Inspired

We all need it

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Hey viewers, I was planning another more positive post, but today I heard someone say something that shook me up. I heard someone say they should just kill themselves.

I don’t have much to say about it. But I have felt that way too.

Reach higher.

People like me, we get our hopes up, set ourselves these high reaching goals; and imagine what a fulfilling existence would be like…and then we find ourselves stuck in the day to day living.

“Any idiot can survive a crisis, it’s the day to day living that wears you out.” Unknown source

I was never more depressed in my life than in the two years I spent prior to finding God. I don’t mean I never enjoyed myself in that time, or that I didn’t eat, or anything like that; but I lived everyday with the underlying question why I was so miserable.

I am so different now it’s hard to believe it, that part of my life seems so small and shell-like. But I still get reminded of it from time to time. I used to feel sick to my stomach nearly everyday, because I felt that way whenever I was scared or nervous or just plain worrying. I used to be a hypochondriac and feel sick whenever I heard or read about illness. I used to have irrational fears of monsters and other stuff I won’t go into. And those were the small problems. My overall problem was fear. Like Charlie Brown, I was afraid of everything.

Fear has torment. That’s why it makes you depressed. Fear makes you hopeless if it stays too long.

The second time in my life I was depressed was when I’d been a Christian for a year or two, and God just went into hiding. Every believer deals with this sooner or later. And knowing that helped, but for awhile I felt like my faith was pointless.

That experience taught me so much. I learned that faith is not a feeling. Because when you feel bad, even if you believe your religion is based on facts and knowledge, then it looks false. I learned that praising God when you don’t feel like it is sometimes the only thing that brings Him closer, and that’s not for Him, it’s for us, to remember what kind of God we serve. But I also learned that God doesn’t leave, He simply becomes less visible so you have to search deeper and deeper to find him. And that can either make you angry, if you let it; or it can make you stronger.

Maybe I’m alone in this, but I think when God says His ways are higher than our ways, He means that the way he chooses to do things is what it best, even though it makes no sense to us at all. But until we can admit that our ways are the lesser because we are the lesser, we can’t be raised up to see His point of view. That’s why Christians are always talking about going higher than before, and being lifted up. But non-Christians get this concept too when they realize that maturity is a thing, and what it looks like. (And no one is born knowing that.) Maturity is the simplest example of what I’m talking about. It’s the difference between pretending to bake a cake a s a kid, and actually baking one as a young cook (and messing it up probably) and then finally learning how to do it right. At first there is no real difficulty, and no real reward either; then there’s a lot of difficulty and still no reward; then you get to be good at it and the reward is two-fold, the cake and the accomplishment.

But first of all you have to want to. And to want to you have to be hungry. I’ve heard this over and over again. Hunger never gets any easier does it? In fact, it gets harder. But if you learn to understand it, then you can do something about it. Maybe we all wish there were easier ways to achieve the Great things in life. But that is because we are down here, and we need to be higher. (I guess I had plenty to say after all. It’s gotten easier to talk about the rough patches of my life.)

As you all can see, I have no picture perfect existence. I’ve talked a lot about my faith in this post, because I had to, there is just no other way to understand things like this. I got shaken up, and it’s happened before, and it hurts every time. But nothing has taken me out yet, and nothing has to take you out either. My advice if you’re feeling bad is to hold on; play good music; read a good book; chat with a good friend about it; and keep holding on.

Until next time–Natasha

Life as Riley Matthews

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It’s no secret that I, Natasha, like the show Girl Meets World. For various reasons. But today I wanted to write about something I thought of after watching the episode “Girl Meets Pluto.”

One of the main characters, Riley, is often described as a goofball who only sees the good in everything. And she wants to believe Pluto is still a planet. Whatever your thoughts might be on that, I can relate to her; I never wanted Pluto to stop being a planet. When I originally learned the Solar System,( via the Magic School bus,) I taught it to my younger sister. It was one of my first teaching experiences; I loved it. And Pluto was still a planet.

