I'm Beginning to Wonder...

...if I'll ever get to that place I've always wanted to get to. You know, I'd thought that when I started college, I would finally be able to break out of the little cage I've always been enclosed in. I've been trying so hard for so long to grow into the person I want to be, but it always seems that I just can't untangle myself from all the things that are holding me back.

I guess there's not really a lot to say about this but to put it bluntly: I want new things. I've been wanting new things, but I always feel like I have so many obligations that I can't set anything down, no matter how lightly, and walk away into the brilliant blueness I so long for. It's really quite depressing.

I'm really looking forward to NaNoWriMo, I guess. Partly, yes, because I'm about to become a novel writing machine, but because I am hoping to finally get some peace. I can dive into my own little world that I've created inside my mind, with the characters I have developed from my wants and needs, and take a break from my pathetic story by becoming a part of theirs.

Nine and a half more hours.

gHoSts

Last night was the Neihardt Ghost Tour, something I'd long anticipated. Apparently, it's only to scare freshmen, and they won't tell you the stories unless you go on the tour...so we went. However, Ellen and I had previously looked up Neihardt stories on the Google, and what we found was actually extremely similar to a couple of the stories they told us on the tour. I was pretty legitimately creeped out. I'm gonna put up photographs from Raymond 3 (the floor I live on), and tell a short version of the stories that go with them.

The Lounge

Yep, that's the Raymond 3 lounge. I suppose it looks harmless enough, but you never can tell (oooh, George Bernard Shaw pun for me!). Note the Dr. Seuss mural on the wall, along with the fun posters of 2009 Nebraska football on the adjacent one. Apparently, though, things in this room were not always so happy. Sara, a student in 1918, lived in Room 314 (that's three rooms down from mine), and fell ill during the flu epidemic. Every day, she would ask the nurses to open the windows to let the light in, and every night they would return to shut them. Open, shut, open shut. Sara died. For decades afterward, students would report hearing noises. Open, shut, open shut. Finally, one day nearly 30 years ago, a maintenance man entered Sara's room, commanding her to stop opening and shutting the windows. The noises stopped, and to this day, no one has since heard the windows open and close. However, as no one wanted to sleep in the girl's room, Room 314 was made into the Raymond 3 Lounge. Come visit!

The Creepy Doll

There's not a whole lot to this story, except that some girl who lived (again) on Raymond 3 had a doll that she left out in the hallway one night. She heard a scratching at the door, opened it, and found the doll staring up at her with glowing orange eyes. Her boyfriend saw it, too, and so did several other people on different occasions. They threw the doll down the trash chute, and students complained of scratching in the walls long after.

Well, there are the stories of my haunted floor. Just be glad you're not the one having to sleep here!

Seriously.

Longing For Home

So, today I've been thinking a lot about longing for heaven. I've been recalling those verses about being a citizen of heaven, and how this earth isn't actually our real home, and when I sit and let those words sink into my head, it's abosolutely mind-blowing! I feel as though this it is so easy to get caught up in the workings of this world, the mind-sets, and the attitudes, and so difficult to remember who we really are. I'm sure that most people would think it ridiculous if we went around broadcasting that we are actually just passing through: a little vacation, if you will. Actually, more like a detour that we have to take while heading to our final destination.

Then, thinking about the final destination, I was challenged by my 411-God text today to ask myself what types of things make me long for heaven. To be honest, I really have no idea, but I think that from now on, I'm going to try to be more aware of the small blessings around me, the things that help me to see God for who He is, that make me crave Him. I'll go ahead and admit that when I found out I wasn't Jewish (I was about 4, I'm guessing), I bawled. I just couldn't come to grips with the fact that I was a Gentile, not one of God's chosen people. Since then, I have grown to understand that we Goyim are grafted into the tree of God's family, so I'm fine with not being Jewish. However, becoming aware of my faith's Hebrew roots has been something that has strengthened my faith immensely throughout the past year. I've found that God has given me a huge heart for Israel, and I have acquired an incredible respect for their culture and ways of thinking, even if I don't always agree. This love of Israel and this newfound understanding of the Bible, its beginnings, and the world that my Jesus would have lived in, has made my faith so much more real to me. I thank God so much for that, and I would say that it is one of the things that makes me crave heaven. I long for the time when the Temple will be rebuilt, I long to see Mashiach coming on the clouds, and I long to fall at his feet in worship and love.

It really kind of makes me shudder with anticipation.

Soneto IX

Here's a poem I love by Pablo Neruda. It's been translated into English beautifully (and it makes me think of Robert).

There, where the waves shatter on the restless rocks
the clear light bursts and enacts its rose,
and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds, to one drop of blue salt, falling.

O bright magnolia bursting in the foam,
magnetic transient whose death blooms
and vanishes--being, nothingness--forever:
broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea.

You and I, Love, together we ratify the silence,
while the sea destroys its perpetual statues,
collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness:

because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics,
galloping water, incessant sand,
we make the only permanent tenderness.

Shells.

My hands are full of shells.

Beautiful, intricate, wonderful shells.

I've been wondering why on earth I can't seem to grasp hold of God these days, and I thank him for showing me what I've been doing wrong. Each time I set out to find Him, I always seem to end up right where I started, back at the beginning. I begin with zeal, only to find myself torn between the shells I hold, wonderful as they are, and the starfish perfectly in my reach. I say to myself that God is out of reach, that He is withholding himself from me for whatever reason; I say that ever since my changes over the summer, God has been distant and surreal. I suppose the reason I pin this problem on God is because I can't bear to face the fact that I really need to drop my shells. My hands are full, and I can't grasp the God I love.

I am so preoccupied with doing everything, with being everything, that I hinder myself from dropping everything and just being. Jesus led a focused life, one in which He didn't live according to the expectations of others, the obligations that humans undoubtedly will feel, and the interruptions that, although seemingly good, would have delayed the work He needed to do. Jesus didn't try to do everything for everyone during His time here on earth. He didn't heal every single person in need of healing, He didn't stop to make sure that every single non-believer believed; that would've been wonderful, but it wouldn't have fulfilled the purpose that God had set out for Him, that He had said yes to.

I wonder what I have said yes to in my own life that is stopping me from giving my complete yes to God. Although I'll need to do some praying as to what these things may be, I know already that they will cost me something to drop. Like seashells, the obligations and undertakings of my life may be great, but I've realized that often the worst enemy of the best is the good, not the bad. However, the starfish will be worth it. If I truly believe that my life has a purpose beyond my own works, wills, and thoughts, let me be able to take a step, drop my shells, and be reunited with the God who so wants to be with me.