Dreams and Realities–New Year’s

12/29/2024 / toseealife / Leave a comment

The turn of the year is coming up.

Every year this time, my Church does this thing they call “Dream Sunday” which happens to be today.

I take the chance around this time to reevaluate my goals in life and ask what I still want to do.

I tend to make two lists. One for the year, and one for my lifetime.

I’ve had getting married and having kids on the lifetime one for years and years–God are you there?

(Just kidding. I know everything has to happen in its time. It just gets hard to wait.)

For other life times goals, becoming a paid professional writer has been on the list since I was a teenager. (Hey, help me with that one and like this post guys.)

But because I know that it takes time to acheive some things, I also make short term dreams.

I don’t like to use the word “goals” or “resolutions” when I do this. Not because there’s anything wrong with those words, per sec, but because I know myself too well. If I treat it like it’s a demand, I won’t want to do it.

A dream is something I can try to do, but if life doesn’t work out that way, I can always find a new dream, just like Tangled told us. (That’s not my favorite Disney movie, but it is probably on my top 10.)

I’m not too disappointed when I don’t meet those goals. And I’ve also learned what dreams are reasonable over the years. When I asking myself a number, like “get 200 followers” then it won’t happen. I can’t control other people.

But if it’s a goal like “get a new car”, or “read 30 books”, something that either isn’t a set number to it one that I can be flexible with, and that I can control, I can usually do it. Even go above and beyond it.

As I mentioned in a different post, I just got the new car. I can’t even remember if I put that on the list last year, or if I just decided I needed it now.

I do know though, that owning a blue Toyota has been on one of my lists, though if it was the dream one or the bucket one, I can’t say, for a long time.

What? I just like what I like guys.

And that’s basically happened. I mean, it’s kinda blue-green, but hey that’s my favorite shade of blue. Light turquoise to aquamarine. I’m a beach girl.

I also just got my wisdom teeth out, yesterday, and while I wouldn’t call that a dream, I’ve had jaw problems for a couple years and I’ve hoped doing this will help a bit, so in a way it’s a dream. Also I was able to get it done quickly and around my work schedule, that was a blessing.

Also, it was way easier than I expected. I barely had any reaction to the anesthesia, and I’m able to chew already the next day (soft foods of course, but still). I apparently am lucky, my mom and sister said they could barely open their mouth for days.

Also I had a best case scenario pretty much, so while I wasn’t jazzed about getting surgery for the first time, I was blessed that it wasn’t a bad experience. (Is it weird if I prefer it to a regular dentist appointment? I hate drills.)

I hope if you have to get yours out, that encourages you.

Anyway, not everything was planned, but they were things I wanted.

And things that were planned, like finishing more stories, and getting a better job, I got and then some. Like last year, I put a better job on the list, and I got a much better and longer one than I expected.

It might not be everyone’s dream job, but it was perfect for me, at this stage of my life. Helped pay for the car, after all.

(Btw, I sold my old car to my sister, though I got it for free, and people are judging me for it. She wanted it that way. I offered to give it to her and she didn’t like the idea of accepting it that way, so I said I’d just sell it to her instead. She wanted to feel more independent, and I 100% respect that.)

Just because I got it for free doesn’t mean I really wanted it that way. I just could never have afforded it when it was given to me, I plan to pay for my own cars going forward if I possibly can. I’m not above getting help, though. I’d do the same for anyone else, I figure, so it’s no big deal to accept it. And I mean that, my family shares bills a lot.

I’ve been able to go out with friends a lot this year. And I think making more friends was one of the things on my list, too. (I haven’t found it yet, but that sounds like something I’d put on it.)

Also, I’ve planned my first get away trip without my mom’s help.

I may actually file for taxes finally, another dream, weird as it sounds, but it means I’m not impoverished anymore.

Now, does all this mean my life is perfect? No.

It’s been a good year.

But I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging. I share all this because I see it as God’s goodness.

But to level with you all who might feel like your life sucks compared to mine (and mine’s not that glamorous, so if yours is worse, I’m sure you’ve got it rough), maybe I can encourage you a bit.

This is a recent thing for me.

For many years, I’ve had a lot of these wishes, and honestly, I couldn’t even work towards them for the longest time, I was just hanging on barely to what I already had, not expanding.

I’ve not had a lot of friends for most of my life, and it’s been weird to make more.

And it felt like I had one issue after another the last few years. I had health issues, though they seemed small, but not to me.

I had job problems constantly.

I got frustrated a lot and I had a lot of anxiety.

And I still sometimes do. I know that none of this stuff I have now will last forever. Friends come and go, so do jobs, vehicles, and health can be changing too.

Money will rise and fall for me, and so will success.

Now that’s no reason to assume I’ll end up worse off. God takes us from glory to glory.

And I don’t mean that in a cheesy way. I’ve seen it play out.

While things have been both bad and good for me, I have noticed a different aspect of life with God in each season. Sometimes it’s his kindness, sometimes it’s just the strength to keep going. The voice in my head that says it’ll get better.

And no, it doesn’t happen overnight.

Christians love to share our testimonies of God’s goodness, because it makes Him sound better to outsiders, and we don’t want to seem like we’re doing badly, when we’re supposed to represent how much better life is with God.