Do you see why I still want to think of it as such? Perhaps the fact of the matter is, as I’ve heard pointed out, that it’s ridiculous for us human beings to think we can decide what anything as huge as a planet is. But really, its not about how much we know, or how we can measure stuff, we names thing so we can learn about them and so they mean something to us.

If Pluto is a planet it has more dignity than what it’s called now, an “Ice dwarf.” Ugh. It’s one thing to decide something is grander than you knew at first, like the sun being more central than the earth; but it’s another to decide something is lesser than you thought. The earth is actually more central than we used to think. And I can understand why Riley still wants to believe Pluto is a planet.

I have a lot of Riley in me. I want to see things in a good light. Even if/when I hear hard facts, I wonder if there’s a brighter side that no one knows about. Is there a hidden good? Perhaps that sounds like nonsense to other people. Sometimes I think it is and that I just look for what’s not there. But here’s the thing: I like being this way. From all I’ve observed, in my short life, being pessimistic only makes you miserable, and it means you are always living in fear of bad things happening. I know too many people who tend to think the worst. They aren’t happy. Though “There’s more to life than that–Don’t ask me what.” (Fiddler on the Roof.)

I have to say I’ve been disappointed a lot, and I have my moments of wanting to give up on hoping for the best. But in the end, I can’t, because the day I lose hope, I lose everything. If you have no hope, you won’t see the good that is there, and you won’t expect the good that might happen. (Ever wonder why people who are pessimists are also the most critical?)

I have to have hope even to think anyone might read this post, and more hope to think it might help them out.

One final thought: Hope is not always a feeling. It is a choice. It is choosing not to say that the worst will happen; hope is waking up in the morning and being glad to start the day; hope is doing your work because you know it’ll benefit you in the long run; hope is risking standing up for something because you think it can get better; hope is seeing the political mess around us and believing good things can still happen; hope is turning off the electronics and doing something in the real world; hope is encouraging someone else because it could brighten their day. What fuels all this is love. Hope is the action of love. One of them anyway. Or perhaps it’d be better to say hope is the action of faith. Whatever works for you.

100_4836Okay, that’s all I’m going to say for this post, hope you enjoyed it–Natasha.

A me-centered universe

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I’m sure you’ve heard the term me–centered. it means self-centered/selfish. Looking out only for the needs of yourself. And Sometimes we aren’t even aware of this attitude in our selves, I’ve been accused of being self-absorbed simply for taking something too personally or being preoccupied with my own feelings.

I’m just laying this out for context, I don’t actually want to discuss being selfish. I’m more interested in the question: What is the center of everything?

It could be us in that we observe the world from inside ourselves. Everything you take in from around you is regulated by what’s inside you. Air is regulated by your lungs, food by your digestive stem, sound by your ears, and light by you eyes. (Darkness is the absence of light and you don’t need sight to see it.) And I think the good and bad things around you are all processed by your mind, heart, and soul. One could say “Me is the lens I see and feel everything through, therefore me is the center of everything.”

It reminds me of how scientists used to think the earth was the center of the solar system. We saw everything going around the earth after all, the sun and moon both moved across the sky. The planets moved more slowly. It was just logic. Right? Wrong.

Oddly enough, a man named Copernicus came up with a different theory. And years and years later we actually have pictures that prove the earth is not the center of the solar system. Turns out the sun is.

Great for the sun right? But what does it have to do with the subject? Well, in thinking about what to write, I remembered what C. S. Lewis says in the end of his book Perelandra. (The sequel to Out of the Silent Planet.) Lewis basically introduces the idea that the universe is set up for each thing, each creation is made for every other creation, and every other creation is made for every individual thing. Like a puzzle, each piece is part of a bigger picture, but the bigger picture is not complete without that pieces and all the other pieces need it to do their job.

