we're all trying to find

a place in the hope of future and whatever make us feel like we're truly living.




Thanks, PepperAnn and Grace.. You helped me see points I hadn't thought about before and I really appreciate your perspectives and encouragement. No, really- if I weren't so tired from cake-baking I would probably be all teary eyed. Thank you times a jillion.

I was in bed a few minutes ago thinking about what yall said to me and I decided that If I didn't write down what I was thinking immediately, that I might forget and be back where I started. So this is me recording and remembering and processing.

When I was in elementary school, I think I would have to say my 2 passions were babies and piano music. I loved holding babies, dressing babies, feeding babies, especially baby dolls because they didn't puke. Last summer, SY Rogers mentioned in his talk about how girls like to play with dolls because its our nature to take care of things. God made women to be nurturing. Through the piano- I felt like I was living... I don't care what song they put in front of me, if I didn't know it, I wanted to play it over and over and over again until I could close my eyes and play- because when I didn't have to worry about the technical aspects of the music, I could play it memorized. I could play it by heart.

And when I knew my music by heart, (ok, kids. this is going to sound silly and it might make your arm hairs stand up) I could play it by heart. I would just sit at the piano and close my eyes and move back and forth like my teacher would when she played something that she felt was meaningful.

When my first cat died, I remember being so overcome by death and the reality of it. (I think I was 7) I sat at the piano for at least 2 hours I'm guessing, and played the piano. No sheet music, no nothing. It sounded very crappy. - but because I was thinking about my cat and how much I was going to miss her, I just pushed the keys and tears ran down my big ol fat cheeks.

Then, one of my parents, I forgot who, came in the dining room and told me that if I didn't have anything to play, then I should stop banging on the piano.

Not that that was my big life changing traumatic event, but I made sure I didn't do anything by heart out in the open where somebody could tell me I was being ridiculous.


What I'm getting at, is this: What do I want to do by heart and what makes me feel alive? I've had so many answers to that in the past 19 years- which isn't really a lot, but it's all I know so it feels that way...
- When I wanted to be a pediatrician, (because I wanted to take care of all the babies in the world) I remember working in the church nursery every Sunday and Wednesday. As I got older, I started "getting ready for college"- I heard that medical school was hard so I wanted to already be ahead of everyone else. When I was 14, I tried to memorize all of the bones in the body in one summer and I got dang close.
At the same time as all of this, I also wanted to be on Broadway and dance every day. When you dance, you get to move your whole body- when you feel the music, it's so much better... and nobody can tell you to stop. I danced for 12 years at The Dance Shoppe and got into the Senior Competition class in middle school and about a year after I got my first pointe shoes, I decided dance wasn't for me. I didn't feel it anymore. (Getting accepted into the Young Americans was quite tempting though, and sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if I went to CA my freshman year instead of Winthrop)


Maybe what I've been worrying about is the thought of my passion for life dying out... life meaning what makes you feel alive. Maybe the day that I woke up and decided to draw was the first day that I allowed drawing to make me feel alive. Sometimes certain poems and songs make me feel alive.. Chris Rice's songs did that for me when I was little, and now when I play them on the piano, I feel like something's circulating in me other than blood. As if the thing that made me was allowing me to take a great big gulp of himself and hold it in for a little bit, and try to keep it moving in me for as long as I could without letting go.

Making images do that for me now and I'm continually searching for whatever will bring me that connection with the Life. Drawings, photographs, some movies- it seems like over the years that feeling has become more of a combination between visual and audial, rather than audial alone.

.....And my worries about making a wrong decision? I think I'll always have them, but Grace and PepperAnn are right: If I keep going after what makes me feel alive... what I have passion for... what I want to do by heart.. then I think I'll alway be happy.....



good news: on the first hour of the first day of this year, was the first time.. in a long time.. that I let being Alive (and being forgiven) have all of me.. and when I opened my eyes, my hands weren't beside me or in my pockets and That's what I truly want to go after...