My Life Is Based On A True Story

Well, that would be how things happened. I've been kinda keeping an eye on my blog and noticing that I'm nearing my 100th post. But of course, somehow I managed to un-publish one. I don't even know how one does that! So apparently I'm not very blog savvy.

I had great plans that my 100th blog post would be something clever and epic, but it wasn't. It wasn't at all. It might have been one of the most bland things I wrote!

This post however represents the start of my next 100 blog posts!

I started a blog in July. It's been somewhat steady. This year the posts have been slower in coming because I also started a daily hand written journal and so a lot of my stuff just gets written there and I don't come on my blog as often as I used to. Maybe I will write up some of my handwritten ramblings some day.

I recently was looking at some magnets with twippy sayings on them and one jumped out at me: "My life is based on a true story."

Well, as if that isn't the most obvious thing in the world! But then, think about it! Life is for real. And depending on how you wanna think about it, you are writing your own story. Or maybe you prefer to think that the Lord is writing your story. He is of course, but maybe it's kind of a choose your own adventure? We are in freedom to take any path He offers us, or to stray completely from any path at all. We can turn to page 34 or 426, depending on what we choose, or we can forge out own path, burn the book, write a different ending.

But I'm pretty sure that no matter what we choose the Lord foresaw it. So He is writing our story. Or at least righting it. No matter what we choose He will do His best to turn our choices toward use and Him.

Maybe I'm rambling. I know that I am, but I'm just too excited to slow down and organize my thoughts.

I started a blog in July. I've written over 100 posts and I am grateful for the encouragement and feedback that I have received. I really do hope that my blog is inspirational to others and is useful to someone other than me, but I also know that it is useful to me whether others get it or not.

I love to write. I've been writing for as long as I can remember. I REALLY wish that I could find the story of Toodles and Cindle that I wrote when I was like 4 or something.

I have been writing.

When I was 12 I wrote some never-ending, excessively long story about some royal families and all the people falling in love. It was over 300 pages, typed, single-spaced. It was called "The Story" and it got too big to fit on one floppy disk so I had to split the file so that I could back it up. I have so many partial stories sitting in files on my computer waiting for something to happen.

Seriously the only story I ever finished (other than Toodles and Cindles when I was around 5) was a sorta Frog Prince parody called "The Invisible Prince".

I thought it was cute and okay but had some serious problems. This summer one of my friends read it aloud to me and another friend and that moment changed the way I view my writing. It was one of the scariest things to sit there, crimson-faced while my story was being read out loud! I still cringe a little thinking about it. But they were laughing and enjoying something I had written, and I had a little epiphany that maybe my writing was okay. Maybe people would actually enjoy reading stuff I write!

So, through these friends I developed the courage to at least start a blog. It took me a few more months to start sharing posts on facebook and actually letting people read it! But it has been a great outlet for me.

I love a lot of things, but I didn't realize that I could actually be good at any of them. Painting took me completely my surprise! I'm no da Vinci... yet. But I found that I could never become a good writer or a great painter without trying. Practice is necessary, frustrating, and fun.

I enjoy painting, even when the end result looks like a 2 year old painted it. I enjoy writing, even if I misuse "it's".

I enjoy it, so I do it, and I progress.

My life is based on a true story. It's the story that I make it to be. I get to choose my own adventure. And by golly, I'm gonna choose it!

Broken.

It has been an emotional couple of days. I wrote about the burden of joy a few days ago, and then continued on to have a lovely weekend full of friends and good food. Kempton for autumn weekends. Riding an old timey train with some excited and cute niecephews. Lots of fantastic times with friends and family.

Monday was rougher. I heard some hard news about a child I used to babysit. She is one of the cutest children and I spent most of Monday unable to keep myself from crying. My eyes sting today with the pain of yesterday's tears.

I'm supposed to be working on another article but I cannot focus. I love writing and I hate editing. I like the freedom of a blog post for writing about anything. No theme. No thesis, but bumbling thoughts with no plan. I never edit my blog posts, other than occasionally glancing over for typos.

I hate that life has to be hard. One thing going wrong makes me feel a fear in all areas of life. Everything is up in the air and trust goes out the window. I want to say that one bad thing doesn't makes me trust the Lord less, but the feeling on my heart 3 days ago was peace and confidence in Him, and I still trust Him, but I don't feel very peaceful about it. It's not begrudging confidence, it's just not peaceful and happy.

And it makes me fear every possible thing. So, that's not really trust, is it?

I guess I'm ashamed to say that one child being sick makes my trust in the Lord falter. That's not something I care to admit, even just to myself, so here I am, processing my feelings on my blog, and admitting them to you, and figuring this out for myself at the same time.

