my mind and my heart...

my mind is constantly at war with my heart.

disclaimer: i love my parents dearly.

my mother is listening to peter, paul and mary's "this land is your land". my father is currently driving for the limo service, and i feel guilty being THRILLED with this time away from him because EVERY DAY i come home from work, he is here. the retiree is a home body. (now i know where i get it from).

i need decompression time from my job. this year i have been unable to be home before 5pm (with the exception of rare occasions and my precious fridays - i refuse to stay later than 3pm on a friday). whenever i come home, someone is here, and i am forced to close my door and hole up in my room while i process my day and prepare to talk.

is it too much to ask to have a home of my own? where i can hear only the music i want to hear? somewhere that gives me a little more space of my own? somewhere i can light the candles i want to burn? where i can leave something, and when i get back after a 10 or 11 hour day, it will still be there? somewhere i can call MY own? somewhere i can choose the color of the walls and the curtains i hang? somewhere i can express MY own self in the decor? somewhere i choose the carpeting?

i can't help but feel guilty for feeling this way, because as i stated in my disclaimer, i adore my parents. they're great. but i think i could adore them more if i was living down the road 10 minutes from them :)

(thanks for giving me that opportunity this week, rachel and kyle! even though i would much rather be with everyone!!)

i often wonder what God is preparing me for by living at home... still.

i could get a part time job... i technically DO have a part time job mondays, wednesdays and thursdays... it pays well... but i feel like working an additional minimum wage, part time job would further my exhaustion and take away from the energy i am required to have on a daily basis from 7am-4pm. it just doesn't seem worth it.

so, the plan is to stop saving for a few months and pay off some credit card balances i've been carrying for too long. i can write off my student loans in a few more years if i stick with teaching in an inner city school district. (definite bonus to teaching city kids, not sure if my sanity being on the line is worth it, though). pay extra on the (amazing) car (that i am still in love with) in order to pay that off early. cancel the gym membership. go to the cheapest netflix membership available. etc, etc, etc....

i really try to stay positive and see the bright side of things and lean on the Everlasting. BUT... this week has been tough on me. bad things happening to good people. friends making really poor choices. students making more poor choices. family members struggling financially. friends and family members struggles with addiction.

(side note that made me laugh: i proof read this and it originally said "friends and family members struggles with addition". ha! also, WHY is blogger so dumb and changing the size of my font in the middle of this post and then putting it back to normal later in the post? annoying.)

i have klove playing on another tab in my browser and this was playing as i wrote that last paragraph: "there will be a day with no more tears, no more pain and no more fears. there will be a day when the burdens of this palce, will be no more, we will see Jesus face to face, but until that day, we will hold on to you always..."

this post really doesn't have a conclusion, and that bothers my music-teacher-forced-to-additionally-teach-language-arts-and-essay-writing-skills self...... but the ultimate purpose of this blog is to document my heart and thoughts.... so that i can look back and see where i was and where i ended up.

to be continued...

chosen!

about this time last year, i sat on the front porch of my parents' house with kathryn, celebrating the life of a friend of hers that ended much earlier than she had hoped. we sipped pink champagne, and talked about the heavy things that come our way in life.

we talked about anthony, and how he had left his wife kristi behind. how they had been married such a short time. they had their whole life together planned, and they had much to accomplish.

everything kristi had, was stripped away in an instant.

i wondered... how did she move forward? how does she function? she is broken, but her faith is strong, kathryn told me. she knows that anthony's passing is part of God's plan... like it, or not...

i remember that night sharing with kathryn that the Lord had been asking me for quite some time, "Valerie... am I enough?"

while my life circumstances weren't what i was hoping for, they weren't as bad as kristi's... i was honest and i told Kathryn that at that point, i had to say "no"....

to some Christians, that may have been a questionable answer. kathryn reassured me that it was a beautiful answer.

after that conversation and some time of pushing it to the back burner, i did some research on brokenness...

and found that the Bible says that God has a purpose and a plan for each of us.

(well... that's a given...don't we all already know that?)

what i didn't realize was that while He may allow us to have free will, for those whom He wants to use for His purpose - they will be brought to brokenness so that they may serve to glorify Him.

wow... what better purpose in life???

i have said from the day that i graduated from high school that my wish was not to do what i wanted, but what the Lord would have me do... and it took me 8 years to get my teaching degree. the Lord taught me a lot during those 8 years... mostly that for me, the "normal" things for young adults don't happen in the time frame seen fit by society... but in His perfect timing.

why change that now?

i want a husband, and a house with little feet running through it. i want dirty diapers and sleepless nights. i want baby snot and spit up. i want focus on MY family. i want to attend Bible studies and bring my kids to soccer and baseball and gymnastics...

go back to that whole wishing-for-my-life-what-God-wants-and-not-what-i-want thing.

and insert be careful what you wish for [ here ].

i'm standing at a place in life where i never thought i'd be on SO many levels... and while it's a surprise to me, it's not to the One i made a promise to live for.

after all.... i've been chosen...

i can get so caught up in the have nots in my life... i have my days of wanting what i want, when i want it.

i need to be reminded that i have been CHOSEN by HIM to live my life for HIS purpose. not mine!!!

it means that my every need will be supplied. and not necessarily my "wants" in life. am i ok with that? i'm getting there.


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i started this blog entry late last night (saturday). wouldn't you know... Pastor Bob McCoy's message today was on being CHOSEN!

the question resonating with me from today's sermon is this: Jesus has said "I have chosen you."... am i going to make Jesus my #1, or will i produce a substitute surrogate?