Love

What’s in a name?

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Well it’s been over a week. It’s the Holidays you know, there’s more to think about, also I have other writing projects I work on besides this blog.

This may or may not be surprising, but blogging is the way I get out my more intellectual ideas and explore real life phenomenon. My real passion in writing is fiction. I love making stuff up. Writing about my own life usually bores me after awhile. Maybe because not too many things have happened to me yet. When you spend most of your time at home, even little things become important, but it doesn’t mean they’d be interesting to anyone else.

An interesting thing that happened last week was I looked myself up on the internet. Of course I can’t be specific, but I found out that a lot of people share my name, my fuller name that is (I knew there were other Natashas already.) And some interesting people have my name. I wouldn’t necessarily trade places with them, but one happens to be a writer of sorts, what are the odds?

It got me thinking about names. Some people think certain names give you certain characteristics. This may be true. In the Bible there’s a story about a guy who’s name meant “fool” and that’s what he was. But then there’s names that mean pretty basic things, like a plant or even a kind of metal, and you can’t say a person will become like that can you?

Maybe it’s all in why you choose a name for something. Plants that are given names thrive better, if the names are good. Naming anything makes you get more fond of it, unless you give it a name to express your contempt. We’ve probably all seen, or read about, or encountered a bully who nicknames their victim something awful, and it demoralizes them. We  know that what you label someone slants your view of them.

You’d think with all our knowledge we’d learn to be careful about what we call people, but knowledge never makes anyone careful unless they are careful already, by nature. I am fortunate to have good names, and very few people have ever nicknamed me, and eve fewer have nicknamed me something bad. But it only takes one time to teach you how much it stings. The worst thing is if you start believing what they call you.

I actually like to nickname people, and usually I don’t do it with an intent to annoy them, but I used to. (To my siblings.) So I’m well aware of how easy it is to start using this power of words the wrong way. And there are many wrong  ways, this is just one of them. I don’t want to hate on anyone reading who’s done this, because I shouldn’t talk. But believe me, it is so much better if you stop. since I stopped doing it, it’s like I can breathe better in my relationships with those people.

I’ve heard that I’m just too sensitive about this type of thing, but in my experience, it’s just better to clear the air and not antagonize people. (On purpose.) The bible has plenty to say about this, and so do plenty of other sources. Like Aesop’s Fables, and plenty of less famous books. You’d be hard put to find a story in which the use of words did not lead to trouble  in sooner or later.  So I think I’ve now made my point quite distincly. I’ve said enough.

Until next post–Natasha.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Naturally, I won’t be posting tomorrow, so I’ll say it now.

I have a lot coming up. I’m turning 18 soon. Something I’ve been waiting for since I was old enough to like taking care of kids, which was 6 or 7 for me.(I don’t mean I babysat at that age, of course.) My birthday will also mean I’m finally old enough to drive, which I held off on till this long because I heard it was better, and we didn’t have a good car anyway. (It was an amazing car, but not for a beginner.) I also self inflicted a no-dating principle till I turned 18. And now I know why that was wise advice I was given, because looking back, I wasn’t ready to date any sooner than this.

This is my year of change, that is  certain. Nothing has been constant since this Summer, but thing started changing last Summer. I believe this is sometimes called a Year of Grace.

But I’ve become a much more confident person, and I’ve had some dreams to fulfill come to me, and I have places to get to in life. And how many people can say that at the brink of 18?

Circumstantially, I have less to be thankful for than I did a year ago. But I won’t focus on that. Those who have next to nothing and are thankful for that are more thankful than people who have plenty, 9 times out of 10.

So, as it is the point of the holiday, I encourage everyone to take a minute to look over the past year and see what they’ve grown into, and what experiences they had that taught them, or changed their lives. I’d love to hear about this if anyone wants to comment. Thank you for reading, see you after Thursday.–Natasha.

I’m in Control.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I hope I won’t lose points if I admit that I do, on occasion, like to watch Barbie movies. Barbie annoys the heck out of me 90% of the time, but now and then the company comes out with a good movie. (Is there a hashtag for that?) In case anyone reading likes her, here are my top three: Barbie and  The Fairy Secret, Barbie Princess Charm school, And Barbie Starlight Adventure. The titles are the worst, I admit, but the content isn’t. Okay, now to why I am bringing this up. In yet another movie (The Princess and the Pop star,)045 there’s  a song that’s pretty good, and one line in it has always grabbed my attention. “I’m in control, I broke the mold, the girl you see is up to me.” (Here I am.) It’s a standard theme, being yourself.

But I always think of the implications. It’s one thing to be yourself, it’s another to think that means no rules, no boundaries. “No right, no wrong, no rules for me, I’m free!” I love Elsa, but I’ve never like that part of the song. But  the words “I’m in control” from the above song, those warrant a little reflection.

What does it mean to be in control? Especially of your career, your life, your self.

Well we all know one can’t be in control of one’s career, disaster can strike, at any time. We hope it will not, or we ignore the possibility, but it is there. You can make career choices, but you can’t control accidents, economy, or public zeal.

