The Fear
- Lily Allen
I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don't care about clever I don't care about funny
I want loads of clothes and f*ckloads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them
And I'll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
Cause everyone knows that's how you get famous
I'll look at The Sun and I'll look in The Mirror
I'm on the right track yeah I'm onto a winner
I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear
Cause I'm being taken over by the fear
Life's about film stars and less about mothers
It's all about fast cars and cussing each other
But it doesn't matter cause I'm packing plastic
And that's what makes my life so f*cking fantastic
And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And it's not my fault it's how I'm programmed to function
I'll look at The Sun and I'll look in The Mirror
I'm on the right track yeah we're onto a winner
I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear
Cause I'm being taken over by the fear
Forget about guns and forget ammunition
Cause I'm killing them all on my own little mission
Now I'm not a saint but I'm not a sinner
Now everything's cool as long as I'm getting thinner
I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear
Cause I'm being taken over by the fear
i dont know that everything i need to say will come out clearly- but heres an attempt to write through everything thats cluttering my mind right now.
i've been ready to get out of college since the time i went to my first class freshman year. when i came home from study abroad, it was especially hard to make myself believe that it was important to finish. so here i am. i graduate 2 weeks from today. and i dont know what to do with it.
its not that i'm scared- i really dont think thats it. i just feel overwhelmed. and really stressed. which isnt like me. and the thing is, i dont like to admit its stressing me out. because i know the right thing to say is "im fine. i trust God to show me what He wants." but i cant say that truthfully right now.
i've realized that im not going to be able to find a job that has anything to do with my degree, which makes me frustrated that i spent 4 years and $30,000 to get it. i feel that money would have been better spent in so many other places. and i know that it doesnt help to think that way, because its done with now. but it makes me mad. and i cant truly say that my time here was a waste- my time spend in columbia i mean. being in college allowed me to grow as a person, it allowed me to study abroad, to travel, to meet incredible people, to learn who i was... but all that time spent in class. dangit.
ive realized i have to move out of my apartment in 3 weeks. i've lived here for 3 years, and i know its silly, but its going to be sad. i've lived with megh since freshman year, and we wont even be in the same state next year. and i dont like it.
i wont have insurance in a month. and i was fine with it until everyone started lecturing me about everything that "could" happen. and now im becoming a little paranoid...
i dont have a place to live next year.
i dont have a job.
for the first time in my life, i literally dont know what the next step is. and there are so many things i want to do that i feel like my brain is on overload and there's no way to sort through it all. every possible path has so many decisions to weigh and other people to take into account and i quite honestly would rather just not deal with any of it. it all just seems too big to tackle and think through.
im stressed and i know it, and i hate the ways i can see it affecting my life. i notice myself getting frustrated by things so insignificant- i notice myself checking out on my kids at work, not paying attention in conversations with people, getting upset for no obvious reason, pulling away from relationships, and i hate it bc this isnt who i am.
i know youre supposed to wrap up a blog entry with a little lesson learned or some sort of resolution to the problem being discussed, but i got nothing.
i feel like everything about the way my life is right now is about to cave in and im just sitting in the middle of the room, waiting for it- knowing its coming and that theres nothing i can do to stop it. and i feel like God's going to have to teach me all over again who i am in Him- who i am apart from everything thats such a definitive part of my life right now-, and i remember how much that process hurt last time, and i dont want to do it again.
i know all the right things to say, i know all the verses, i know what i would say to someone else in my place. but to be quite honest it doesnt make me feel better and it doesnt help me figure out where to go next. i dont mean for this to be a huge complaint session but this is my blog and i feel like i should be able to be honest on it. and my most honest feeling right now is that i just want it all to stop. i just want to forget about it all and come back to it later when i feel like i can begin to sort through it...
so this is all ive got. we'll see what happens...
it was a really amazing weekend. i hung out with awesome people, had awesome time with God, had good time to myself, ate good food. yep yep.