But the wisest of us realize that if life is better with God, it logically must mean that even the bad parts of it are made better by God.

Jesus warned us we’ll never get out of suffering in this life. No matter how good we have it, there will be trouble. Not because God wants us to suffer, but because the world is not a safe place. Suffering is inevitable. Jesus suffered a lot.

And we think that means only the Cross, but no, Jesus was tired, hungry, hurt by his friends and family, mocked, accused, and that was before he even was killed. He slept outside a lot.

Often, we don’t have the mental picture of just how difficult it must have been for him, as a man, though He was God.

So, no, no one gets out of suffering. He wasn’t floating around in a nimbus, people, not feeling the burn of walking everywhere. That’s not how it happened.

But Christian artists have always portrayed Jesus as somewhat above suffering. Not I think, out of a lack of understanding perhaps, always.

But because they recognize that our inner self, that is what makes suffering seem impossible or bearable to us.

Jesus was strong on the inside, so He rose above his circumstances. He was not raised by rich parents, in a well known district. He came from Nazareth, the bad town of the ancient world. Everyone thought it was awful.

He has his high moments, to be sure. His entrance to Jerusalem, he was worshiped, given gold, frankincense, and myrrh by the wise men.

The point I’m making here is that Jesus wasn’t always sad or always suffering, but he certainly wasn’t always doing well either.

His life, like ours, had its ups and downs.

So when Christians say that God will make your life better, we don’t mean your problems will go away. We mean that God will get in your problems and make it better for you.

And I would say that’s the truth, in my experience.

I had depression and anxiety, they didn’t just go away because of my faith (they have gone away mostly now, though). But while I had them, I felt God with me. Not always in a distinct feeling of peace, but at least, I felt like I was not alone.

I think that’s the worst part, really being alone. Ever notice that no matter what experience we suffer, the loneliness part is always the worst. Even if it’s painful in other ways, somehow what horrifies us is that we’re alone.

Humans do not like to be alone.

It’s funny too, I’ll see people online saying they like to be alone–in a public comment section, where they’re commenting on other peoples thoughts and getting likes and comments back.

I’m thinking “you don’t like to be alone, you’re asking for sympathy from strangers, and giving your opinions on their lives, because that’s just a less risky way to have companionship. You get to have it on your terms, that’s all. You’re not truly trying to be alone.”

Let’s say no one who’s on the internet is ever trying to really be alone.

Maybe if you go off the grid and live in a log cabin without a phone, then you’re really trying to be alone–and you’re not reading this post then.

I do notice though, that people who say they want to be alone, have small dreams.

Like it or not, we need other people to make our dreams happen. I know mine never would have happened without people–and some of them literally require other people participating to make happen at all. I can’t marry and have kids with myself, can I?

So, no, I don’t leave other people out of my dreams.

And I submit everything to God.

The word says if you commit your ways to the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart.

This doesn’t mean, I think, that we get every single thing we want. I think that there are desires that God gives us, in our lives, that He will make happen, if we don’t go against His will.

Often something would only be good for us if it was through God. Otherwise, it would end badly.

Not just because God won’t bless it if it’s not through Him, but often the ways we try to get things without God are very selfish. We lie, we steal, we cheat. We try to get ahead.

I don’t really want to be rich, now.

I’ve wondered if it would be nice, but honestly, I think if I didn’t have to work, I’d feel pretty useless. I would like to be well off enough to work only at what I like doing, instead of what I hate to do, but, that’s not a requirement, it’s just what I prefer.

But if I got a billion dollars or something and never need to work again, I’d feel empty.

Sure, a lot of money would help me…

But honestly, right now, there’s not that many problems I have that I really need to fix with money. There’s a few, and long term, yes, I’ll need more.

But I can say for what I need right, now, I have enough. And I’ve noticed that’s always the case. God has never given me an overwhelming amount of wealth, but He’s always given me as much as I need for my current expenses. And that’s been true even as my expenses increased.

Sometimes I want to get ahead, and I get frustrated that I can’t, but I know I have no real reason to complain.

It’s the same with my dreams. They didn’t all happen when I wanted. And they still haven’t all happened.

But enough of them have happened for me to know that God is good.

And I’ll get the other things, if I need them.

Though I don’t think that God only does things when we need them. I do think some stuff is just for the fun of it. Just because we want them, too. But that’s more depending on if it will hurt us or not. You can’t be more generous than God, but He knows what we need to be happy.

That’s the thing too, I think that’s maybe why I haven’t gotten further ahead. Working for all this makes me feel more satisfied with my life.

Would I really be happier if it was easier for me?

I don’t know. I kind of doubt it, somehow.

I do hope that one day I can live below my means and still have enough, but, I’m trying not to worry about it anymore.

See, goals and money problems were what plagued my dad constantly while I was growing up. The funny thing was, we were never starving or homeless. I’d say we really weren’t that bad off. But he obsessed over every money problem anyway.

And all his other goals, he’d forget about them and just worry about business.

And, we never had that many other goals. We’d talk about it, but eventually it always came back to business. He didn’t stick to any other goal.

