I have come to terms with the fact that I need people to like me. I need affirmation, I need to be valued and I need to be needed. It feels good when a friend smiles at me from across campus, happy to see me. It feels good to get a text message from someone just saying hi or sharing something funny that happened to them.
But what happens when the smiles stop? When the they don't think of you when something funny happens? With my friends from high school it has been a mutual letting go. But what happens when the message is "I do not want you. You are not valuable."
Today is Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. I always wondered why we didn't celebrate Jewish holidays if Jesus did. Did they stop being important? I don't think so. Some of my friends and I have decided to be Messianic Jews (or at least try to be) and today is our first Jewish holiday: Yom Kippur. And on this day of atonement it begs the question, what do I need to atone for?
Those smiles. Those text messages. Not because of their existence but because of what they mean to me. At the end of the day it does not matter if I have the love of the masses. The only love that can redeem me is the love of God. Donald Miller says in Blue Like Jazz that "the most difficult like I have ever contended with is this: life is a story about me." Life is not about me. Life is not about how great I am and how much people should love me because I'm fun and talented and yadayadyada. My life should be a glory to God.
My prayer: may my physical hunger today represent my hunger for God. May my hunger for the attention of praise of others pale in comparison of my hunger for His presence in my life.
I miss feeling... different. You know the high school feeling: No one understands me! No one has felt this way before!
This desire to fit in, to be some homologous copy of every person I come across, is getting old. I want to be a hemp wearing, tree hugging hippie. I want to be a world traveler who can laugh at her mistakes. I want to play the bongos and dance barefooted and not be embarrassed at the sway in my hips. I want to have comebacks ready when someone laughs at me for something I hold dear. I want I want I want.
How do you shed the shell? How do you be vulnerable in a world where very few people care? How can I embrace this person inside me who loves to dance and sing and make art without the dread in my stomach that no one will love her.
I don't have a conclusion for this blog because I just don't know. I want to know, but I don't.
I do not want to graduate. I was surprised to realize that a few days ago. Graduation feels like the end, like my life will finally be over. Maybe looking at grad school that way isn't the healthiest, but it really does feel that way. I still have so much to do! I need to learn how to rock climb! I want to learn how to dance the salsa! I want to learn Spanish, I want to learn how to cook. I want to learn French and live in France for a year!
Then when my advisor tells me that going to France for a year will mean that I graduate in 5, I feel strange. 2012 seems very far away. I will be at Andrews for 4 years anyway, even with my leaving for 1. Ugh, I really am never happy. Can I afford 5 years?
Speaking of French, I can't take Elementary next year because it conflicts with Western Heritage. So I'm going to try to take it over the summer and intermediate over next summer. Will that be enough? We'll see. After taking 3 years of Spanish in high school I never felt like I was ready to live abroad and I don't think I ever would have gotten to that point. Even though it scares be beyond belief, it's something that I want to do, and I think that I just have to jump in.
Besides that, I don't have time to wait. Where did my life go?
I do not understand. How hard is that to admit? Well, not very actually. If anyone could have overheard my thoughts in Anatomy today, then they would know that I do not understand.
But it is hard to admit that I will never understand.
"God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed." - Saint Augustine.
I will never understand God. Never. I have come to believe that He is bigger than a book, bigger than a religion. Maybe all the different religions are just our way of trying to reach Him. Maybe they are our way of pretending that we know Him.
But that is a difficult situation. I will be accused of copping out. And I'm not sure that I necessarily believe in the "be a good person and that's enough" philosophy. But from what little I have seen and experienced in life, I think perhaps the best I can do is to follow van Gogh. "But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things."
I am.
In my dorm. Doing homework (obviously not.) Alone for once, if only for a few minutes. I just realized that I've fallen into that familiar trap again.
"I can't wait until..."
Hey, Ashley! Yeah, you! This is it! This is your life, and if you don't start living soon, you're going to die. No joke. The clock it ticking, and you are wasting your life on facebook wishing for something better. Well I have news for you. Get up off your lazy bum and go get something better. Sure Berrien Springs is not ideal, but it's where you are. And happiness is all around you. So stop looking forward to some unknown future. Enjoy this.
