thinking out loud, as usual

*deep breaths*
When a person surrenders their addictions, that don't stop being an addict, right? It's my understanding that an addict is always an addict.

Confession is like detox. It's an exorcism and a release....and slightly more humiliating than I had originally estimated. But not in the way I had guessed it would be. I thought I would be rejected and looked down upon, encouraged to attend more therapy sessions, ostracized.
That's not what happened. I was accepted into a community of people who are dependant on the Blood of Jesus, just like I have chosen to be. A community of people whose pasts are wrecks that they have been rescued from and that they walk independently from today. Their burn outs and rock bottoms don't define them anymore. Just like how my past is. It's a community that sees all my missteps and says that they have been there too. All isn't lost....(Oooh, there is some awesome LOTR quote that I am dying to post here, if I could just remember it. This sounds like a good reason to have a marathon.)

The humiliating part is good. Because I don't ever want to get myself into a situation like that again if I can help it. I know that I'll mess up at some point, but I am trying extra hard now to remember to ask for help...I have a whole strategy to employ now when I'm tempted. And I fully intend to use my entire arsenal to keep from falling in that marsh again.

I didn't feel bad about what I was doing. I didn't. It wasn't out of guilt that I was compelled into action, I am an expert at explaining away my actions to myself.
It was because of the breath-halting knowledge that God was silent in my life. And I had moved on. It was only at night that I laid in bed and tried not to think about it, that I realized how horrified I was.

(I think I know how the prodigal son felt. It's so very odd to me that God call me daughter, when I don't deserve to be a servant of his. It hasn't quite sunk in yet.
The justice half of me is fighting it. There is no way this should be possible.
The other half suggests that perhaps I shouldn't worry about the justice of it all. It defies logic, yes, but if He's giving freely maybe I should throw myself into this and think about logic when the work is done.
I dunno...and I don't think I'm meant to know, right now.)

I didn't feel bad about what I was doing. But I do now....I feel awful. I know this is an answer to prayer because I was asking Him to make me feel terrible about doing this. And I do now. It keeps me from doing it again. I don't feel guilty about it. I feel sad. It makes me want to cry that I was ever involved in it to begin with.
I just have to keep remind myself that it is as far as the East is from the West. My new favorite verse is Romans 5:1. It says that I am justified, which means it is as if I had never sinned.
Still a little big for me to fit my head around.

I've been suffocating my addictions this past week or so. I didn't purpose to kill them all at once....that's just kind of how it went.
I started out with Facebook, reasoning that it should be easy enough. I knew that I would have to get rid of the stories that play in my head constantly, because they are my escape. I am dependant on them. Those are gone now. I knew I would have to do it soon by didn't think it would be this soon, honestly. Fanfics, also gone.....My days have suddenly become unnaturally long....
I can't be sleeping for hours on end because my stories helped me do that. I'd drift in and out of sleep with them riddling my dreams. It's difficult not to think of them, it keeps me awake in the mornings.
Darn, right? I was having sleeping problems anyway. But I do get to sleep at night faster, last few days. And I've been more refreshed. So it's not all doom and gloom.

It's occurred to me that I should be filling my days with something to replace the things I'm distancing myself from. Reading my Bible has been one of those things I should do...But I am one of the most unmotivated people on the planet. I procrastinate until I can procrastinate no longer. I is lazy. I am slightly interested now, though. I've read little verses here and there, lately and it's like I've never read any of the Bible at all before. It all seems new and purposeful to me now. So I am interested, which is new for me.

I need to be careful that my addictions are replaced with the right things and not the wrong ones....like blogging, for example.
signing off-

Facebook Withdrawal

This...is more difficult than I expected. Various illogically fearful questions have zig-zagged through my brain such as "what if I think of a brilliant status update?!" and "what if someone important sends me a friend request and they think I'm ignoring them?!?!" and "how am I sposed to write my research paper rough draft without the moral support of my facebook friends?!?!??!?!!1!!"

And then I realize that this is all pathetic.

I have resolved to wait a week before returning to the lovely facebook. Just to prove to myself that I would indeed survive if zombies attacked FB headquarters. That means that on teusday of next week I will come back.
One day down!

I have considered recording all the statuses I come up with between now and then and recording them somewhere....but have thought better of it. I don't suppose it will do anyone any good having a notebook full of phrases like "Bree Reno likes to tear up paper." and "Bree Reno is writing this blog instead of doing her english homework." and "Bree Reno will most assuredly die of exhaustion one day, because she thinks instead of sleeps."
No one really wants to read that. Not if you're being honest.

