A new kind of Fall- and some fairly average ponderings.

It is so beautiful outside here, right now, and often. I love that.  I'm currently sitting outside on a balcony at USC's campus while Add is in class. I love that, too. It is a beautiful and peaceful campus, especially in the evening.  A medium amount of breeze always makes me feel more alive and connected to God in a way in life, (well, most nature-y experiences do, but I especially like breezes, and trees, and leaves) and there is currently one whisping about.

I do love trees. Oh how I love them. I think I could hide beneath them, wrapped up in a blanket of grassy foliage, surrounded by trunks and with nothing to look up at but a canopy of leafy branches and be perfectly contentedly peaceful.

I find that I really can love a lot of things. I am good at finding a way to enjoy nearly anything.

I also find that I can be really frustrated. Sometimes I feel really trapped, and utterly hopeless. Sometimes I wonder why I feel so complex, if I am too complex, or if everyone is as multidimensional and confused.

I think I understand the over arching themes of my life and my general trajectory. But it's all the little things. It's all the small details- it's all the times I have been so convinced about my point of view about something one way, and then, perhaps a year or more later, I find myself completely sympathizing with the other point of view. It's all the times I can't forget certain things I have experienced, and can't figure out why, and all the times I have come across something that I had completely forgotten about in my past, that was an extremely huge deal to me at the time, and I wonder how it is possible that I am at all the same person that had that experience, because how could I not remember that?

So what is it to be human? What is the culmination of all these life experiences and the comings and goings of people- I have experienced so much of that, too- I can tell you years of my life based on the friends I had at the time. Sometimes it feels like the rotation of a revolving door- and like I am just standing watching it go round, and people get on it, and I see them for a moment when reach the opening where I am standing, but the don't get off there. Instead they go full circle and back out the way they came. It's fun and entertaining sometimes, and sometimes I like it because it keeps things fresh and new, and sometimes I don't even notice, or I just don't make anything significant of it.  But I don't like it, sometimes, too. Sometimes, I really just don't like it at all.

So I guess I'm just here thinking, and mulling, and being curious. I hope someone else does this. I hope someone else can relate. Cause really I find myself here a lot.  Anyone?

It's like I've been telling God I want to climb a mountain, an he's like, " But you barely know how to walk! "

  I have been seeking purpose and trajectory in life for several years. Often it has been born out of a sense of guilt I think, as if there is no way God could possibly be pleased with me in current circumstances. And I hate that. To think the only person it really matters what they think of me, the one I should want  to please more than anything, sees me as a disappointment.

  I want to do something great. Not necessarily in the eyes of the world, but to feel that I'm living up to my potential and fully utilizing God's intentions and purposes for me. I've felt trapped from being able to do this for so, long. Like every time I get an idea or think I know what he would want me to do to please him there becomes a barrier, and no matter how hard I bang my fist, kick and clench my teeth, I'm stuck behind some formidable wall, staring up, wondering why I can't climb it. Did I not try hard enough? Did I not pray long enough? Was it really the wrong direction, because it's the only one I've been able to find for months!

  I've started thinking about all the things I do have to be doing, though. And have realized how incredibly unfaithful I can be even with those.  I mean, if I just poured myself into the different things I already have going on in my life, I would be so incredibly exhausted, and would be very glad to not have something more I needed to do, too. There are so many opportunities I can think of that God has laid out before me in the past that I totally and completely glossed over entirely. As I recognize them now, I can't even think of ways they could have been more obvious.

So I'm learning to be faithful with little. It really is like I've been telling God I want to climb a mountain, an he's like, " But you barely know how to walk! "

And yet at the same time, when I think about it, the "small things" that I already do have before me,   they really are not small things at all. And I feel very purposeful and life-full and excited at letting myself focus and work harder them.

So I think it's both. I think there are a lot of little things I could be so much more diligent with, and I'm very thankful to God for the realization of that. And I think there are a lot of things, that are not necessarily so small, that I already have going on and need to rejoice in and take up with pride and joy. I'm not called to be everything. And I'm not called to impress everyone. I'm simply called to do the work that is set out before me.

And I'm very pleased to say, that it is work I am very, very glad to be doing.