What is so brilliant about this idea is that I can see it all through creation. The ecosystem for one example, animals need plants, plants need animals, our air needs both  oxygen and carbon dioxide which come from plants and animals (and people.) And all that is connected to the water cycle, but I could go on for pages about that. I think I’ve made my point.

You may not be the center of everything, but in a way, everything is set up for your existence. It can be hard to see at first, but think how many things other people do for you on a daily basis that you never thing about. Someone made the car you drive in, the phone you use, the screen you’re reading this off of, someone built the roads you travel on, wrote the books you love, designed the work or school system you’re a part of, grew the food you eat, routed and purified the water you’re drinking, and made the clothes you’re wearing. Maybe you don’t like everything other people have caused in your life, but have you ever realized how much you rely on them to live at all?

Our lives are woven together like a tapestry. You affect way more people than you think. Often in ways that the best detective  couldn’t trace back but if we could look at time from the outside we’d see we had a hand in the most obscure details.

The sun is the center of the solar system, but it’s rays reach out through  the whole space. And I’ve heard that the whole universe as we know is balanced perfectly for life on earth, only on earth, without the rest of the universe the sun would not be able to exist. (Don’t quote me on this I’m not a scientist, I just love it.)

I don’t actually believe anything is the center of the universe, because then you’d have to fir everything else around that thing, I believe instead that everything is overlapping into everything else. I believe God should be not just the center of  my life, but in every part of it.

The fact about centers is that they narrow things down, I prefer things broadened out.

That’s all for this longish post. Until next time–Natasha.

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Starlight

What I saw on the highway

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APATHY…HOPELESS… A few weeks ago I was in the car on the way to church and I noticed some graffiti along the highway. These are two of the words I caught. But there were more, all about the same. And I’m sure if you’ve seen any graffiti you know it’s usually depressing, or downright vulgar, occasionally you get the artistic words that don’t make any sense but whoever painted them seems to think they’re better than cuss words and negativity. What’s interesting is that only a short time after noting those words, I read somewhere (I believe it was another blog) that graffiti can tell us what young people are thinking nowadays.

I’m not sure how true that is, but certainly some angry teens are trying to tell us something. I have known moments where I felt life proclaiming to the world what I was feeling, not because the world could help me, but because I wanted someone to know and to notice.

In retrospect, I know that I had a lack of communication skills as a younger teen. And that it was because I had trust issues. ( We call it cynicism when it’s adults.) Plenty of lonely teens and kids are asking “Who hears? Who cares?” And I still ask those questions sometimes, but now when I ask I have the answer. Doubt is not the question, doubt  is having the answer and then questioning that.

We exist to be loved, and all of us know it deep down. When we feel unloved and don’t know why, we may think we’ve missed it somehow. That at some point in time either we made the wrong move, or someone just decided we  weren’t worth their time, or we were left behind by mistake; and eventually we conclude it is too late, better find something else to live for.

But what else is there? People do everything they do out of love, or need. And they are happy accordingly. It is terribly sad that there are young people out there who feel so unloved that they tell us all that apathy is the way to live, and life is hopeless. I’m not saying it is right or wrong to spray paint on the highway, I’m asking why.

I’ve wondered a lot why no one ever asked me why I was the way I was as an early teen. I think they probably just didn’t know what to ask, And my past is in the past, I’ve moved on. But I didn’t do it on my own. It took a lot of prayer, and I don’t mean the repetitive, religious prayer, but the kind where the tears are streaming and you feel like you’re being crushed under the weight of your pain. (Ever been there?) It sounds bad, and it certainly felt bad, but when you come to grips with your pain, it’s a huge relief.

I’m going to close this with a word of encouragement to anyone who can relate to what I’ve shared. There is hope. Apathy is never the answer because apathy is it’s own kind of hurt. it is better to face the real hurt and get healed. God can do that for you, or other people can help you. But it’s all a matter of opening up. And if there’s no one at all to turn to that’s when I’ve always found God to be my help.

I think that’s enough for all of us for one post–until next time, Natasha

Don’t be too nice

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I titled this in a very unusual way; but I think you can all guess where I’m going with it.

