The dark side of the moon

as Marilyn Monroe quoted..."I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." This is applicable in so many ways in my life.. but it opens up a door to another question.. are expectations synonymous with wishful thinking?

I always preach not to expect anything from anyone or anything, because if they meet your expectations they are only meeting your expectations and if they don't meet your expectations they don't.. so it's technically a lose lose situation..

and my dad always preaches not to get to excited about something because then you don't fall so hard when you're let down..

I feel like both of these words of the wise are something I strive for but do not achieve.

I have dysthymia.. which means.. I have low serotonin levels and sometimes and some days the sun isn't shining up my a$$... and it's on those days that I reach to people and with my true colors shining, my flaws, my imperfections.. I am able to read out their character? Are they of strong character? a good heart? do they run the minute things seem difficult? Are they one of those people that looks for a simple fix and when they can't find are frustrated and run away? Or can they just BE with me...

I have my father on one hand telling me not to reach to people because he thinks I use the world as my therapist, and to some people in highschool I was labled a "pity whore" because nobody knew my disposition (including myself) and my needs were so great to be accepted and loved by people in all that I was, that it hurt.. it truly hurt....

I have my pastor on the other hand preaching that community is the solution to every woe, since God created us for community and I have my own advice that ties in with this where I have seen that isolation is the garden of the enemy so on days like today being alone is the worst option..

but where does this leave me?

I would like to believe that people cared enough, not to care that you need help, even if they can't solve what's wrong they can aide the ailment just by being caring, or a distraction, or by even just BEING THERE for me..

I would like to hope that someone out there can think all of this is worth it.. my imperfections, my flaws, my disposition.. that they could love me despite my low serotonin days... that they could still find my raw emotion, the truth of who I am beautiful..

whenever I find someone I care about I hope for these things out of them.. is this expecting too much? Is this me, being a hypocrite and being let down by my own expectations because everyone is as broken and as fallible as myself?

I don't know where I am right now, I am scared, and Lost, and jilted

and I don't know who I can turn to or not.. and so I am reverting to blogging.

welp.. this accomplished nothing.. typical.

Silence says too much

God took me on a journey the other day, it was Tuesday evening... and I was at Zoe, and Kyle Walling spoke on the face of God that is "Jehovah Shalom" "God of peace".... he then commanded us to be in complete silence and find a place where you were completely at peace... and meet God there...

He told us a quote by a guy with the last name "Buckner" it went something like "None of us are really good at silence... it says too much"

And in my silent moment with God.. everything was said.. everything I needed to surface, everything I needed to heal from.. it was all there.. when I close my eyes and dove in deep with the Lord...

"please say honestly you won't give up on me, and I shall believe" -Sheryl Crow ( I shall believe)

He took me on this journey through a tunnel he beginning of the tunnel was littered in happy memories that have occurred as of recent and as I gradually traveled deeper I hit memories that have pain linked to them that started off the same way... I traveled this way until I was completely broken... and that's where the Lord met me at the end... He showed me that I need to trust Him, and to heal from these things.. before I could have peace in every aspect of my life with Him... especially in my heart..

right now love shows another face.. right now love and fear with me are synonymous with each other.. it's exciting and terrifying but also in some ways foreign.. I am afraid to let myself be loved.. or to love... but also confident that I can overcome all of this sooner than I thought...

I can do anything in Him who gives me strength right? and I cannot love without Him...

I can't wait for Him to show me how there is no fear in love, but that true love casts out fear...

I can't wait to be healed in all the broken areas of my heart so that I can have the full capability to love!

Lord guide me, be the center of my life, give me truth, wisdom, understanding, and peace, and in all things let me glorify You. AMEN.

In search of dry land

one of the wisest things my mother ever said to me was "Erin.. you never want to admit you're in love.. because you never want to be wrong" she was talking specifically to me about me.. and I didn't even know how right she was... almost 5 years later I am beginning to see how right she was.

right now I feel like I am swimming in emotions..and I can't for the life of me find dry land...

I wish I could be more specific than this..but even with me (believe it or not) certain states of vulnerability are too personal to share.. maybe I should pay a visit to my written journal then.. to write myself epiphanies in circles...

I can look at every male relationship I have in my life right now (unrelated to me of course) and think of them in terms of marriage... is that sick? I think that's sick.. (and not the "cool" sick)... something is seriously wrong with me

I have always gotten along better with males.. I think it's because I have always been such a daddy's girl and my father has always been so open and honest with me about everything.. he has given me life bluntly.. toughened me up to the realities of the world.. awoken me from my fantasies... taught me not to expect too much.. gave me great advice when it comes to the opposite gender and in all of this has been my best friend..

I can be myself around guys, I can be honest and open, rarely insecure... of course all of this is a recent development but still...

