Maybe, It’s Me.

My mind keeps wondering so many places, that I can’t concentrate.

Sometimes I feel so in control, like everything is in my hands and I know exactly where I can place everything and then suddenly everything just falls to the floor, and I’m forced to pick up the pieces again.

My heart just wants to wonder everywhere…and it feels like it’s caught on something. No matter how hard I yank and pull, I can never be completely free.

And maybe that’s my problem.

I keep thinking about wiping the dirt of this crummy old town off my feet, that I forget that I can’t wipe away who I am deep down.

I can’t wipe away all my insecurities and doubts; I can’t pass the blame onto everyone and everything else.

I can run, but I can’t hide away from myself.

If I’m so dissatisfied with my life, maybe it’s not the scenery or the major or the friends or enemies that I need to change or runaway from…maybe it’s me.

I don’t like the scene I’m living in, but that’s just the now, not forever.

I’ve changed my college major so many times I’ve lost count, and I’ve found that each one holds it’s own set of doubts. I’m not afraid of trying; I’m afraid of the aftermath of failing.

I’ve disassociated myself from certain people but I’ve found that they weren’t the root of my unhappiness. Granted, some of these people are better off not being in my life, but if I can’t forgive, then that is another form of my own unhappiness.

I could blame my unhappiness on lack of relationships and the age old saying that “nobody cares about little old me”.

But I’m the one who makes my bed and has to lie in it each night.

It’s like blaming the sky for bringing rain and soaking me wet, but when it boils down to it, I’m the one who didn’t bring an umbrella.

At the beginning of this year, I said the only person I can change is myself.

This is how I feel about life right now, I’m so busy fighting off the weeds in my garden, that I don’t even notice the flowers in my life.

And that’s sad.

Because the entire point I made about last year is that I spent too much time picking weeds and trying to be more “successful”, that I forgot to have any moments. I didn’t stop and smell the roses is what I’m trying to say.

And I’m tired of the circle I keep going round-n-round in.

It’s like, I’m picking this weed and that weed and I’m going to get through college, and I’m going to move out and I’m going to get an amazing job and explore the world and oh, then I’ll be satisfied and happy with my life.

And that’s not how life should be.

Clearly, satisfaction doesn’t exist. The world has made success so distorted that we don’t even know when to be satisfied or if we should be.

Happiness is like candy, you eat it and then it’s gone.

So I’m just going to enjoy life. I’m going to sing at the top of my lungs to the radio while sitting at stop lights, maybe I’ll roll the windows down. Because who cares what people think.

I’m going to finish college, but I’m going to enjoy it while it’s here.

I’m going to live at home with my parents, and yeah, that sounds so completely uncool, but life is just like that right now. It’s not always going to be this way. So I’m going to enjoy the evenings I spend talking to my parents about my day and hearing about theirs. I’m going to enjoy how loud the house is when Ru is on the a rampage while I’m trying to study, because someday it’s going to be quiet, and I know I’m going to miss it.

It’s not complete satisfaction, because the kind I’m searching for doesn’t exist until I get to Heaven, but it’s a content kind of satisfaction none the less; to have a family that is there when you get home, who heats up the leftovers for you when you’ve worked on Christmas Eve, and who will always have a light on for you no matter how far you’ve gone or how long you stayed away.

~ Tru

Just A Thought.

This is probably the awkwardest picture of a jar of paint brushes you will ever see. One day, a long time ago, I thought I was going to be an artist. The dream died but I still like to look at my brushes because I think they are more pretty then my paintings. PS: Setting them on a bookshelf was suppose to be artistic. Oh and Nancy Drew for the win.

Some days everything is alright. The sun is shining; the long day’s worth of school is cut short with a sudden cancelation of your night class, and before you know it the semester will be over and you will walk out of class with the birds chirping and 60 degree weather that feels oh so good.
Life is messy most of the time but sometimes it’s okay.
You look forward to the future but sometimes you have to stop focusing on the big things. Like college graduation, finding a job, and going through all the phases of adulthood that plummet towards you as you leave the past self of term papers and tests behind.
Instead sometimes you just need to focus on today and what little bits of joy it will bring you.
When you look too long at the big picture you start worrying and fretting over how incomplete it looks.
We forget sometimes that tomorrow is just another stroke of the brush. You paint flowers in your garden and you make minor details to your clouds of possibilities.
Sometimes the colors are just completely wrong and you have to tear off the page and start again. Sometimes you make a wrong stroke and your forced to repair the mistake, and even once it’s fixed and barely noticeable, you know it’s there and it bothers you to the point that you think you have to start again when you really don’t.
To be honest, life is kind of like painting with your eyes closed sometimes. You don’t know how it’s going to turn out. You just have to trust God to keep your hand steady as you paint.
But trust me…once you open them, it will be a beautiful masterpiece.

