Down

I've been feeling down a lot recently... not really depressed, but not really smiling or laughing a lot. Maybe because it hurts to move my mouth... just maybe.

I haven't really participated in a lot of activities, I find myself automatically disengaging and finding corners to sit in and people watch. Generally, it kind of looks like when I'm sad. I'm not...I'm just not happy.

But then I had to slap myself in the face. I was the only one who was making myself miserable. Me! No one else was... here I was having my own private pity-party, feeling selfish and wishing myself back to bracelessness.

I was lounging around all of today, not really doing anything in particular, feeling slow and painful. At the end of the day, I looked back and realized that I had accomplished nothing. Absolutely nothing! I could choose to be happy and purposeful and actually get things done... or else look back on today and wonder what I could've accomplished if I had broken out of my pain stupor.

I'm not up to my normal par. I'm just thankful that I finished my English assignments before the pain set in. Ok... it's really not that bad. But I feel as if a new dimension has been added to me and I don't know what to do with it.

The following days will be filled with ups and downs... but I can determine how I face them.

Lost and Found

It was a hard day today... full of ups and downs... valleys and mountains, with no plains in sight. It's kind of nice to be noticed... not that I'm normally not, but braces do give one some special distinction... or so it would seem. They hurt... they need to be cleaned... it took me three times as long to eat my lunch than it normally does. But the biggest dips of the day came in the last two periods. Band class. We started off with a drumline. A DRUMLINE!! Having grown up in Africa, there was no way that I would not be gyrating and moving to that beat, drumming to my heart's content. In some way, those rhythmic pulses unify people and their purposes in a way that the less knowledgeable have found out sooner than the rest of the world. The music rolled and I was enjoying it.... creating new skills, laughing at my mistakes, sitting on a high stool and not being able to tap the beat because my feet couldn't reach the floor. It felt like a long lost string in my soul was vibrating and I was just able to enjoy... enjoy as I have not for a long while. I wanted to be swept away...

Now for Part 2: Actually Playing
One of my friends had suggested earlier that it would be interesting to see how I could play the flute with braces on. I hadn't really thought about it, but it wasn't as if my mouth shape had changed, so I wasn't worried. I opened up the case, picking up the pieces and fitting them together... proud of their gleam. All put together, I lifted it to my lips and tried to play a scale. Only air... ONLY AIR? My heart plummeted and I frantically tried to do anything I could to make a sound. I rolled the flute in, made my mouth different shapes....all the while the sharp ends of the braces were hurting my teeth.

I felt stripped. So lost. So un-made.

My main forms of communication are through my writing and through music. Now one of those is gone for me... at least for awhile. I am not absorbed by the flute... it's not my life... but it's the one thing that allows me to express myself fluidly, without trying (although poetry works in a similar way). To have that ability which I took so for granted taken away from me shocked me. We played through a song, and I could only hit occasional notes, and that took a lot of effort. The conductor looked over at me and asked me if I knew which part I was playing and I nodded. Tears were starting to form in my eyes... I had been proud of my ability... never really working for what I had gotten. In the majority of the areas of my life this is true. Now all I could say was, "Braces." I wanted to rip them out, stomp them, and get back to my normal life. I felt as if I was blind, having lost something that I had never really noticed before. It's always been so natural... I've never been able to whistle, so I can't miss the memories that haven't been made. But that flute represents a part of me that was found three years ago when Mr. J came to our school. When he gave me the power to express myself, I grew new feathers, sprouted new wings. I could fly, because I was free...

Now I feel alone... and resentful. But that's wrong. No matter how much I don't like the situation... it's for some good. So I say with conviction.... I like the weather today.

Something in the Air

I biked home from school today, pushed ever onward by the twirl of wind around me. Leaves raced along the tires, tumbling and swirling. I breathed deep and took a quick second breath. There was something different in the air. Something....

