I knew Spring was coming,
Even before the birds,
Because the day would come
When you would call.
"Is the snow gone yet?"
You'd ask almost before 'hello',
Before you'd wonder how I was
Or what another Winter had done to my soul.
In fact I don't think I ever knew
If you ever wondered.
You would just call to see
If every bit of snow had left,
And then you'd seamlessly slip back into my life
As if you never even left.
You couldn't seem to see
I was just a stranger,
Waiting for a stranger to come back again.
I'd wait expectantly
For the birds to sing to me
On some bright and melting day
Because I knew you'd ask
If the birds had begun to sing.
You'd think I'd know these things,
But then you think I know a lot.
You thought I knew why
You left long before each first snowfall
-To beat the cold, of course -
But maybe you were avoiding
A long, freezing Winter with me.
It's not too hard to see
Since I wasn't enough to keep you here
And cold was enough to make you disappear.
"Is the snow all melted yet?"
You ask, almost before 'hello',
Before I hardly know it's you,
Before I hardly am awake.
"No, the snow's still here.
I think I'll be snowed in for the year."

Random, Rambling Thoughts of an INFJ (#4)

Stressed.

Yeah, that word sums it up. The hat my mom knitted for me comes off and goes right back on. It's been that way since December. I forget sometimes I have hair, except when I'm zipping up my coat, and it gets caught. Except when my scarf pushes the wild escape artists into my mouth.

You look tired.

I probably should be getting more sleep, but I don't try. My soul is too tired to give my body enough rest. There's the problem with hats - they don't hide eyes. I could disguise tired eyes behind makeup, but I don't give myself time. Dragged out of bed, and then I'm always running from one thing to another with gaping, empty hours between. Gaping, empty hours with my brain - a brain that thinks too much.

Shut up.

Funny thing about brains - they don't listen. The thoughts keep coming.

Shoulda, coulda, wish I woulda...

This train of thought is old, but it's the gift that keeps giving. I should spend my time more wisely. I could've used those gaping, empty hours to do this and this and this. I wish I would've because now I have an endless 'to-do' list.

You don't need to be stressed.

...Because saying that has always helped people not be stressed in the past.

Stressed.

I wonder if I'm going to be like this for the rest of my life. They say stressed out people live shorter lives. Do I want to live a long life? It sounds exhausting. And stressful.  I'll get back to you in ten years.

Random, Rambling Thoughts of an INFJ (#3)

Maybe it's because I'm the youngest. Maybe it's because of my personality. Maybe it's a whole lot of things all mashed together. I don't know because I don't know many people who are the youngest, and I don't know many people who feel the same way, but sometimes I feel like I'm going to be left behind or have been left behind. Like I'll be grown out of or are already grown out of. It's a fear I have and can't seem to shake. Life is all about moving and changing, and sometimes that means leaving some people behind. For most people, it's probably a sad part of life, but they're also moving on. They're also going on to great and exciting new adventures.

But that's not me. I'm still here.

My best friend and brother closest to my age moved away to the other side of the country two years ago. Another close friend got married the December before last and moved off to Michigan. Now she has a baby girl. Suddenly she seems so much older than me and more mature. Another friend went to a three month discipleship program where she was not encouraged to have much contact with the outside world. During that time, she experienced one of the saddest times in her life, but I wasn't there. Other people took the place of comforters. She grew closer to other people as we grew farther apart. Friendships change - I've been told that, but I don't like it much.

Because I am still here.

And the longer I stay, the less likely I'll find new people to replace the old, and how could they really replace them? No one can replace old friendships. There might be new ones. Different ones, but not the same. The longer I stay, the less likely I'll build a support group because how many people stay? Why would they stay? It's not society's way.

And even if they stayed, people change. It's a sad thing when people change, and you watch from a distance. I don't think I've changed much in the past years, not significantly, but maybe I have, and what if I have? Three years ago, I wrote a poem type thing. It was written with a specific friend in mind who I used to talk with almost night over gmail chatting. Part of it was just fear. Part of it was actually already happening. It was full of wondering how the 'unfriending' began. Wondering what if I changed, and what if I became someone the friend didn't like anymore. Sometimes the change isn't a bad thing either. Sometimes it's just because you change and your friend doesn't at the same rate or doesn't ever, but if you're the one not doing the changing then you feel left behind and outgrown.