Being in control of our life is something a lot of us really want. If only we could meet all its demands, and still do something meaningful. If we could know we were making a difference. Well, we are, whether we know it or not. No one is inconsequential. On our own strength, I really don’t think we can balance all aspects of life. And that is because of thing number three.

If we can’t control ourselves, then we can’t control anything else. I heard the term Self-Control for years before I knew what it was. I’m still figuring it out actually, but this is what I’ve got so far: Self Control is the ability to keep your feelings and impulses from ruling your behavior. It is not banishing all feeling of pain or sadness, it is simply not letting those feelings ruin your life. Self Control means if you get angry, you can keep from blowing up at someone, even if they deserve it. Self Control means you’ll do what you intend to, and not get side tracked or succumb to temptation.

In that movie of movies, Frozen, Elsa thinks for a while that the key to freedom is having no rules to break. But no one has to tell her that’s not true, she realizes it pretty quickly after her sister informs her that she’s plunged her entire kingdom into deep winter; eternal winter they think. (I suppose there’s no proof it was eternal.) Elsa finds out that whether she’s around man-made rules or not, there are rules of nature. Fear does affect things. And she’d not gotten rid of hers yet. Fear is very hard to control, I’ll admit. Sometimes you can’t, the only time you can is when something else is more important than fear. I make this point because so many things in ourselves that we don’t control are fear-based. Anger is, panic is, stress is, binging is. The answer is, of course, Love.

Love is my favorite thing to talk about, because it’s all we need. Every need finds its root in love. God’s love is the cure for every fear, and human love can do wonders as well.

Before Self Control, comes love. So at best, the message that you can be yourself when you learn self-control is half cocked. You can be yourself when you know you’re loved. Bottom line. And I mean really loved, unconditionally.

All right, that’s all I’ve got for now. Next time–Natasha.

Still have it.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

“…But I know in my soul that no matter how bad it gets, I’ll be all right.

There’s hope in front of me, there’s a light I still see it, there’s a hand still holding me, even when I don’t believe it.

I might be down but I’ not dead, there’s the best still up ahead.

Even after all I’ve seen, there’s hope in front of me.

There’s a hope still burning, I can feel it rising through the night,

and my world’s still turning.

I can feel your love here by my side, You’re my hope…”

This goes out to all my readers, on election day, on every day. We still have a hope.

“For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope,” Jerimiah 29:11.

3-forest“…I still have hope, you are my hope.” ( Hope in front of me, Danny Gokey.)

–Natasha

 

When you mess up.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

The past is past. Put it all behind you. Forgive, forget. Move on. It’s a closed issue. Let it go.

These are all ways to say that you can’t spend your time in regret and resentment. I have to say, I try not to screw up. I try to be good. I have a hard admitting if I fail. Not if I’ve done a “little” thing; like said something rude, but it’ll be forgotten by tomorrow, especially if I apologize. (By the way, have you ever had someone say they don’t even know what you’re talking about, or they’d forgotten about it, when you say you’re sorry for something. I get this quite a bit. I think it’s be better to just accept the apology, but that’s not a rule, it’s a suggestion.) But if I have an ongoing problem.

To be honest, I’m one of those people who really doesn’t realize how certain expressions and words can come across. I’m inside my head so much, I tend to know more what I mean, then what other people think I mean. But sometimes I worry about it enough to go the other way, and worry too much about people reading into my words. I know I’m not alone in this problem. So let’s talk.

I’ll just cut right to the heart of the issue, if I may. It’s not about being unable to let go of stuff. It’s about whether you believe you should. When you want to be a good and kind person, it’s easy to pour on the shame when you fail, as a self imposed punishment. I think the problem is two fold: On the one hand, we can’t fix ourselves, so we feel ashamed; on the other hand, we don’t want to let God help us.

It’s like, no matter how much our life sucks, it’s our life, and we should control it. Then we can’t. And we get mad at life for taking control out of our hands. Even though, who on earth told us we could have it in the first place? I know, I’m in favor of the “It’s your life” slogan. But I hope all my readers know that what I mean by that is you’re responsible for how much you do, and don’t do, and your attitude; not that you can fix everything with a little time and effort.

So maybe when I get frustrated that I screwed up, a part of me is just upset that I can’t see it coming every time. And maybe a part of me wants to be perfect, because it seems like I should be. And to be honest, a part of me is also scared that I won’t bounce back if I make the wrong move. How far is too far? How far before I can’t go back? You all know what I’m talking about.

But in the end, the only real way to live is to know you’re flawed, but to believe you can change. And to know that change comes through love, not through shame, effort, or any other medium. Don’t be afraid to say you’re sorry, don’t get down if someone doesn’t accept your apology, just live it out. And get excited when you win a battle. Record your wins and your losses.

If I may end with the lyrics from a song I like, it goes like this:

You know you can’t stay right where you fell. The hardest part is forgiving yourself. So let’s take a walk into today, and don’t let the past get in your way!

Yesterday is history, and history is miles and miles away. So leave it all behind you, let it always remind you of the day, the day that love made history.

Would you believe that you are history in the making? Every choice that you are making; every step that you are taking, every chain that you are breaking; history is in the making. Every word that you are saying; every prayer that you are praying; every chain that  you are making; history is in the making. ( History–Mathew West.)

–Natasha

We all need it

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

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