Redefining Trust: Who Has Your Heart?

I've noticed lately that our society is somewhat obsessed with talking about trust.

Every horoscope, every personality test, every 50-trillion-questions-about-yourself-survey tries to define you by your predisposition to either trust or not to trust.

Unfortunately for me, I'm evenly split on every personality test I've ever taken. I'm loud, I'm quiet. I'll spill my life in a flood of everything you didn't want to know about me, and I'll sit in the corner dreading having to speak more than 10 words. I can go two weeks without cleaning anything, and I can be an emotional and mental web of chaos because there are three pens too many on my desk.

There was a personality test I had to take in high school, the DISC test. My result? 25/25/25/25. Very funny, God. Oh well, I guess you can consider my DISC to be well-rounded. (The guy who made us take this test didn't find that joke very humorous, by the way. He told me with a very concerned expression on his face that I was a highly unusual person. No shit.)

"Do you trust people?" Come on. What kind of question is that.

I've realized that I'm one of those people who spills easily, but won't expect anyone to mop it up.

I will give everything, and count on nothing.

I'll show you the inside, outside, and wrong side of my heart, but won't commit you to it's care.

This is where everyone has looked at me and said, "you're the most trusting person I know." And I have to say back, "Yeah? Alright. If you say so."

But this has never sat right with me. I still feel like I trust everyone, yet no one, and I want to know why.

Pictures from a Rainy Day & Stubbornly Holding To Blind Belief.

It rained today. I'm tired of the rain, so very tired. But all things are pretty, and I have decided to see them as such. So I took pictures on my front porch.

Also, I realized today, yet again, that I'm only a child. But that I have the best Dad. And that when I revert back to the heart he originally placed in me, stripped bare of all questioning, fears, guilt, concerns, and a forever of et ceteras, life is a thousand times more beautiful. More thoughts on that below.

Graceless Children.

Sifting through old things, I found this. I originally wrote it in 2007. I wanted to share.

- - -

watch two young children at play. content with themselves, content with each other, content with their toys and the few simple requests of yours while they sit at your feet. but left to one another for even ten minutes, and one will find two small monsters, focusing all of their once-innocent energies on making sure the other follows the rules as his or her tiny, young ears heard and their naive hearts interpreted. any outsider can watch from behind the invisible glass and see for himself that their adamant demands do not stem from a concern founded in what the best action is for the wisps of souls that they are, or in what the principle behind a command is and was. no - it becomes a miniature world in which perspective, reasoning, and purpose -and most certainly grace- is lost. there is an obsession with proving the other little one that he heard wrong and it was only 30 minutes, not 35. watching darkened eyes and hearing words that should never fall from lips as untouched as theirs greatly frustrates the observer. a disbelief towards the ever-growing childish fury raises silent questions in the heart. 'where did the child with simplicity in his calm eyes disappear to?' 'what wordless force turned her tiny palm into a pathetic fist?' and, 'how are their worlds so small and trite, yet have the capacity for a seemingly instant hatred on the shallowest grounds?' the observer who is wiser still will probe further:'how do you teach a child perspective? purpose? a concern for the rule he was given, but not for forcing it upon the other?'

how do you give a child eyes for himself but only his heart for others?

there is another question has not yet been asked that could change the grip on the observer's heart from one of frustration, anger, disbelief and near-disgust to one of quiet understanding and a compassion that washes over a fistful of sins.

'what if they never grow out of this? what if none of us have?'

The Gender Role Fight: Where Are You Looking For Truth?

It's 1:07am on a Saturday (Sunday?) and I'm upset. Again.

I write a lot of blog posts when I'm upset; maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't. Whatever.

(However, I am drinking coffee for the first time in 7 days, so I'm actually ecstatic-upset. Is that a real state of emotion?)

Lots of you know I started the Good Women Project recently, and have launched myself into a world where the dirtiest of secrets find their way into my inbox, I am bombarded with links to Men Are From Some Other Planet & Women Should Rule Everything To Make Up For The Last Eighteen Thousand Years articles, and can't go 24 hours without wrestling through a gender-related identity crisis in my own life.

I interact daily with women who hate men, women who hate women, women who love being women, women who hate being women, men who hate women, men who don't know if women should be women or if they should be men, men who wish women would be women, women who wish men would be women, and women who wish we were all just humans and the words men and women weren't in our vocabulary.