Maybe this fear started when I was younger. I'm the youngest of five. My mom had me when she was already in her early forties which isn't the norm. Between my eldest brother and me, there are eleven years. I don't know why it was this way, but growing up, all the families we did things with had children much older than me. I was the one stuck on the end. Even amongst cousins, I was the youngest (out of all cousins, I have only one younger one). By the time I was deemed 'old enough' not to be randomly stuck on the end, they were in college, had a job, or were even married. I mean, when my eldest brother moved away from home, I was only 9. My next brother moved out when I was 12. I was probably still viewed the little, annoying sister.

When I tried to work on building up more friendships while I was still high school, I had the opposite problem. The people around my age were all the oldest in their families. In some ways, I think they were more mature than me because their experiences were different than mine, and they weren't able to understand that feeling of being left behind or outgrown.

Even now I sometimes have this feeling, but time has given me more perspective. There's many things I might not have discovered if I hadn't been excluded. For starters, I learned to entertain myself with story creating which eventually lead to writing the stories down. If not for feeling like an island some days, I wouldn't have had the time. I might not have even cared about stories, and I think God has given me stories as one of many lifelines.

Secondly, I think this quote by Dag Hammarskjold sums up the other good thing:

"Didst thou give me this inescapable loneliness so that it would be easier for me to give Thee all?"

There's nothing like those kinds of feelings to force you to turn to someone you know won't ever leave you behind. Won't ever grown out of you. Won't ever stop loving you because you've changed or because, for goodness' sake, you still haven't. To top it off, He also knew what He was doing when He created you with the personality you have and planted you in the place where you are. Most times, that's all I am betting on, because it isn't easy when following God's plan leaves you sometimes feeling like you've been outgrown or left behind since His plan for your life isn't like His plan for everyone else.

-So-

Have you felt this way? Do you think it's a birth order thing? Or do you think everyone feels this way at one point or another in their life?

I'm over here climbing back out of the pit of stomach flu. Can't seem to keep the sicknesses at bay. I might title these words as ramblings, but I kinda slaved over them because my mind isn't on top of things yet. Still, I guess they are rambling in the sense I started them with no knowledge of where I was going to go with them, and some parts I'm still not sure about...Would love your thoughts!

Good Things Do Happen

"When things are good
I don't believe that they're for real
I really wish I could just tell myself I gotta feel
Feel something else instead
Cause lately life is like a dream
It's messing with my head
I must be dead
So, suddenly it's all picture perfect
Life is so good and I don't deserve it."

-Phoebe Ryan

Good things do happen.

It's silly because I knew that. I know that, but sometimes I forget because life isn't easy and not a lot actually goes smoothly. Maybe sometimes it's just me and this time of life. You know how multiple years can give you dump truck load of hard after dump truck load of hard? These past years the dump truck has been at constant work. I brace myself always for the next bad thing to happen. The next loved one to pass away. The next disappointment to happen. The lesson repeatedly being pounded into my brain is that nothing, absolutely nothing, ever works out as easy as you think it will.

What's hard for me is that I have the tendency to fantasize about future events till there is no possible way for me not to be disappointed by the actual happenings. It's something I've done since I was little, but it's gotten a lot better. If you don't have expectations, then you can't be disappointed. If you aren't up on an impossibly high cliff, then you don't have to fall. It's a bit of a skeptical way to look at things, but...then something unexpected happens, and you're reminded:

Good things do happen.

That's why we have hope - to sustain us through these dump truck load years when sometimes good things seem far away, even though they are always around us. When something good happens, you then are sustained by not just hope but also memories. Good memories. Love-filled memories. Memories that sweep over you in your most unsuspecting moment and leave you wondering how you were so blessed to experience those things.

Good things do happen.