I just read Martin Luther’s “Before the Diet of Worms” speech. Worms (also spelt Wyrms) is a place in Germany, the Diet is apparently the Emperor and his cabinet,( the paper doesn’t say, but I gathered that from what I read.) I was struck by the points he made about in our effort to not allow fighting and arguments, we might fight against the Word of God itself.

As John Eldredge has pointed out in his book Wild at Heart; there is such a thing as being too nice. You know those people in movies who drive the audience (and often the other characters) nuts because they won’t stand up for someone else or even themselves? Or the type of person who Philippa Gordon, in Anne of the Island, calls uninteresting because “She never says but good of anybody.”

We all know there’s wickedness in the world, and while dwelling on it is gloomy and unhealthy, a person who will never speak of it at all seems hardly wise, smart, or realistic. And they also seem weak.

I have actually been lectured on how I need to know what’s going on in the world, which always means the bad stuff I notice, but I do dislike to think of the unpleasant things. I am not at all saying we should go looking for the wrong stuff in this world. It will find you. And when it does, as it did Martin Luther, we need to be willing to take a stand.

That’s a common phrase to hear nowadays, but taking a stand is a serious thing. It always has risks; it always could turn out badly, from our perspective anyway. We could be mocked, or ostracized, or we could simply fail to change anything.

And what’s more, we need to realize that not everything is worth standing for. For me the test is always in if it is biblical, if it is affecting an important thing, and if the potential benefits out weigh the potential damage. But I’ve taken very few stands in my life. If that seems surprising given the nature of this blog, then let me just say that it is much simpler to address the questions I have myself, via the internet, then to know when it’s a good idea in real life to make an issue of something. I have less to lose, and I am not fighting with my audience. That is not to say honesty on social media is not scary no matter who you are or how many followers you have, but real life is always more daunting.

When we take a stand we must care more about the truth then about what we want. But we also need to be loving and kind to the people we are standing against, remembering that they are human being just like us. Kindness does not equal niceness, it is unkind to be nice to someone who really need a good shaking up. It is also unkind to shake someone who really needs a hug. It about what is needed, not what either party wants.

A stand can be quiet, or it can be loud. It can be silence, or it can be yells and shouts. Both are right in their own time and place. But yelling doesn’t make something a stand. And quiet doesn’t mean kindness. It’s all in the reason.

But never taking a stand is worse then not making it perfectly. We are so anxious not to offend people. We are so concerned with who likes us. (Even now I can’t help wondering if I’ll get any likes or comments on this post.) I have seen a problem either ignored, or handled in the nicest possible way, so many times, and very few times have I seen anyone really take the harder route.

You know, we’ll never be complete human beings until we will fight for something with all our might and main. Sometimes it will even be with ourselves. But we can’t sugarcoat everything. We can’t keep turning a blind eye, unless we want to turn blind next.

This has been a little less encouraging than usual, but I hope you’ll take it not as criticism, but as a challenge to look around and face things with courage. I know the Martin Luther inspired that feeling in me. I just want o pass it on. With that–until next time.

Natasha.

Experiences.

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I am updating this post because it’s been several months.

I want to get more into why we have experiences in this reboot.

Brushing your teeth is an experience, but it is not really memorable; versus going to another country, which you will probably remember as long as you have a sharp mind.

Though experiences themselves are easily defined by the facts, what they do to us inside, that is not so easy.

It’s funny how a seemingly terrible experience can later in life prove to be a good thing. one you are even grateful for. Like having a bad tooth pulled. Or getting disciplined by your parents. Or it can be a far worse experience, traumatic even, yet later, it makes you stronger.

I want to share with you guys something I got into this week, it’s an old comic book story, by Jack Kirby, about Scott Free and Big Barda.