friday morning i went to hang out with courtney, quite possibly the most beautiful person i've ever met. she's such an example to me of how jesus wants us to love and live. she and her husband allen have just experienced one of the most trying times imaginable- they were pregnant with sextuplets, told that everything looked great, taken into the hospital unexpectedly, and lost all of the babies within the timespan of a week. this was the first time i'd been able to talk to her about what she experienced and how she was dealing. i told her that i had been so mad about the situation, and i had been. it didnt make sense to me that God would give them the babies in the first place if only to take them away, especially when so many people were praying intensely for them. court said: "it didnt make sense to me either, but i had no choice to believe that God was going to use it for something huge. if i let myself question it, i became angry at Him, and that wasn't an option because He was all i had. i was desperate for Him." to watch someone with a faith so strong- a passion for jesus so intense- left me so in awe of who He is and how powerful and merciful He is. i cant sit here honestly and say that it all makes sense now, i cant say that it doesnt upset me and even make me mad still, but i can say that i truly believe He's good. and i believe that His way truly is better than ours, even if we dont get it at the time.
God showed me another really cool thing this week. as graduation gets closer, i realize more and more than i dont have any specific direction for my life. i have plans for the immediate future, and a job secured for next year, but i mean as far as what i want to spend my life doing. i am too often very easily led to believe that my life wont count for as much if im not in a foreign country serving as a missionary. and i know that missions is going to be that one way God uses me in my life, but He hasn't ever specifically said where, or when, or for how long. God showed me this week that i am being incredibly restrictive to the ways i think He can use me. over the past few years i've found so many new things that i am passionate about and that i love doing. traveling, writing, learning about wine, yoga. these are the big ones. and i've struggled because these are legitimately things that i want to spend my time with, but i've always said that they aren't important and i need to focus my energy on the ways that God can use me. the other day He spoke clearly to me and showed me that He has given me every one of these specific interests, likes, hobbies, passions. He picked them out and gave them to me to make me the person He wanted me to be. and in fully living out these passions, i am living fully in Him. who's to say that my interest in wine won't lead me to a tasting where i meet someone who is in desperate need of His love? who's to say that through my writing He won't lead me to write a book that reveals his truth? or that my interest in yoga wont lead me to teach a class for people recovering from sickness that aren't able to afford a membership to a gym? or that my passion for travel won't lead me to a family who has never heard the name of Jesus? i have put Him in a box for far too long, and i refuse to do it anymore. He's given me passions and I'm going to live them out in Him and know that He can use them for His glory in ways i cant imagine.
last big thing. God has been perpetually transforming the ways i view marriage. a year ago, i was convinced that i'd be single for the rest of my life, and i could not have been more at peace with that. honestly, i had zero desire to get married until the past six months of my life. and ive realized that i didnt want it because i didnt really understand it the way God means for it to be. through talking to my roommate today, God showed me that marriage is the making of a new family. that sounds so simple. let me explain why it was such a revelation. i really think i've believed that marriage is just a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship that lasts forever. sure there are hard times but at the end of the day you're just crazy about each other and will never feel differently. God is showing me that there are times when i wont even want to talk to my husband because we're so frustrated, there are times when we'll both need time away to work on ourselves in order be better spouses, but at the end of the day, we're family. i've been apart from my parents and brothers for months at a time before- we dont always speak every single day, we dont tell each other every little detail of our everyday life, but they're my family. they're there for me always, they love me no matter what, they push me towards jesus, and they fight for me. thats how a husband and wife become. not saying that its all trouble and hard time, but im acknowleding the fact that its not always perfect. and i think viewing it as a familial relationship rather than strictly romantic (although it is that too) gives a much firmer foundation for a marriage that is going to last.
so there you go. He's been teaching me like crazy. and i love it and i want to learn this much from him all the time.
a pretty great weekend all in all- ate with my family at olive garden friday night (stuffed chicken marsala, chocolate cake for dessert, and the most amazing glass of chardonnay), breakfast with kathryn at chic-fil-a on saturday (talked for 2 hours straight before running back to the car in the pouring rain), laid in my bed for a solid 4 hours and read while it stormed outside, ate pizza and ridiculous amounts of marble slab ice cream with brandon on saturday night, and spent today doing homework before going to church where God continued to show up and be awesome. not as excited about this week, but one month til graduation and two until thailand. :) happy day.