This past Summer was hard and exhausting, but before all that, way back on April 6th of 2007, good seeds were planted. I received a letter in the mail from a girl in South Carolina. We wrote, we blogged together for awhile, we e-mailed, and then went back to good ol' snail mail. As the years progressed, my list of penpals grew smaller and smaller till she and one other girl was left, but that meant the letters only grew. Long, rambling letters full of complete randomness and mundane facts that only we could possibly be interested in. Since 2010 we played with the idea of visiting each other. We always knew we would one day, but it just hadn't worked out. Then out of the blue last February, she said she'd come visit me in the beginning of June.

So she bought the tickets. We skyped for the first and only time. And I planned. And planned. This was unlike anything I had ever done before because I tell myself I don't need something or I'm perfectly fine here, and I wasn't even the one going anywhere. On June 1st, we headed over to the Seattle airport to pick her up. We were there early and waited for what seemed an eternity. I knew what she looked like. I was pretty sure on that, but man, my heart was beating fast. I'm seriously the awkwardest person in existence, and I was there trying to frantically think what I was going to say. What I was going to do when I saw her for the first time. Whether I would be just who she imagined I was from the letters or whether I would disappoint - that was my greatest fear. What if I didn't live up to her expectations?

Then there she was, coming out security, and it didn't feel weird, and she graciously overlooked my awkwardness. I don't think I have ever had so much fun in my life. This was the first time she had ever come out west.  We took the ferry to Bainbridge island to see the Seattle skyline. And to see snowy and majestic Mt. Rainier. To Pike's Market where we went into a bookshop and had the coolest story ever to tell - "We've been penpals since we were twelve and met face-to-face for the first time today." I showed her my mountains. She saw banks of snow in June. And elk along the roadside. We drove around in the farmlands trying to find an old fort and wandered along the cow trails. We dashed through the valley museum before it closed and ruined our dinner with a root beer float at the little, old-fashioned fountain attached to the museum because she had never had a root beer float before. We drove through endless evergreen forests, saw Mt. St. Helens, went to the Pacific ocean. We wandered too far down (up?) the Long Beach Peninsula (Folks, they call it Long Beach for a reason) because we wanted to reach the rocks and got stuck on the beach in the dark at 11 trying to find her shoes and the pathway to the little cottage we rented.

Even though our feet felt like we were walking on daggers the next day, we wandered through the historical, little town of Oysterville, and I showed her the little red and white church where I'd get married someday with her as my bridesmaid. On the last day, we followed my family's tradition and went to say goodbye to the beach, and I misplaced my shoes, and we misplaced the pathway back to the cottage. I walked barefoot painfully back along the sidewalks and got some weird glances while she ran ahead and checked out of the cottage before the checkout time. We saw the lighthouses on Cape Disappointment. Climbed up into the Astoria Column past a flood of kids on a field trip, and I remembered why I really don't like heights as I pasted myself against the column. Long hours in the car through more forest, playing music we both liked because we like the same music, and losing our cellphone reception (and afraid that our parents might think we got lost in some cave somewhere). Plunged ourselves into this:

Because why not? And because I totally didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. We would have died if not for the mercy of some desperate looking people we passed on the way to one entrance of Ape Cave because our stupid flashlight would've failed partway through. And you can't possibly survive in Ape Cave without flashlights because you climb over high areas of boulders on boulders, and she hit her head twice because she is taller than me, and we worried about what would have happened if she knocked herself out, and this was the second time I was sure we were going to die and couldn't believe what we were doing, but in spite of all that, we survived only to find the route home still shut from the winter's snow so we had to back track, and she drove all the way, even though there were deer and mice and rabbits on the highway, because she knew I didn't like to drive in the dark. And we got home at 2 o'clock in the morning. And it wasn't just the big things and the traveling and the adventuring. It was the talking and wandering and companionship.

It was the realizing she came across the whole country to meet me face to face, and for the first time in my whole life knowing I had a best friend in the world. It didn't matter if she went back home after nine days, leaving a hole inside, because it just didn't. I realized again that good things do happen - things that you can't possibly expect or imagine. And that's what I've been remembering all Summer, and when I remember, I realize I am blessed beyond measure.