What Is Real?

There have been days when i have sat here wondering…what is real?  Is there any point to everything I try to do in life?  I struggle and strive just just a hint of happiness and it seems like when I have a small bit of it, it is just taken away.  Its like everyone and everything around me is fake, I even feel like there are times when I just act like things are okay when in reality they aren’t.  At least not for me.

Is there even such as thing as “real”?  Like what is it?  What is real?  Is it different for you than it is for me?  How do i know that what is real for me…is actually real?  There are times when nothing at all seems to be real and like I am just going through the motions so to speak.  Whose to say what I feel isnt real.  I mean who’s to say what my clients says she sees isn’t actually there just because we cant see it?

How can one tell the difference between reality and perception of reality?  One of my favorite bands Identity X full length album is titled “Perception is Reality.”  Could the guys of Identity X be right that whatever you perceive to be real, is in fact reality?

Thanksgiving

Its that time of year again.  Thanksgiving where we sit around the table and eat til our hearts content.  This is this season where the pounds pack on because of all the food we eat from Thanksgiving dinner to Christmas cookies, to hot dogs and saurkraut for good luck of course.  That being said, I thought I would go through the things that I am thankful for, since I said I would do that weekly anyway.

My family first and foremost

Laughter of small children

the softness of my cat

my health…I could have lost it all

Friends who care

Talents God has granted me

Music…

Literature and the ability to read it

The luxury of owning my own car

A warm home and food on my table

Meeting new people.

What is it that you are thankful for and that keeps you going day after day?

Comfort Zone???

I am going insane with how I am feeling right now, I just want it gone.  Sometimes it is hard to break free from the clutches of depression just like it is hard to break free from dancing with the devil.  If we stay in the dance with the devil too long, the darkness that follows him will undoubtedly envelope us as well.  We’re trapped.  Sometimes….sometimes it feels like I don’t want to break through, that I feel comfortable in a depression, more like myself…but thats not a good feeling to have, not a good place to be.

I have to ask myself why would I want to remain in a state of depression? What does it do for me other than make me feel worse? But at the same time if the things I think are what I am used to believing…it’s almost like a comfort zone thing.  Like I don’t know who I am when I am not depressed.  Is that part of staying in this dance with the devil?  The longer I stay spinning with him, the more natural it feels.

The maddening thoughts in my head are things I do believe about myself so when I try to tell myself differently, or others tell me differently it’s like a lie.  Like its hard to grasp what is actually true, what others say or what is being said to myself.  It goes back to my comfort zone thought, I am comfortable with what I think, it’s what I know and how I deal with things.  To me things appear one way, when I guess in reality are different….or are they?

Dancing With The Devil

At one point or another in all our lives, we all dance with the devil.  We have kind of a tango going, he leads and many times we follow.  We listen to the tune he strings and tend to tune out the song God sings in our ears/hearts.  We let him in and we dance his dance throughout our lives.  Sometimes we wake up and stop the dance with the devil and dance with God instead. 

There are times when we allow him to spin his lies about our lives, our walk with God, about our motives and so much more.  We allow him to tell us lies about ourselves and what we are worth.  When we dance with the devil and he spins us around in his lies.  I think right now I am dancing with the devil which fuels my depression.  When we get into this dance it can be hard to forget the footsteps and walk away.

Depression

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately, a lot of contemplating over things.   I will admit that this week depression has been really knocking me down.  I have been doing okay with fighting it and dealing with it, but this week it has been really attacking me and knocking me down. Its starting to feel like I am failing.

I look at the things I have been through, so much heartache, pain, and struggle.  I have had moments of happiness but for some reason those moments were taken away from me. It almost like I am not meant to be happy.  That I am doomed to live in heartache and be alone...will I be the crazy cat lady with like 20 cats..okay maybe not that many but still a crazy cat lady in the least.

I cant seem to make anything work lately.  Nothing.  I look in the mirror and see nothing of worth.  What do I have to offer?  I feel like there is a void that I cannot seem to fill, i dont know really what would fill it either.

Can I make anyone happy if I can’t seem to make myself happy?  Could Todd have been right that I am for some reason unmarriable? Why do I keep failing at even the simplest of things like making some of my easy dreams come true?

Putting Yourself Out There

Sometimes there comes a time when you wonder if you put too much of yourself out there.  Too much of your heart on the line only to get hurt.  Do we sometimes just set ourselves up to get hurt?  To have our hearts broken by putting ourselves out there, but our hearts on the line?  Just hoping that it wouldn’t be taken for granted to broken.

