Love

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

Vulnerable Good

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I have to thank beautybeyondbones for having this quote “Life is vulnerability.” When I read that it grabbed my attention.

I have heard of course that vulnerability is necessary. But I never thought of life as being all vulnerability. It is isn’t it? Everything we do, we could get hurt doing, it seems like life as an endless potential of disasters that could happen, and we hear about them happening a lot.

But I don’t spend my days worrying about all that could happen to me. There’s a few things that could go wrong even on this small blog, but I don’t worry about them every time I post. I wasn’t always worry free, there was time of my life when worry was a disease. I worried about getting sick, getting in an accident, getting bitten by animals, getting lost, and even worse stuff. Some of it was totally irrational, but as I’ve said before, fear is not rational.

Worry is always thinking about what might happen, or might be happening, so it is always dealing with unrealities. Extensive worry can even be a form of neurosis.

We are vulnerable it is true, but remember vulnerability also means being open to pleasure, to change, to growth. If we wouldn’t be hurt we couldn’t be healed either, if we couldn’t fall, we wouldn’t know why it’s so good to be standing. I am not saying we need bad things to appreciate good things, I am saying that to be free we must be vulnerable. Desiring safety too much makes you a slave to whatever seems to offer it. I’ve been more open on this blog lately because I realize that to be real I need to be honest. If there’s one thing people online have encouraged me to be, it’s open. Maybe its easier online, but if you do it consistently it becomes a habit in your life.

Those are my thoughts for now, until next time100_4974–Natasha.

Not a statistic

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There are statistics about almost everything that people do: about how we dress, and how we behave.

But I googled random acts of kindness, and there’s no statistic about how many people do them. Or how often.

I think the obvious reason is that most of us have done a random act of kindness (or helpfulness, if you’ve seen that commercial) at some time in our lives, but I would hope it would be several times.

But then I thought, what about the less obvious reason?

Kindness just can’t be measured. Remember what the fairy godmother says in the 2015 Cinderella movie? “What’s a bowl of milk? Nothing. But kindness makes it everything.” How can we know the effect of a single act of kindness? I love those videos that you can find on YouTube of people doing an act of kindness and it setting off a chain reaction of kindness. I think a lot of us might be skeptical about that actually happening, but would we be skeptical if we were told that a single act of unkindness (like cutting someone off in traffic) could trigger a whole chain of people being rude to  the next person they meet? If being mean is contagious surely being kind also can be contagious. Though it is true that  kindness can be harder to catch, if you’re not in the habit of it already.

Kind means proceeding from, showing, or having benevolence.

Have you heard that story about the horseshoe nail? For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the message was lost; for want of the message the battle was lost; for want of the battle the war was lost; for want of the war the empire was lost. All for the want of a horseshoe nail.

An Act of Kindness is kind of like that horseshoe nail, now, what if it wasn’t lost?

Brought to you by Natasha.

 

The starfish principle

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Hello everyone,

You know blog success comes in rhythm. You’ll have a couple good posts and then no one reads the next few. Here’s hoping I’m still in time for another good post.

I seem to strike a nerve when I talk about relational issues, or connecting with people. I wonder why that is. Maybe because I’ve had a lot of trouble there, so what I’ve learned along the way rings true. That’s one paradox of life that gets over-looked in most self-help resources. And I’ve read and watched quite a few things about self-helping. I’ve come to believe it only works to a certain extent.

I love doing things on my own, I need privacy, I need solitude, I am an introvert. And there is no shame in that. Even as a seemingly self-reliant individual, I often feel I need a helping hand from other people. I’m the type of person who likes to choose their own path, but prefers it if someone else had left mile markers and warning signs along the way, I’d rather not make a blunder unless I have to in order to learn. A good name for it might be being like a Sherpa. I like to teach others, I like to help others, and in the words of Evan from Girl Meets World “I want to help people get to places they never thought they could go.” But I’m not a huge trailblazer.

