two blogs in two weeks

watch out, i just might become a regular. 

i kind of have a confession to make. i think maybe i just have had a really hard time blogging, because i am just not really sure how to do it anymore. 

just bear with me here. 

i've had two different types of blogs, one, from two summers ago when everything i wrote was deeply insightful and reflective and now, where i just post some pictures once every few months and it seems a little pointless. 

i'm not really sure how to find the in between and to tell the truth its a little discouraging to read old blogs where it seems like every day i had made new discoveries, grown in different ways, or had some wonderful revelation. although i'm not saying  it wasn't authentic or true to where i was at the time, i just think the perspective that i have and the person that i am is a lot different now. 

let me explain. jared set up a blog for me at the end of the school year, two years ago, right before i flew off to france. it was so i could write about what was going on there and also so i could join him in the blog world. it just so happened, though, that we broke up that next week, the same week that i ended up in a tiny, remote French town, secluded, virtually away from all comfort of family and friends, and left with nothing but time for reflecting. it was great and hard and completely Hosea 2 coming alive for me, but it is such a different life than my life right now. not any bit better, just different. i think i forget that when i read over those blogs sometimes. 

i forget that, because sometimes i wonder why i don't write so regularly and freely as i used to and why i don't always have wise and profound things pouring out of me. 

france and the rest of the time that jared and i were apart seemed like it was a time when i was making huge leaps and bounds in growth. and while there was, and i would never discredit or dishonor the God who drew that out of me, i just don't think i really had any test of that growth in the middle of it. 

my time was for me. all reflection was on my relationship with God and me. all thoughts were on me and my growth with God. and oh, how He knew I needed that then, but that's just sort of where it stayed, me and Him, me and Him, me and Him. 

i didn't really have many relationships that needed time and love and attention,

i didn't really have much work and school that made me budget out my time. 

i had hardly no commitments that required anything from me. 

although that time is so precious to me and was so needed, it was sort of a selfish time. 

it's just so funny how much more honest ( and therefore not as wonderful and holy ) my perspective of my self is with jared. 

that time when i was alone didn't make me think i was perfect, but as soon as i learned something i checked it off the list and moved on. got one lesson down, moving on to the next, and so on and so on and so on. 

i didn't have someone there that let me know maybe i didn't really have that lesson down as well as i thought, because they could see the ways in which things weren't changing.

i didn't have someone that let me know that they got hurt when i sinned against them the say way the next day and the next day and the next day. 

i didn't have someone that called my bs when i pretended that i had mastered a certain wound, or sin, or was free of all shortcomings. 

and yeah, its not fun to fight about things, but i will only always agree with myself.  i'm never going to argue and fully challenge myself to think about something truthfully on my own. 

and yeah, it's nice to have a holy, wonderful, do-no-wrong perspective of myself, but that is so far from the truth. and teaches me nothing about of my real, deep need for a Savior. 

so sometimes, its hard for me to write, but sometimes, i just need to learn that being in a relationship, and very soon entering into a marriage, means that while there still may be times of fast, rapid growth, a lot of it is hard and slow and takes trying fresh every new day. 

so for me, and for you, too, jared, know this. 

i may not spend whole days sitting and reflecting at home or reading my bible at the park or writing about huge, wonderful revelations...

but know this, its the days spent with you, the conversations we have, the things we have to work through that draw me closer to holiness than any of that. 

its working through the sin and selfishness that we both have that makes it so much more hard and so much more real and so much more worth it. 

i just love you a lot.