Its like you put yourself out there, but for what reason?  I know there are times when I should be guarded especially towards one person in particular, but how can you be guarded, and protect your heart when you just keep putting it out there.  Keep showing your heart on your sleeve so to speak.  When you love someone how far is too far out there, too far on the line to put yourself?  How much do you risk being hurt, to be with the one person that you love?  Are the tears worth it?

The Oath

I just finished reading an interesting novel by Frank Peretti called The Oath.  The jist of it is that people became so controlled by their sins that it manifested itself into a dragon.  When they became too far gone, and made excuses about their sins, they were “hooked” through the heart and the dragon killed them.  One man found out the best way to kill it was to have Jesus in your heart.  So the more he prayed the higher advantage he had, but the more cocky he got, the more hooked he got and closer to death he got.

The book got me thinking about our own sins.  How often do we forget about God when we are “engrossed” in our sins.  We make excuses for why we do things even though we know it’s a sin.  We try to justify things only to have it grow larger and larger until we are “hooked” by it. Maybe we don’t have a visible stain on our hearts, but God sees it.  What would happen if our sins manifested themselves into something like a dragon? Would we be able to stop it?  To defeat it with trusting in God and asking forgiveness?  Or will we need more?

I think too often we think  that if we make an excuse then that makes it better or makes it not a sin.  Does that really work?  What purpose does it do other than make us feel better about something?  We try to make one thing into another thing.  We think one small thing stays that small but it only snowballs into something bigger and becomes a dragon like Peretti has in his book.  What do we do when it snowballs?

Forgetting The Past

There are times when I just sit back and think of my past experiences and I know there are other people that do the same thing.  The problem with that sometimes when we think about the past we tend to revert to it and live in it.  We get stuck in the past and have a hard time getting out of it.  I know I have fallen into getting stuck into the past many different times.  It’s hard not to…we remember the hurts and pains, and sometimes we remember the good times.  I find it funny how sometimes we don’t dwell on the memories and good choices we make in life, but we dwell on the all the pain and bad choices that we made.

Too often we dwell on the bad things in life, but why?  Why do we dwell on these things?  When all we get is pain, nothing good ever comes from dwelling on these things.  Yet we find it so hard to dwell and spend time dwelling on the good times and the things good that happened in our lives.  I know sometimes it is hard to forget the past, hard to forget the hurt.  But why dwell on it? I ask myself this almost every day.  Why do I dwell  on the past that hurts me so bad?  Why dwell on the past mistakes I have made, they are just that…the past.  But why….why cant we just let it be the past?  Why do we need to always bring it back up one way or another?

Where does that get us?  No where honestly.  What is the point in dwelling on past hurts and pain only to allow it to cause us more hurt and pain in the present.  It is so easy to slip into the past and not focus on the present or even the future, OR because we dwell too much on the past our future looks bleak and we are some what afraid of it.  Afraid to move on, afraid to give something…or someone a chance.  Dwelling on the past gets us no where, yet it is too hard to not dwell.  I wish I could just forget the past and leave it there in the past and live in the present, life would be happier, don’t you think?

Thankfulness

Last week I said I would try to post once a week about the things that I am thankful for and I realized I haven’t done that this week let alone posted much this week or even this month.  We should be gracious for the things that we have and be thankful for them.

A good church family

Friends who care about me

puppies playing

a hug…a nice good hug

Being in love

Realizing my talents

Kitten’s meow

primroses blooming, flowers in general

my health

The ability to follow my dreams

There are many things throughout our lives to be thankful for and I know many of us have things that we want out of life as well.  Sometimes I think we need to just stop thinking about what we want, and being thankful for what we have.

Just thinking

Tonight on my way home from Donya’s (my best friend), I noticed a shooting star off in the distance.  I haven’t seen one since I was a young girl.  I havent thought much on shooting stars since I was younger.  I used to think they held more power than they really do.  Every little kid thinks if they wished upon a star their wish would come true.  Sometimes we carry that way of thinking into adulthood…if I wish something to be one way it is.

How often have you talked yourself into believing something was one way only to find out it wasn’t?  Better question ever talk yourself into being sick?  Almost like that.  Convincing yourself about things.  I look back on things and realize that I have done the with more than being sick.  I have convinced myself of many different things, that things happened one way when in reality it happened another way.

Could wishing be considered the same thing as pray or at least something like it?  I know it’s not really the same thing as prayer, but along the lines, like a little kids way of praying.  Just thinking randomly now…

The Past

Many times a lot of us hold on to our past experiences, we let them rule our lives and what we do and how we react to different situations and sometimes different people.  We do things the only way we know how, and I think sometimes when we do things that specific way or another way, it makes things harder.  We hold people to certain expectations based on our past and sometimes sure it’s good, but other times it just does more damage than good.

