this is what i've come to realize lately... i learn best when i read. second best when i listen to something over and over and over again. and third when i hear it just once. doing something is hit or miss learning for me. this is how i learn.
i have amazing friends in my life. i  really do. lindsay, ash, brit, kelly, kate, becky, jessy, so many. the problem is, none of them are immdeiately in my life.  they're all in other states, and i'm in ky. in ky, i have a lot of people i hang out with, but i have yet to meet someone who even comes close to... idk being them? i know that there are all kinds of people in the world. that's really cool. but i really believe that everywhere we go (even different states) has a different culture. a different kind of people that draws it.
i have told people that i love different culutres, but what i'm realizing is that i love third world cultures. i have told people that i love meeting new people, but really i only like meeting new people who are awesome off the bat. i have told people that god is enough period, but in real life god is only enough when i like my circumstances, or at least have solid hope that they're only temporary and that they will get better.
my entire college experience has been a real time of brokeness for me. like real brokenness. like not just sadness, not just confusion, not just wrestling, but real deep falling apart inside. thank god for skin to hold be together... sometimes i feel like it's not going to be strong enough soon, and i'm just gonna spill out everywhere. all my doubts, fears, hopelessness, insecurity, everyyywhere. there's an attractive picture. haha.
before i left indiana, i thought i knew what brokenness was.  i thought brokenness was how sad i was when swinger moved away. i thought brokenness was how left out when my two best friends started drinking and partying without me. there were several times like this, but looking at them now from 3 years up up the road, they were just hurt. at those times, i still had awesome friends and circumstances, i still liked my life- a whole lot, and i still felt young and free with my whole life a head of me. 
when i left indiana, and started life on my own, my pride was quickly broken down. my dreams started becoming unrealistic. my reality didn't come close to measuring up to the dreams i had spent years building upon. 
can i just tell you how old i feel really old?!? i know i'm 'only' 20, but ew. okay wait 10 years ago i was 10. and 5 years ago i was 15. ick i guess it's not that bad. but i still feel old sometimes. by great friend brit and i were talking about this a couple of days ago and she said that it's prob because i hang out with high school kids all the time (yEah youth min :) ) and that's prob true. but even at college.. but i guess look at asbury as a whole and it still makes sense.  i need to find some 22/23 year olds to hang out with more. yeah, that would be good.
music is amazing. it helps be become. it engraves messages into my soul. it helps me become me. 
recent amazing music: compliments of lindsay :) so good.

remembering a trip to the airport  with ash to get callie after spring break 09. going to meadows with brit last friday, after it was supposed to be closed, and then hanging out and talking till like 2. late night/early morning conversations in general. random texts and facebook messages that say i love you from people who i don't get to live everyday beside anymore. lindsay telling me she reads my blog (hiii!!) :). wade head-throw-back laughing about something i said.  aunt joanie and our 5 min talk the other day. mix cds. the tears in an old guatemalan mans eyes when i prayed with him last week.  babies that look like little sumo wrestlers.  a message from the mill i listened to 3 times today. minutes of peace. and remembering that god is faithful, no matter what. he hold our tears, our hearts, and one day he will redeem our brokenness. i cling to this truth. he is good. he loves. oh, how he loves...

have you ever had that sick feeling? the one that starts in your stomach and then spreads to your whole body? like when you hit the realization that what's done is done and you can't go back- no, really, you can't go back. tonight i was hanging out with brit in her dorm room and we were talking... and i really couldn't share my heart because i would even think of something and i felt my eyes welling up.
i asked her if she could redo anything about life what it would be- or maybe she asked me. but regardless, my answer is asbury. i hate it. i hate it i hate it i hate it. brit and i had really great conversation tonight, but all i can think about right now is that fact that i can't redo the past 3 years of my life. fdjknvaf;adjkls. i want to go back. i want to transfer back to iup after hating asbury my freshman year. i want to make friends that live in the same world i do. i want to experience college in a way that even resembles what i always dreamed it would be. asbury is so so so so so... not it.
why? i think that at the root of all of this, my feelings are hurt... because i do not understand why this is happening to me. did i do something? did i not do something? am i a bad person? is this punishment? my constant state of heart goes between numb and angry. i am so afraid that after i graduate i am going to need years of counseling to get over this. i know that is stupid. but this is my biggest self-centered fear.
why? i hate this. my heart is breaking. and i can't take much more of this.... i do not say this angrily... i say this with a broken heart and a dying spirit...