Crumbs.

Sometimes I feel like I’m a crumb still sticking to the cake pan, or the leftover soup that couldn’t quite make it into the ladle. I’m always on my own. I’m in the “average and that is all I can be” crowd of people…which is desperately lonely sometimes. I’m nothing special other then the fact that there is only one of me in this big world and yet that means…everyone is special then…so I guess I’m still average.

I realize that maybe everyone feels like they are left out or whatever. But why is that when we are left out we feel sad…but uncomfortable when pulled in?

Why is it that everyone wants to live the word of greatness but only a selected few actually get to do this?

Is it born into circumstances or is it some sort of messed up fate?

Because when I think about my life so far…it’s nothing great. It’s just average. Even my life goals fall into the average because I’m lazy.

I’m just trying to figure this whole thing out…why is it that sometimes life just works out for certain people in the best possible way and then there is us?

We have to work through school and pay off our college debt as we work and work and work. We don’t ever get to go anywhere. We are cemented to the ground…

But it’s not like the cement was always there…somehow it poured on our feet, which were once standing on green grass soaked in possibilities.

I begin to wonder if maybe the reason we are the crumbs still sticking to the cake pane isn’t because our fate made it impossible for us to form onto the lovely cake with all the special people….but because we simply can’t let go and fall off when the cake forms.

If you understand what I’m saying…

Maybe the reason we are held back is because we are ones holding ourselves back.

You want something? Go out and get it. I’m not saying that it’s a meant to be. Only God knows that. If you are meant to live out greatness (which I’m sure all of us are), then you will. I don’t think any life has no purpose. But sometimes greatness can only be seen by small numbers, and oh my, when will we realize that affirmation from others is pointless?

And when will we realize that greatness is not the point?

The point is Love. Loving Jesus and others and doing works that will give God the glory, not ourselves.

I feel like I harp on this subject way too often, and maybe that is because I haven’t been able to get it into my thick skull yet that it doesn’t matter if I aspire to be all that I can be, because what I need to become is a servant.

A servant you say? My goodness, you must think I’m crazy.

You thought we were reaching for greatness?

No, we aren’t reaching for greatness. We are reaching for humbleness, servitude, grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

And yes, I know that this post has become a jumble of words and incomplete thoughts…

But maybe I can save it somehow, huh? Maybe I can get a well rounded thought out of this head of mine.

If we are all so lonely, aren’t we together in our loneliness? If you get what I’m saying. If we all feel the same, then we really aren’t so alone in our feelings.

I’m pretty sure all of us feel like crumbs once in a while…

We are always last. We are always waiting to be pulled in.

But we shouldn’t have to wait to be pulled in, because we are already pulled in close to a loving Savior, who knows all our dreams and hopes for the future. Who forgives us and consistently humbles us when we let the so called worldly greatness and popularity get to our heads, where we take all the glory and keep it to ourselves.

You can look down the road of has beens. The ones with all the awards. The ones with all the magazine covers. The ones that large and loud crowds boast of their greatness.

And then there is you. The precious gem that wakes up day to day and goes to school full time and works, who is known by name by a very small island of people.

Maybe you won’t make a gigantic leap in the world of sparkling photographers who wanted to know what you ate for lunch…

It’s not about being special. It’s not about being born into a certain circumstance where you are automatically “great” or whatever.

It’s about the ones that don’t have much and yet still don’t think of themselves. It’s about the ones that can wake up day to day and crack the cement around their feet and go out and chase the “average” and sometimes reach above it.

We aren’t reaching for greatness.

We are reaching for Jesus and with that we achieve the greatest of all greatness.

~ Tru

Threshold

Another year is coming to a close.

How can everything be so different yet so much the same?

As much that has happened this year, there really isn’t much to say about it.

365 days have gone by and yet…I am still me. Socially awkward and temperamental Trudi.

I feel like as soon as the clock strikes midnight I will lose something.

The sense of security, perhaps? You get so comfortable in the year that you are in that before you know it, it’s time to say goodbye.