While I am here, I may as well tell you that I am completely disgusted by how my female mind works. (I write all this in the most playful way possible, mind you.) I crush on someone and immediately, my mind flits ten years into the future and pictures us married and in a foreign country of some kind with lots of dust and days that rival the inside of a cookie-bakin' oven. That is so irratating to me! Obnoxious!
Why on earth would I think things so improbable and presumptuous about people I barely know? I have no clue.
I think it's cause I'm a girl. Similar to how guys can't help but use their eyes to judge things, I can't help my brain from getting ahead of itself.
The problem is that after I've thought these things, I always feel bad that I've dared to picture someone else's future. I don't know why. The future is just so out of my hands and not something I could predict if I tried, so I very rarely think about my own. . . But to consider someone else's seems almost like a sin. Like I'm breaking my own Cardinal Rule.
That probably makes no sense.
I guess it's because by picturing my crush in a future of my own imaginings I disregard whatever his dreams may be and set unrealistic expectations for everything that might be in store for us. Gosh, even using the word 'us' feels wrong.

Anyhooos....there's not much else i can justify putting off my paper to write. I leave you now with the lovely Gabe Bondoc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmHBu-pncmA awesomeness

au revoir ..... i guess ..... man, i don't want to write this paper.

I realized today that God does not operate like Superman. I also realized that in the past I've expected him to. And, as it turns out, God doesn't whisk down and save the day all the time. He is a little more subtle than that, in my experience. He also has a bigger plan that Superman does. All Superman does is react. God has a strategy, a master plan...
Interesting.

I am at a cross roads. I am nearing the end of my Passport program at Metro. I have one and a half more semesters there...or quarters...whichever. I am finishing with the swim school after this session. And a large gaping hole is left for my future to take place in. And, as is usual with me, I have no plans.

Recently I've been uncovering reality. I've been discovering how I cannot live my life halfway. I can't be a good kid part time. And I can't keep controlling particular parts of my life.
Certain things are easy to give up while others make me feel like that guy in the Bible who asks Jesus how to get to heaven and Jesus tells him to sell everything he owns and follow him. The dude couldn't do it. He walked away...miserable.

My everything that I don't want to give up is difficult to describe which is partially why I believe it's so hard for me to surrender it.
My imagination is my escape. It's my entertainment and my outlet. When I am upset, I write. When I am bored, I write. When I am confused, I write. It's my solution to many things.
Imagination has always been something that I've never truly given up to God. And I know it's become an idol for me. I've always shrugged it off, telling myself that it was impossible to know how much was too much. No one can preach much of a sermon on this type of thing because it's so personal.

I am always spilling my guts on this blog...and none of my guts are capable of lying. So I am being completely honest with you when I say that I do not want to give this up.
I know that it is not an option. Surrender is unconditional.
My feelings suck. My head wants to want this. I'm not sure what my deal is. Maybe I'm afraid that I won't have anything to fall back on. Or maybe it's just a horrible habit that has built up. I don't know. I probably don't need to know.
Right now, I'm praying that God would change my heart, that He would help me want to please Him. Because right now I am too comfortable.

That's the other thing. I think I might be meant to be a missionary somewhere. And I know that I'm just plain scared to do what I have to here. I am scared of phones, for one thing. I can't drive. I am a writer, not a doctor, not a language teacher, not a preacher, not a wife, not a business woman. (That's a funny order of things to be, is it not? It struck me as funny. But that's how they spilled out. *shrugs*) Heck, I don't even know the Bible that well. Anywhere I would go, I would be a burden.
I want so very badly to help someone with something. And I have accepted that at this point in my life I will accept the help from the people God sends my way as graciously as I can. And perhaps later I can give back. But as of now I have no money. No experience. And no confidence.

At the moment, I am rather overwhelmed and feeling on the hopeless side of things. There are so many problems that need fixing. So many hurts that have not been kissed better. Even if I was everything I wish I could be, I wouldn't know where to start.

There was a brighter side that I was going to right about, but it's late and I can't think of it at the moment....Oh, yes. For the first time in years, I am seeing stars in my dark night of the soul. I am catching glimmers of the God I was so close to as a child. It's not that he wasn't there before, I've just been blind for a really long time now....Or what seems like a long time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnDvRRY5eT4 I am still listening to this gal. Brooke Fraser is awesome...Quite frankly, it is down right upsetting to me that no one knows about her. I love almost every one of her songs on her Albertine album. This is a completely different topic of which I will not even start on other than to ask why on EARTH Christian radio stations play the same ten artists over and over and over and over again? I do not know, George.

the end