My dad is good at business, so it’s not like it’s not his gift, but I thought it should have made him happier than it did.

That’s why I have other goals, ones I don’t have to pay for.

And some things I will have to pay for. Both.

Because success isn’t just in money, but money is usually part of success. Put that on a plaque.

So yeah, you know, I’m happy.

Lastly, let me say, I do still sometimes have the fear that all this will go away just as fast as it came.

And it’s true there are no guarantees in life.

But I realize that this was kind of hurting my ability to enjoy it.

I’m not perfectly good at blocking out worry yet. I think it would be hard for someone like me, who’s been like that most of her life, to unlearn it in 1 or 2 years, but, I am better than I was.

See, I’ve heard the cliche that you won’t fix it by worrying, but I only recently started to realize just how logical that is.

I guess I lacked maturity before to really embrace it. And this is not an age thing, so many older women than I are obsessed with worries and fears.

So I say if I’ve changed, it must be a God thing.

So, to get back on topic, not every dream may happen. And some things that I have now, I may not have later.

Hoesn thoguh…so what?

I mean there are always other things you can do. The world is full of stuff, why get hung up on losing or having one thing, or one person.

True people are not replaceable, but you can always let new ones in.

I mean if I quit because of bad experiences, I’d have quit years before I made any real friends.

That’s the thing, why do we give up? Why do we settle for our life the way it is. Nearly every problem gets better with enough time, energy, and innovation to try to fix it.

I mean you can make money at home in so many ways now, you can’t have really tried everything if you’re broke.

Maybe there’s so many things we can do, that we can’t settle on one.

I really do suggest making a dream list then. Things you always wanted to do, or things that just sound fun to you.

Try to do them. At least one of them. In the next year.

I should get started on mine.

Happy New Year to you all, and stay honest–Natasha.

Christmas has changed for me (in a good way).

12/25/2024 / toseealife / Leave a comment

It’s that time of year again.

I’m waiting for my family to get ready so we can open presents, since, you know, that’s how we do.

I thought I’d write a short post about how Christmas has changed for me a bit this year.

We still did all the same things, but I felt like I wanted to do them myself more this year.

The last few years, I’ve kind of lost my enthusiasm for a lot of the things I used to like as a kid. I didn’t want to decorate the tree, listen to the music, or do cookies and lights and all the other stuff.

I’m not sure if it had something to do with my dad moving out, and the subsequent depression and anxiety that followed for a few years, or if it was as I’ve become an adult, I don’t have the same childlike enthusiasm as before, so I didn’t see a point to it all.

This year though, I found myself wanting to do those things again. And I did, I actually helped do a lot more than before. I set up the tree, and my sister and I made cookies since our mom had to work.

My sisters and I have all had to step up more and more often as our schedules get more busy and our mom’s does too. We’ve taken on more and more responsibilities.

That stressed me out more last year, but this year I felt more into it.

But I really think the change is more of tied to my new job somehow. I’ve noticed I’ve become a lot more productive even at home, since starting it.

It’s hard to believe how much of a difference it makes but because at this job I’m treated like an adult (instead of a student like I was at the last job), I’ve grown to see myself with more self respect.

It’s not that I didn’t try to be a good worker at previous jobs, but I felt always lile I was treated as beneath my boss, even when they were nice to me.

This job, even though I’ve made mistakes, sure, everyone does, I’m never belittled or treated poorly. So I’ve gained the ability to be able to offer solutions to problems and enact them myself. And instead of getting in trouble for doing things differently than the others, I’ve been told it’s good that I came up with my own approach.

I now understand why people find good work environments make such a difference. While I coudl survive in a bad one, if I had to, the good one makes you feel more like a person.

And carrying that self respect back home, I also made more contributes to the household budget (small ones but I tried) and did more chores and stuff. Because now I feel more like an adult.

I’m 26, I’ve been an adult for several years, but the mindest just wasn’t fully thre for me. I mean, I’ve not been immature, but I guess it was more of not feeling like other people gave me credit for it. That feels different now.

It shifts, really.

To cap it off, I bought my second car (first one I’ve paid for though) this month, and that was another milestone.

I also wil file taxes for the first time next year. Yay…

But actually, making enough income to even need to worry about filing was something I prayed about. I don’t relish the idea of paying them, but if I’m finally not under the poverty line, then that’s good. (I know you can file even if you are, but I made a few thousand at most the year before this so it was literally pointless to even bother with that. This is the first year I’ve made more.)

I think also, as I’m older now, I’ve realized that I won’t always be able to do all this with my family.

Not that I’m planning to move out, get married, or anything else any time soon. But it will happen eventually.

I know everyone says that, but, I think it is true. Maybe it’s just a phase of life to realize that. Kids are always looking forward to the next thing, which is not bad, they have their whole life ahead of them.

Elderly people tend to look behind them, though some of them don’t, but many live in the past.

I’m not sure there’s any one age where you decide to live in the present, at least not universally, but I think that’s kind of what I’ve been thinking.

And Christmas is the time to think about present, right?

Ha ha…I know, bad joke.

But at the same time, I mean…yeah, the holidays are kind of what let us slow down and see where we are right now.

