My Reminders

I recently started an art project to put on my wall next to my bed where I can see it everyday.  It will have messages that I've received from God in this past year with room to add new messages in the future.  That way when I receive an important message, I can be sure that I won't forget.  Below I will list the messages and why I needed to hear them.  But before I start, I just want to acknowledge that my whole heart is in this post and this will not be easy to write. 

Here is the beginning of my project:

On separate papers will be my 3 reminders as follows.

1. You are not God. 

Last year I was in spiritual turmoil.  It all started with prayer.  I noticed that I wasn't praying very much and my spirit felt like it was asleep.  I asked myself why I wasn't praying and I realized I didn't trust God.  And then I probed deeper and realized I didn't trust that God was real.  I felt that no one was listening so I stopped trying to connect.  When I realized what I felt, I said a prayer to God.  I wanted to know the truth.  I said "I don't want to be comforted, I want to know the truth."  That lead to me questioning everything about life.  I asked all the scary questions that I usually try to push aside and not think about like "what happens to us when we die?"  I tried to bravely face the truth but I just kept getting more scared.  One night, I was laying in bed unable to move or talk just feeling the weight of the universe on my tiny little shoulders.  One day I walked Bishop to school and just stared at all the objects and plants and people and life happening around me like they were alien.  I was shaken to my core. 

I slowly began to make peace with my fear and found a way to continue existing.  Then I received a message "You are not God".  Even if God does not exist, it is not me.  I can't change anything by worrying and being afraid.  Me worrying about bad things that might happen will not make it so.  There IS a truth and none of us know what it is.  Trying to carry the weight of the universe will not change the truth of it. 

I do believe in God.  I have seen love and I know that it's real and I believe that love comes from somewhere.  My goal in this life is to spread that love as much as I can. 


2. You may... or you may not. 

Some of you may know I've been doing quite a bit of personality work lately.  This is the message that made all that work click and fall into place.  I've been learning about all my negative tendencies and have been thinking about ways to overcome those.  The problem is feeling that there are things I SHOULD be doing.  I feel bad because I have a number of artistic projects that I've started and never finished and I see that pattern and feel like I won't be able to break out of it.  When I think I SHOULD be doing something, it makes me feel like I've already failed in some way.  When I heard the words "you may... or you may not" it took all the shame out of the process.  I hear it like "you have permission to use your gifts, you can create something with them, it doesn't matter what you haven't done in the past".  Now I just feel ready to go.  And ready to post this blog that I've been thinking about posting for months.  I may post it and I may not.  I've decided that I may. 


3. Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.

Some of you may recognize this as a bible verse.  It's one that gives me hope and courage.  It also reminds me of my mom because there's a song written around this verse that she used to play in church.  My mom was the first person who taught me how to be Christian. 


Whew.  This is me.  My heart is on this page.  And I hope the holy spirit as well. 

Not Shy

I was recently contemplating my "shyness".  I put it in quotes because I'm not entirely sure what being shy entails and I'm not quite sure it accurately describes my social nature.  I feel like everyone has a different definition of exactly what it means.  I don't think the word technically applies to me but considering the number of times I've been asked "why are you so quiet?" in my lifetime, I'm sure there are many people who see me as 'shy'.  I suppose I could look up a definition and settle the matter but that won't stop people from thinking I'm shy in real life.  It's not like every time someone points out how shy I am I pull a dictionary out of my pocket to correct their terminology and offer them a more appropriate word to describe myself.  That would involve engaging in conversation and I don't do that because I'm.... a quiet person. 

I actually did figure out the heart of the issue.  The key lies in drama class.  I've always enjoyed acting.  Even when I was terrified to stand on stage and perform, I still volunteered for plays.  It's like some invisible force was pushing me into these uncomfortable situations.  Then at some point between middle school and high school, I started to enjoy the adrenaline rush of being on stage.  I loved being in drama club.  It was one of the biggest anomalies of my life, to be so quiet and practically invisible at my small high school but jump at the chance to perform in front of an audience.  But there was one part of drama club I did not enjoy.  I absolutely hated Freeze. 

For those who didn't go to my high school and take drama, Freeze is a game where everyone stands in a circle with 2 actors in the middle.  They improvise a scene until someone yells 'freeze'.  Then both people freeze and the new person chooses an actor to tag out and they take their place and start a new scene.  The only time I ever played it is when the drama teacher would yell freeze and then insert me into the scene.  Then I had to come with a scenario on the spot.  Sound familiar?  This is what real life conversations are like except way less scripted than real life.  You could be anyone, anywhere, any time and it was terrifying.  As many of you know, I am terrible at making decisions.  The less meaningful the decision, the harder it is to make and 30 seconds of make-believe in drama class is one of the most meaningless decisions I can think of.  I'd rather be walking around the school naked, on the way to take a test I didn't study for than come up with 30 seconds of make-believe with someone I barely talk to in real life. 

