There is one word that I seem to say a lot to myself.
A word that is what I want. What I want to be. What I want to feel. What I want to live by.
It's such a simple word. Small, only four letters long. Some describe it to be in the shade of red or blue. Some describe it to be a rainbow... others, just white.
I don't describe it as a color or a definition.
It's a feeling. A feeling that comes from the soul. A feeling that in your gut you know is right. A feeling that can be taken away in an instant.
To have this word describe me, would mean that I could finally breathe again. It means that I don't live with binds of self hatred, self doubt, and sadness. I am not controlled by the fear of losing who I am to a disease. I am not influenced by the picket white fence society I am so dreadfully a part of. Where judgements of who you were, what you believe in, where you live, and what your involved in mean nothing. To be this simple word would mean that I could express emotion without fear. Without the anxieties of what affect it could have on someone close to me.
It would be like feeling a fall breeze for the first time, at the top of a hill, the sky filled with clouds- none of which are covering the sun. Arms spread out letting the wind take hold of me. Eyes closed soaking it in. In complete bliss.
I cannot wait to expirience that moment. I will film it and share it with you all.
I'm going to leave you and to dream about the feeling.
Thank you so much for reading, please come back soon.
Dear Friend,
I cannot tell you how much I care about you. I can honestly say you've changed my life, for the better, always for the better. Did you know I love you? Did you know I spend hours just thinking about you? Thinking, praying, laughing at memories, knowing and hoping there will be more memories to come. I cannot thank God enough for our friendship. He created it, brought it into existance. Christ friends, that's what we started out being.
When I first was given the idea of being Christ Friends, I wasn't too fond of it, because I thought it would end quickly, that we wouldn't talk much. Who knew that it was going to turn out like this. You becoming like a sibling to me. Someone I could lose a limb for, give my life for. Sell my soul to the devil to ensure that you'd be okay, at all costs.
Gosh, I really don't know where I'd be without you.
I don't think you know this, but you know more about me than my family does. You know more about me than I probably do. I can honestly say I love you to the moon and back.
I love you to pluto and back.. haha...
We've talked recently and you have sounded so much better. You are so much stronger than you were. You are the strongest person I know. You inspire me every day. Thank you for showing me what strength is. Thank you for being strong and inspiring.
I know you tell me not to worry about you. I do everyday. I worry about your health, I worry about our friendship, I worry about how you are at this current moment.
I can't help it. We've been friends for so long. I just want you to be okay. And I know you want the same for me.
For both of us to be okay.
I will be thinking about you most in the next few days. Hoping that whatever you're doing is helping you. Making you better, happier, safer, healthier.
Keep your strength. Keep your passion...Keep your faith. The faith that started this friendship. Faith keeps this friendship going. I know it. Because without God I don't think this friendship would have lasted as long as it is.
God has made our hearts intertwined. One is lost without the other.
I just want you to know you are loved. By God, by me.
Oh, man. Let me just start out by saying that I am praying for every family that lost someone today in Newton, Connecticut.
What a tragedy.
I think that we've all heard something along the lines of "never take something or someone you love for granted, because one day it will be gone."
How does this relate to the tragedy of today?
These families whose children went to the elementary school lost someone who had a whole life to live. And was never given the chance to live it.
I mean if you think about it some of these kids could have had a bad morning with their parents and left without saying I love you to them. Parents could have already been at work before even watching their kids leave for school. Teachers and staff know the children and fellow staff that were fatalities to this terrible act.
To think what is going through those peoples minds. It's devastating.
To think that could have happened where I live. At the school where my siblings are educated...
My prayers not only go out to the families who lost students and faculty , but also the family of the shooter.
The thing is we don't know why the shooter did what they did.
Of course it wasn't right or lawful.
But to lead someone to do something like this isn't in the norm. We do not know what was happening in the shooters life to make them come to this conclusion.
I want to send up prayers to the shooters family, Lord knows they probably didn't know that this was going to happen. I hope that they are sent peace.
The amount of hatred that was inside this shooters heart is nothing to encourage.
Nor is encouraging mass amounts of people to hate on this person.
Hatred doesn't make anything better. It just fuels the devils works.
God is not hate. God cannot force someone to love. God cannot force someone to not kill. God can only give and accept love.
Do not blame God for this tragedy. Pray for those who where affected by this, that they are granted peace.
Pray that He shows that love, that agape, unconditional love to all of those who were effected
I'm going to ask you a few questions. Feel free to raise your hand if any of them relate to you personally.
If you had a moment in your life when you have ever felt alone, please raise your hand.
If you ever had a time in your life when you lost a friend, please raise your hand.
If you ever had a time in your life when you felt as though you didn't have any friends, please raise your hand.
If you ever had a time in your life when you felt as though you didn't have anyone, please raise your hand.
Thanks for your participation.
The first thing I have to say is that you aren't alone. I am a big advocate of that statement. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
I cannot tell you how many times I've written that down somewhere- or on myself- as a reminder that I am not alone.
Bare with me as I try and stay on track and hopefully not go off on tangents.
Let me start at the beginning of my life and how that statement- YOU ARE NOT ALONE- came to mean so much to me.
Well, as most who read this blog on a consistent basis know, my faith and religion, they are a big portion of my life now.
I was born and raised Catholic. I went to weekly mass with my family. I went to Catholic School for my elementary career. I prayed, occasionally... I was pretty much your normal Catholic kid, going through the motions..
It didn't really mean much other than a right of passage into the next grade level, or into the next stage of the Catholic Church. At my age of a young naive girl, I didn't really understand what it meant to have a faith, I just knew what it meant to have a religion.