i dont know if im allowed to have favorite kids at my job- probably not. but if i had to pick one, it'd be JT- the most awesome second grade boy you've ever met in your life. he gets off the bus every day and gives me a hug, some days he even has a song of the day for me. he's great.
today i was helping him with homework and all of a sudden he got up and walked off to the side. i turned around and saw him standing in the corner, motioning and whispering for me to come to him.
(imagine the raspiest voice a 2nd grader can have...)
JT: "Miss Kari. I got a problem. And I need to talk about it"
Me: "What's wrong JT?"
JT: " Well. I keep saying bad words under my breath, and I think God hears me. And I dont want to do it anymore but I cant stop. And my grandma said I need to stop so I keep saying 'God forgive me' but I keep messing up anyways. And then i feel bad"
Me; "Well, why dont you ask God to help you stop."
JT: MISS KARI I AM but i still keep doing it and i FEEEEEEELL BAADDDDD."
Me: "If you already asked God to forgive you, you dont have to feel bad about it. Just ask Him to forgive you and to help you stop."
JT: "That's it? That's all I have to do??"
how can i give advice to a second grader and not even believe the very words that are coming out of my mouth? I dont have to feel bad about the sins that are in my past, bc God promises He's forgiven me and will give me His strength to be more like Him. and i think when i really do begin to understand that, i have the same reaction. "Thats it? Thats all i have to do?" because it would seem that i would have to do more- that i would have to do something for God in order to earn His forgiveness. But i dont.
and thats why i love my job. bc my second graders are smarter than me and God uses them to teach me about Him.
"There is a myth flourishing in the church today- once converted, fully converted. In other words, once I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, an irreversible, siniless future beckons. Discipleship will be an untarnished success story; life will be an unbroken upward spiral toward holiness. Tell that to poor Peter who after three times professing his love for Jesus on the beach, and after receiving the fullness of the Spirit at Pentecost, was sill jealous of Paul's apostolic success.
Often i have been asked 'Brennan, how is it possible that you became an alcoholic after you got saved?' It is possible because I got battered and bruised by loneliness and failure, because I got discouraged, uncertain, guilt-ridden, and took my eyes off of Jesus. Because the Christ-encounter did not transfigure me into an angel. Because justification by grace through faith means I have been set in right relationship with God, not made the equivalent of a patient etherized on a table."
i love, love, love this book. over the past year, i made alot of decisions and fell into a lot of sin that made me question where i really stood in my relationship with jesus. i felt like if i really knew him and had been saved by him, then i shouldnt be struggling with the things i was. but it was because i took my eyes off him. it was because he has to continue to save me daily, and will have to for as long as my life goes on. i am a follower of jesus. that does not make me perfect. that does not mean i wont sin anymore. it just means that when i do, his grace is enough.
i finally started reading a book that i've wanted to read for years, but have kept putting off--- im a little bit in love with it so far. i want to write as i read through it because it helps me delve deeper into what im learning when i write it in my own thoughts. here's the passage that struck me the most today.
"men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their imperfect existence. as a sinner who has been redeemed, i can acknowledge that i am often unloving, irritable, angry, and resentful with those closest to me. when i go to church, i can leave my white hat at home and admit that i have failed.
God not only love me as I am, but also Knows me as I am."