I don't even want to write it, but today, if I'm really examining the thoughts rattling around in my head, I don't trust the Lord today. I don't hear Him, and I don't think His plan is safe.

Oof! What a thing to admit! What a broken lack of confidence! But writing takes honesty. Examining and recognizing these thoughts is the only way to get back to Him.

And of course, I know that the bad things are NOT His plan, but today I am hating freedom. I am hating that spiritual freedom allows innocent people to be harmed.

And that is not trust. It is doubting His eternal plan. It is doubt. It is fear. It is frustration and pain.

In September I wrote about wishing to trade places with others or wishing I could take their pain away, even if it meant taking it on myself, and I feel the same today.

It's cliche, but all I can think is that it's not fair. It doesn't make sense, and I am done with hell attacking people I love. I want to protect, and I just can't. It's too much. There is no solution.

It is not good that man should be alone

The Lord God, Creator of the universe, designed it such that people are supposed to be teamed up to take on the world together.

People are not meant to be alone. Men are not meant to be alone and women are not meant to be alone. The Lord intends for everyone to find a teammate along the way. 

"For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and cleave until his wife and they shall be one flesh." Genesis 2:24

So why are some people alone? Freedom is the obvious answer. If the Lord wanted it to be so, He could just make it so that every person found their partner and lived happily ever after. But He values our freedom above our happiness and even our salvation. He allows us to make choices so that we can choose Him in freedom, and choose each other in freedom.

Now that isn't to say that the single people of the world have freely chosen this path. Some have chosen to be single, sure. But that's not why I'm single. And I'm sure there are a lot of other people who would choose to be married if they could.

So what went wrong? Why are there people who want marriage and are not married? Something went wrong, right? I don't like to think of single people as lesser people. The Lord loves everyone. Single people aren't entitled to less of His love, but do they perhaps feel it less? And plain and simple are they as happy and fulfilled?

That the state of marriage is to be preferred is because this state exists from creation; because its origin is the marriage of good and truth; because its correspondence is with the marriage of the Lord and the Church; because the Church and conjugial love are constant companions; because its use is more excellent than the uses of all else in creation, for thence is the propagation of the human race according to order, and also of the angelic heaven, this being from the human race. Add to this, that marriage is the fullness of man; for by its means man becomes a complete man. (Conjugial Love 156)

Yep. Confirmed. Marriage is the best. So why do some people not get to be part of that? And to be entirely blunt, why do some people not get to be complete?

Later in CL 156:

That from creation there was implanted in man and woman an inclination to conjunction as into a one, and also the faculty thereof, and that these are in man and woman still, is evident from the Book of Creation and at the same time from the Lord's words. In the Book of Creation, which is called Genesis, we read:

Jehovah God built the rib which He had taken from man into a woman, and brought her to the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; her name shall be called Ishah [woman], because she was taken out of Ish, man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh. Gen. II. 22-4. 

[2] From these passages it is evident that woman was created out of man, and that there is in both an inclination and a faculty of reuniting themselves into a one. That the reunion is into one man is also evident from the Book of Creation where both together are called Man; for we read, In the day that God created man, male and female created He them, and called their name Man. It is said here, He called their name Adam, but in the Hebrew language, Adam and Man are the same word.

So, it's clear to me that the ideal state is the married state. And if it's ideal, it's what the Lord hopes for for all of us. And yet He will not take away our freedom and just grant us that marriage. So I circle back around: Why do some people who are following the Lord and His Word get to be married and other people do not?

I think to some degree we do put marriage on too high a pedestal. Someone created a lot of external trappings that distract from real marriage and the purpose of weddings and marriage. The bride is important, the groom is important, the friends, the ceremony and the party are important. The Lord is essential, and everything else is not important. But this is a rant I should probably not go into now.

Marriage is special. Marriage is ideal, and just because some of the ideas surrounding it have been completely misused and abused does not negate the importance and use of marriage. And I think that's one of the reasons I care so much about marriage, and being married myself: I want to reclaim marriage and use it for what it's for and to build and create something that is so valuable to the Lord.

And part of me knows that I can work on my marriage and serve marriages in this world without myself being married to another person, but it seems like much harder work. And I know that marriage is hard work too, but there's a reason the Lord planned us to have partners, so no matter how many times people tell me of ways that I too can be working toward marriage and supporting marriage it doesn't seem like a real and whole thing to do with my life.

I love supporting marriages, and supporting my single friends in their hopes for future marriages. I love taking care of children and spending time with families and doing as much as I can to love and care for marriage. It's a start, but it only feels like a start. And starting out is often the hardest part. And a perpetual start can be exhausting.

"It is not good that man should be alone."