"take the ridiculousness from my life"

For the past 3 months I have been planning to move back to Charles city, Iowa..yet again..and work and go to school for photography. It sounded like a great plan. It felt good, it felt right. Well ladies and gentlemen, turns out whatever plans I have made for myself..never seem to work out. You would think after all these years I would have learned that when you're plans are not to seek out the plan the God has for you..you fail and not just a little fail but a big fat juicy failure fail. I had every intention of leaving in September. It's august 30th..yeah I'm not moving this week. It feels as though God is just throwing me a bone and slowly deleting all the ridiculousness in my life. Sometimes I think He's just sitting up there thinking "wow she struggles.." These plans for Iowa practically disappeared into thin air. I don't know how something can fall apart so quickly, but it did. Its scary how quickly God answers when you pray a prayer like "take all the ridiculousness from my life." It's a lonely place to be when you are stripped from all of your plans and forced to see clearly. At the same time is cleansing to have a fresh perspective and comforting to know I serve a God who tells me the plans he has for me are to prosper and not to harm me.

Yep, so here I am still in Phx, AZ. Its not a terrible place to be stuck, and I hope in a short time I wont feel the need to use the word stuck. I do feel happy that I'll be able to see my dad and be of support to him and my family while we are finishing out his sentence together. However, I am fighting the deep urge to be my spontaneous self and go somewhere wild and adventurous. A new perspective has opened my eyes to all the adventures that are right here in my own backyard. A new incredible experience to make music with a precious friend has been so exciting and has overflowed my creative cup. Continuing to learn about my friends in all there new stages of life will be a great experience. To love someone again will be the greatest adventure of all. I have peace knowing that God knows my heart and he created me in such a way that I know he will not let me walk through life without a companion, a "teammate", a sweetheart. :) I feel like maybe God has given me an opportunity to turn an unexpected something into a special someone. :) To that person, you are one the most spectacular surprises of my life and Im grateful for our time together. I am always amazed by the crazy directions life has taken me. Thank you to those of you who have been amazingly supportive throughout hardships and trying to make decisions in my life. I wont lie, times have been hard, but you are truly what makes life that much easier. I love my friends and family so much!

"Go, go out and conquer, go out and find yourself, find the world, find someone who will fill your cup, and lift you up and lead you to the cross where He is enough."
-chasing hearts

Dad update!

Friday I was able to drive to tucson to visit dad for the Fourth of July. I went to see him at 8:15am ish and we talked for about 3 or 4 hours before he "kicked me out." I wanted to give some information about where he's at and some details about how he is. He is in really good spirits, which was so good for me to see. He was smiling and talking my ear off the whole time! Not an exaggeration for those who know him. He wants everyone to know that he is okay. The situation is still unfortunate and it's not good in there by any means, but he is okay! They all are assigned to jobs. Dad's job is in the kitchen. He said its good because he gets to be more picky about what he eats and he gets to eat at a different time which also allows him more time to eat. He cut his hair short. haha. His hair grows naturally toward the middle so it looks like they gave him a fohawk. I told him he looked like uncle Jerry and needed to get his ear pierced. :) He got a kick out of that. He has lost 17 pounds already. He walks 2 miles in the morning and 2 at night around the track they have there. He looked great! When I first saw him Saturday he was limping. He pulled a muscle in his leg playing softball. Apparently he is making friends. :) He also gets to play the guitar a few hours a day in the music room. We are sending him songbooks left and right. He said the biggest enemy in there is time. He only works 5 hours a day and then you have a ton of free time to do whatever. Free time is never good when you don't want to be there. It's a camp style prison, so there are no walls. It's so weird to know they could literally walk away from there. Obviously if they do and they get caught they send you directly up to federal high security prison (not where you wanna be). They sleep in a big warehouse with bunks and I think he said they have a desk space with their own lockers.
We talked about my life..I love my dad so much for making an effort to support me and being there for me in my adult life. He looked at me and told me not to stay here. He said to me "your dad knows you better than you think and you need to go be your own person, and live the life you want." Hearing that was the release I needed to go. The truth is I'm a lot like my dad, I love change, I love being spontaneous, and I'm a passionate dreamer. He gets its..he gets me. So, I have goals in mind that I'm doing everything in my power to reach. I'm excited about the future and I'm even more happy that my dad is excited for me! At about 11:30 he says to me "well I better let you go, there's a bbq today." What? Since when is there a bbq in priz. At least he's taking part in the activities they do have. He's making the best of it and I give him a lot of credit for not curling up in a ball and rotting in there like I might if i was in his situation.
All in All great weekend and that's the gist of how dad is doing right now. He appreciates letters. If you are sending him letters and he hasn't sent you anything back it's because he needs your address and phone number so that you are on his list of people he writes. I will try my best to keep friends and family updated! :) keep dad and my family in your prayers..we are doing our best to keep it together!
FAMILIES STICK TOGETHER IN ALL SORTS OF WEATHER!

My heart hurts for you..

Lately I have been overwhelmed thinking about girls that allow boys to treat them bad. It seems like such a simple concept, yet it's more difficult than we know for the girls who are in those situations. I've come to the conclusion there are two kinds of girls (in this particular case). One, the type of girl that knows the difference and does something about it. Two, the girl that willingly allows herself to be treated like dirt.
I do not understand how a girl can be told she means nothing to a man and continuously go back to him for whatever reason. It baffles me to no end. Obviously there are issues there, but it just makes me so mad that girls don't know that difference and act on it. It infuriates me even more the girls that know the difference and do it anyway. I have personally met girls that think this is normal, that its ok. Yes it makes these men scum, but these women are allowing these men to be scum by condoning it. These are the troubles girls that ruin relationships and marriages and their own reputations and wonder why people are calling them skanks. This is not an attack this is venting and frustration that somewhere down the line someone didn't do there job to teach woman self respect and men how to treat women.