In this chapter of my life I have never felt so free and joyful and hopeful and wonderful.. I have begun to accept my circumstances the way the are and accept that they wont always be this way..and the optimism in me is seeing them get better...

Being a single mom isn't ideal and subconsciously and sometimes consciously I have omitted that desire to one day be married...

I have accepted who I am.. and feel that maybe one day someone else will accept it all the same..

I know about all the sacrifice and compromise a relationship requires... I know that I have the potential to fall in love.. and that there's the possibility that someone might love me in return.. but when this happens how will I know?

I am so terrified of being wrong.

I almost want to never get married.. to never commit to anything or anyone.. because I am afraid of failure.

not so much that they will hurt me, but more so that I will hurt them..

being the emotional face of God that I am... I am all over the map constantly I can't put a finger on how I feel why I feel it I can't trust that I will always feel something, I can't trust my heart or my thoughts.. I fluctuate so much, I tolerate so little. my standards are so high and yet.. they aren't...

I long to be loved, and I long to love, but I am terrified of all of it.

I have loved and I have lost.. meaning I have loved without reciprocation and I have been loved without the ability to reciprocate and both were excruciatingly painful.. almost intolerable.. especially the latter...

if I had to choose which of the two I would predict to be the most prominent in my life it would be the latter...

I don't know if I have ever been in love.. and I wouldn't know if I were in love.. because i would always give it another name and justify my actions accordingly..

I am difficult, I am stubborn.. not just to others but to myself..

I don't know how to trust myself..

I can pray and lean on God..

and trust him...

but it's so difficult..

because his holy spirit resides in me.. and I am difficult..

it says that love never fails..

I am believing that.. I am trying to at least...

how can someone long for something and yet run from it constantly.. pretty soon I will run out of chances... and when I end up an old maid what am I going to feel? success? remorse?

both?

that stupid expression "don't let the fear of striking out keep you from the game" just hopped into my head...

well this game better have extra innings because I am going to chew on this for a long time...(and I am not talking about tobacco)

ah.. analogies.. so brilliant.

but really...

Lord be with me. Amen.

surfacing

So I don't remember the last time I blogged, or what I have blogged about, but I am willing to bet that the chapter of my life I am about to write down now is very much different from the one I wrote then...

I was very broken for some time.. generally we are all broken constantly, living in a broken and fallen world.. however.. my brokenness had a name..

I was looking for identity in the wrong places. (seems to be a motif with me doesn't it? a trap I constantly fall into)

I had so much pain and heartache and so many areas of my life that needed healing that I aimed to find a solution to all that.. and my solution ideally was to find a counterpart.. a boyfriend.. and through several tests.. God showed me.. that I was just looking for something to put my identity in.. and that was my facade of choice....

I had many friends pray for me.. I was in a rut.. everything around me felt like it was in shambles I couldn't see past the curses of my circumstance to the blessings that were actually there because my eyes were shielded from the truth...

I needed something, and I didn't know what it was.. and God being all knowing, and knowing me better than I knew myself.. knew exactly what that was...

as I posted previously my relationships with males were complete crap after my ex left for massachusetts. I felt like I poisoned in the minds of all men because they didn't know the story.. or the whole story.. I know my ex believed certain things about our situation (being blinded by heartache) and as I have been told he told these things he believed to others...

I walked around not knowing what anyone believed of me.. especially men.. and I felt toxic.. completely toxic...

so this being my biggest hardship.. my friends began to pray that God would deliver to me a gift.. a gift that was special to me.. that I would know was mine,... and it would be unexpected and not what I knew I needed.. but when I received it, it would be a miraculous.. gift...

and no later than two weeks ago, a friend of mine invited me to go to her boyfriend's family's cabin in Alta, California.. for her boyfriend's birthday....

and since I felt like my life was stuck in a mundane rut... routine... I jumped at the chance to get out.. have a vacation.. even if it was only 2.5 hours away and for 2 days...

What I found at that cabin was a gift.. it ended up being me and her and 6 guys.... and what God did in that cabin over the course of that two days was greater and better than I could possibly express in words... but it boils down to this.. he put me in the woods in a cabin with a bunch of boys.. and let me heal..

I talked to them, was myself around them.. revealed to these boys the truth of who I was.. and they listened to me, hung out with me, joked with me, had fun with me.. and I healed.. in all of those areas I believed I was toxic.. I healed.. and was able to glorify God...

and frankly it has been the gift that keeps on giving.. those gentlemen are now some of my closest friends..even though being around all of them all the time I feel like I am penny from the big bang theory since they are always geeking out all over the place...

but I feel comfortable in my own skin, I know who I am.. I healed in so many areas I didn't know even needed healing and God knew the exact prescription to heal me in those areas..

