special about everyone, everyone's different and important because they bring something special to the table.  I think it was because I was always into a whole lot of different things, and I was never exceptional at any of them that I felt this way.  but I think that is my "thing".  (you know, everyone's got their "thing", right?)  I am quite multi-faceted.  I mean everyone's multi-faceted, but really.  I love to run and eat and write, and the only thing I'm really, really good at out of the three is eating; I act like a 5 year old most of the time, but I love talking about life problems and giving advice as best I can; I wear running shorts and massive t-shirts almost all the time, but I seriously love fashion; I am a scholar, I am an artist, I am a woman; I love, love, love people, but I'm more shy than I wish I was.  I used to think all this meant that I didn't really have a "thing" and that I needed to find one.  which, I guess, is why I started running track in junior year, and why I got obsessed with my grades for a little bit because I thought they weren't good enough, and why I started painting canvases, and sort of (probably subconsciously) why I started this blog.  but all of those pursuits only made me realize that I love them all.  so here I am: a college kid, a sorority woman, who is a little wiser, a little sillier, and certainly a lot more comfortable with herself. 

all of that, really, was to point out the lack of logic in my next dissertation. why, then, am I so easily unnerved by people?  I try to justify it by blaming it on the fact that out of all the things in this world, I hold people dearest.  but that is an excuse.  I am so easily unnerved by people (sometimes) because I worry too much about what they think about me.  it's true.  and while I would never change something about myself because of someone's opinion, I often find myself believing that my chief end is to be liked.  I don't like being singled out.  I don't like not having anyone to talk to.  sometimes, I even think that I would rather people not think I am something special.  really, though, it is more like I want people to think I am something special, but if they ever say something about it, I don't know what to say.  I'm perfectly fine with you complimenting my dress, or my bracelet, or my hair; I'm great at accepting those compliments.  but I never know what to say when people give me a serious compliment, it's like all of a sudden I feel this really deep desire to give them some great, serious compliment too, so I start focusing on that and then I sort of just freeze until I think of something to say.  that makes it sound worse than it is, but you get the picture. 

okay, back to being nervous.  sometimes I just feel like I am surrounded by all these great people and I really have nothing of any value to share.  sometimes I feel like everyone else knows each other, and I'm the new kid (sometimes that's true).  sometimes I worry that I'm going to say something wrong and people will realize I'm not who I appear to be, that I don't have it all together, that I'm not artsy or brilliant or smooth.  sometimes I forget that it would maybe be one of the greatest things ever if we all realized that no one has it all together.  so I find myself getting that little anxious feeling, you know where your heart is beating maybe a tiny bit fast (not a lot) and your stomach is unsettled a bit and you just know that if you were to be forced to stand on your tip-toes, your calf muscles would quiver a bit.  that's me all too often the last few days.  and, well, I'm sick of it.  there is no need for it.  but it's not exactly like I can wag my finger at my nerves and say, "hey, you, stop freaking out please."  or believe me, I would.  I know all the tiny little anxiety issues I've had throughout my life have been little lessons, teaching me to rely more on Christ.  but it doesn't make them any easier to deal with.  I know, I know, He wants me to depend on Him for acceptance and being liked and seen as something special and all that jazz.  so, I guess I'll take these little lessons one at a time, and try to learn from them, so I can stop being such a mess sometimes.  but I feel like this is the way Christ likes me best, with all my messes and my problems that seem to have no solution and my faults and failures.  because out of this chaos, He creates beauty.

creative bit: sick

Sick of doing things I despise, just to get by.
Sick of being pushed into a corner.
Sick of never getting what I want.
Sick of watching the world fly by while I remain stationary.
Sick of not participating because I am too busy surviving.

Sick of repeating my own poor-girl manifesto as I wait for life to start.

I force my body to rise from my concrete floor-chair, joints popping, and cross to the dirty window in my apartment.  Wiping a hand across it, I make a clear line through the grime and peer outside.  I see the dirt under my own fingernails, but choose to look past them and see instead the endless expanse of bright blue sky, the warm rays of the June sun, a cloud shaped like an elephant, a free-spirited sparrow soaring, the vibrant life in the Manhattan street below. These things present themselves to me in slow-motion, like hearing, seeing, and tasting present themselves to a newborn. Something swells up inside of me, I feel the waves of it lapping against my rib cage, dying to be set free.  Action? Intention? The feeling of being fully alive? I become dizzy with it, whatever it is.  I am sweetly intoxicated.  The light intensifies, colors come to life.  I am cognizant of another reality, existing secretly just beneath the surface of what I thought was truth.  I store all these things in my memory, to have something to pull out in the dark days to come.

