--ponderings--

Lately I've been feeling sort of blah. I've been feeling like my life is going no where. I've felt hopeless and just sort of sick of my life. Not sick of living...just sick of the monotonous life that I've been living for the past months since graduating from college. My life has no frills or excitement. I've been going through the motions every day. I wake up, go to work, come home, go to bed...the cycle continues. I have various things that I'm involved in like choir, praise team, teaching two year old Sunday school. But other than that I have no other hobbies or distractions from the 40 hour a week job I have. I don't look forward to work, in fact, I dread it. I have mixed emotions about my job. For the most part, I really don't like it. I don't like the drama, the set-up, and a couple of co-workers...and it can be super stressful [especially when you have 9, 3 year old, kids all to yourself and some of them become very defiant and do not want to listen to you] I've come close to my breaking point several times in the past few weeks when I've just wanted to scream at them and spank them. But of course if I did that, I'd be fired. I certainly do not need that. I need this job. I need the money. I need the experience. But I'm so unhappy with it. Yes, it is giving me an income, and experience. Two positive things. But my heart is not in it at all. Sometimes I enjoy the kids. They can be silly, and loving...at times. I do not know the background of most of these kids, but I know many are from very broken living environments and not so good homes. I don't know if these kids experience the kind of love that I can give them. Sure they have parent(s), but I don't know how that "love" is shown to them. I could be the one warm thing that they get every day. I just don't know. But other than thinking that might be the only reason why I'm working where I am, I don't want to be there. I want to feel like I'm doing something great. Something meaningful and extraordinary. I don't feel like I'm really living a meaningful life. My heart is not in any of the things that I do. I try. Not hard enough though I've found. This is obvious in the way my attitude is reflecting on the things that I'm doing. I'm not happy with what I'm doing. I want to do something different. I want to quit doing some things and not have those responsibilities anymore. I want to move on. I want to move away. I feel like I'm being squashed into this tiny box of a life. I feel very limited. But I get scared when new things come along. But I need something new. I want to feel something new. I hate to sound like such a pessimistic person and all, but I just don't feel like my life is full of meaning right now. Why am I where I am? Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why do I feel the way I do? I feel so far away from where I feel like I'm suppose to be. If that even makes sense. I hate that sometimes I feel like I'm completely alone when I'm surrounded by people. I hate feeling like no one else understands what I'm going through. Then I get mad at myself for feeling like my life and situation is so much worse than everyone else around me. I'm so selfish. I'm so narrow-minded. Both very true things. I can also be very two-faced. I saw one thing and do the other. Or I say..."I'd never do that" but then turn around and do it. Man have I ever changed in the last year on certain issues. I don't feel like I'm a bad person, but I do feel like there are some things that I need to keep on the down low. It's funny as I write this one of my favorite Switchfoot songs has come on and it goes like this:

I wish I had what I needed to be on my own...cause I feel so defeated and I'm feeling alone. And it all seems so easy and I have no plans...I'm on a plane in the sunset with nowhere to land. And all I see it could never make me happy..and all my sandcastles spend their time collapsing. Let me know that You hear me. Let me know Your touch. Let me know that You love me. And let that be enough.