There are times when our past teaches us things.  Sometimes its how to properly handle a situation, other times it teaches us to rely on God more, other times…we learn to deal with thing in a negative way whether it is lashing out at the people around us, or lashing out at ourselves.  I know people who do both; and I admit in the past I lashed out at myself…my one tattoo covers the scars.  But through time, and through like situations, we learn different ways to deal with things.

One of the most important things we need to remember in dealing with our pasts and the hurts other people have caused us is that the people around us now aren’t the same.  Sometimes we will get hurt its inevitable, but other times there are people who generally care and wouldn’t do anything to hurt us.  That was a lesson that took me a little time to learn.  It was hard to realize that not everyone was going to hurt me, leave me, or abuse me in some way.  Its hard to get out of that mindset, but it is something that needs to be done in order to find the true happiness we all seek.

Autumn

I would have to say this is my all time favorite time of the year.  I love watching the leaves fall and change colors.  One of my favorite memories with a former boyfriend was in the fall.  We decided to go for a nice picnic at a park near by, we found this cute little spot next to a pond where ducks were swimming.  We laid out the blanket and had our lunch, then we just laid together and watched the leaves fall.  They feel in so many different ways, some flittered, some twirled, some floated.  But it was never the same almost like how a snowflake is never the same as another.

I think sometimes we don’t pay enough attention to the world around us.  We don’t see the beauty in just the simplest things like watching leaves fall.  We have forgotten how wonderful this world is and that we don’t have to go far to see it.  We don’t need to some foreign island to see the beauty this world beholds.  Just go outside in the fall or watch the sunset and see.  One of my favorite memories will always be that autumn day watching the leaves fall and seeing the detail not only in the colorations, but also the way they fall.

There are so many simple things in life that we need to open our eyes to and appreciate.  Things we take for granted.  Why shouldn’t we take one Saturday afternoon and have a picnic in the park?  Why can’t we go hiking taking pictures of the nature around  us?  Why…simply why can’t we sit on our back porches watching the sun set or primroses bloom?

Acceptance

Sometimes there are things in life that won’t go the way that we expect them to or the way we want them too.  There is a say that if you want to make God laugh; tell him your plans.  That saying can never be truer.  How many times have you tried to do things your way only to fail and have things not work out the way that you expected them too?  When have things worked out the way that YOU planned them too?  I know in my life things never turned out the way I wanted them too, but once I accepted that things pan out the way that God wants them too, everything seems to fall into place.

We need to accept that sometimes things aren’t going to happen like we want, we won’t get everything in life that we want.  We will fail from time to time and that doesn’t mean that you are doomed for failure or that God doesn’t want you to succeed.  Sometimes we need to fail and fall in order to come to where God wants us to be.  Sometimes we need to struggle through life to come to a point where we need to be to find our life’s purpose.  We learn things through our life’s trials and many times we learn to accept things as they are.  Things in my life aren’t how I would like them to be, but I have accepted that.  I accepted that things aren’t how I want them because I know through this I am going to learn something and be where I need to be.

There is someone I care deeply about who made some mistakes in his past, and when I think about it, yea those don’t matter to me and nothing he tells me about his past will change how I feel about it.  But what does matter is the fact that without those mistakes…we wouldn’t have met.  He wouldn’t have come to camp, to my church.  He wouldn’t know some of the people who adore him and see a good man within.  I think of my mistakes and if I didn’t make them or made some of the decisions I struggled with, I wouldn’t be where I am right now.  I wouldn’t have the life I have.  Who knows what would have happened if I went to California or Myrtle Beach.  Things would be different yes, but would they have been better?  ALways need to ask yourself is the alternative better?

Accepting things in life as is can be a hard thing to do, but honestly it is not a bad thing.  Things may not be as you want them to be, or you could be struggling in life, but when we accept things and let them happen naturally and not forced, then everything will fall into place.

Thankful

I realize the other day that I havent done a post on the things that I am thankful for an awhile.  I wanted to do that at least once a week and come up with different things each week that I am most thankful for.  We need to thank God for different things in our lives no matter how small or how big…so here goes…

 

The smile and laughter of someone I care about

Finishing a good book

Being healthy: no cancer; or other ailments other than a cold

A good paying job, stressful as it may be I am thankful for it

Laughter…just laughter in general

The softness of my cat

Talents God has given me and talents he hasn’t given me

Luxuries of life: internet, cell phone, car, etc. 

Soft warm bed to sleep in

Fall, the changing of the leaves, the scent everything

There are so many different things to be thankful for and to thank God for that sometimes I think we forget that we should thank him for the things he has granted us.  Things we take for granted.