Attribution of Joy

On my birthday, at the behest of a few friends, we did a game of sorts, aptly called The Birthday Questions. Just as you may suspect, it involves questions; some about the last year as well as the year to come. Then, at the end, everyone goes around and says something they appreciate about the birthday person. I was so honored and astounded that so many of my friends and family cited my joy!

It was astounding because as I've admitted previously, I'd recently come to the realization that the eminence of joy I'd been characterized by throughout my life was lacking. And I felt it, but I'd realized this only after recently feeling the Lord restoring me to that joy and feeling familiar to myself again. It's such a part of my identity that to feel as though I'd lacked its poignancy, makes its return all the more relieving. And the mention again by others of its prominence all the more honoring and profound!

It is all to God's glory! It's my knowledge of and experience with Him...I can't explain otherwise why I'm this way; I can't even really explain it to begin! I just know if I didn't know the Lord, - if I didn't have the hope that I do, there's no way I would know such a joy; exude any joy at all.

And I hope to live that better than I have in the past. Not take it for granted. I hope that it doesn't just stand out to people, but help them understand who God is. See an aspect of Him often lost in the muck. Because if you ask me why, I can't explain it further than it's because of what I know to be true.

Thinking Hour: My Brain Hamster on 'Ambition'

Midnight is my thinking hour. I end up in bed, all ready to sleep. Rest my head against the wall, and it's like the weight of it not being on my shoulders anymore is a thought-catalyst. My eyes protest with heavy, sticky blinks...but that Hamster is running a marathon. My brain hamster.

I had all these grand ideas about what I was going to do when I finished college. Not work-wise, I didn't much care, immediately anyways. I thought I would learn things I'd always wanted to, but never did because you couldn't get credit for them - or rather I didn't want to pay $400 a credit to learn them. I think I made a list, it's somewhere...

It's somewhat true. In a different way than I expected. I have been able to find more peace in solitude than ever before, which is a feat of learning in itself! That next to a 9-5 that I'm not fulfilled in, to put it politely, and I've gained my version of ambition. I've never been much of an ambitious person. I am ambitious about things I know I can accomplish. Maybe it's not that strict of a science, but I'd say it sums it up. To have ambition about things, for me I think it's a majority willpower, and the rest follows.

I finally had the space, the time, the money, but most importantly the willpower after I graduated to aim myself at some things I've always meant to do but never successfully do. For instance, getting healthy and I've made significant progress. In that I've taken up regular exercise, namely through the medium of running. Who'd a thunk? I had tried several times in the past, and I haven't exercised this regularly since I was 17. I haven't ate this well in my [on-my-own] adult life! I dared to pick up the guitar yet again, and take a stab at it. This time? I feel like I'm actually getting over some sort of hump where I don't feel like a complete novice. And probably the best thing about my 22nd year of life (technically 23rd, if you think about it)? I went out on a limb a little to start leading a women's small group - which you can ask them, I'm very laid-back, but hey that's my style - and it has been by far the best thing I've done this year.

Somehow or another, all of these things I was too overwhelmed by academic learning to pursue. Academic learning is not my forte. It very well could be, but my willpower was only strong enough to finish what needed to be done, to get a plaque on my wall. I regret that mentality a little, but that regret has also fed my drive to put myself into the things I have been doing. Remind myself that I like learning. I am a student in life; not at the U of M for a bachelors degree!

Maybe that is ambition, I don't know. But I do know that there are plenty of things I can do if I set my mind and heart to them; many things I can learn and experience. It's just the tiny step to cook real meals; put on the running shoes and tie back my hair; clip my beloved nails, show up to the lesson and put in the practice hours; open my door to whoever may come once a week for a year (& beyond).

And with all education, there is a learning curve. It stretches your capacity and sensitivity to grace...which is what I've been so stuck on and returning to the last few weeks: Grace. In all places it's astonishing. To have it for yourself, for someone else, for someone else to have it for you, etc. etc. But that's a whole other topic...

The ingredients to do something you're not yet equipped with the experience for? Willpower to move towards it; ambition to fuel your fire; and grace for the falls.

Everything, & Wanderlust, & Running

I want to do everything. I want to do everything in life. Even the things I'm scared of, I want to do. When I get bored; when my life appears boring, I go into this possibly unhealthy place where I think of all the possibilities for right now. The reason it's potentially unhealthy is because it's probably not helping me feel content with my life.