Men and women: You all are a trainwreck.

And it is breaking me.

The fight against gender roles has seared a deep brand into the flesh of this generation, and instead of healing, I'm watching it destroy.

The issue overwhelms me. Every part of it. Feminism, sexual orientation, civil rights, gender roles, marriage, glass ceilings, those stupid statistics on men making more money in the same position as their fellow female co-worker.

The ungodly number of research studies, statistics, polls, articles & books written on the topic makes me want to give up entirely. To say, "To hell with this. Everyone just shut up, and just BE."

Unfortunately, I can't say that. The topic is a loaded gun, and we're firing it every single day - aiming with good intentions and hitting all the wrong things.

The long and short of it is that hurt people hurt people. Yeah. Hurt people HURT people.

We must realize how and why we are hurt before we go around firing off missiles in the name of protecting people suffering from the same wounds we are.

Beauty Secretttttttttttts.

Hey girlies. This post is for you. :)

I asked a bit ago if you'd like to hear some of my beauty secrets, and the whole world flipped out and assumed that I had lots. I'm flattered.

But, unfortunately, I don't have a lot of secrets. I only have a few. And I'm about to have none, because in 10 minutes you will have read this and they won't be secrets anymore.

Also, I'm going to preface this by saying I am not a girl who spends an outrageous amount of money on cosmetics, hair product & skin care.

I lived this lifestyle briefly, and it broke both my bank and my heart. Why? I found out pretty quickly that the more I bought, the more time it took me to get ready in the morning. I also found that it sabotaged my definition of beauty, and how comfortable I was in my own skin. So, long story short, I decided it wasn't worth dropping a couple hundred a month in order to sleep less in the mornings and be more discontent with myself.

I also want to challenge you, women, to build your beauty routine around your desired lifestyle.

What on EARTH do I mean by that.

Here's what I mean. I can tell you right now that I look "better" with darker hair, and that for me, this means getting a full color every 8 weeks. This also means I have to use Schwarzkopf Bonacure Repair Rescue Shampoo (but NOT the corresponding conditioner, it's too heavy - have to pair it with Brocato Vibracolor Conditioner) because it is the ONLY shampoo in the entire world that can keep the dye from fading and pulling my natural red out in a strange way. No really, I even tried Moroccan Oil products and that didn't work.

Girls, that's well over a thousand dollars a year on just my hair - in one paragraph. And that doesn't even include at least four different kinds of product to keep stocked when I use heat (flat irons/curling irons) to "protect my hair." If that didn't bite, do some more math. Spend an hour in front of a mirror every morning Monday-Friday, and even if your time is only worth minimum wage, that adds another $1850 to the annual bill. Plus, I would argue that you are worth more than $7 an hour.

Good Woman's Guide to the 21st Century: MakeItMAD.com

Hey everyone!

Today I am directing all of our readers over to Max Dubinsky's blog: MakeItMad.

Last summer, Max wrote A Gentleman's Guide to the 21st Century. For me, it was a massive slap in the face. I had forgotten that men like this were around. I knew that I'd started to settle & I'd already started working on that, but this reminded me that it was an all or nothing deal.

I was raised with high expectations for men, and in high school was blessed to be around extraordinarily good guys. No, seriously. I lived in a bubble that most of you will never experience. A bubble where all of my guy friends held the door open for us girls, took the lead at the dance parties we threw for every single one of our birthdays (and kept their hands in the right places), dropped all profanity when we were in the room, and never tried to 'get with us' unless they had a damn good date planned. I successfully made it through high school without ever having even kissed a guy.

Fast forward three or four years and I had been completely and entirely convinced that these guys were gone. I couldn't tell you how many guys I'd kissed. I'd have to ask you the definition of kissed if you asked that question. Did it mean making out, or did it include the intoxicated kisses around the room too? I remember sitting on the edge of my bed at one point and piecing this thought together: "I know what I'm worth. The man that deserves me does not exist. So, I'll just take what I want from him, and I won't feel guilty. I can't get what I need so I'll just take what I want. What feels good. For ME."

Hearts That Bleed, & Blind Faith : Today I Drowned In Love.

Today, I drowned in love. Five years ago, I drowned for lack of it.

Five years ago, in my desperation for Love, I anchored my mind with the determined decision that I would never, ever leave God, and never, ever forsake him. Because He promised me that. And if He was going to promise me that, dammit, I would promise it back. I didn't love Him, not yet. But I was going to learn if it killed me.

