Thoughts

I’ve been too hard on my Dad in the past. We communicate differently, but he really does love me lot. I should send him a card saying that.

Not as often

Obviously not using this as much as I’d like to. I love to write. I should get on that. 

 

Slight insert having nothing to do with series started on January First: 

 

Healed friendship with Joel. Healing friendship with myself. I love where I am at right now. The more I give up , the more I get back. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for me. He’s already blowing my mind every day. 

 

I hope to be more open. I pray to be more open. You should too, it’s wonderful. 

It’s hard to bask in being single when all of my friends are attractive. Just saying.

Does one night really mean new beginnings?

A once wise person I used to know said that if you want to be somebody, you be that person today. You’re not who you want to be in the future, today is the future, and you make the choice to be the person you want to be. 

My prayer is that I want to become the woman that God wants me to be. 

Isn’t that my goal while I’m here? To please God? Well, if that is my one goal while I’m on earth, I think to myself sometimes…

        ”What in the world am I doing?”

I think I’m having a problem moving on to change because I haven’t really processed everything that’s happened. So I think I’ll use this as an outlet to write it out, so I have nothing left to keep replaying in my head to see what I could have done differently. This will be devoid of any kind of form, but perhaps a faint timeline will be present.

I should turn the tube off before proceeding….and now for a soundtrack of the year for my writings. 

Okay , after going to the bathroom and thinking about how long this will take, I think I’ll just do short snippets and take about a week to complete this.  ( I have a lot of work to do around the house today, so let’s just start with January.)

Music: I’m taking a chance on Pandora and using a Jump Little Children Station. Joel was still in my life at this point, so it’s only appropriate.

 

 

 

Okay… 

             The day before school started I was notified by my mother that my Dad was not continuing his financial support into the spring semester. 

I hit the roof, but I knew it was expected. The premise of my fathers’ continuing financial support was to make C’s and above. I made 1 D that semester (it’s possible that there were two, but grades have never been my strongsuit.) 

           In a logical perspective of cause and effect, my Dad had every right to financially withdraw. However, during that fall semester, my Dad called me perhaps 3 times, and all about finance questions, never about how good I was or how Joel and I were. I don’t remember him asking about class that much either. The relationship with my father and I had been on a steady decline since my freshman year when he didn’t come to visit me. 

First day of school, I sent and email to my Dad asking about financial documentation, and a casually dropped question about why he didn’t tell me sooner. ( The kicker is that you have to apply for financial aid for the year by april BEFORE the fall of that semester. This was the spring, and no FAFSA had been filed.) I was doomed not to receive any financial aid. 

My dad emailed me back explaining the logical reason why he didn’t continue support, but I didn’t care, all I could read from his words were “I don’t really care much about you as it is, and you’re just a financial obligation who wasn’t really panning out so I needed to cut off all ties.” 

I felt like bad stock. The things that my Dad and I talked about were not that deep and weren’t really ever about the real me. I tried bringing things up, tried talking about Joel, but things always get refracted back to school and money. This had been a trend of communication since I started college. 

       I do understand that my father was putting me through school at that point, and that school and money were intertwined to him. But it seems like there has been irreparable damage done in almost every phone conversation that didn’t talk about my personal journey, or every parents weekend that nobody was there for the past 3 years. 

         So, these were the things going through my head. Joel was a great support system, there for me to cry to and talk to, however here is where the big whopper of mistakes was made by Joel Boss. He had said this a few times before when my dad had hurt me, but this time I took it way too seriously. 

“Sarah, all you need is God and me. That’s all you need.”

We’ll talk in another chapter about just how much that one screwed me up.

Even though I felt that my faith wasn’t strong, and there were days I knew that God would pull through for me, to be honest, I thought that was the moment when I would just drop out of school because I wouldn’t get any funding. 

From the leftover of selling my piano, I received enough financial aid to keep going through the semester. (Through loans of course, how else?)

God pulled through for me and I still had Joel, so I was content. Except one thing. My father hadn’t spoken to me on the phone this entire time. 

I sent him a couple of emails a couple of weeks after this with no response. Here’s an excerpt from one of them:

     “Having a relationship with my Father matters to me, and if you can’t see that it’s been going down the drain for the past three years, then I don’t know what to say.”

“If it wasn’t obvious to you, then I am stating now that I think that email warrants some kind of response. You are killing me with your silence Dad. Please call or write or something, or I’m going to have to stop contact altogether for my own sake. I love you but I can’t keep letting this eat at me everyday.”

No response.

He called me about a two weeks before the wedding and asked how I was, and said we hadn’t talked in a while. I wanted to run myself into a tar pit because maybe that might be less aggravating than this situation. 

The next chapter has a lot to do with Joel and my Dad, so I’ll end this chapter here. Sorry if I’m ending on a sad note. There is a happy ending, I promise.

Don’t Drink and Fly

Actually , just quite the opposite here in Charlotte, NC. My plane was delayed in Asheville, thus changing me to a later flight. With time to spare, I thought I’d imbibe in my first airport beer today. It’s an India Pale Ale and it’s quite delicious. With my warm, toasted turkey sandwich to follow, this will make Charlotte a town to remember. 

    My dear friends the Vince Guaraldi Trio just greeted me over the airwaves. This Christmas felt a bit empty; perhaps it was the first holiday without seeing my mother at all, or maybe it was the absence of attendance at the Christmas Eve Service. 

“It was too rainy and cold outside.”

Last time I checked, Jesus was born in a barn. The least we could do was venture out in a heated Sport Utility Vehicle and travel 2 miles to hear about the Christmas Story. But Lord knows how offensive that service might have been (to my family, not me.)I am a coward for not driving the SUV down there myself, and I’m also a coward for not standing up for my Savior. 

He has changed my life, and not just within the walls of Wesley. How am I to truly accept my New Father when I haven’t even learned to forgive my father? 

We drove to the airport together today. That was the first time we’d had together in over 3 years. He called Joel a coward. Or a really mean person for doing the things he did, but most likely a coward. I think that sped up my recovery from a broken heart about 200 mph. 

There is something about your father being unhappy about your broken heart that makes you remember he’s your father. I’m thankful for that, but how much more upset is my Father in Heaven when I hurt like I have been? I can feel it in my bones whenever I think about that. 

He knows my hurt, He knows my trouble. He’s saved me from myself… Surely Hell is part of it, but I am coming to think that the biggest battle is fighting the noise of selfishness and arrogance and pride to hear the sweet sound of peace, truth, and love.

Awkward Outlet

 

 

There hasn’t been a day in my adult life so far that I haven’t wanted to write my thoughts down somewhere, but the past has proven unruly in regards to blogging my actual thoughts. Friends were offended, I tried to justify my thoughts, and the outlet turned awkward and untruthful. 

 

            I hope to change that with this one. Not all of my thoughts will be here, naturally, and many things will stay in my physical writings. I thought this might be an outlet to let anyone know what I’m thinking if I haven’t had time to catch up with them, or if anyone who’s even known me since I was a tyke wants to know how I’ve changed or what really matters to me these days, you can occassionally check to see if I’ve written down a new thought. 

 

          These are just my reactions. I realize it’s public, but I also realize that it’s important to treat others with respect. If you’re offended by my writings, use your freedom and choose not to read them. Otherwise, I hope my writings can help someone else find insight to what is going on in their lives. 

 

We’re all related in one way or another. Let’s share with each other and see  what comes of life together