resonate

i've been thinking about this whole idea of 'soul mates' lately. the dictionary states it like this: "someone for whom you have a deep affinity".

this makes me wonder about affinity...

"A natural attraction, liking, or feeling of kinship.
An inherent similarity between persons or things.
Biology: A relationship or resemblance in structure between species

that suggests a common origin.
Chemistry: An attraction or force between particles that causes them to combine."

i wonder if there truly are people in the world that we totally resonate with. if there are people out there that once we meet them, it's as if every fiber of our being is understood. is it possible? are they out there? i don't mean in the romantic way either. well, it could be romantic but maybe not. maybe they're the same gender, maybe years apart in age, maybe...

what stinks is when it ends. when that affinity ends and it's time to move on. i don't know why God would bring someone into our lives that is so deeply affirming and then take them away. or maybe it's not God's decision at all. maybe we run from it because it's scary and dangerous. maybe we don't like to be that understood. it's scary when people know our thoughts before we do. when they can guess what words will come out of our mouths or what reactions we'll give to certain situations. what's worse is the accountability that comes with all this. the fact that someone can know us so well that they can anticipate every terrible, ugly, dirty thought or action we'll have. when we allow people so far into our lives that we cease to be one person anymore and suddenly the vibrations of every decision we make reverberates into someone else.

scary.

and yet beautiful. it reminds me that we aren't alone in this big world. we're not an island, as much as we may try to be. we all seek to be understood, and sometimes that hurts us even worse. sometimes we don't seek to be understood but instead to be liked and agreed with. i think if we want to resonate we have to realize that there is truth to be told and not simply loving silence. do you know what i mean? am i making sense?

i suppose it's like church shopping. we all want to find a place where we "fit" and then if one day we don't fit anymore, we leave. we go find another church that "feels better". i think that's what is so tough about wellspring...a lot of the time we don't feel good. at least i hope we don't. i hope that ken's right: we have a balance of truth and grace. we have permission and trust enough to speak truth into each other's lives with the same amount of love and grace. it's a balancing act, and that's a story for another blog, another day.

i'm glad i have a place to resonate. i'm glad i have people around me that understand me-not just like me, or agree with me but truly challenge and love me. i'm glad i'm on the journey and it's neat to think what chapter is next.

and i'm glad i have friends...even if they like a & m, are in a frat, think they're too old to hang out with me sometimes because they have a kid, or play with electricity all day. it doesn't matter...i'm glad i have you guys around.

"The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.”
Ben Okri quotes (Nigerian author who uses magic realism to convey the social and political chaos in his country, 1959)

sticky sins

This is pretty cute guys...check it out:

http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2005/05/03/7-deadly-gummy-sins/

popularity contest?

this is pretty funny. i'm wondering how i get to be on the list:

http://www.thechurchreport.com/content/view/823/32/

vulnerability

i hate being sick. if you read my blog, then you'll notice a trend: i hate a lot of things. i suppose hate is a rather harsh word, but i'm a girl and we speak in extremes so hate will suffice for today. i really don't enjoy being sick-i suppose no one really enjoys it, well, unless you're a hypochondriac i guess. anyways, the point is, i have a terrible cold and i'm not enjoying it. the world is not a smiley face today...

the worst part about being sick is that you're vulnerable. people see you when you're really not cute (and i know i'm cute most of the time, but not right now) i'm snotting all over myself and i've got gross stuff all down in my chest that keeps me coughing all the time. the worst of it is that i don't like to take medicine. I KNOWWWW what you're all thinking, "gosh, juli is so stubborn" and i realize it. i know i'm stubborn. i simply don't like the way medicine makes me feel. i get all woozey and dizzy and air-heady (which is different than most days). so since i don't like to take the meds and i try to let my body fight it on it's own...i'm stuck in this rut until it all blows over, or until my body decides to shut down...whichever happens first. another thing i don't like to do is cry. it seems that when i get sick i'm much more apt to cry. anything can set me off because in the end, all i want is to be held and taken care of (oh, i need to cuddle!)

for me, i'm most vulnerable when i'm sick but i'm learning more and more how i can allow myself to be in that place without my body forcing me into it. i'm learning to trust. lately i've been talking about all this "community" stuff which is all fine and dandy until it starts to suck. there are moments that boundaries are crossed and feelings are hurt, and it is awfully painful. it isn't fun to let people speak painful truth into our lives or to correct an improper behavior. i don't enjoy it, but i'm learning to allow it and i'm trying to cope with it in a healthy way. it's kind of like the medicine...i don't like to feel out of control. i don't like to feel as if something else has control of me and my situations. i don't like that someone else could have any bearing on where i stand in my life. now, to allow someone to control it is an entirely different thing, but to allow others some sense of say in my life...well now, that is a yielding of control that is hard for a stubborn girl like me to give up. issues with authority....yuck.

i think talking about community and what comes with it are so easy to do sometimes. we can talk about how uncomfortable it is and how painful it may be...blah blah blah, but when it comes down to it, we run. we run as far away from the possibility of pain as we can. we remove ourselves and we convince ourselves that our current reality is truth. some of my favorite people in this world have done it, and i sure as heck know i have...which makes me wonder-is true community possible?

i want to say yes, i want to believe that even though we fail sometimes and we screw up that God has it in his divine plan to make things right again. not to make everything beautiful and sun shiney and a smiley face again, but to make it right. i want to believe that we all have a chance to be brought back into community and a chance to be redeemed and forgiven by each other. i hope that even when i run and hide from truth that there will still be people waiting when i want to return. on the flip side, i hope that i can be one of those people with my arms wide open waiting patiently on those i love. well, that's my hope at least.