Maybe that’s why God commanded so many of them in the bible. A lot of people don’t know this, but Celebration is actually considered a spiritual discipline by the Christian church.

Because it is a discipline, isn’t it? It takes work to make celebrations. And it’s something I’ve never been very good at. I was an anxiety ridden teenager and child, and as an adult, I’ve only made steps outside that in the last couple years.

So I understood why it’s actually an act of self will to celebrate.

But if you do, if you build up tha muscle, eventually you’ll come to see why it matters so much.

Feasts, dedications, festivals, they help us remember the good things that happened in the year.

Gretchen Rubin, author of the the “Happiness Project” wrote in her book that “the days are long but the years are short.”

That’s so true.

We experience the present as a long time, day by day, but it drops away from us into the past so quickly. The older I get, the faster it goes.

I’m not really sad about this. I think change is important and it’s often fun, and good. I’m not as afraid of it as a I was as a kid.

But nonetheless, we can miss what’s good in our lives if we never pause to think about it.

Every book and movie about Christmas feels like it’s about that, doesn’t it?

Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe it’s something that humans just know, deep down, about holidays.

And remember that in the Bible, the angel told the shepherds “Peace on Earth and good will to men”. Designating the birth of Christ as the time to celebrate and have good will to each other.

So I have good will that all of you will have a good Christmas.

And even if you are dealing with some tough stuff this Christmas, try to find something to celebrate.

(I get to have a dentist appointment tomorrow that I didn’t want, and that’s just the beginning, so no, my life is not perfect right now, but, I’m not letting that steal my joy.)

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight, day, and whatever is in between.

Until next time–Natasha (do you know that name means Christmas? Fitting right.)

New Life, New Season

04/05/2021 / toseealife / Leave a comment

I suppose it’s unchristian not to do a post about Easter… have I ever done one before?

This may not be the most conventional subject for an Easter post, but I was thinking today about some of my old posts. Back from 2015 and 2016.

I wrote one post about how much I didn’t like being wrong. This was not long after I started my blog, probably just a couple months. Nothing has changed, I still hate being wrong.

Being wrong and surviving

And I wrote another post about forgiveness, at this time I was about 16 or 17, I’d say. I know it was before I moved.

At the time, my dad was still at home of course, and would be for a few more years, and he was as awful as usual, though at that time we interacted less, he was addicted to video games and unless I interfered with that, or was working with him to earn money, we hardly spoke.

By then I was already reading books about healing and coming to realize just how much pain I had from him and my mom. This is an except from a post I wrote at the time.

Then

Letting it go-from another angle.

“Forgiving is hard. Yet, I wonder why? We all make mistakes and so why are we so hard on each other for making them? Maybe we want to see a fairness in others that we don’t possess in ourselves.

Let me be clear; by forgiving I don’t mean letting people get away with serious wrong doing. Nor do I mean living in a sort of denial that the damage other people’s words do to you, is not that bad. It is actually much worse than most of us know. Forgiveness is actually acknowledging they did wrong and letting it go. In the words of Stasi Eldredge “It was wrong, very wrong, and I release you.”

Forgiveness is actually more for us than the offenders… Emotionally most of us have probably heard about the necessity of forgiveness. When you hold on to the actions of another, you build them into your brain. I don’t mean in a mind control sense. But when you hate someone you obsess over them, you think of them and the things they’ve said and done to you; if it’s someone close to you then you struggle with not having their approval on your life even as you despise their opinion. You feel indifferent to their pain and even glad when they suffer. You say you’ll forget them but you can’t, because you can’t let what they’ve done go. If you don’t remember who will? It won’t matter to anyone. And that is what scares us, that our pain won’t make a difference in anything. That we ourselves don’t matter. These people who hurt us were right about us then. The emotional and mental damage this does to us couldn’t be fully disclosed if we took hours and hours to talk about it. To not forgive is to agree with the people who hurt us and to sink to their level at the same time.

That is why the first step toward forgiving is admitting it was wrong and you were damaged. A lot of people don’t get this far. They won’t admit their weakness. Or in some cases they will only admit their weakness but never that they can overcome it. They wallow in their pain all their lives…

So, if you are willing to take step one and admit you have been hurt–bad (And someone may be thinking “I can so do that.” Well hold on.) What is step two? It varies. It may involve crying your heart out. Grieving the wound the Eldredges call it. (I highly recommend their books Wild at Heart or Captivating for more detail on this very important part.) In my own journey of forgiving, I cried several times; I shared my pain with trusted people–but don’t do it with the person who hurt you, that was always a disaster–I prayed about it. To which I attribute all progress I made. Pain can be scary because it is so deep. Sometimes we wish we’d left it alone in apathy and numbness. But really that’s even more frightening.

After sadness, or sometimes before it, will come anger. More anger. And fear. Here we face yet another choice, we can press on, releasing the anger and fear, or we can let it drive us back. At this point you will not feel like forgiving, nor will you feel like the person deserves it, it will be purely a choice. I suggest writing it down. Saying it. “I choose to forgive (insert their name).'”

Now

Now that I know so much more than I did then about the situation, this level of grace on my part astounds me. Yet, I know it wasn’t me, I wan’t that wise, I was simply following what my teachers taught me, I always did have that childlike faith.

