eleneariel | Entries tagged with thoughts

My eyes are being opened; don't think I'm blind.

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In other areas of life, things are dropping into place. Thanks be to God for showing me that Now is the time!

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I've been thinking about all the things under the surface. There's so much more to me than what you see: there are experiences and dreams and ideas that I have not shared with anyone and likely never will. I think things that I never say. I have deeper emotions than can be articulated. Words aren't adequate to really express most of who I am. I don't think I'm unusual; I'm not even that private of a person in general. I wonder if anybody can truly know me. Or if I can know anyone else completely.

In the end, I guess we know each other enough, and that's what matters. God knows me completely; He knows you, too.

Last month I read a book titled Living Beautifully Together, by Alexandra Stoddard. She's written a number of books about what I call "gracious living", including The Gift of a Letter, Living a Beautiful Life, Creating a Beautiful Home, and so on.

The book itself was nothing all that spectacular, and I actively disagreed with parts of it: I do think that one must put time into nurturing oneself in order to be a happy and healthy individual able to help everybody else (you've all know those who wear themselves to a frazzle taking care of everyone but themselves, right? Not very comforting people to be around, usually!) but I was a little uncomfortable with the amount of time the book spent on on that aspect. I'm well trained in how to take time for myself, so I didn't need any more help in that area!

However, it was a very useful book in that it cemented in my mind a philosophy that I have held for some time, albeit unconsiously. Living graciously - appreciating ordinary beauty, making that extra little effort to make life pleasant and enjoyable for myself and others, living life fully, taking the time to make a moment beautiful rather than mundane. It's about slowing down just a little and not running around so frantically that we miss all the lovely moments in life. It's about stopping and enjoying a moment without trying to cram anything else into it. It's about doing more than just surviving.

( Read more... )

There's so much more I could say, but I fear these thoughts have been disjointed enough without throwing more into the mix. It's one of those things that I feel so deeply that finding the words to really adequately portray what this is to me seems impossible.

A quote from the book that rather sums it up for me: "Be creative with the time you have and do everything with flair and a sense of fantasy. Whatever you decide to do, make it a wonderful experience."

I like mountains. A lot.

I like looking out the window and seeing mountains. I wonder if I would ever get used to the sight and take them for granted?

I just confirmed my tickets for the Idaho trip in *counts* 21 days. I didn't dream that I purchased them. They haven't lost my reservation. This is good!

I cleaned (sort of) and the mess is much better. After the weekend I should have a lot of the ~~clutter~~ Christmas presents out of there, and that will help a tremendously. (Oh, the new curtains are up. They are very black, and I like them.)

Things that used to make me nervous at the mere thought of them happening someday don't seem to be so scary after all, now that the time is here. Interesting.

I get to go to work in the morning! Oh, yippie.

I love flying down back roads in the dark grooving to the music.

And thinking about good memories of movies and wine and delicious Mom's Ham Stuff and wonderful company. (

savetheolives,

clothofdreams, and

sicilianocalvo- thank you again.)

I'm now the proud owner of The Godfather and The Godfather II. *happyhappy* (Danke, Hannah!)

And after the latest news from relatives (can it get worser? Evidently!) I am more content and happy than ever to belong to the immediate family that I do. Especially when my dad says he's glad I belong to them, too. As a woman, it's wonderful to be loved by a mother, but there is something especially meaningful to being loved by a daddy.

(Two days until my family leaves for their vacation - which probably means Godfather every NIGHT! Woohoo!)

This turned out longer than I intended. It was going to be a pithy one-liner....ha. I'm just not that good at pithy.

When you have a whole evening planned out, and every single thing you've planned involves electricity, but you come home from work only to find that the power has been out for an hour because some stupid ~~drunk~~ person has run their car into an electric pole.....

And the house gets hotter and hotter because it is still 100 degrees outside, and the light fades, and you can do none of the items you have planned, but can only sit close to the window with a paper fan and read books....

And, well, once the power is back on and your equilibrium is restored, then you can appreciate how nice it was to have a relaxing evening with nothing to do but read.

Hm. Why do I never feel calm in the MIDDLE of situations? It's not nice to be stressing out needlessly.

Love = forgiveness?

I am feeling exceptionally strange, giddy, chipper, and odd. What a lot of things to wrap up into one bundle of me!

A very pertinent point from this morning's sermon:

"Our righteousness is as filthy rags." That doesn't mean our bad deeds are as filthy rags. All the good things we do look like trash to our perfect Father. But He loves us, accepts our efforts, and helps us try harder, even though compared to His wonderful perfection, they'll always look like old cleaning rags.

Wow. There goes any traces of smugness I might have been tempted to feel.

In the ladies room before church started, I thought of the title of my first non-fiction book. If You Don't Talk To Yourself, You're Crazy: a history of an imagination. Yes, I'm serious. No, I don't know if I'll ever get around to writing it.

Hey, inspiration doesn't always strike in story-book worthy places.

How does anybody ever learn to type on a QWERTY keyboard? And yet, how proficient we are, and how terrible we would be on an ABCDE one.

Baby finger- and toenails amaze me with their teenyness.

I don't like it when people try to help me be a better person when better = more like them.

It makes me uncomfortable with both myself and them.

I just got done tagging all of my old entries.

It was very interesting, reading back through four years of my life. And a lot more pleasant than I thought it would be.

It makes me wonder where I'm headed.

Current Mood: contemplative

Just a thought--life is a funny and ironic thing when Home is the place you spend most of your time away from.