AS yo may know, I don’t read a lot of comic books, but here and there I have one I like. This actually was all a tory I read online and saw pieces of on Justice League Unlimited, I only rada little of it in an actual comic book. I am not endorsing the show, but id o recommend reading the comic book saga if you get the chance, it’s an amazing story.

Not just because it may be the most romantic one in the DC universe, and it has a functioning couple to boot, but because even individually the stories of these two characters are poignant and surprisingly real.

Raised on the hellish planted of Apocalips, Scott and Barda are very different. Scott is the adopted son of the ruler of the planet, Darkseid, while Barda is a selected child who is being groomed to be the head of the furies, horrible female warriors who have no mercy, no pity, no remorse. It’s not really their fault, they are all brainwashed, hypnotized, and severely punished for doing anything remotely good or beautiful that Darkseid doesn’t like.

To make a longs tory short, Scott and Barda both witness one injustice too many, and Scott decides to flee to Earth, Barda, for reasons she does not fully understand, decides to help him, but does not follow till later. When she does they are happily reunited, and after a lot of adventures together come to realize they have fallen in love, they get married, and continue to have adventures. Though the most memorable may be the one where they go back to their “home” and face their nightmares (almost literally.)

Now I bring this up because the amount of experiences both these characters have is huge, and most of the experiences, at least early on, were bad.

So, it’s just a comic book, right?

Never!

Something about this story rung true with me. I have not had such a horrible life thank goodness, but I recognized something about it.

see, though we don’t live on a world that has no hope, many of us live in a kind of personal misery where we feel no hope. And we are brainwashed by many sources, hypnotized by entertainment, and severely punished by circumstances or possibly other people if we dare go against the norm.

I’ll bet most of us would look at Scott and Barda and say “that would never happen in real life, two people raised like they were would never be able to live a healthy lifestyle.”

Come on, is our modern phycology so very different from the kind of messages I’m sure Scott and Barda both heard? “You are meant for this, you can never be anything else, hope is pointless.” And I do not mean the lack of self esteem, but the lack of awareness just of what life is really about.

You might say, and honestly I would have agreed with you, that Scott and Barda would both be really messed up. Haunted by their past. and for awhile, they were. It literally cam after them. But they protected each other.

Until the fateful moment when Scott decided he was through running. He would go back and face it. And Barda, though she believed they would die, went with him. And they didn’t die, though they came close.

And this is how I feel like I relate to this story. Facing your past, and the fears that go with it, can be terrifying. You can feel like you’re going to die. Pain hurts. That’s what pain does.

But here’s why I don’t find their story unbelievable and I do find it real: I have been on the same journey. I continue on it. I do not feel as fearless as Barda, or as clever and optimistic as Scott; but I have had to learn to be brave, wise, and hopeful. I love Barda because she tells Scott right before they go into a dangerous situation, which she compares to a shark. “We’re jumping down that shark’s mouth together–and then I’ll beat it to death from the inside.” Who doesn’t want to marry someone with that kind of devotion?

Having a rough life may suck while it is rough, but one thing is certain, you cannot become so tenacious as to beat a shark to death, unless you’ve had a rough time of it.

And it takes tenacity to love, take it from someone who once had the backbone of a jellyfish, at least when it came to facing my own demons.

Scott understands, as he tells Barda, that they are proof Apokalips can fall. Not because they have defeated Darkseid himself, but because they defeated the darkness that he tried to instill in them. They overcame it with love and justice.

Usually we think of love, but you need justice too. Justice is what tells you when it is time to face your fears, justice tell s you when it is not fair to other people to act the way you do. Justice tells you that you should have a better fate than what you’ve been assigned by your enemies. (Whatever form they take.)

I think we are apt to get tired of hearing about the inner battle, but it is the one we have the most active part in, and it affects more than you know. More than I know.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to fight, ladies and gentlemen, and if you find a person who will jump down that shark with you, keep them around.

Note to self: Marry somebody who has no problem beating a shark to death if  it should ever be necessary.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this unabridged post from DryBonesTruth. Until next time

–Natasha