Life will never be the same.

safe

I used to think that writing was safe.  I used to think writing was safe because I've always done it.  I mean that literally.  when I was in the fourth grade, I created a newspaper for my family.  I was the sole researcher, reporter, designer, and editor.  it was my baby.  I wrote nonsense stories about what my older brother did with his summer and gave a detailed anaylsis of my little sister's sleepovers and shamelessly advertised myself for a friendly game of basketball in the driveway.  I've always liked to write. 

but now that I'm older, now that I realize how much power each fragile thought I have holds, I no longer think of writing as a safe thing.  it is scary and wonderful.  scary because it makes me face the darkest corners of myself and display them for everyone who takes the five minutes to read my blog.  wonderful because it makes my life make more sense.  for me, there is freedom in writing, because it releases me from all my pent up thoughts, from the me that I try so desperately to hide.  there is something about the danger of exposing myself to people that attracts me to writing.  I realize that may sound masochistic, but that isn't it at all.  I was thinking earlier about how much I love driving on interstate flyovers.  my mom hates them; she doesn't much care for heights.  but I love them.  when I drive on them, I feel like I'm not just driving an ordinary car over an ordinary road, but instead I'm driving a rather extraordinary car right into the sky; I'm flying. I also love heights.  fear of heights is, I'm sure, one of the most common fears of the general public.  but I downright love them.  I love being high up and looking down at all the tiny things and then looking up and seeing miles and miles of space.  it makes me feel small and insignificant, and yet an important part of something huge and beautiful.  there's something about the little bit of danger that you feel when you aren't standing on solid ground, ground you can't by any chance fall from.  it feels reckless and unsafe, and like the most natural thing in the world - like that's how we should be living.  and it is.  because the only way to rely on God is to realize how very, very close you are to the edge of the precipice, how very, very easily you could fall right down into the abyss.  because when you realize this, you realize that you have absolutely no control over what happens to you and the other people around you.  and when you have no control, what can you do but turn to the One who does?  all this talk might make it sound like I've got the right idea, like I'm living just the way I should, with just the right amount of danger and recklessness.  I'm not.  I wish I could say that I liked danger and recklessness, but it isn't true.  I like being safe.  I like knowing what is going to happen.  I like being in control.  this sounds completely contradictory to what I said earlier, but that is where the complexity of my brain comes in.  I love being dangerous when I write and when I drive on flyovers, but I don't like being dangerous in my life.  I am, in fact, incredibly bad at being dangerous.  I wish it wasn't so, but it is.  I was talking to my best friend on the phone earlier after going entirely too long (something like four or five days) without talking to her and we talked about all sorts of things, among them being control.  she uttered one word.  one word that changes everything.  that reminds me my life is hardly mine. that forces me to live a dangerous life.

surrender.

me and surrender don't get along very well.  I think surrender is a beautiful thing.  I'm quite in love with the idea of it.  but I just can't seem to make myself commit.  I tell myself after a long day in which I've fought with myself, wrestled with ideas, come to the conclusion that I am a despicable human being who can't think a right thought, that I am ready to surrender.  that I will henceforth no longer put up a fight.  but it never works.  it lasts maybe an hour in sarah brain and then gets thrown out the window, along with every other trick and method I've tried to quiet my mind down.  but it's the only thing that will work.  it takes time, it takes a conscious choice and effort every day to put down my weapons and my need to control things and let go.  surrender.  it may never get easier; it may be just as hard each day to surrender as it was the day before.  but even if that's the case, it will be well worth it.  I will get to live each day more freely, more purposefully, more dangerously.  and it will be beautiful.  so, today's to do list?  surrender.

scatterbrained

this will probably be one of the most haphazardly organized posts ever.  but I don't care.  that's right, reader, I don't care if you find this difficult, obnoxious, or pointless.  because it is not for you.  it is for me, as all my writings are.  and this is how my brain works all the time.  so I guess this is your official welcome to true sarah territory.  the territory that I try to hide most of the time.  the territory that has the power to inspire me, eat away at me, scare everyone else away, and give me the ability to read everyone I know really, really well.  it is a skill I must say I am rather fond of.   but it comes at a price. 

when I said this post was going to be "one of the most haphazardly organized posts ever" what I really meant was that it was not going to be organized at all. 