But I can’t say I’ll miss it. The next year is full of such mystery, enticing me to come hither. Maybe that is what makes 2015 (and every other new year) so exciting. The unknown of it all.

It’s a little frightening.

But I know everything will be okay. That is the hope that we cling to. That no matter how screwed up and messy life gets, it will all be okay in the end.

Oh, life is so unutterable sweet sometimes and then it’s in the “depths of despair” and then it’s okay again and then nothing happens and then everything happens at once.

I feel as if I’m on the threshold of something and I don’t know what it is. All the dust is crowding on all the things that I loved. I feel as if adolescence is truly behind me and now I’m an adult. I’m stepping into an empty room and I’m not sure what to put there.

So much hope springs from the unknown. The idea of greatness; the expectation that softens the blow as reality hits.

All these sweet, sad goodbyes are making me nostalgic. All the times I spent mulling over my future plans, I didn’t really enjoy the year as much as I should have. I forgot to make more memories. Instead I was too busy trying to achieve all these goals. Trying to be all impressive when in the end I only ended up straining myself and falling into anxiety and stress.

I guess, as I step over this threshold and the clock strikes midnight…I’m not going to wish for a better year, but a better me. The only thing I can change is myself.

So, I’ll raise my sparkling glass of grape juice to the New Year and I’ll see you all in 2015.

“Tomorrow, is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one.”- Brad Paisley

For Blue Skies

I realize that most of my deep revelations come while I’m driving in my car. I don’t know why, but my thoughts run rampant at stop lights.

I was driving in my car on my way home from school, there was a lot of traffic, which is kind of annoying, but nevertheless, you see people walking along the streets and sitting in a car beside you and ahead of you and it just hits you like this…

Complete strangers, each with a soul and stories that you will never know about. Each with lives that keep on continuing as they make that turn onto the interstate, driving off to who knows where.

People we don’t know, tend to be thought of as the props in our own personal plays.

We walk among strangers and don’t even glimpse their faces.

And that is sad.

Every week I sit in classes and listen to my teachers talk a mile a minute about our bodies and what they are made of and how they work. Never does it come up that we are more then just skin and bones; made up of multiple systems (each far too complex to not be made by a creator by the way). Don’t even get me started with my Psych class.

Never does anyone say anything about our souls and how they desperately need saving.

Maybe I have come to realize that our hearts beat for many things in this life and how insignificant everything is when our hearts beat for only those things…

Money. Title. Lovers. Worldly belongings. Fame. Approval from our so-called peers. Academic success.

In the end it matters only for who these worn and heavy hearts beat for.

For who do these souls belong too?

When I start thinking about all these souls and hearts…it causes me to search my own and ask myself what my heart is beating for?

Because lately, I have felt lost, worn, tired…and just empty. I feel as if I’m in this ring boxing at air. I’m not sure what I’m fighting against, I just have to keep swinging my arms.

The fact is, I know what my heart is beating for. It’s beating for selfish things. It’s only beating for myself.

It shouldn’t be.

I think about my academic success and career choices and finds myself thinking “which one will give me glory.”

And the fact is, that the more I think about my own personal gain and how I can obtain these things that I want in life…the harder it becomes to achieve them.

I’ve been trying so hard this semester between work and school…and to be honest, bitterness started to set in.

And maybe it all came to a head when the snow started falling and I skidded into the ditch on my way to town one dark Saturday evening and I sat there in the car feasting on all my bitterness; stressing out, and wanting to burst into a flood of angry tears.

Then some guys in a tractor pulled up, hitched my car up with a chain and pulled me out of the ditch then drove away.

I didn’t even have a chance to say thank you.

All these souls…all these hearts beating…

For who do they belong to you?

Jesus.

We can only be saved by a constant, always loving Savior.

Constant. That word has such warmth and safety.

Because no matter what, He will always be there.

Oh, how little it all matters when you strip away all life’s fineries and worldly accomplishments and day to day hardships and you find Jesus in the crowd of regrets, sadness, mistakes and expectations never met.

He’s a light, you know. Shining on all the messes that we make in this life and loving us despite everything.

It’s just crazy.

How much Jesus can love despite all flaws, beyond what you deserve. Loving you endlessly.

And He loves not just one person, but every single soul and heart beating in this world, as if they were the only one person He died for.

Choices

We all have choices to make; everyday. Some choices may be easy, insignificant, and small. Those are the best kind. They don’t change your course in life, one way or another; the choice doesn’t really matter. Your still you, and your still safe from the word change.