today was a rough day. i cried. someone i care deeply about and respect greatly cried. i got mad, i got defensive, i was sad, and i felt the pain of community. it's not pretty. it's not always fun, but it's something i'm glad to be a part of. i'm thankful for days like today when God pushes me so far that i snap, because i think it's then that all the cool stuff can begin.

i hate boys

ok, so i'm kidding. i don't really hate boys...i just don't like them at the moment. i think the worst part is that i don't like myself sometimes because of boys. they complicate everything...and i have way too many other things to be worrying right now other than boys....

the other day i was pulling into work and i saw something that literally made my heart ache. as i parked my car at the back of MSC, i look over toward the railroad tracks to see about a dozen grown men running toward something. i thought that there must have been an accident or something terrible had happened to make those men run so fast. as i looked on ahead of where the men were running i saw a truck. these men were running toward a truck. 'ahhh' i thought to myself, these are the day laborers. they were full on sprinting to a truck in the middle of the hot day so that they could hopefully get some work for the day. that blows my mind.
last night some of us at wellspring got to meet at MSC with two pastors and our owners wife so that we could chat about what we can do to help guys like these. it kills me to think that these guys are literally right across the street. i've grown up in this town all my life and i never even knew they were there. as we discussed things to do we came to the conclusion that we have to build their trust in order to help them. we're hoping to start taking them breakfast and also helping to keep accountable some of the jerks that pick these guys up and then never pay them for their services...that really pisses me off. i swear...the world is making these possibly illegal day laborers out to be the ones doing all the taking advantage of, but perhaps we're missing the other side of the story. ugh, i think i hate white people too. (just kidding, calm down)

my friend deanna and i have been looking for a cool place to buy american made clothing at, but we're having trouble. we're struggling so hard with not wanting to buy the really, really...reallllly cute clothes that are constantly advertised, but where else can we get such hip threads? i pride myself on being different, and even trendy sometimes, but how can i do that if i'm constantly checking the tags of clothing to make sure they're not made in a sweatshop? and how do we know??? what happens to those people that we decide we don't want to buy from, does that make it even harder for them? ken mentioned that one of the women he got to hang out with in london is going to thailand to hang out and show women prostitutes how to make hand bags instead of selling themselves. now THAT is pretty f'ing neat (yes, i almost dropped the 'f' word mark..calm down-ha!). why can't i just pick up and move like that? ohhh yeah... because God has me here for a reason, or so i keep being told. ha.

my friend ryan once told me that africa is right outside my door, but i don't really feel like it sometimes. i mean, the day laborers are right there...why is it so easy for me, even in this very minute, to sit here and feel better about everything simply because i've agreed to go and help them out twice a week. what else am i doing that is so darn important? ...blogging...duh.

we've also been chatting a lot about community as of late, and i'm loving it. i want, so desperately, to be in community. i think that we're getting there, but are still so far away. i'm hurting for our community right now. we've got a lot of folks that are going through some tough times, and...being juli...i want to fix it all. i want to hope that my life means something to those that i travel with, and that we're all in this together for a very divine reason. sometimes it hurts so bad to really get down and dirty with each other's lives, but i don't think i'd have it any different. it's been pretty easy for me to open up to our group about a whole lot of things, but there are still parts of me that stay hidden. there are things about myself that are way not cute ( i know, hard to believe), but i keep them locked away in fear that someone will find a reason to leave me. we all have abandonment issues, don't we? we all fear that at some point we're not going to be loved for exactly who we are...

which brings me back to boys. ken and i have spent a large amount of time talking about marriage, and relationships, and love. i'm scared of being married. terrified actually. it's so easy for me to joke about "loving" a boy...i say it an awful lot, but it's really hard for me to imagine committing to someone that could potentially hurt me. i get teased all the time about how flighty i am and what a silly girl i become when i start talking about boys and feelings...and eww...i'm feeling ridiculous just talking about it. i know it's all a long way off, but there's a lot of work to be done before i'm ready for any of that. at this moment i'm just trying to work as hard as i can cultivating friendships and relationships around me...and maybe one day that will all end in marriage. who knows...

in one of those conversations that ken and i had, i mentioned to him one of my favorite quotes "love isn't in the falling...it's in the staying there". i've found that to be pretty powerful. i come from a family that went through hell and back in order to stay together. there were times when i was asking my parents to walk away from the marriage and from the kids...thank God they didn't listen to me. (i'm kind of dumb sometimes. again, hard to believe). they've given me an example of what it means to stick it out...even when you really really really dislike somebody. no one ever goes into a relationship hoping it will fail, but sometimes we seem to throw our hands in the air whenever we think we've given it fair fight, but what's a fair fight anyways? i guess that more than anything right now this has to do with how i feel about community. it isn't just about the falling, but in the staying there. we run so quick when things get messy...we love each other when it's convenient and pretty but not when it gets ugly. that disappoints me. sometimes i don't even think we realize when we do it. we find other communities that affirm exactly what we want to hear and how we perceive the world. i've fallen in love with the church and with wellspring right now, and i want to stick around. i want to love it even when it isn't pretty.

so in the end, i don't really hate boys. i'm just in a place where they've become a distraction and all i can do is distract myself with something else-hopefully something much more beneficial to the church or to mankind. all in all...i'm fine, and i know i joke about boys a lot, but i'm okay without them. i don't need no sinkin' boys. (don't worry mom, i'm not becoming a lesbian despite my possible move to montrose).

well now, this has gone on much longer than anticipated and i still have so much to ramble about. maybe it's the fact that i'm back here in my dungeon of an office and ken is gone all day (yes, i do miss him on occasion). i'm sure i'll think of more to say later...