On the other hand: where would Home be for you if it were defined as the place you spent the most time?

And for clarification purposes, let's assume that any time spent unconscious by virtue of being asleep doesn't count.

I like meeting my parents for supper after work. It makes me feel grown up.

I am very happy.

The nesting bug has bitten me big time. I have never, ever felt discontent about living at home--still don't, really--but all of the sudden I want a house that is mine to decorate, change, paint, plant flowers around, and arrange. I feel like Danny; "I can't turn off my brain. Every where I go, I'm seeing the angles." Every walk I've taken around the neighborhood lately all I can do is look at how other people have arranged their yards and think "Oh, I could do that" or "They should move that over there."

Speaking of walking, it really is wonderful to get up early enough to get a walk in before the day gets started. I never thought I'd be happy about getting up at 6:00 to do something like that. o_O

Back to nesting...(This is a term people besides me and Grandear use, isn't it? You know--arranging your living space. Constantly changing things. Nesting!)...My room lacks it's new wall paint yet but I have the furniture in a new way which I am very happy about. Once the paint is done I'll revamp the prints and maps on the walls. And then I guess I'll just take over the rest of the house and tell mom she has to let me redecorate. =)

I've done my hair a new way this morning and it looks smashingly elegant. And Hannah, I'm wearing the new ~~poncho~~ shawl. I feel beautiful.

Time for church. I love my church. How can I praise God enough for making this work out so wonderfully?

(I garagesaled yesterday and oh, that made the nesting even stronger...I could have such fun decorating/furnishing a house with random bits. I happened upon an estate sale that had a number of old items, so I nabbed all the real silver and the old prints and linins. And an old, old wooden eye glass box with "The White-Haines Optical Co., Cor. Long and High Sts., Columbus Ohio" on the top. I'm positive it's at least from the 1920s, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it was older.)

I wish to be known as a person who moves through the world with grace and ease.

Unfortunantely, it's not something you can strive for or work towards. You have it, or you don't.

I wonder if it'll ever happen.

Have I been boring lately? I feel boring. Or boring on the outside, even though inside all these exciting things are going on. But I can't articulate them. As usual.

I want an occasion to use each and every one of my new icons.

How happy I am to be alive in this wide, wide world, alive and being me.

I begin to capture the feeling from two years ago.

And tonight on my way home in the dark, I want to hear music, loud and driving and relentless.

Roam, Give A Little Bit, Listen To Your Heart, Lonely No More...

All the things that are opposite my classical, literary persona.

I like being a complicated person.

Every so often something happens that makes me realize how different I've become.

A couple weeks ago in class we split into groups of three for a project. One person had to be the leader and organize the information given by the other two students. The other two in my group naturally assumed that I would be the leader of our group. And the scary thing is: I naturally assumed so too.

I've never been a natural leader in my life. I Do Not Assume Leadership Roles. I have rarely been picked out to be in charge of other people. In charge of projects I could do on my own, yes, but not other people. And yet, there I was, taking over with no problem at all.

Every so often I'll be standing with the "girls" at work (the part time ladies), and suddenly I will realized that I'm actually in a supervisory position over these people who are two and three times older than I am. There are times when I'm the only full time person in the building, and...then problems end up at my desk. I am 20 1/2 and they are coming to ME for a final decision on something?!

But mostly I just accept it and only occasionally am I shocked and surprised. And that's another of the things that has changed.

**********
I'm kind of lonely today.

And I'm not sure whether to lament for my lost youth or not.

I miss some people that never even existed, except in my mind, and in the end I'm not so sure whether they were better company or not.

Sure, I know. Real is always more Real than Pretend, only Pretend is a lot more fun because you get to make up the rules as you go.

I've been wondering why I like the things I like. Maybe I think too much; maybe I over-analyze things, maybe I'm just weird. But I wonder about these things...is it just random? Or did God put them there, and if so, why?

I love books and information. Am I a librarian because those are things I like, or did God give me those likes so that I could be a librarian? The job was a very much God-given thing: too many things converged perfectly at once without my help for it to be other then divine intervention. But did He take my likes and give me a job that fit them, or did He plan me for this job while I was yet in the womb and thus plant those desires in me? If I was rabidly passionate about numbers--which I am not--would He have made me an accountant instead?

(As a side note, I can think of several people here who also have jobs perfect for their likes/passions:

crystallia has always had a tender heart for hurting people and

equuschick has a tender heart for hurting animals, and both have jobs to match them perfectly.)

I like Odd Humor. Is this because God wanted to give me friends who also delight in Oddness, or did He pick those friends for me to match my humorous streak?

It makes me wonder about the future. I delight in things Italian. Is God likely to do something with this someday? I swoon over uniforms. If I marry a man with a job that requires a uniform, will it be because God gave me someone to match what I already liked--or has He been preparing me for this man all my life?

Or maybe it's all moot, since God's Divine Plan works either way, and probably both at the same time. Maybe I'm foolish for trying to understand it.

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eleneariel

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Joie de vivre

i thank you God for most this amazing day

Entries tagged with thoughts

Perfect for a Grey Day

On Living Graciously

PS

Mmmmmm cold

Thankfullnesses (hm, can I add any more double letters?)

Flexibility is always good

A thought from a sermon I didn't listen to today

A Sunday thought (or two)

Thought:

Milestone

Home

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Have I said this before? I think I've said this before.

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I get these moods

A brief period of introspection

In which the Pretend is overtaken by the Real

Which came first: the like or the effect?

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July 2011

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