How I came to this solution, out of all things, I have asked myself over and over. How I fell at God's feet instead of at the devil's? Well. Over the last five years I've found the answer:

We love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19)

I knew, five years ago, that I didn't understand his love. That I didn't feel his love. That I didn't see it, I didn't understand it, I didn't trust it.

But in the moment my heart snapped in the dark, when something prompted me to crawl out of bed and kneel, with my face in my pillow, hands gripping my sheets, sobbing and lungs struggling for breath, at 17 years old, I also knew that he would be Everything to me.

I knew that this God that I didn't know would be my Everything. And I wanted to know Him.

When love steals our hearts, this is how it feels. This is what we know but cannot explain. We just know.

Ice: A Short Story.

Closer, just one step closer. Must. See. It. Children are the ones who don't know when to stop, I'll be fine. I won't fall. Lungs like a vacuum, breath stops. Ice burns into every inch of me. My mind just as frozen as the water that I'm now submerged in, and I grab at the camera body that is driving itself into the dip below my hip bone, wanting to save what I know is already ruined. I rise, the splash as surreal and silent to everyone else as it was to myself. Does cold water freeze vocal chords instantaneously? Inexplicably calm. In less than two seconds I've accepted defeat. I deserve this. Maybe it is a spirit of acceptance that silences us, not the cold. Fascinated with my inability to speak out and scream for help, the silent voice in my mind asked a thousand questions a second. Sometimes, I wonder if that's just what emotion is. Questions, statements, exclamations; all at once, too fast to understand and just fast enough to feel. I watch those I was with move in slow motion on the snow covered ice, realizing I've dragged their filming equipment down with me. How many thouands of dollars did I just destroy? I laugh at them, to myself, that they would have entrusted me with their most valuable possessions; things I can barely even make use of. Fools. My mind begins to darken and I know that I will sink because I’ll freeze, and that I’ll freeze because I refuse to scream; not because I can't swim.

40 minutes passes before they've found a woman who can find me at the bottom of the lake and save me. Ten times longer than one can survive without breathing. I am dead. They know this. I know this. Utterly lifeless, and unsure of my consciousness stemming from a heart still beating or from a perspective outside of myself. Something snaps and for a brief second I see a connection between soul and whatever this is that I am experiencing. She touches me, and the water is completely clear. I see everything. The world. Everything. I follow her underwater, with every intent of surfacing through the same skylight in the ice that she does. I watch it seal itself in a way that physics don't allow as soon as she slips through, and my entire body knows that no, her way out is not mine. I flip, easily, now breathing in the water like it is my oxygen. Second nature. Like a seal trapped beneath the ice, metal doors appear in every direction and begin sliding shut, from ice to floor, boxing me in. I race to escape. I could call for this woman again, I know this. But I find myself accepting defeat again. So easily. Condemnation and self-hatred is absent; this is merely a passive agreement of apathy. The last door slams shut against the base of the lake, echoing to my core. Panic and peace woven together in a way we don't experience above water. She appears yet again, to save me. Who is this woman? She slides a ring I cannot see on my finger, and slips invisible jewelry on my neck. I breathe. Again. Peace. Again. She lifts a door effortlessly and pulls me to the top. She does not speak to me in my native tongue, she speaks to me in Grace. And somehow, I understand this language. She offers to go back under, suffering pain upon pain to retrieve my camera. Even though we both know the water has made it useless. She understands my grief. Placing a worthless camera back into my hand moments later, Grace takes another form: action. And gives me not what I need but what I want. And stays by my side.

 

+ west. a bigger god. +

 

 

sometimes i wonder if the sky determines how i view god. out west, i am in love with a bigger god. in the midwest, i fight to see him through the clouds, and am constantly limited in what i believe of love.

to me, this is reason enough to move.

to be in love again, with a bigger god.

ps. ten points to anyone who can guess which photo(s) is/are of me.

+ that's when love gets so dirty. +

how did i become
a daughter you don’t have
a daughter you didn’t have
and a daughter you won’t get?

i know.
cause everyone wants an enemy
everyone wants a pretty memory
and everyone wants the best for themselves.

how did you manage
to make the imaginary thicker than reality
and how did righteousness
find it’s way into love

that’s when
that’s when love gets so dirty