The big choices, the important, hard, life changing ones. Now those are difficult. Like what college major you should choose, or deciding to love someone, or deciding if you should move out and be an adult.

These big decisions are painful, and you can’t make them with the most certainty, because there is too much unknown.

I came across this quote a while ago. I thought it was slightly strange at first, but it gave me a new idea. Loving is a choice we make, even accepting love is a choice. We seem to think love is just an overwhelming feeling inside of us. But what happens when that overwhelming feeling ceases?

“He loved her, of course. But better then that, he chose her. Day after day. Choice: that was the thing.” – Sherman Alex

Some choices need to be made everyday. Some choices aren’t just once. It seems like this world keeps making choices less permanent. Like when we love someone, and we marry that person, and then one day you wake up and you think “I just don’t have that feeling anymore, the love is gone between us, we’ve changed.”

Choice…that was the thing.

Everyday we have to keep deciding if we want to keep loving someone when that overwhelming feeling is gone.

Everyday we can make the choice to stay asleep with our dreams or go out and chase them.

Everyday we have so many choices.

I sometimes feel like I’m drowning in an overwhelming ocean of options and I don’t know which to choose. I’m frantically trying to take hold of this ship I’m in and steer myself in the right direction, when I end up on a deserted island most of the time.

But when I give up all my cares to Jesus, I find that it’s really not so hard to figure out what choices I should make in this life.

So, I choose Him above everything else. To be honest, if I only choose Jesus, then every other choice I make will be with confidence. Because I choose Him, everyday. I choose to keep loving Him, even when the road seems long and my shoulders ache with every weight full of choices and too many options.

I choose Him because He loved me when I was unloveable. I choose Him because when I was unreachable, He reached for me.

I choose You today Jesus, because no other choice makes sense, if my choice isn’t You first.

Okay is Okay

I’ve been so busy, that I feel as if my life has become a metronome. Bouncing back and forth in a steady, fast pace. I’m trying to match the rhythm, but I’m not very good at it. It’s boring to be honest and life has been going by too fast. I’m so busy focusing on the rhythm of the metronome that I don’t have time to enjoy the music.

I’m so busy going back and forth I can’t move forward. Time just passes so quick that it’s impossible to step outside the rhythm.

But there are days that step outside the metronome. The high notes interacting with the low ones. The bright sunny days that make you feel as if the world is okay. The days when you accomplish more then you expected. That A on a test that proves to you that you’re smarter then you think. Those moments of unexplainable joy that shout out into the void of monthly payments, minimum wage jobs and piles upon piles of homework, saying “life is more then a constant struggle.” because honestly, it feels that it is sometimes…the constant struggle to be better, think harder, and to be more then you can possibly be.

As sad as I am sometimes, life really isn’t so bad. I didn’t say it was good but its okay. Maybe okay is enough, maybe to be just okay is our whim of hope, maybe it’s our fate. Okay may be all that we are and ever will be. I think it’s alright is we just settle for okay. I know, why not try to settle for wonderful or even plain old good. But let’s be honest, this is a sad world, full of sad people. Being okay is fine. We don’t need to be anything other then that. I think we get so caught up in the act of finding complete and flawless happiness that we don’t realize the tiny bits of it that happen each day. We cry, we laugh, we go through the motions. One day is going to really tick you off and the next day is going to be sunshine and rainbows…and you know what? That’s okay. It’s like I said before, life isn’t perfect but it wasn’t meant to be. God created Adam and Eve and knew they would sin. He knew that He would have to send His ONLY SON to die for us.

Though life at the moment may be a metronome, it’s a grand sweet song. It may not be a number one hit on the Billboard Top 100 but that’s okay. My song is the sighs of a classroom; the clicking of the register at work; the sound of the coffee pot dripping in the morning; my car that makes strange noises, and the silence in the house as I go to sleep. It’s not amazing, nor wonderful…and I know it could be better, but right now it is what it is, and I’m okay with that.

Heartbreak and Triumph: The Olympics

Let’s be honest with ourselves. As we watched Shaun White take his final run on the half-pipe, whether we were rooting for him or not, we all held our breath.

When Shaun White finished his final run and held his hands up, you could see the tears welling up in his eyes, and yes, maybe a few tears came to my own as I watched the TV screen, because expectation takes it’s toll on even the very best and sometimes being the underdog is better. Shaun White, who everyone expected to win or least get silver or bronze, ended his final run in fourth and came away from the Olympics for the first time ever with no gold, and even more shockingly, no medal at all.

