soak up the sun

nothing like a long weekend full of very little responsibility to set one's mind to pondering.

this weekend i decided to re-read my journals of the last year or so. decided it would be good to investigate and re-visit my dealings with The Boy over the last 18months-ish. and it was good. good to read. good to read and remember and be reminded that there was a lot of truth and warmth and encouragement and fun and lightness. and there was also a lot of drama and frustration. and no where to be found was there evidence of any "in love" tumult. this was tremendously reassuring. it might sound funny to think that i would have to read something to determine for certainly sure that i hadn't forgotten something like being in love with someone, but with him, and with me, and with my writing, yes, i do have to read it sometimes for it to be true. sometimes i really do feel like some things simply did not happen unless i wrote them down.

i am honest in my perforated journals. see, i decided a few years ago that i would be unblinkingly honest with myself in my notebooks if no where else. and so i bought journaly notebooks with perforated pages so that i could, if necessary, madly scribble in terrifying honesty and then rip the sheets from the notebook and toss them. lest they fall into the wrong hands. and so, i re-read them. and was reassured. and checked closely for the frizzly remnants of torn pages, and, finding no evidence, decided that this was the whole truth.

and so, i lay in the sun with the warm glow undoubtedly inching wrinkles out of my skin, and smiled at feeling like i have really come quite a long way over the last year. the bonus of reading the journals is that, of course, not all of it is about The Boy, or other boys, or drama or pining or moping. ok. a lot of it involves one or more of those things. but not all! not all. and i can read myself last summer and realize 'crap! what a mess i was! and what a mess i am not any more!'. that's a crazy-ass awesome feeling. slowly but surely, the Lord is working on me. not as quickly as i would like sometimes. but i guess i do still have a painful lot to learn. about everything.

but indulge me a second as i lay out a new idea that i have. beaching it up on friday, i rolled a lot of these ideas and questions and musings around in my head and i tried to break it down into the three main things that wear down my heart every day. or close to every day. and how would my life change, how would i better serve the Lord, how would i be living out of my true heart, if i just BELIEVED differently. more fully. more positively, trusting, quiet, assured.

and so, i've decided to make a pretty little card/sign for next to my bed to read every day. it will say:

BELIEVE that Jesus is enough.
BELIEVE that you are beautiful.
BELIEVE that it is going to be good.

when i live everyday confident that Jesus is enough, the other things upon which i expend way too much time grasping will be less and less important. free up more of my heart to love people. if i can live in a world where i can believe that i am beautiful, a lot of the insipid acts of desperation, a lot of my shopping for self-esteem, a lot of my day to day panic about what i look like to other people (physically and spiritually, etc.) will start to fade. i hope. and if i can believe that the LORD has promised that i can live in hope, that he will satisfy my desires with good things, then how much more energy would be freed up from worry and pessimsm and panic? oooooohhhh i long to believe those things. really believe them. as a fan of cognitive-behavioral therapy schemas, i'm going to try the sign. just thinking about making the sign every day for the past 4 days has made me feel calmer and lighter. less ugly. less lame-o pathetic. more like someone who can soak up the sun in the beauty of a long weekend without self-hate, without panic, without worrying about what's ahead.