So that is the heart of my issue: improvisation.  That's why I love writing so much.  There no one here judging what I'm writing as I type it and I can proof read before anyone sees it.  But real conversations require a lot of improv.  Yeah, society provides us with a small script sometimes but it's taken me years to learn that so you can just imagine how awkward my teenage years were.  I don't mind being seen or heard when I have a script.  I'm not afraid of people noticing me or paying attention to me.  I'm afraid of people expecting me to say something when I have nothing to say. 

This is also why I suck at class discussions.  By the time I formulate something worth saying, the conversation has usually moved in a different direction.  I need time to think and ponder what I want to say and usually people want an answer right away. 

And that's why I'm not shy.  I don't know what to call it.  Bad a improv.  There should be a word for that. 

Painting With Mess

Yesterday I had a sudden urge to revisit my former self.  I was just standing in my room and had the thought "I want to remember who I used to be".  Most of old journals are packed away but I do keep one out because it's pretty brief and concise.  It captures mostly feelings in my life and not so much people, places, or events.  Although I always know by the date exactly what was happening and why I was feeling that way. 

Honestly, it was a painful journey.  It's hard to look back and remember how much I struggled.  I felt so alone back then.  I really believed that no one understood me.  I was living with deep feelings and not much understanding of where I fit in the world.  And I was terrified of letting anyone see it.  One poem struck me in particular.   I think it summarizes how I felt while I was working out how to become an adult. 

This place is messy
full of scrambled feelings
being tossed around
and held in tight quarters
being stretched and prodded
cross examined and questioned
but kept locked in a box
not allowed to spill
or spread
a huge mess in a little box
threatening to escape
waiting in the box
its ready to explode
to paint the world
with this mess
to paint a beautiful picture
with a hopeless mess
to paint a story
of love
with mess
(12-16-07)

It's crazy to me now reading that how it almost perfectly describes an INFP.  INFP's feel things so deeply and personally but seem so calm on the outside.  And they usually enjoy art so they often literally paint their messy feelings.  I write mine out.  Sometimes in poetry. 

The journal does have a happy ending.  Sort of.  I mean there's still blank pages in there for me to write on so it technically hasn't ended yet.  I wrote about John and how good it felt to finally be understood by someone.  I finally found someone to unload all of my crazy thoughts and feelings.  There's not much written in the journal after that.  I had less need to express my pain in writing. 

I'm glad I have these memories to look back on.  It's good to see how far I've come in regards to emotional health.  It kinda makes me wonder what I'll be like in another 10 years.  I'll be unstoppable. 

The Essence of Who We Are

I thought I would start off blog month with a light subject: personality!  It's weird that that word seems so frivolous.  When I hear 'personality', I think of choosing colors and lattes and sorting people into Hogwarts houses.  But it's the essence of your person-hood, the undefinable thing that makes you a person in this world.  It's heavy shit if you think about it.  Which I do.  All. The. Time.

I've been really into Myers-Briggs typology lately.  It was kind of a snowball effect.  I found a free test and made John take it because I wanted to know what his type was and then because I visited that website, my google homepage kept showing me articles related to MBTI, which I clicked on, which then caused google to show me even more articles.  Now half my news feed is blog posts about how your type deals with getting your toe stubbed in a crowded room while giving a speech to 50 people.  Okay maybe not that specific, but I'm not exaggerating by much.

If you're not familiar with Myers-Briggs types, I'll give you the short version.  There are 16 types based on 4 aspects of personality.  I'll use my type as an example since this is my blog and myself is the subject I'm most knowledgeable about.  My type is INFP which stands for Introvert, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving.  I guess Intuition gets to be 'N' because Introvert got there first.  The opposite would be ESTJ which stands for Extrovert, Sensing, Thinking, and Judging.  There is tons on information on the internet if you want to go down that rabbit hole.  I'm just gonna focus on me for now.

Kris is also an INFP but she's borderline INTJ so we're still pretty different.  Basically an INFP is 'they have a ton of personality and a million ideas but good luck getting it out'.  That's actually what makes us ideal writers.  We are very hard to get to know but awesome at putting our ideas in writing.  I remember wanting to be a writer as early as 5th grade and I really sucked at it back then.  At some point, I realized it was a somewhat impractical profession and tried to move on but I've still never settled on anything else.  Recently I found out that choosing a career is actually a big problem for INFPs which makes me feel a lot better.  I also found out that INFPs are the most likely out of all the types to stay home with their children.  I wonder if that is a conscience decision or if it just kinda happens by default.  I just started having kids and hadn't established a career yet so I thought 'I might as well just stay home with them'.  I am glad I got to do it though.  I guess it was a little of both: default and choice.

I think that's enough about me for now.  I will definitely talk more about types in later posts.  I know a few other people's types and I can talk about them.

So.... I will blogging every day this month.  Hopefully I can keep up.  I used to do it at lent, so this should be easy.  Kris will be joining me to.  Can't wait to see what she writes about.  She told me it's something big!