Pathetic.

I am sitting here looking at piles of stuff from Target. I should put it all away. I should wash the dishes or do something, anything but sit here in my sorrow. I am going through the hardest time in my life, just a few weeks before my 30th birthday, which I will spend alone. I will be going to get a tattoo... by myself. Pathetic.

World.

We live in a broken world; full of pain. Nothing ever stays the same. Nothing is as it seems. Everything deteriorates and falls apart.

Ups and downs.

Shane and I are pretty normal (in some ways). We have our ups and downs just like every couple. Some of ours downs may have been extreme, but sometimes I wonder how well we know what is going on in other people's lives or relationships. Little hints here and there from casual friends and acquaintances make me wonder if everyone doesn't really have the same problems that Shane and I have. We are redefining "us." I don't think we have ever really been on the same page with what we expect "us" to be. We both grew up without very good examples from our parents of what healthy marriage looks like. It does frustrate me that culturally we have to give off an appearance of always having it all together. At least that is how I perceive it.

My WHOs.

What really matters? What really matters RIGHT NOW? Not my driveway or my arms that I am currently insecure about or whether or not I will get up in the morning on time or how I feel about turning 30 or what grades I will get this semester. I am alive... that is pretty damn special in and of itself. I have people that love me and care about me in my life. I have ten kids that love me and depend on me to support them, at least part of the time. Why am I here on this earth? Is there a why? Do I even need to ask or to answer that one. I'm feeling that "hut" feeling. Every so often I get all "What is the meaning?" and think "Life would be better if I lived in a hut." Meaning, I wish that I wasn't boggled down with all the American materialism crap. Do I really care about WHAT I have? Isn't WHO I have more important. And I have my WHOs.

The Current.

I stole this one from my BFF.

A Parable by Richard Bach:

"Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all--young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom." The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks and you will die quicker than boredom!" But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure." But they cried the more, "Savior!" all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Savior."