Actually for some context, (sorry for burdening you with my dark past), at the time I was attending a very toxic church– not by choice, my father forced us all to go. I hated it. “

Well they hounded us from the pulpit about forgiveness and how unforgiveness would land us in hell.

I don’t disagree, the Bible is pretty clear about that… but this church took it to an extreme that ignored that real damage other people’s sins did to you. No talk of therapy, no talk of long term healing.. I ‘m not sure the idea of emotional healing was ever introduced. I know plenty of the parishioners had family issues.

My dad would repeat all this at home, expressing fears over himself not making it, and praying that we all would. His fear scared me, I would not have felt dubious about my own salvation, but he constantly introduced doubt. Small wonder I still struggle with it.

I’m not naturally much of a doubter, not anymore, but it seems sown into me. Popping up when I least want it to.

My dad also found testimonies on the internet about people who’d been to hell and back, or saw visions, and warned about unforgiveness.

I cannot say how much of it was true, all I know is the Bible has no stories of any Christian visiting hell and coming back, and no precedent for it, though heaven is permitted we know from Paul and John. Perhaps hell is not impossible, though no one would like it, but at the very least, many of the testimonies were too much like Dante’s Inferno, a human’s explanation of what hell would be like, and I am skeptical hell could make any more sense to us than Heaven, and no human would come up with what the Bible says about Heaven (read Ezekiel sometime)

That’s not really the point. I have to thank my dad in a way, that is what pushed me to salvation, finally. One has to learned to be thankful for what good did come of anything in our crappy past, though once I felt offended at the very idea. And I wouldn’t take kindly to anyone else telling me that, since they’d be dismissing what I went through.

No, my dad did a few things for me, though not really out of kindness in this case, it stands more to God’s power that the fear and doubt of those years actually led to something good for me, God truly can make goodness out of anything.

My dad also read the post I quoted above. Which I wrote with him in mind. I heard him talk to my mom about it while he was reading it. I remember what he said, I may never forget it:

“I was reading (my name)’s post… I can’t imagine who (she) could know that would have hurt her so badly.”

In said post, I wrote how talking to the person who hurt you did no good… thanks Dad, for proving me right.

I really didn’t want him to read my post, and wished my mom would have stopped him, but turns out I had nothing to worry about. I think that was one of the last times he read my blog at all. I know he doesn’t now, he’d not like what I write about him, I’d be sure to hear about it.

Now, I no longer think that telling someone they hurt you does no good, if they are a mature person who truly loves you. Or even immature, but not toxic (it’s not the same thing, after all), but I was right not to tell him.

Years later, probably a year before he moved out, my dad also said in one family meeting that he got a sense that I had very low self worth, and he prayed for me about it.

I was aware enough by then to be thinking “Thanks Dad, who do you think gave me low self worth”

Wasn’t you treating my like dirt my whole life, neglecting me, abusing my emotions, telling me I was responsible for all your problems.

Now, this is not a post just for me to whine about my life.

But, we’re talking about rebirth today.

I’m starting to, like Paul, boast in my weakness. If I can take pride in nothing else, I can take pride that I have this terrible story (though it wasn’t all terrible), and I still held onto my faith.

There are man things I am still waintg for, the fullr edmeption of my past, the full meaning of why it happened t o me. A chance to tell more peopel my story. I aprpeciate ou 220 or so followers, but IW ant to reach even more peopel, more and more.

I haven’t to dlit all here, some things I did not even realzie were significant until later. soem thing sId id not feel comfortable sharing yet.

What can I say about this trial that other, wiser, better peopel have not alread siad? All I jave if my own story.

I can tell you that I’ve never heard of anyone else doing what I did, reading the books, pupmping thmselves full of self-help, roads to healing, seeking and seeking and seeking.

It was terrible to go through that dark time last year when I feared all that was for nothing, I invented years of my life in healing, and I though I ended up just as screwed up anyway.

While no amount of reading could have prepared m for the shock of getting out of abuse, it did give me something to fall back on. I took the leadership role in my family in my dad’s absence. Not fully, perhaps, but as the other dominant personality, it just happened naturally.

I felt I had to protect them, that since I hatched the plan to get rid of him, I had to make sure they were okay.

It’s been a blow to crumble as much as I did, and not be able to work steadily either, but I had to let go of the idea that everything is my responsibility.

When my dad left, I got my life back.

Really, I was getting it back every time I wrote those posts like the ones above, that I was basing off my real efforts in prayer and self reflection. My dad put all that venom into my brain, and I spat it all out through prayer, tears, songs, and resolutions.

5 years later or so, I still do that. Thouh I make less resolutions, I’ve learned to be suspisonv of those.

While I was still deeply damaged by my dad, the way I handled it back then, by God’s leading, has gotten the poison out of the wound, so it could heal, and I’ve haled faster than I thought I would.

I still have bad days, today even, doubt assaulted me again, even in Church, but I didn’t give way to it like I sued to, I do not know when I will stop being tempted, but I am a lot stronger now.

I gained back the weight I lost too. I’m walking straighter than I ever have, and I have less stiffness and back pain.