It's fallen into autumn now. I wore my sweater all day at school, and for the first time since the beginning of school I wore tennis shoes. The air was chilly, and I rode to school wishing for gloves. But it was overcast... not a sign of this bright glory to come. But on my way back it reminded me of something...

I feel so busy these days. So full of things to do, meetings to make and to maintain, things to prepare for, not to mention my "normal" life. But the "something" in the air today reminded me of days past. Days in which I could take my leisurely time and would feel like spinning among the leaves and joining their autumn dance. Days when I was young, when homework was only something rumored about by highschoolers. Days when there was a crisp, lively, vitality to life.

Memories of school days past. First day impressions, making friends you hope will last. Bringing out the winter clothes, putting summer things away. Why don't I feel that "something" every day?

Okay, enough with the rhyming, but seriously... I've kind of lost sight of the spark that is living and imagining in this downpour of homework... and I want to recapture that "something." To stop and smell the roses once in awhile... to be vibrantly alive.

Stars

"A girl without freckles is like a night without stars."

I spent the last two nights with a friend who lifts me up in every way, and she told me about this quote. One of those ways in which she lifts me up is about my appearance. I don't mind it, honestly. I have never struggled with my freckles, or with my face or figure. But I have not always felt satisfied with how I look. I feel average, and once in awhile I just want to turn heads. But why? Why do I want the approval of others when they're looking at the outside and not the inside?

Everyone of us, girls especially, I think, want to be known and told that we are beautiful. Now I don't think that I'm ugly. But I do think that I'm normal, adequate, just-enough. Not beautiful, gorgeous, cherished or lovely. Those words seem to belong to those who have their whole lives figured out. Thing about God is that He likes to change what I think... even when I like wallowing in my nice, muddy, comfortable hole of self pity.

He tells me that I am beautiful and I find that hard to comprehend. That He would find me so ravishing that He wants me forever. In fact, He created me to be desirable. And I don't understand that kind of love... crazy, tumultuous, overwhelming, peace-giving, pursuing love. Love for something that He made, even though I am imperfect. Love that makes up who He is.

I have always struggled with 1 Timothy 2:9-10

"And I want women to be modest in their appearance.They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes. For women who claim to be devoted to God should make themselves attractive by the good things they do." (NLT)

I want to be attractive and lovely. I want compliments and to be lovingly pursued by a young man someday. But what He calls me to be is nothing of the sort. Oh, all that stuff comes along with it, but it's not the focus. The focus is on Him... not me. When I make my life about Him, then I am beautiful and lovely in every way. He has made my form lovely, but what really makes me attractive is when I live for Him.

May I shine like the moon at night, reflecting the Sonlight...

Pleasure

I opened up the book yesterday, and turned to my chapter. The title hit me hard - Planned for God's Pleasure. I struggle with this... a lot, in both simple and complex ways. Simple, because I find it hard to take my eyes off of me and what I want to do, and complex, because... I can't understand that kind of love.

To think that He smiled at my birth.. that He made me the way I am because He simply wanted to. It blows my mind! Too often I see myself as normal... which, in and of itself, isn't that bad. I shouldn't think too highly of myself, and yet to give myself the proper place to which He has assigned me... as His personal pleasure... is a huge balance beam. But, here again, comes in the fact that it's not about me, but Him.

If I simply live my life, working to please Him, in every way I can. To offer my life as a worship of who and what He is. That is my goal... my ultimate aim.

Leaving my devotions, I felt refreshed and new. I felt like I had discovered an oasis. That same day, the lessons I had learned earlier that morning came into play. We were strolling through Ikea.. through that endless serpentine maze of bedrooms, kitchens, dining rooms, bathrooms, and everything else that could make you drool, when I realized that I was doing just that. Drooling... The pleasure that the world offers, the shiny new things, the attention they bring, the space that the craving for new things creates...all leave me empty. It's as if this world is a desert, and these mirages are luring me from the real thing.. the real oasis.

I wonder what the balance is. The difference between having new things and pleasing Him. But for right now, I strive to give Him pleasure, while not falling for the world's.