This may not fit perfectly, but I like it.


I know a girl
She puts the color inside of my world
but she's just like a maze
Where all of the walls are continually changed

And I've done all I can
To stand on her steps with my heart in my hand
Now I'm starting to think (SEE)
Maybe it's got nothing to do with me

Fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too

Ooh, you see that skin?
It's the same she's been standing in
Since the day she saw him walking away
Now she's left
cleaning up the mess he made

So fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too

Boys, you can break
You find out how much they can take
Boys will be strong
And boys soldier on
But boys would be gone without warmth from
A woman's good, good heart

On behalf of every man
looking out for every girl
You are the guide and the weight of her world

So fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
So mothers be good to your daughters, too.
Boys, you can break
You find out how much they can take

-John Mayer

You are what makes life that much sweeter..

In my life I have been truly blessed with at least one friend at all times that genuinely understands me and my situation, whatever it may be. Over the years I have gone through many different stages of change and growth. It's hard to go through changes with your friends. While you want them to grow, you want them to stay the same. Sometimes they don't change into people we want them to be. Sometimes they change and go through stages we don't understand or know how to deal with. The truth is being a friend is not always about liking every stage they go through or even why they are there, but more just having the understanding to love them through it. I'm talking mostly about myself. I know that I have been changing in ways I didn't know I could over the past few years, and it's been a struggle to explain those changes to people close to me. I am a different person than I used to be...and thank goodness for that. I'm glad that I'm changing and growing. I couldn't imagine a life of being stagnant Simply because I have chosen to grow in a different direction doesn't mean I'm growing in the wrong direction. That's hard to grasp for some people. What I have learned from my own changes is that I was far more judgemental than I thought I was back in the day. You can't tell someone what's best for them until you are in there shoes completely. Everyone has a different story, different circumstances, and different convictions. It's not as black and white as I used to think it was. I decided a while back to make decisions not based on what ANYONE else thought. Super hard thing for me to conquer. I value my family and friends opinions a great deal, however I had to come to the difficult conclusion they did not know what was best for me. Only I could decide that. All that aside. I have been so blessed to have at least one friend though everything that gets it...like really understands where I'm coming from and makes me feel like I'm not crazy or alone in the world. Right now I'm blessed with a few of those kinds of friends..THANK YOU. From the bottom of my heart..thank you for letting me use you as human diaries, and for making me feel like my very complicated life isn't as complicated as it may seem in my head, and for encouraging me and making me feel like I can conquer the world, and for loving me with sensitivity and understand through the things you don't agree with. You are what makes my life that much sweeter and I'm grateful!

Fresh eyes

The best part about blogs is that you can write whatever the heck you want and people will either read it or they wont. Considering that I'm ridiculously behind and dont know how to run my own blogger site, this could be interesting. This could also be the first and the last if I can't figure it out. Here is goes..

Today I woke up with a feeling I haven't felt in a long time. The feeling of being truly awake to my life. Everything has been cloudy for quite some time. Not that things aren't complicated still, but I saw it all through fresh eyes. :)
Tomorrow is Father's Day. It will be the first father's day that I wont be able to get my dad a gift. I can't bring anything with me where I go to visit him. It's been one week and one day since I drove him to Tucson to check into the Prison. He will be there for approx. 2 years. That's 14 holidays and countless events he will miss. It is only temporary. It wouldn't be as hard as it is if I didn't love him so much. So for that Im grateful. I didn't know how much I loved him when I was younger..in fact I didn't know him very well when I was younger. I love being an adult and making your own opinions about people. My dad has been the miracle worker in everyone's life. He made things happen. For the first time in my life I know I have to make things happen on my own. I did move away and I did live on my own, but that reassurance that if I called him and needed him to move me home he would...and he did, isn't there anymore. Its scary, liberating, and humbling all the same time. I'm 23 and the realization that I still need my daddy is terrifying now that I don't have him. In that moment of fear I find my weaknesses are my strengths. The true ability to be vulnerable is what makes you strong.
I realized today that I was loosing my ability to be vulnerable. It's not as easy as it sounds to love like you've never been hurt or live like you'll die tomorrow...or any of those cliche motto's. The reality of it is that life is hard, people do get hurt, and it is easy to let a day go by where you're in a cloudy funk. Everyone is going through something. When I first told people about dad, I heard a lot of "well it could be worse." Ya it could be, but the situation was bad enough for me to feel hurt. I have struggled to feel my feelings, to be vulnerable. Never in my life have I had trouble being vulnerable. I was told by a certain someone that crying doesn't help anything, it just makes you feel worse. Maybe it does, but at least you have physical evidence that you are a human being. Crying to me is sadness leaving your body one tear at a time. If that is in fact true, I'll cry my little eyes for a day and be back on track.
Anywho...getting back on track. Today I have chosen to be vulnerable and strong because of this amazing new awakened feeling. Tomorrow might be different, but today is all I can see and all I can handle. We serve a sovereign God and only He knows what tomorrow will bring.
I kind of know what tomorrow brings...it bring me to my daddy!!!!