I wrote once before that I have the tendency to sometimes fall in love with certain words.  tonight they are on my mind, so here is a list of all the words I can think of that I l-o-v-e:
life. love. grace. peace. vibrant. happenstance. write. adventure. redeemed. run. sunshine. world. beauty. soul. rain. laughter. human. community. aesthetic. art. compassion. bright. daddy. think. essentially. prismatic. frail. color. vintage. serendipity. aunthenticity.
in no particular order.  I suppose some of them make sense, as I obviously like the idea and the word is simply the physical manifestation of the idea.  but some are just words that I like the sound of.  some are both.

we were driving home from dinner with some new friends earlier and I was watching the world go by through my window and I was thinking how beautiful it all was.  the entire city of austin is downright gorgeous: all the huge rolling hills, every tree, the sea of twinkling lights that lets off this subdued sort of glow from the city, the many swirling colors that make up that huge expanse of texas sky - seriously, every single day has been made up of different colors.  and it isn't just the scenery that is beautiful; my whole life is beautiful.  it is full of chaos and confusion, a lot of joy and some sorrow, change, beautiful people, laughter, love.  and then it hits me.  this thing that I have been watching draw ever closer to me, this thing that has been staring me in the eye for quite some time now, smacks me right in the face.  not once have I given thanks for it all.  I have thought about it and talked about it and written about it and yet, I haven't thanked the loving, gracious God who has given it all to me.  I am undeserving of it all.

do you have songs that, when you hear them, just make you feel like you?  I do; there are certain songs or artists that I listen to that remind me who I am when I listen to them.  it's sort of a hard concept to describe if you've never felt that way, so I'm not going to try really.  I don't know what it is about them - maybe the style, maybe the lyrics, maybe the way they make me feel when I listen to them.  that's how I write - I listen to songs that make me feel like me and usually drink a cup of coffee or hot chocolate out of my favorite mug (which I am greatly missing tonight. perhaps that's why I'm lacking cohesion. probably not.)  I don't know why, but I also always write late at night.  I can't write during the day.  which is why I could never make a career out of writing, along with my fear that I will one day run out of things to write.  I think I write at night because it is the only time I think about things that are actually relevant.  most of the time during the day I think about stupid things like what I'm going to eat or who I want to talk to or which boy I should like.  late at night I am able to take my blinders off and see the big picture of the world, the deeper streams of life.  as much as writing makes my life make more sense, it is taking a toll on my sleep schedule.  I suppose that is the price this silly writer must pay.

feeling crazy yet?  worrying about my mental health?  don't, this was only a small sampling.  in any case, I am done for the evening. er, early morning? anyways, I shall leave you, dear reader, with some lines from two songs that make me feel like me.
"Could I have been anyone other than me?  Then I look up at the sky; my mouth is open wide, lick and taste.  What's the use in worrying?  What's the use in hurrying?  Turn, turn, we almost become dizzy." - Dave Matthews, Dancing Nancies
"How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes.  I struggle to find any truth in your lies.  And now my heart stumbles on things I don't know.  My weakness I feel I must finally show... In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die; and where you invest your love, you invest your life... Awake my soul." - Mumford & Sons, Awake My Soul

for grandma

there are a few things in life that we know will always be there.  there will always be love, youth, faith.  there will always be pain, suffering, death.  nothing in this world is ever perfect.  it may be beautiful, but is not perfect.  my grandmother on my dad's side of the family passed away unexpectedly yesterday morning.  no one saw it coming, no one really got to say goodbye.  I know she is finally complete, finally without pain, finally enjoying the presence of God.  that doesn't mean I am capable of imagining holiday dinners without her, or seeing my grandpa living alone in their house.  I wish I had known her better.  while I only saw her once or twice a year, I learned a lot from her.  she was one of the strongest, most loving women I've ever met.

in 2004, grandma lectia was diagnosed with breast cancer.  she fought her battle valiantly, never complained, never saw the darkness in the cancer.  it hadn't been long before that that she gave her life to Christ.  I remember writing her a letter about Jesus one time.  I don't remember how old I was, but I remember writing it.  her faith in Him was inspiring.  despite the hardships she faced with her cancer and the frustrations of the family, she never wavered.  after many chemo treatments and other pains, she finally went into remission and her breast cancer was cured. 

all throughout her life, grandma always took care of everyone.  she made everyone's beds in the mornings and turned them down before bedtime every night.  she made breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day and cleaned the kitchen by herself.  every time we went to visit, we would get in somewhere around 3 a.m. and she would always get out of bed (if she hadn't waited up) to greet us and promptly shove leftovers in our faces.  we would always get these huge plates of food and she would sit with us and talk while we ate.  "Sarah," (or surruh, as she pronounced it) she would always say, "you need to get a little bit more meat on them bones!" and then she would put a piece of cake or whatever had been for dessert on my plate.  she was the one who brought the family together.  she disspelled the tension that would inevitably come when all five siblings and the unnumerable grandchildren were present.  she put up with grandpa and his crankiness.  she held everything and everyone together.  she went to church by herself almost every sunday, but she always went.  and she loved everyone despite their many, many faults.

 you will be missed.  but I know you are where you've always longed to be, where your heart is most satisfied.  I love you, grandma.