That being said, I’d like to say more about helping people. In the course of my almost 18 years of life, I’ve run into a surprising amount of obstacles that much older people still have to grapple with. Here’s a little personal back story: When I was born I contracted a kind of pneumonia, I spent a week in an incubator, and it was a scary time for a lot of people. But I survived, with a lot of prayer I’m sure. From the beginning, I’ve been a tough little girl, as my mom put it. And at the age of 3 or 4, I accepted Christ. And my first remembered witnessing experience (That means telling other people about Jesus, in case anyone is unfamiliar with the term,) was at about the same age, to a few extended family members. That was the first time I encountered resistance to my faith. It has surprised my siblings when I later admitted to always feeling that my beliefs were not safe ones to have in the world. I don’t say this because I view it as a bad thing, on the contrary, I’m glad I never had any illusions that what I believe is popular or welcomed in our world. It makes for less of a shock nowadays. But repeatedly I’ve found myself dissuaded, or even put down, for having stronger principles, stronger opinions, and more dissatisfaction with the culture than most kids my age. ( And I bet some of my readers have heard similar stuff, people who blog or read blogs probably have a lot of opinions.) I have never liked mediocrity, and my dislike of it only gets stronger with time. And I get cautioned for this, honestly, it’s like people don’t know what to do with teens who have ideals that differ from the average.

But here’s the thing, when you accept being average, you accept being unimportant.

When you measure people by the average, you limit how important they are, and you limit your own capacity to feel compassion for them. You limit your ability to feel passionate about changing lives. in fact, you may even adopt the cynical attitude of “No one really changes.” (An attitude the hero Kim Possible expresses in one episode of the show. I’ve heard it before, but not usually from the hero.)

In “Girl meets Communism,” Cory Matthews addresses the problem with average success, pointing out that being average makes you common, and then there’s no incentive to be excellent. This applies to helping people too, when problems are average, so is our motivation. When we see people as just a group with identical troubles, we create stereotypes. The thing about  stereotypes, is that stereo means it’s all around you, and type means it has the same characteristics, and when you put them together, you’ll start seeing them everywhere. Entertainment often counts on you having preconceived notions of things or people for you to find it funny, or emotionally stimulating.

I could be just another voice on an internet that has billions of voices already on it, you could be just another browser, when there are millions of us just in this country, and I get a handful of them, what does that change?

I may have shared this story before, but it’s worth repeating:

Once there was a little boy on a beach, and he noticed that the tide was bringing in starfish, many of them.  When starfish are out of the water too long, they dry out and die. The little boy started picking up the starfish and throwing them out into the sea. A man walked by and noticed what he was doing, and he commented “You’ll never save all of those, son. It won’t make a real difference.” The little boy considers for a moment, then picks up another starfish and throws it into the water. “I’ll make a difference to that one.” He says.

I’ve heard this told a few different ways, so I’m paraphrasing as closely as I can to the main point. Not everyone can speak to a large amount of people. But anyone can speak a large amount of something to one other person. I think we tend to see our circle of influence as someting that reflects on us, and our worth, not as something God has given us so we can do just what He wants us to do and do it well, instead of trying to do someone else’s job, or perhaps a job we aren’t ready for yet. It’s a rule of theatre that there are no small roles, just small actors. Small actors may get cast in small roles rather then let them spoil the whole play, or a good actor may give a small role it’s full meaning. It’s really up to you.

I do the best I can on this blog, because I hope to make a difference for even the one person who might read a post. Here’s a closing thought, if you have a big heart, and a small circle of influence, what’s inside you will force what’s outside to expand, or else it will pour into what vessels are available far more than if your attention was divided between a large group of people.

Here’s some closing lines, from  a song called “Give a little love.”

“Well I know my death will not come, till I breathe all the air from my lungs. Till my final tune is sung, for all is fleeting, oh but all is good. And my love is my whole being, and I shared what I could.”