I get demanding. I want to see things happen, things move. When they're not what I want, or not exciting I want to shake things up.

This is far beyond a desire for an exciting life. Don't think that I just think I'm special and get to have more fun than others. I do, in some ways (haha) but there's a kind of person who can dig their hole and lay down in it, and just - well, avoiding the outright mordbid, - wait. I'm not that person. I think there is something special to someone who is open and ready for heavily dynamic life. Not that you could ever be ready for it all...but there's something about having a wandering heart and just enough courage to chase those dreams.

Some people want the white picket fence and the two-point-five kids, and there's nothing wrong with that; we all have our own cravings, desires, and functions. There are some that crave to move, desire to see, and function out of water, so to speak.

There's nothing wrong with that. I'm a runner. I'm not a commit-aphob, though most of my personality tests will say that (they dually refer to my type as loyal). When things aren't how I want, or envision, I go. Because they're inevitable to be different if the scenery, circumstances, people are all different. Don't think I'm just a quitter, or a scaredy-cat; I've been conditioned. It's my coping mechanism: walk off.

So I was thinking today, of all the things I could do. The places I could go. The adventures I could have. I let myself vacation in a fantasy land where problem A. will be solved, or thing X will disappear. And like I said, I don't think there's anything wrong with being full of wanderlust, but you have to know if you're prone to escaping and you have to know yourself well enough to not to let yourself do it.

I let myself make bookmarks, and do research. And then I go to sleep, and I get back up. I live my life, until the real need for change comes. I wait hopefully for the wanderlust to be satisfied. In life thus far, I have learned: the journey you end up on is way better than the one you had planned.

Something to Say

It's not often that I feel like I should have something to say. Usually I just do have something to say. I think I'm either in a phase, or I'm just growing up and in that, learning when to speak up. I feel like I have been learning that. As silly as it may sound, a while back a friend tweeted a proverb about not having a quick-tongue, and I was challenged, in general.

The proverbs are riddled with wisdom telling us it's better to mind our mouths than to spew without care, even if it is effortless. For me it's so often effortless, to have anything to say, though at times it comes stumbling out...and so that tweet (of all the ridiculous ways to get convicted), it stuck to me. I've been followed around by the notion that just because I have something to say doesn't mean I should. The times to hold my tongue have presented themselves, the fruits of which have typically been clear.

Then what to do when you feel like you should say something but don't know what? Not a situation I often find myself in, but I've been encountering this more now, too. Maybe it's a part of learning the balance; learning to be further choice with my words. I'm more of a fan of intentionality than an employer of it...I've also realized.

Intentional speech. I feel like it could make the world go round. Assuming clarity comes with it, which it rarely seems to. But what power might come with words that are not just pointed but weighed?

I guess, today this is what I have to say.

The Harvest: Joy

Whether or not you believe in or know anything about the bible, it's true: in life there are seasons. I'm sure I spend a lot of time talking about seasons and life and growing, but it's just what fascinates me. That is when I'm not lost in it.

I feel like I'm on the exiting end of the tunnel, from a long season of feeling at odds with myself, and having lost a sense of who I am. You could read this and know me, or follow my blog and think, She's just over-analyzing and over-thinking, that's her thing. And that is sort of my thing, but other than the occasional case of anxiety, it's never done me wrong. Cognition is what gets me up in the morning, and somehow (mostly by miracle of God) gets me from A to B, helps me retain the wisdom I gain from the revelations I have and the things I'm taught, and causes me to forget the things that are seemingly less important...and help me process happenings in my life, such as this.

The most notable end of a season is harvest. I am in the harvest of a season. Not that it was something where I particularly knew I was in a sweltering, stormy growing season, or like I'm being "plucked". In retrospect, I don't think it was quite so obvious. I felt a little detached from myself, though 'a little' isn't a fair assessment. Since my trip to France and Vietnam, coming up on two years ago now, I haven't felt fully myself. They have this phrase, once you do YWAM you're "wrecked for the ordinary". I thought for so much of these past two years that that's what it was.

In some respects, it was: I returned to an unraveled version of the community I had before, with what was left of it focusing on empty things. I had the choice to move forward in an uncharted fashion of my own, or walk with those I had around me - not to say it's their fault, any of the wandering I did. I think transparency is essential, and will fully acknowledge anything about these last two years, to anyone. But I think I made that choice aimlessly, maybe even unequipped. Ignorantly, is the word.