The song matches my mood completely. These are words that I would write. I've felt very far away from God for quite a while. I've tried to get closer, but all to no avail. I've failed miserably. I'm in this state of wanting to be independent. I need to feel independent. Maybe it's because I've always done the "church" thing and I was brought up in a Christian home. I'm not bashing my upbringing, my parents, the church, or God at all. It's just something I feel like my life has always been "caught up" in but has gone through many dry periods. Maybe I'm in a rebellious phase right now. Maybe I need distance, but can't get it...so my moods and attitude have been terrible for quite a while. My last year at college was one in which I sort of rebelled from the whole church scene. At school, I had freedom. I had to make the choice to get up and go to church on Sundays and be involved in Bible Studies. Now I will say I did remain faithful to Monday Night Bible Study, although, my attitude did not reflect one of a servants heart and it was more of a chore for me to go every week. That did change though about 6 weeks from the end of the year. We changed up worship. We did worship in the stairwell. For some reason, that changed how I felt about MNBS worship. It was so incredible. And it touched my heart. But the whole church thing was very up and down. I was not happy where I was. For various reasons. It had lost the feel it had my first two years there. Then my third year I feel out of going there for a couple of reasons. Then I went back again Senior year and did not feel completely comfortable so I left again. But I really didn't ever find another permanent church to attend my last semester of college. There was a period of several weeks where I just did not go at all. This was part of my "rebellious" stage if that's what you want to call it. I just felt like I had gotten stuck in this pattern of going to church when my heart was really not it in. I was going through the motions of church and playing my part in the stain glass masquerade every week. I didn't feel like anyone really knew me or my struggles and those that might have cared...didn't take the time to really ask...or I wouldn't let on that I was struggling. I was drowning without a life raft, so I decided to get out of the church boat and try life on my own. Still kind of doing that right now. I'm floating on the broken pieces of my life raft. Just floating and not really going anywhere and not really flailing about screaming to be saved. It's more of a silent struggle where I am trying to do life on my own. Now that I'm blogging about it...it's out there. But it doesn't mean that I'm going to change. I hate asking for help. I don't want to be needy. I just want to be free. Independent. I know all the right things, and I know what I'm suppose to do. But I just don't want to. Maybe I'm waiting on something else to happen. Something big that will change me. But maybe I'm missing what that big thing is. Maybe I'm already there. Maybe I'm just living day to day and not realizing what extraordinary things that are there for me to do. To become. I want to be remembered as someone who has done things. Not great things, but extraordinary things. I want to be remembered as being good. Bold. Courageous. Kind. Loving. Honest. Loyal. Caring. Selfless. One who reflected her Creator in everything she did or said. Right now, could I be remembered as that type of person? Is my life reflective of those characteristics? Am I putting my all into what I'm doing and being the person that God has planned for me to be? I know that I'm not. It makes me sad. But I can't seem to change it. I'm in an endless, dry desert. I've come to a point where it just makes me want to just give up and get out. Start over. There are no do-overs. I wish I could go back and change some things. Undo choices that I made. That's it, I need an undo button. Or a time traveling machine. That way I could go back and undo the things I wish I hadn't done, and also see my future. I'd love to know where I'm going to be this time next year, 5 years, 10 years, and so on...

What kind of person am I going to be? Am I going to be doing something extraordinary with my life? Am I going to be a wife? Am I going to be a mother? Am I going to be someone great? I would really like to know. I hate not knowing. It's like when you watch the season finale of your favorite TV show and they leave you with this incredible cliff hanger...or you're reading a book in a series and you have to wait for the new season or the next book to come out. I also really don't like movies or books that leave you with an unresolved ending. There is nothing else to tell you what happened. You just have to imagine. That leaves me with too many options. I want to know the ending. I have to know or it just irritates me. I mean your imagination can take you in so many different directions, but which one is the best one...the one that has the most meaning to add to the end of the story. It's like my life. I want the ending of my life to have brought about the whole story of my life....to add meaning to it and be beautiful. So that when I'm remembered, my life was not one that just fizzled out and meant nothing. I want my life to be a beautiful story that someone could tell after I'm gone. To tell how my life began and all the struggles that I went through and how I overcame them and how I added something to the world. That I made a difference. That my life helped to change others lives. I want to be someone remembered like that. I want my life to make a difference. So that brings me back to where I am today. As I think about the "cons" of my life. The monotony of my life. How I feel like I have no meaning. I know this is not true, but it's just how I feel. I want to change. I want to be bolder. I want to do great things. I want to be a good person.

I want to be the ordinary person who did extraordinary things because she took what God gave her to do amazing things.

It's time to bring on the challenge of a new year. 2010, here I come.