My chiropractor tells me I will be a new person when the treatment is finally completed. It’s taken 3 times as long as I wanted to see results, but God never promised it would be done when I wanted, just that it would happen.

I eat more now too. I think I eat more now than before all this happened since I’ve learned when I feel bad, I’m usulaly hungry and low on calroies, not sick.

My gaggin epidose have been over for proably 5 months or more now.

New year, new me, is what I said when 2021 started.

But when I look back at those old posts, and remember how I was then, and see that my heart was more pure than I thought, and that I was trying my best to obey God, as I always have… I think, I’m also just ht old me.

Somehow, my dad never dseprtryon who I am. Though he treid. Somehow, I kept waht I wanted in mind. I’ve never waved for long on what I want.

I want to have a great ministry.

I want to write great books

I want a great marriage

I want many children.

Whether all that comes in the form of adoption, or whatever I end up dong, and travel, or staying home, I don’t care as much as I used to, I know that all this must be part of me for a reason. I was born wanting those things. Except writing, that came once I knew I could do it, but I was always a storyteller even before that.

For ears I eceived little t ono enocuagemanet form anyone about these deams, but I didn’t lose them. That’s a mircale, from what I hear form others, pretty much everyone loses their fdreams as they grow up. To raitne then till you’e 22 is rare. Bt hte ime I’m 30, it’ll be a minoritiy.

I have a feeling I will still wan the same thing at 30 as I do now, only hopefully, I’ll have some of it by then.

I’m a girl from a toxic, abusive family, I’m not supposed to be the statistic that gets a good marriage, and becomes a good parent.

I’m the one who got told she was wrong, and criticized for everything, I’m not supposed to succeed at my talents.

I’m the one who had someone sow doubt into me a lot, I’m not supposed to have a good ministry.

Well, flip all that, God is the God of the unexpected.

Sure, right now, I have small blog, smaller YouTube Channel, and only a couple short published books on kindle that no one reads. I’m not in a lot of ministry, and I’m at a point in life where it feels no one sees all that much in me.

Perfect time to be suddenly launched into something unexpected, God has a pattern, but He’s not predictable.

I don’t know what will happen in the next 5 years, but I haven’t waited all this time for nothing, I’m sure of that.

New Life means Old things getting a new vitality, and new things springing up. Jesus coming back to life didn’t just give us His old life back, it gave us an entirely new kind of man, as C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity.

An odd hybrid between the Divine and the mortal, that is what we are. One that you won’t find anywhere else in heaven or on earth, and how can I say what the purpose of it is?

John said “It is not yet revealed what we will be, but we know that when He is revealed, we will be like Him.” (1 John 3:2)

As I’ve come out of my depression and anxiety, they’ve begun to make less and less sense to me, I no longer understand the logic behind them. I am sure, that is God.

To be sure, I’m still tempted at times, and I won’t say I have the cure all for either of those two problems, since the path I walked had to be for me personally, and my fears, but some stuff overlaps in our lives.

I can’t even be certain I’ll never have another time of my life where I feel this way, though I can’t picture it fooling me ever again. Feelings are not the same as mindsets.

I do think some changes will last.

Someday, I hope, God will give me the words to describe what happened to other people. Just now, I am still too much in the process to explain it, and I’ve noted others don’t really understand me if I try.

But someday, surely, I will be able to look back and see it clearly. Hindsight is 20-20. (That’d be a good blog post title)

I get it, some of you are still in the darkness. I hope some of you have begun to see light.

If you wait long enough for something, with God, it will happen. Or something better will.

God showed me that, actually, one time I was talking to Him, and He brought it to my attention that if I just waited long enough something was bound to change, no state of being is permanent for a human.

We hate being told it’s just a phase, but everything is a phase. The Bible calls it a “Season”

I don’t know if any angry teen or young adult will read this, but if you’ve heard those words “it’s just a phase” I know, it’s annoying, but, take it from me, you’ll want to believe that. All pain can pass. Even the worst and deepest kinds.

And while I was not assaulted with what humanity considers the worse crimes, I’d venture to say I knew that deep pain as much as the next person. I take things very seriously.

At least I could not lie to myself that way. God made me this way for a reason. If I could be blind, like others, I might still be in that situation.

One thing I kept saying to my sister was this “No pit is so deep that He is not Deeper Still” (Betsie Ten Boom).

Well, I tink that is enough for today. Thank you for reading, and have a great day

Until next time–Natasha.

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Bad At Love

02/16/2021 / toseealife / 1 Comment

A slightly late post for Valentine’s Day that’s not about being single or family love or self care!

Yay!

There was something in my post Why not just reconcile?, there was one part my sister told me she really liked.

“You shouldn’t aim to be better than someone else, you should aim to be as good as you can be. As loving, as pure, as brave, as wise, and then you have no real limit, you can always grow.”

We talking about that, and I said “Love is exponential.”

What I meant by that, is that we tend to weigh and balance love by certain standards.

It’s kind of what Valentine’s day has become hasn’t it. You got to do the flowers, candy, stuffed animals, and if you have an SO, you got to have holiday sex (I might be a sheltered homeschooler, but I know how it goes, I read books. Yes, I’m aware that flex just makes me sound more sheltered, but it is like that for real.)