I hope this helped someone. Until next post–Natasha

Everybody’s talking about…Love?

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Hello readers,

S0, here’s my question for today: What is Love?

Love is a thing everyone hears about on a regular basis. But not everyone feels it, and a lot of us are confused about what we’re feeling and what part of it is love.

I remember as a kid I wondered why I didn’t feel the kind of love I saw in movies or read about in books, why I didn’t feel like they felt. I wondered if I loved my family at all, and what was wrong with me, how could I not know the answer to that?

My love tended to express itself through fear, I would only feel it when I thought about how horrible it would be to lose a member of my family, but that didn’t make me feel any more kind or sensitive to them. It just made me worry more.

Now when I say movies and books, I don’t just mean romantic love, people like to illustrate the ideal family, the ideal siblings, the ideal parent-child relationship. And they usually make it seem like every problem can be solved if people just listen to each other, and compromise a little. But that is easier said than done, as I’ve discovered. These sources don’t tell you  about how people can listen to you and not hear a word you’re saying, in their hearts. Or how you compromise and still feel unhappy and unsatisfied. What about when someone just doesn’t want to talk to you period? Or when they have so many issues of their own, they can’t really sympathize with yours. What about when they make excuses to avoid resolving the problem?

Who really has the ideal family? I’m sure my family might look like it on the outside, but we’ve had some bumpy areas over the past few years, I’ve been scared that we wouldn’t make it. And who has the ideal marriage? Or friendship? Or whatever it is we wish we had, but it seems unattainable.

So what is love? And why is it either absent? Or it’s not working like we thought.

Well, I’m nowhere near wise enough to really answer those questions. All I have is the few things I’ve learned. Or perhaps I should say I’m learning them.

That’s the first thing we need to know about our earthly relationships. They are a growing process. Mine have not stayed the same. They didn’t stay the same before I was a Christian, but after I became one, they changed drastically. But the change really was just the growing of the good things and the disappearance of the bad ones (almost, we’re never going to be perfect.) If you have a clue about love now, then you can grow that into something real, and very rare. I’ve been fortunate to live in a circle of  people that all know something about love, but I know that is not most people’s situation.

Another thing about love, is that it is hard. Loving people is about treating them the right way, and then doing a little more. And doing what’s right all the time is something none of us can maintain. We’d be lucky to even start out well.

Is love a feeling? Or is it an action?

I think picking just one of those choices is a mistake. Love is both. But at its purest, love is acting upon what you know you feel, even when you don’t feel it. That is, feelings tell us what’s in our heart, sometimes. Some feelings are deeper than others, and when we feel them it does more than make us cry, it creates a resolve in our heart to do, be, or see things differently than before. your feelings (they used to be called passions) may tell you at one time that you deeply love someone, or that they deeply love you. But it will take actions to prove either is correct. You’ll find out how loving you are when you find out how much you are willing to do, sacrifice, and go through, for someone else; and how little of it you did without feeling like doing it. And what someone else is willing to do for you will speak volumes about how genuine their affection is.

Love is not attraction, attraction is simply one of the things that may make love fun, or may snare people into thinking it is love.

Love is not selfish. Love is not greedy. Love is not too proud to admit a wrong doing, or to be the first to make peace. Love is not insecure and needy.

Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not stuck up. It does not anger easily. It is not rude. It does not look to benefit only itself. It doesn’t think evil of the beloved.

Love believes the best, hopes for the best, endures till the end, and bears the cost.

Love is not broken or fractured. It is not disengaged. It listens to us closely, holding every word as important. Love keeps its word. It honors what deserves honor. Love is not passive. Love isn’t anxious about things. Love  is not restless. Love is pure.

Love is not God, but God is love.

I just paraphrased 1 Corinthians 13, and a song called “Pieces.” (Amanda Cook, Stephany Gretzinger.) None of us can live up to this standard.

And the wonderful thing is, we don’t have to. Love covers us.

That’s all for this post–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