i came home for a week. i got out of classes because pop died, so i came home monday night and i'll be till sunday. 
the whole time i've been at asbury (with the exception of a couple of weeks) i have had a hurting heart. it's not that asbury is bad place, some people love it and that is there place, but it's not mine. at all. it was the perfect school for my sister, why would i think it would be perfect for me too? my heart breaks. 
i went to asbury full of pride because i was getting out of indiana, i wasn't going to go to '13th grade' :), i was going to go to college at a place that was going to be cru on steroids. 
that's not how asbury turned out. to me, asbury is a school for some of the most awkward/strange people i have ever met, and some cool people (but their all media comm... maybe that should have been my major...). whenever i come home, and most of the time i'm at asbury, the consuming emotion of my life is regret. i feel like if i had gone to iup from the beginning have i would be having the 'college experience' i always dreamed of, the one that i was so excited about starting when i left for asbury in 2007. what happened?
people i love a lot tell me that there are awesome people everywhere and i just need to find them, or that i just need to get new friends if i don't like the ones i have, but i don't know how to convey to them that that's not how it works. 
i realize that i am abundantly blessed to have school paid for, like basically everything is paid for right now. i do realize that is incredible, but because my eyes are locked on the other side of the fence, my constant thought is that all those blessings would still have been there if i went to iup. 
last night i had more fun than possibly the rest of my semester at asbury combined. coy's, jed's, clymer, indiana, clymer again, hannah's, jed's again, moo and hannah's, adding some decoration to rachel's room :), creeping around brush valley... .  
the shadow proves the sunshine, but the shadow is so dark, and deep, and overpowering. 
sometimes i'm mad. sometimes i just cry. sometimes i just drive until i realize that i don't have the money to spend on gas, so i turn around ... :). sometimes i go shopping with money i don't have to spend, thinking that if the outside looks the way i want it to, the inside will follow, or the life i want will follow. it doesn't work. and i know that. but i still do it. 
the thing that breaks my heart the most about asbury is that i liked who i was when i left to go there, and now i don't like who i am- at all. when i'm with people at asbury, everything i say is funny, there's no expectation to be greater, there's no social state expected of me, because christians love everyone. ha.
when i was hanging out with people last night, i realized just how much i feel like asbury has socially messed me up. it's like... i don't even know. it's just ...weird. idk.
i guess, i love honesty. like if i have something in my teeth, i want you too tell me about it (ha i know- not life or death ;) ) that's one of the things i love the most about my friends brit and jen, they're honest. being with them is like peeling off the top layer of the honesty i want to have in my life. i grow the most when somebody tells me like it is. that's how i grow. that's how i become better. 
this all goes back to me. and i try to remind myself that life is not about me, (but then i question how much of that god thinks is true. because i know there are different opinions, but i think god wants us to be happy, but that's for another day...) but i don't understand why this is what college is looking like for me. i guess my thought is what did i do to deserve this? i know that god makes oceans from the rain, but it's been raining for a long time.
this is long. it wasn't supposed to be depressing, just therapeutic, but it's kind of both.
i know that i am blessed beyond belief.
and i KNOW that the shadow proves the sunshine. and i am so blessed to have a 'home' that is just this amazing. and people that i love this much that that it hurts to think that i can't be part of their lives, and the other way around, like i was just 3 years ago. 
i'm gonna go live today now, instead of just writing this. but... ah there goes my school bus. 115 how i miss you. god please show me the ocean soon. and thank you for the smell of home. the soundtrack of home. 101.5, 100.7, and 102.1. and 103.7. thank you for letting the first 18 years of my life be so amazing. and please redeem that last 3. 'this was never the way i planned....'.

i just played the HaHa game on the student center porch with hope, logan, jimbob, and someone else... i loose every time. and i love it. today is beautifullll :)