Great day for me, right, single since birth?

Well, like many people, I chose to look at the day as a day to remember to think of anyone I love. I get my family chocolates or cards, usually candy, since my card making skills suck and buying that stuff is pricey.

So, I don’t get depressed on Valentine’s Day, but it does remind me how we have commercialized everything now, how we put pressure on ourselves to love on just certain days of the ear.

I am all for holidays, St. Valentine is someone I look up to, anyone who stands up for love and marriage tot he point of death is going to be important to a romantic such as myself. I love the idea of having a day just to remember love.

What I don’t love is that holidays are often not just the public day of love, but the only private day of it for many people.

I read in a book once about one couple who’s kids were all born in November because Valentine’s Day was one of their only sex days, that’s just not right.

Not that sex has to be present if both partners are not physically able to have it, but if they are, then that’s just sad.

And that’s the problem. What’s the use of paying lip service to Love, literally (sorry that joke was horrible) on one day if you ignore our family the other days.

I also don’t like the Single’s Awareness Day jokes, because to me it disrespects the whole thing, very selfishly. You don’t have to be married or dating to value marriage or dating, in fact, if you only value those thins when you have them, you don’t value them truly for unselfish reasons.

Spending a day getting jealous of all your not-single friends is hardly encouraging you to think of Love on better terms.

And Love goes beyond that romantic kind. That stuff is really good, but it’s not the only thing.

Though, I will say, we are undervaluing even the erotic side of love these days.

If you read Song of Solomon, you’ll see that even our ideas of sex are far short of the Bibles in terms of the adoration between lovers and the purity of sex when it’s done right, ad the sheer joy of loving each other so deeply. I don’t see that too much anymore.

I think there are times, as C. S. Lewis even said, that you have to encourage your desire for sex with your spouse. That may be the most important thing to do at that time.

But any one with half a heart ought to see that’s really something you do because you have a deeper love that goes beyond your own conveniences or wishes.

And that’s what I wanted to talk about.

As a culture, as humans, we are just bad at love. There’s two songs, and at least one Webtoon titled that that i know of, and far more people who’d admit they suck at relationships.

Common reasons?:

Jealously

Fear of Commitment

Fear of Intimacy

Baggage (usually the reason for all of the above)

Do you know anyone who’s GREAT at Love?

If I do, it’s not many people. I know far more people who wish the were better at it, and even more who probably don’t even think about it being the most important thing in life.

This was brought to my mind even more by a conversation with my 10 year old cousin last week.

Ever since I started tutoring/mentoring her this kid has been giving me crap, throwing tantrums, trying to guilt me and blame me for all her stress and insecurities being triggered, and saying she’ll talk to her parent about it.

Of course she has no idea who she’s dealing with, I’ve heard all this before, multiple times.

Last week, she admitted to ling to me the whole week because she doesn’t like me being there, watching her. I told her I was disappointed to hear this since we had talked about trust. I asked her how I was supposed to believe her when she told me stuff, if she had lied to me for 3 days straight just to get around me.

She didn’t honestly have an answer to that, and I didn’t expect one.

But she got very emotional and finally she said “I’m just bad at love” or “being loved.” Like how she doesn’t always want hugs when she’s emotional, and how she used to be good at making friends, and now she’s not (thanks to some mean kids beginning to bully her).

Unfortunately, her home environment can be toxic too, her parents aren’t so bad, but their relatives and friends constantly expose the kids to ridicule over very minor mistakes that has caused both of my cousins to shut down in different ways. They are more open around us, but sometimes do the same thing if we ever show displeasure or disagree with them. To them, that means mockery is coming, though we never mock them ourselves.

I know how they feel, my dad subjected me to many humiliating experiences, and so do my relatives on their side of the family. I have never been comfortable around them, now that I am an adult, I’ve grown stronger and I usually am left alone by the relatives, but it took years to get to that point, and when you live in it, what do you expect?

That sad thing is, this is hardly abnormal now. In fact, my aunt and uncle are still above average parents, but they don’t have a clue how to do positive reinforcement. I support discipline, but not exclusively, it’s too discouraging. Giving people digs is just normal in our day and age in America, and I can’t change that myself singlehandedly.

But I am left to deal with the effects of it, because my cousin is to scared to confront her actual parents, so she projects it all onto me because I am nicer to her, and more considerate. When she got fed up and said she’s “bad at love” I was remind of myself.

I didn’t talk to anyone about it, but when I was even younger than her, I had trouble feeling love, and I thought there was something wrong with me. Looking bad, I did feel love when I was 4 or 5, but my anxiety and other fears took over sometime after that, though I remained affectionate for a while, til my dad’s treatment squelched it mostly. Then in my teens and pre-teens, it got really bad, with my dad actively trying to give me a complex. I only got through it because I came to Christ at 13 and began to mature in Love.

Love has always bee my primary focus as a Christian, when I came to Christ, I had been seeking out the truth about love, without even knowing it, reading certain books, watching things, and trying to understand. Once that change happened, the world became alive for me. I remember one of the first things was I began to enjoy Nature, I never cared much about it before, but I did after that, I read in “Hind’s Feet on High Places” of the same thing happening to Hannah Hurnard. I’ve known my sisters to have the same experience too.