As the years passed I had moved around and found myself in 6th grade, going to public school. I knew nothing of public school other than what I saw on TV... and it didn't look pretty. School was fine, of course. The kicker was that there were no religion classes.
So I was enrolled in "Youth Ministry", where I met someone I can call my role model. His name is Joe. Joe was the youth ministry coordinator and pretty much ran the ministry with a group of volunteer parents and Maria, who also was a youth ministry coordinator.
Joe is a kind spirited man whose calling is to spread God's love to all youth. It's astounding to me that one man can show so much love and affection to so many young people.
Now this youth ministry thing was something that I was not into when I first went. I was one of those kids who thought that they didn't need it.
I mean I go to mass, I have the sacraments, my family can teach me about God. Why do I need this? Though as the youth ministry nights continued I became more willing and wanted to go. I wanted to learn, I wanted to socialize, I wanted to be a part of this awesome God willing thing.
During the summers in between youth ministry I went to this summer camp. I had heard about it about two days after I had moved and a neighbor friend soon told me about all of the wonders of this place.
This place is probably a place that changed my life drastically. Let me explain a little. This was a Catholic summer camp, with week long sessions. I learned not only about how awesome nature and God's creation is, but also how awesome and loving God is. The staff, I thought they were superheroes, seriously. I had never seen so many college aged kids so in love with their faith and so willing to share. It was awesome.
So, my middle school years went by. I wasn't alone. I was going to all of these amazing faith filled things. Life seemed to be going up. I was beyond excited for what high school was to bring.
The youth ministry program changed in high school... it was more in depth. We still socialized and played games. It was all still fun, we just got to be more mature about our faith.
During this time is when my faith began to change. It wasn't just like I was going through the motions anymore. I felt something more than what I had ever felt before.
In high school youth ministry we had to do 27 hours of service. We could go help at the food pantry/soup kitchen, serve at an old folks home, or volunteer to help out and co-lead in the 6-8 youth ministry.
Boom. I was sold. Helping out with kids who are in the same spot I was 3 short years ago. Heck yes.
So I was brought with open arms onto the youth ministry volunteer team. I was only a freshman in high school, the youngest person there. I was so inspired and willing to share my love for God, the love I had only learned to express a few years earlier.
As my freshman year continued, I felt like I was on the top of the world. Growing in my faith, growing in the school community- for being the quiet kid, and finding out who I am. Pretty neat.
Summer before my sophomore year was probably one of the best summers ever. I was going to Camp, was having DEEP conversations about my faith. I met new friends, made new relationships, and met a boy. A naive 15 year old girl, life was peachy-keen.
Once school started, I met the people who would change my outlook on life drastically. I became a part of the group I would classify as the "outcasts", all of them great people, wonderful people. However, every relationship I had felt one sided.
Let's retrace our steps back to the first questions I asked and this time I will answer them for my 15 year old self, midway through the school year.
Did you feel alone during this portion of your life? Yes, with only my thoughts.
Did you lose a friend? Yes. Unfortunately.
Did you at one point feel like you had no friends? For the second half of the school year, yes.
Did you feel as though you didn't have anyone to turn to? Yes, and no.
These people I seemed to be friends with, I felt didn't really care about me as much as I cared about them. I treasured the friends I had, because I was such a conservative person. They were all I had in a sense. So, in my eyes it seemed as though I was giving so much attention to these people who didn't want to give me any. I felt as though I wasn't able to talk about what I was feeling. So, I felt alone.
Because of this feeling of being alone, I confronted my friends in a manner that was immature. I treasured them so much, I would say one thing then immediately regret it knowing that I would lose them. My words were too harsh because they had been bottled up. Leading to drama, and lost friendships.
Which then spiraled into me feeling excluded from the "group" I was a part of. Making me feel like more of an outcast, and pulling my confidence into the toilet. Which lead to a lot of issues outside of high school.
Though, I felt that I didn't have friends. I was still going to youth ministry and growing in my faith. I was continuing to learn about God's love and His wanting to communicate and be a part of are lives.
So though I felt as though I didn't have anyone physical to turn to, I turned to God. Everyday I asked Him questions.
Why am I alone in this big world?
Why do I have no friends?
Why am I hurting?
Why, Why Why?
I don't remember if God ever gave me answers to those questions. He did however show me love. Unconditional love. Through music, through the Eucharist, through teaching others about Him.
Through everything that was going on in my mind and in the physical world. I was spiritually growing to new heights.
When I talked to God, I didn't feel so alone. When I listened to Christian music I felt so much love.
Moving years forward, friends for me are still rare. My confidence could use a little bit of tuning up.
But I still have God.
God is still my best friend.
Always willing to listen to me yell and scream about how life just isn't fair.
Always able to put some sort of something in sight to show me that I am loved.
Still telling me that I am not alone. He is here.
God taught me that I would never, ever be alone. Because He is always the friend who wants to hear about your day. He is always there willing to listen to you cry. He is always there to give you love, unconditional, never ending, agape love.
I don't know if I've talked about loving myself, ourselves... I need to do that soon.
But I digress,
The concept of love is something I want so incredibly bad.
I want it more than I want a job.
And right now that's a lot.
I've come to the conclusion though,
that I won't get love.
If I cannot accept love..
Or give myself love.
Let's start with the first statement. If I cannot accept love.
What does that mean.
For so long I have written about God's love.
And how it is so important and what not.
I know what God's love feels like.
Have I felt it in the past few months?
no.
Do I know it's there?
yes.
Then why is it so hard for me to feel it?
We've all heard quotes about building walls and having barriers for certain people.
I've found, or have been shown that I have a barrier with people who want to love me.
For God wanting to love me.
Which sucks.
How to fix this...
Once I know I will share it with the world.
I promise.