God KNOWS me as I am. and He's known me from the beginning. and i think thats the part that leaves me in awe. before time began, he knew every decision i would make, every doubt i would have, every question i would ask- and he loved me. he loved me and pursued me and saved me. and he continues to love me and pursue me and save me. he is not surprised by my unrighteousness, nor does it deter his love for me.
its something we're taught from a young age, i suppose. but the strength of it has never fully hit me. and its the most comforting thing i can ever imagine being told.
i've been wanting to see this movie for months, and it was completely worth the wait. i thought it was the greatest movie i've seen in a while. i dont want to summarize because i want you to just go see it. it definitely has some tough subject matter, but its filmed beautifully and conveys such a strong, difficult message.
its the story of a couple who had a life that everyone around them thought was perfect- big house, two kids, good looks, successful career- yet they were miserable because they realized how much of themselves they had sacrificed to get where they were. the money and the status didn't matter because there lives were falling apart.ultimately they kill their spirits and every ounce of life within them because they dont pursue the truth of who they are and what they are made for. this movie captures everything that i am terrified of in my life and pushes me to fight even more for a life that is lived for what matters.
go see it, and let me know what you think.
"a future without hope for the palestinians is unacceptable. our hearts go out to the palestinian people. we find the deaths of innocent civilians unacceptable." - pres obama...
so nice to have a president who cares and who defends the helpless whether its popular or not.
go here to donate to relief efforts and send emails to representatives asking them to continue to support the ceasefire in Gaza:
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/emergencies/israeli-palestinian-conflict
yesterday, our day began at 3:00am. we had to be at the metro by 4 in order to catch the very first train running that day. we made it, but our car was still packed. we got to DC around 4:30, and the streets were already flooded with people. All we should have had to do was walk straight down 7th street to end up at the mall where the line for people with silver tickets was supposed to start. the road was blocked and we had to take a 2 mile tunnell to the other side of the mall. when we finally got to our line, it was already blocks long. we waited in line until 8, when they let everyone through security, at which point all you could see was thousands upon thousands of people running towards the capitol.
our spots, initially, weren't great, but were definitely better than the majority. we could see the capitol across the street, and if people moved their heads the right way, we could make out the images on the jumbotron. with two hours to go, the entire crowd where we stood ran forward, broke down the barricades, and we were pushed all the way across the street. we ended up behind the first reflection pool, directly in front of the capitol.
it seemed like it took forever, but after the children's choir, after the prayer, after the former presidents had entered, after aretha sang, and after yo yo ma performed, obama stood to take the oath. people absolutely went crazy. you could hear cheers barrell forward from all the way at the Washington monument. the aerial view of the area was insane- i couldn't even imagine that many people in one place before.
he was sworn in, and the crowd lost it. people rushing the capitol, climbing on statues, screaming, waving flags, crying... it was indescribable to be able to be a part of something so big.
his speech was beautiful. (i'll write about my favorite parts later)
we left directly following his speech to try to get to the metro. you literally could not move withing the streets. there were people for as far as you could see. it took us over an hour to find a metro that didnt have lines overflowing into the streets, and even then, we had to wait for a half hour to finally board.
it was a crazy crazy day. but so worth the getting up, the waiting, the freezing weather. it was a day that so many people have waited for for so long- a day that showed how far our country has come, and how ready we are for change. and im excited. and im so grateful that i got to be a part of something that people will be a part of history for as long as history continues to exist.
today was amazing. even though we didn't have the best spots, and were standing on tip-toes the entire time in order to see, just being able to be there- to be a part of something so big, with so many people (500,000)--- amazing.
favorites of the concert: sheryl crow and will.i.am singing bob marley's "one love". jamie foxx's obama impression. garth brooks singing "american pie." the shakira, usher, and stevie wonder trio. and of course. U2. there are no words for how incredible it was to see bono perform. U2 has been number one on my list for as long as i can remember.
favorite moments outside of seeing the artists perform: samuel l. jackson walks onstage to speak. guy behind us: "SNAAAAAKES ON A PLAAANNNNEEEE!!!!!" ; annndddd finding the station that craig melvin is on here in washington (LOVE him, and am so sad that he's not in columbia anymore). and finally, hearing this sales-pitch from a man on the sidewalk who was selling obama buttons: "obaaammmaaa buttons! in this one he has an afrooooo. yes, he has an afro. Obama has an afrooooooo."
im loving dc. i'll write more about my whole experience here when i get back. so excited about inauguration on tuesday :)