Without love and life in us, it’s no wonder we turn to the over stimulus of electronics. It’s hard to be in Nature when you can’t love problem, it tends to remind you how empty you are.

Maybe it’s because real things cost us so much.

A fake bouquet can be bought for a dollar, a real one is going to cost you. Fake gold is cheap, real gold isn’t. Fake jewels, fake cards, everything digital and plastic is less expensive.

And somehow, less satisfying. Even the chocolate that’s cheap just doesn’t’ taste as good and we savor it less.

My cousin is a kid growing up in a culture obsessed with fake love. To the point where it’s semi-normal to have imaginary waifus and husbandos, and ou can get a certificate of marriage to an anime character, and be in a dating sims with one too.

I saw this dumb pick up line on Webtoon yesterday as part of some weird Valentine’s Day special “I’ll be your body pillow”

Do NOT look that up if you didn’t get it, it’s not worth it. I only know because I watch other fans talk about shows.

Hey, I am not knocking fictional romance, it’s actually therapy for me. At least seeing better examples of love than I saw growing up gives me hope. I know it’s not all like a story, but if it could even be partially like that, that’s way better than what I saw.

But, at some point, you have to get up and go put this into practice. You have to try to be the kind of supportive friend you read about, or boyfriend, or girlfriend.

The main thing that stops us is FEAR.

Fear and Love just do not go togheter.

Why don’t I confess to my crush? I am afraid of losing a friend, and humiliating myself.

1 John 4:18 says “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has torment.”

I was tormented by love growing up in a toxic house, and it’s gets complicated.

I believe in the sacredness of Love so much that few things seem worse to me than twisting it into a tool. That’s why my favorite books is “Till We Have Faces” which contrasts holy and profane love with each other.

Profane Love, as the MC of the book says “Can grow to be nine tenths hatred and still call itself Love.”

No one likes to be loved like this, but all of us can fall into the trap of loving this way if we don’t watch ourselves.

I read a Webtoon that also illustrated this well, called “Freaking Romance.”

In this story, a girl and guy from different dimension find each other and fall in love, but the girl resists it because she hates love. “Love” was what her abusive father called it when he controlled her and stole form her and tried to force things on her. Reading that part was difficult for me, some of it was almost word for word what my own dad would say. Down to the fake apologies and gifts.

The guy i this story had an abusive mom, and in one of the best episodes of the comic, he tells another girl with a toxic past, that broken people tend to be drawn to each other, wanting to fix each other’s pain and thereby fix their own, and that can be good, with two people who truly want to be better, such as him and the MC, but in other cases, it can feed into it and recreate the cycle, which is far more common, sadly.

But he wants to be the kind of guy who heals. And the MC ends up falling for that despite her misgivings.

The story rather maturely acknowledges that her mistrust is more becaue of her own past than anthin the guy ever does. Wehn they finally decise to give it a shot, she learns to try to giv emore.

Spoiler alert if you want to read it:

At the climax, Zylith is given the change to be with Zelen forever, if she will get everything she ever wanted, ad then give it up just to be with him. it’s important, because she’s constantly chosen her career over love, and hesitated to to change her mind, even in a crisis. Zylith agrees, gets all that, ad finally gets to return to Zelen. He tells her he’d never ask her to give all that up for him,and she shouldn’t have to.

she replies that though it was great to get allt hat, it wasn’t satifuing, becuase she didn’t ahve him. And she makes an efoort after that to be a giver, not just a tkaer.

Notably, the cosmic forces at work in the story were firm but fair. IF you can’t give our all at love, why be in a relationshp?

That does not mean everone needs to be able to love like that gong into a rleationship, I don’t think any human being starts off that way, myself.

IT means that no matter where ou start from, ou give it all you can there.

That could mean taking our steps to get off an addiction, going to therapy for your mental health, and getting rid of your toxic influences. All that is love, if you do it to become a better person. And don’t ask your SO to fix you.

On the other hand, for some of us, it’s letting our SO help us, and support us, being honest with them, and working not to take out our issues on them when they tr to help. That is also love.

Love is not really about whether you give or you take from an outward standpoint. In true Love, giving and taking become indistinguishable.

Giving a service to someone is a gift, but receiving it is also a gift, I’ve learned that form personal experience, real love is never selfish, whether it gives or takes, because in a way, it is always giving, and always taking, since you get pleasure form loving.

Love then, is just a way of life. It is life. No one without love is really living.

The Bible doesn’t say that in so many words, because the Bible assumes the truth of that. God requires us to Love each other in order to be holy, and to love Him in order to please Him, but he doesn’t demand it. It is simply what we’re told will actually make us right again.

All God does is Love, and if the Bible reiterated that, it’d be every time God is mentioned. Though it does not always look like love to us, that doesn’t matter.

And truly good people do all they do out of love of some sort. That’s just the truth.

I’d tell you all what I told my cousin, for me, there is not way to stop being Bad at Love except through God. That is all that changed me, and all that does now, and all that kept me from becoming toxic.

With that, I think I’ll wrap this up. Happy Love Celebration Day, stay honest–Natasha.

I don’t really like this song but it matched the title so….