Patrick Chan, the Canadian three-time World Champion, who has been dominating Men’s Figure Skating for the last four years leading up to the Sochi Olympics was the favorite to win gold. When Yuzuru Hanyu left the door wide open in his free skate with not one but two falls, everyone watched as Patrick Chan slowly closed the door on himself with a couple stumbles and landed himself in second. Second is good…but sometimes it’s just not good enough.

Shani Davis won two gold medals in the 1000 meter in Speed Skating and was looking to make another gold at his third Olympics. When he took to the ice and couldn’t get up to speed and ended up in 8th place, he blamed his suit…which, maybe would have shaved a second or two off his time, but certainly wouldn’t have gotten him on the podium. Maybe Shaun White and Shani Davis should have quit while they were still wanted. Like a well-loved television series that says goodbye when they know they will be missed.

Because it just wasn’t meant to be. Shani Davis and Shaun White were not meant to become three-time gold medalist. Patrick Chan was not meant to get his gold (still torn up about that one to be honest).

When Kim Yuna took to the ice for her final competitive skate in the Women’s Free Skate, the pressure and weight of South Korea was on her shoulders…though you could barely tell with her flawless performance. After all, she led in the short program, and maybe skated better then she did four years ago when she won gold. She should have won gold in Sochi, but instead placed second after an under the radar Adelina Sotnikova placed herself in first. Kim Yuna announced her retirement right afterwards and like in everything, she gracefully bowed out.

When Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue placed second in Ice Dancing, failing to win back to back gold medals.

dynamic_resize — They are beautiful together. They should just get married for pete’s sake.

It’s heartbreaking and sometimes it’s not fair, but maybe the Olympics aren’t about fairness, maybe it’s more about acceptance and learning the lesson again and again that life just isn’t fair, no matter how hard you work for what you want, no matter how much you want it, sometimes you just don’t get it.

But through all the heartbreak, there is also triumph.

When the US beat Russia in a shootout after the eighth round in Ice Hockey.

When Noelle Pikus-Pace won silver in Women’s Skeleton after having two children and retiring from the sport.

When three fine American men swept the podium in gold, silver, and bronze in Ski Slopstyle.

1392289346000-USP-Olympics-Freestyle-Skiing-Men-s-Ski-Slopestyl-011 — We grow em’ right, don’t we?

When David Wise, a 23 year old husband and father, won his first Olympic gold in freestyle skiing.

Fact: David Wise is a Christian and wants to become a pastor.

When Charlie White and Meryl Davis won the first Olympics gold for the United States in Ice Dancing.

Why do we love the Olympics so much? Because it’s the most dramatic two weeks out of every two years. Sports are the rawest reality we will ever watch on TV to be honest.

The next time the Winter Olympics will be on, I’ll be 22 year old. Who knows where I’ll be in the next four years. Four years ago, I never would have thought I would be where I am today.

Who knows where the next four years will take these athletes, but for some it’s time to say a sad goodbye. Goodbye to the athletes like Kim Yuna and Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue…who gave us performances we will re-watch on Youtube and in ten years tell our kids about, just like our parents do when they talk about the Miracle on Ice, or Sergei Grinkov and Ekaterina Gordeeva.

So goodbye to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. See you in South Korea in four years, where we will watch old record be broken, new faces emerge, and veterans return.

Another Year (Just Another Day…)

There is 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. If we really knew the depth of time, I don’t think we would waste it so carelessly. Unfortunately, seconds turn to minutes, hours turn to days, and days turn to weeks then months until suddenly it’s the New Year, and we look back and see how fast it all went by, and realize that every year is just going to go by faster as we get older.

When we are little, we don’t really have a concept of time. Time is based on when lunch is; when Arthur comes on PBS; when the side door to the garage creaks open and Dad’s home, and then that means supper. When I was little I had every shows time slot on PBS memorized: The Big Comfy Couch, Arthur, Mr. Rogers, Between the Lions, Dragons Tails and so forth. Time wasn’t so important back then. Only that hour of the day when it was time for the ten second tidy and clock exercises on The Big Comfy Couch with Loonette, and when Mr. Rodgers would feed his fish and have craft time.

Then suddenly you’re eighteen. You have your first car, your driving to work on a snowy day, paying bills that keep adding up, cashing checks, trying to get by, going to college, and wondering where on earth you’re going next. You suddenly don’t have enough time.

