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...