things I resonate with

I've been reading Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle and it seems tonight that every couple pages I want to scream, "yes!  yes!" because I resonate with it.

This, this is sort of how I feel with the career thing:

     "There's [a] New Yorker cartoon that shows a woman opening the door of her house to a friend.  We look through the door, and in the back of the house a man is writing at a typewriter, with a large manuscript piled on the desk beside him.  The friend asks, "Has your husband found a job yet?  Or is he still writing."
     "A successful businesswoman had the temerity to ask me about my royalties, just at the time when my books were at last making reasonable earnings.  When told, she was duly impressed, and remarked, "And to think, most people would have had to work so hard for that."  I choked over my tea not wanting to laugh in her face.
     "A young friend of mine was asked what she did, and when she replied that she was a poet, the inquirer responded, amused, "Oh, I didn't mean your hobby." 

(Walking on Water, pg. 109 in her chapter on Names and Labels.)

 When asked who I am, I am an artist.  It is not a hobby, it is a way of living.  What do I do?  I make stuff, and to help make ends meet I work at a recreation center.  I know in my previous blog entry I mentioned my dissatisfaction with this, but the main dissatisfaction is in feeling that what I do is not a mainstream choice - I don't have a normal career like teaching, or nursing, or administration, or something in the sciences - I don't bring in very much money in what I do - and that somehow because of that I have failed.  But I shouldn't care how I am viewed in the eyes of the world.  I know it isn't the choice that brings in a lot of money, but it is a conscious choice.  I want to work part time because I need the space to create and to live and be and figure out this life thing that God has given me.  How can I live it and to the full?  I believe God provides, he always has and always will.  I have these moments of doubt when I am living outside of belief or maybe momentarily forget God's promises.  He created me to create.  I don't care about having a lot of money, I care about having enough.  God grants this, and more.  Not in the ways I expect, but in the ways I need, in the ways that fill my heart and soul to overflowing.

you know, jobs and futures and stuff.

I talked a bit at church today with a guy who is dissatisfied with his job, which I totally understood.  I told him how in January I quit my retail job and went the next four months without one... and he asked what I was doing now, so I told him about working at the rec center, which also doesn't sound like an ideal job.  If anything I feel like what I said would be discouraging - going from one non-career job to another.  But I feel like I am where I should be.  I feel like the rec center was God's answer to my prayers.  It's what I need right now - not a lot of money, but a low stress job that I can do while living and figuring out this making art and selling it thing.  I have an annoying relationship with the concept of "what I do."  I don't feel like the rec center is a "real" job and I don't feel like making stuff and selling it is either.  So what do I do?  Well, I make stuff and sell it.  And I sit at a counter and sell city spaces to people.  And I live.  Not on a lot of money, but God provides enough.  I feel like I've been treading water since I graduated from college, and I've been unsure how to use my life - how to let God use my life?  Sometimes I'm not sure whether the directions I think about going are mine or God's.  When I first came to Texas all I wanted was an excuse to run away - teaching English overseas sounded great at the time.  I don't want to run away anymore.  I think that's progress.  Now I'm trying to figure out why God brought me here in the first place.  I feel like he wastes nothing and has a purpose for everything, so why am I in Texas?  In Dallas?  In Duncanville?  Why did I study art?  Why was I born to linguists in the Philippines?  How will my story make sense?  At first I thought I was moving to Duncanville as an in between place until I figured out where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do.  But I'm realizing that my "in-between" place might be God's "destination" place for me.  It seems like he has a reason for leading me here.  I just haven't figured it out yet.

feeling blue...

I've cried every day for the past five days.  I don't know the significance of this.  I do know that it's not exactly acceptable to cry in public.  People ask you what's wrong, as if it's so terribly unnatural to cry.  Well, maybe it is.  Why do I cry?  So many things are changing that I can't control and that I have no desire to control.  These changes are good things, but letting go of old and letting in new is hard and scary.  For the last couple months I haven't cried a lot, so the need for it I think has been building up and maybe I'm finally at a place where I'm willing to grieve?  What am I grieving?  change, the things that are different now because of change.  I feel blue, but I also think I'm in a good place.  There are other things in my life that I wish would change that haven't, but I guess I'm a work in progress?  I don't know.  I felt the need to write something, so I turned to this illustrious blog.  It's nothing spectacular, just feeling like if I don't write I'll simply burst into tears again.  There is probably a whole list of reasons for the tears and to explain them I would have to tell you a story of my life over the last several years.  Yes.  Years.  Because those moments are what have led me to this one.  No moment is detachable from any others - life is a continual flow of moments, and to understand one, you have to have some understanding of all the moments that led up to it.  Why do I process life in a certain way?  You might have to return to my childhood upbringing in another country to begin to understand that.  Why to some things make me cry easily?  You would have to look at the experiences I have had that those things remind me of.

I cried through church on Sunday -- mainly through worship, but I was in a blue mood all morning.  Particularly moving was... "you're a good good Father, that's who you are, that's who you are!... and I'm loved by you... that's who I am, that's who I am!".... I think it particularly moved me to be reminded that God loves me.  Sometimes I feel like that ought to be an impossibility.  How could he love a sinner like me?!  But there is so much more to my tears than that.  Growing up really sucks sometimes.

do not worry.

This came to mind tonight, so I looked it up and read it again.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Matthew 6:25-34

God is in control. You know, I wonder sometimes where my life is going and what sort of plan God has for it. I know this isn't about plans, but it is about God taking care of us, of him taking care of me. He is the great provider. A couple years ago I looked into teaching English overseas as a missionary, and I even got accepted into the program, but I didn't go. I think I was afraid. Of many things. I was afraid of the money I would need to raise and I was afraid of the student loans I still needed to pay off... and having expenses but no income besides what God would provide and I think I was scared he wouldn't provide, that I wanted to go for my own reasons - like running away - and that I wasn't going because he was actually calling me to it. I was scared that he was calling me, too, I think, and I was scared to follow. I was also scared of leaving behind the few connections I had here. I'm pretty much a scaredy cat sometimes who needs to be reminded to stop worrying about life. I don't know if God has foreign missions specifically in mind for me or not, but I know that whatever he has for me, he will provide. Over the summer he provided a way for me to completely pay off my student loans and become debt free. He provided a new job for me that is just enough for me to afford everything I need, and low stress so my life can be more than just work. He provided a new place for me to live that fits in my new budget that is allowing me to gain independence and to make new connections. He is on the move, and I can feel it. I can't wait to see what else he has in store. Tonight some friends came over and we watched The End of the Spear, because one of them is about to leave overseas to do mission work. I will admit that about halfway through I started silently sobbing, and I'm not sure why, though I know that movie has had the same effect on me in the past. It's like when I watched Peace Child. Part of me feels nostalgic watching movies like that, not because of the violence but because of being a little blonde girl, once, who got to live in a tribal village and play with kids whose language I did not know and did not learn very well. Regardless of whether it's just strong memories and a longing for "home" or some sort of calling or just having a heart, I always find myself very moved by these films. At the end, someone commented on how "not realistic" it was - changes that were made from reality in order to make it movie appropriate - but it didn't make it less moving for me. Is there a call in feeling an emotional response to something like that? I don't know. I do know that sometimes I'm a rather oblivious person and don't take hints very well, so if God wants me to do something it has to be very much in my face.