PRAISE BE TO HIM!

I walked away from that weekend, feeling complete, and whole and confident and beautiful.. and best of all hopeful..

I realized my identity was in Christ.. and he would reveal to me who I was in beautiful ways.. and love me in ways that were special to me.. and that was all I needed.. I realized I don't need a guy to make me into something, or to make my life more exciting.. I knew this all along.. but now I FELT IT...

however..where one door opens.. another closes and vice versa... and although one of my hardships.. or scars that dug themselves into my soul like a mole came to the surface and healed.. another one is peeking it's little head out and causing me a tad of anguish...

nothing terrible, but nothing I can put a name to just yet...

In my new found confidence and peace of who I was.. I somehow became desirable to certain men in my life.. which is flattering don't get me wrong.. but having one prospect pursue me is enough.. nonetheless 5 possible prospects..

I had several boys on occassion within the same week tell me they found me desirable... and I simply felt the urge or instinct to just brush them off like it was nothing..

secretly hoping their desires would go away...

because...

i'm scared...

I am terrified...

I won't commit to anything with anyone unless I know them inside and out for awhile and I can weigh the pros and cons and benefits and faults of a possible life with this person...

never again am I going to jump into unknown waters without scuba gear again and drown...

never again am I going to let the unknown waters of another depend on me to be enveloped in them..

never again...

the mistake of doing that last time is now showing in scars that are beginning to surface (as I alluded to earlier as the moles)

I found that being desirable to others is scary.. I am afraid to become someone's everything.. to have my world stolen like a rug out from underneath my feet.. to lose my independence, my freedom.. to become someone's world and feel smothered.. to be obsessed over and suffocate... to have to realize that someone isn't made right for me and have to break their heart.. to feel led to into temptation.. ALL OF IT..

I don't think I am strong enough... I don't know if there is someone out there understanding enough.. willing to learn with me, compromise with me...

who can be my counterpart...

I am really into the myers-briggs temperament exams and seeing where each of the people in my life lay on the line of extrovert vs. introvert, intuitive vs. sensing, thinker vs. feeler, perciever vs. Judger...

I like reading about their temperaments seeing how they are the way they are.. what they are compatible with... etc...

it makes me see God's creation in a whole new light...

I have already mentioned before how men and women are both created in God's image...

one created couldn't paint the picture of God as a whole.. so he needed woman to complete the picture..

A man shows God's strength, how caring he is, his fatherly attributes.. his provider attributes.. his ability to listen and be cognitive and understanding...

a woman shows God's nurturing attributes, his emotional side.. his jealous love, his softer more emotional desires... his longings...

but each man and woman apart from those generalities are all intrinsically different... not only together do we generally make the picture of God a whole.. but individually too..

in marriage..

love is about finding your counterpart...

think about it as a puzzle.. where one part is empty the other part fills it in making more of a picture.. where one person in a pair senses the other perceives where one is a feeler the other thinks.. and vice versa.. if you walked through life only seeing and feeling the world through your perspective, through your temperament you aren't getting the bigger picture...

if you are only cognitive.. there isn't any way for you to experience the things of this world that can't be explained by logic and can only be felt.... and there is no way to know how to do that unless you have someone who feels in your life...

and sometimes feelers need some thinkers who could cognitively and logically explain things of this world that they might not understand as well and it goes on and on....

don't be close minded to the idea that there is another way to walk about your life... another way to see and feel and understand things...

there is a bigger picture beyond your own realm.. and a lot of that, if done correctly, can be discovered in love.. in finding your counterpart... where they are weak you are strong... and vice versa...

the grandness of the large scheme of things pertaining to love and everything involved is greater than anything we could imagine or wrap our minds around...

tonight I had a friend tell me he could logically explain everything.. and it hurt me.. I was offended.. almost for him.. like my heart was breaking for what was breaking God's because he was unaware.. that there was so much more... to experience.. so much beauty he was missing.. so much that he was closing himself off to.. and being a mercy (spiritual gift) I felt his loss.. I felt what was being robbed from him.. by his choice..

and I lashed out at him.. trying to be loving but being offended nonetheless.. for him, for me, for GOD...

so much beauty is already robbed from us being that we live in a fallen and broken world... we don't need to find other ways to close ourselves off to the beauty that is there.. and the possibility to love whole heartedly as we were intended to...

we are after all emotional beings no matter how much we fight it, or frown upon it, and see it as weakness..

It is when we are loved in our weakness that we are made whole...

I hope someone read this and walked away with something, a seed, some fruit.. some life, some wisdom.. for my mind is too tired right now for these to be entirely my own words...

Listen to Him. He speaks.

YAHWEH