I felt in the last year that I have not been myself; not fully who I would claim that I am, or who I've known myself to be, in my life. All the time I would get asked why I was so happy, or told there was something different about me. I haven't gotten that in a while, and when I specifically realized that missing in my life, it made me sad. I know that joy is a part of who I am, I know it's a mark on my life. So where has it been? Who have I been being?

I can't explain yet, because I don't yet know why I went through such a long drought of a season, but the beauty is in the return. Over about the last month, I have felt a shift. Like I was suddenly reminded of the person I'm made to be; the reason I bother to get up in the morning - and it's not just to think about things all day! Largely, I can't explain the change because it's not a story. It's almost as if I've been waking up over the last few weeks, struggling through a day, only to find at the end that the joy and hope I have has compounded. And it's sufficient.

In the last few weeks, I've felt like the person I've known myself to be all these years. And what changed to cause this, you may wonder? Nothing. Except God has been working on me, restoring me to myself; to my true identity that reflects his heart. I've always set myself on - if nothing else - two characteristics that I know only because of God, and they are: truth and joy. For a while it felt like I was trying to skate on only my head-knowledge of the truth. Now I feel I'll be able to move forward with my heart's understanding of joy.

Little, human parts of me whisper worries that this is not a lasting change, but I've just felt so different than I had, yet familiar to my make-up. The fact that it's so inexplicable makes it all the more necessary (and confusing) to share, tears of relief well as I write. Jesus spoke to me months ago that He would stand with me and fight for me, and I thought that encouragement was enough; that it was it. I didn't know that I wasn't operating as my true self, under the ailment of whatever plague; in all my knowledge of Him, and so I didn't expect that He would bring me back...

but He's just so good.

When Did I Become Me?

For many years, and particularly when I was in my late teens, I’ve been told that I do not seem my age; but older, usually by several years. When I think back on when my introspective stage began – if it can be called a “stage” – I think of myself as the same as I am now. I don’t disregard that I’ve learned things in, say, the five almost-six years I’ve been blogging, let alone the many years journaling. Rather, that I’ve adapted in character. And if I consciously think about six years of life passing and leaving the teens behind, becoming a legal drinker, a college graduate – it makes perfect sense, but for some reason I thought I was this stagnant person, namely one who had arrived. How ignorant was I, for being so-called mature?

Funny, that for all my introspection I happened to miss these subtle changes in me over time. Probably thousands of pages of journals, hundreds of thousands of typed words on blogs and hundreds of poems written, and I miss it.

After a few weeks back from my six months abroad, (which I wish I could affix a title to that would properly summarize it,) a coworker who was also good friend told me, “You seem different, Losier.” I feel the same; I think I am the same, I thought to myself, feeling almost defensive. “Really? Like how?” …please, fill me in because somehow I’ve missed this drastic change!

All this time I thought that I was consistently one person, but thank God I was wrong! I spent some time recently reminiscing by reading over old blog posts. I could see changes in myself by the way that I've written; both in content and style. There are things I was working through, or desiring to see come to pass or change, and they have. 

It's one of the reasons I love writing so much, even though I know how little all these words are read...it chronicles the changes and seasons in my life. It's something I'm greatly in favor of, sharing life experiences - for whatever they're worth - with others, in the off-chance that they might find themselves encouraged or challenged...or inspired. There's got to be a benefit to being so overly cognitive...

But it's just a reminder to me, that even being heavily introspective, we can misinterpret our own selves. Our self-perceptions can be so far different from how we actually are; and for some, who we actually are. 

All this to say: there's importance in recognizing the places we've come from; the dreams we've seen come to fruition, the things we're still longing for. There is value in stopping to survey where you're at, and admire the distance you've come. Beauty lies in the growth, even the days, weeks, months, and maybe years of struggle that often come with growing pains. A big part, for me, of knowing myself is to acknowledge who I've been and who I am. To see that they are the same person, and yet so different.

Those chronicles map out the developments of how we operate today, and sometimes that can make navigating the things that lay ahead, so much easier. 

Articulate

I always love to write, and to communicate, but I go through phases of being able to articulate. I have these urges to write. I tell myself, "Tomorrow, I'm going to take some Me Time; I'm going to write." And then I don't.

It's not like I don't have things to say, I can always say something. Sometimes I just have trouble whittling it down, so to speak. It's almost a matter of having so much going through my brain, I don't go far enough down any one path to bother. I mean, maybe people want to read more of my fragmented thoughts...but I kind of doubt it.