To be honest, we don’t have enough tomorrows, we never did…but as we get older, we learn to appreciate them more, yet we let them slip away into just “another day” anyways. Think about it. Yesterday will never come again. That last hour on this day, you will never get it back. That minute that just ticked off on the clock, will never be wound back. 2013 is gone…and we will never be able to live in it again.

2013 was good. I know that word is mediocre and is used way too much…but anything less or more wouldn’t do. Like every year, 2013 had its ups and downs. It was memorable that’s for sure. I wish I could keep all the memories in a box. All the secret jokes, and the laughter that made our sides hurt and tear up. I wish I had a snapshot of every time I felt like everything was right with the world; I just want to see what I was looking at and wonder why I felt that way. Maybe it was the time we sat by the bonfire on that cold autumn night and made s’mores. Maybe it was the time we were eating gold whales in the car and laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe. Maybe it was the time we went to that Korean BBQ and listened to 90s music on the way home. It was those little moments of insignificance that were the most special to me.

I wish I could go back sometimes, but the thing is…it’s good to move on, even from the good memories, it’s good to leave them in the past in order to make new ones.

So 2014, I don’t have any expectations or resolutions or predictions. I do have a prayer though. A prayer to God that no matter how much we stumble and fall, we will cling more and more to Him; through the worries and fears…have us give it all to You, Jesus. That even through the good, let’s not forget who we owe thanks too. When we wander to new places, may every trail lead us closer to You. Let’s remember that though this year will have chaos and become quite messy…there is hope in each new day, not just a New Year, of fresh starts and new beginnings.

Hope
Smiles from the threshold of (each day or) the year to come,
Whispering ‘it will be happier’…” – Alfred Tennyson

Much love,

~ Trudi

Be Still

Today is one of those days when I have great revelations about myself and then I end up in dire need of chocolate and sleep.

I realized over the years, especially today, that I am constantly trying to have more or be more. Why? Why can’t I be perfectly satisfied?

Well, today I was sitting in my car after a series of unfortunate events, and I realized that the picture that I have of myself in my head doesn’t match up to who I am. In the fact that I set unrealistic goals for myself and try to be someone I’m not.

Who am I? What makes Trudi, Trudi?

I’m not a genius, and I’m not eloquent. I stutter and get nervous when I’m called on in class. I don’t get perfect grades. I prefer to sit relaxing by the TV over a late night out with friends. I’m a hermit. I’m anti-social. I talk when I want to talk, and when I do I say something blunt, and sometimes rude. I’m not always the nicest person in the world, but I try to be. Sometimes. I’m weird. I stay up way too late and get up too early. I’m awkwardly shy and out of place most of the time; completely self-centered in thinking that everyone is starring and judging me. I’m Christian…but I fail at being one sometimes.

I’m being completely honest with you. I’m not going to sugar coat who I am. I’m a sorry sort of person that is a sinner saved by Mercy and Grace.

But I’m not satisfied. I keep looking for complete satisfaction, but I never can find it.

The truth is nothing is going to make me feel satisfied. I’m a cup always half-empty. But maybe that is how it should be. If I’m satisfied in this world then maybe something is wrong.

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that we were made for another world.” – C.S. Lewis

I’m never going to be satisfied. That is the fact. Money, clothes, jobs, people, and everything else in between won’t quench my thirst. I think I blinded myself by thinking that I need be fully satisfied in this life. Ah, but I do need to be content. I need to be fully content in where I am and hopeful towards the future. But, most importantly, I need to trust God. I let my worries and fears cloud my judgement. I think I can do everything on my own and then suddenly I simply can’t. I’m only human. If I give my future over to Jesus, who already has it read and ready for me. What fear do I have? None. I tend to forget that.

Lord, still my soul. The fears, the worries, and the discontentment. Help me to be still and know that YOU are here. Help me to be satisfied in only You, and stop searching for complete satisfaction and gratification in people, position, or things because I will end up with nothing but emptiness.

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heavenly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future, as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.

I don’t know where I want to be, or where I’m going exactly. I do know that I’ll end up somewhere…if that is any consolation for myself. But I’m not scared or worried. Yes, at times I am, but not tonight. I’m at peace. I don’t need to know my future. There could be some huge plot twist or maybe the climax is at the end. Haha. I don’t know. But I don’t need to. That’s the beauty of not worrying and giving everything over to Jesus. He knows, and He’s got me covered.

Goodnight everyone!
~ Trudi