heavy hearted

my heart is heavy with fears, disappointments, stress, concern. i feel like a huge weight is pressing down on my chest. what to do? what to say? where to apologize? do i need to apologize? does anything have anything to do with me or is it my selfishness once again throwing me in the center. but the weight, the pressing down on my lungs, thats real, thats not self imposed. i do carry around guilt. guilt for being insensitive, uncaring, and down right mean, hateful, judgemental. i am overwhelmed by the filth that resides inside me. irregardless of how much i try to improve my character, irregardless of how much i try to press forward towards the person i should be, i somehow at the core remain the same and become increasingly uglier as i see deeper into who i am. is this masochism? am i slashing myself for some deeply needed release of pain that might result in some kind of sick pleasure? is this reverse humility or true remorse? how can we diagnose ourselves? how can we expect others who hardly know us and truthfully hardly care to help us when they can't even help themselves? does guilt ever fade? have i not yet truly turned over all of my mistakes to Him and allowed his grace to bathe me and wash me clean? yes. i have. do i not believe that his grace covers them all irregardless of when, where and what? yes i do. but i am still disgusted by my innate blackness. no matter what comes out of my mouth and no matter what words are used to paint the picture of who i am, i know the truth of who is inside. i hear her interior dialogue - its rated r and heartless. can i really gain a new heart? truly? and if so for how long? i've had moments of purity, moments of newness but they pass, they are flickers of light in the usual darkness. and the flickers have lessened lately, have they, or have i just again increased my awareness of the blackness? i continue to move forward, knowing that i was worth dying for and certainly knowing that i needed to be saved from myself. i move forward knowing the person that christ died for, longing to know the person that christ has created in me. are they one in the same? does christ existing in me allow a new creation to form or does he only increase my awareness of who he died for? increase our awareness of how much we need him? it is hard to believe, not even believe but even to just for a moment to consider that there is no good inside of us. there is no good inside of me, except for christ, and yet lately, i have not been full of his spirit, i have dammed him up with a hard selfish heart, out only for herself, inconsiderate of others and living for the glories of this life. how could i forget that i was not meant for this life, what i accomplish here is of little value, the only value i have here is for others to come to know christ. how have i been as an example of that lately? where have my priorities been? have they been in developing relationships with fellow christians as to grow my own selfish network of support? or have they been developing relationships with people who don't know Christ and showing his love, not by telling and judging and manipulating but by loving others so simply as he so simply loves me? i've screwed up to this point. i've slacked off. i've lost focus.

hope never fades

once again -  i start anew.

bathing in grace
skin - raisin shriveled
still covered in filth

Big things this week!

Saturday: 9AM New Headshots!  West LA 12PM Yelo, Leadership Experience at Mosaic Pasadena 6:30PM I posted on Craigslist "Babysitting for Africa" and I got a plush sitting job for one kid, $15 an hour! SWEET!  Glendale

Sunday: 10AM Audition for Short Film in Culver City - for the part of a crazy, lesbian, overdramatic, drama teacher. . . . I fit the majority of the description, less the lesbian part, but the audition should be fun and interesting! 3:30PM Back Stage Manage for the Mosaic Service at the Mayan Downtown LA

Wednesday: 7:45PM Needing that Africa money I picked up a Sweet Survey that pays $70! I work out for 15 minutes, drink propel, tell them what I think and repeat! How fun! Van Nuys Area

Thursday: TBA Meet with the Germany Project guy! So excited to just have the opportunity! West Hollywood

Friday: 11AM Audition for a Court Room TV Show, how fun! Improvise a courtroom scene as seen on The Peoples Court, etc. etc. and if I get the part, I will get paid $300 for each day I work.  Downtown LA

Saturday: 1PM Impromptu Improv Show in Innner City LA, an outreach event for the upcoming drama camp I will be teaching "Illuminate"

This is why I love LA, every day is a new adventure, a new opportunity, you never, ever know what tomorrow will bring! This is my city now! Los Angeles How I Love Thee and your Never Changing Opportunities! Dreaming Big - Starting Small!!!!!

Safe to dream here?

Finally saw "The Notebook". . . hated it

and here's why. I cried myself to sleep last night over that blasted movie. Movies lie, in movies people fall in love, that irrational, soul shaking, earth shattering, you can do nothing but be with that person kind of love. The kind of love that doesn't make any sense and everyone disagrees with. And in the movies, they have that kind of love, are separated and somehow transcend space, time, and reality and end up back together. I had that kind of love once. The kind of love that you don't mean to fall into, that you try to resist because you know it will never work but then you just screw reality, rationality and let yourself fall. The kind of love that is solely passion and everyone says will never work, that you even convince yourself it will never work because it is only passion, and passion that reaches the height of expression in a physical connection. And now, of course, that I have come to "faith" I recognize that "that passion" isn't really love at all, it is solely sex.

But is it? This past year, after Dion and I ended so fatefully on the gorgeous island of Trinidad, I have completely desensitized myself of anything we had ever experience. I have discounted our relationship of any romance that could have ever been and have settled into a state of bitterness towards the only man I have ever truly loved. So do I hate the movie because they end up together?  and I don't think we ever will? or do I hate the movie because it has reinstigated a hope of a reconciliation no matter how far into the future that may be? or Do I hate the movie because it reminds me of something that was once so true, but I have let myself quit believing in? coincide all of these questions with a recent email from him, reminding me of our love and I am one screwed up woman. Was our love true?

This past year I have convinced myself to believe that he was only using me for sex, for a band-aid to that deep longing within him that only God can truly fill. And though I do recognize that there is a portion of that to be true and I can speak for myself that yes, he was a band-aid for me at times, but now, even in having a relationship with Christ I still have never stopped completely longing for him. 

Last night, as I was wetting my pillow once again with tears over Dion, something I had not done for well over a year, I found myself praying, asking God to show me what was real about Dion and I. I was, for the first time in a year, overwhelmed with the positive memories we experienced together. The first time I met him, our first date and him fixing my car, him teaching me how to drive calmly, him standing on the side of the 70 freeway towards St. Louis comforting me as I cried trying to make a drive that had at another time brought so much pain in my life, him holding me in the middle of the night when the nightmares that have tormented me all my life were causing my body to writhe in agony, him teaching me how to slow dance carribbean style before leaving for Jamaica, his calming voice, his accented voice, his large frame and all the times I shared my body with him, saying Goodbye to him at the airport. I had shut out all the goodtimes in my diligence of following God and rejecting a relationship that had been so "sinful". I don't doubt that I disappointed God while I was in that relationship. But I still find myself wondering why God ever brought us together. And even more sadly, I wonder if I will ever love someone else like I loved Dion.

In the Notebook, Duke opens with saying " I haven't accomplished much in life, except loving one woman my entire life." I am going to LA, partly because I feel as if my one chance to love someone is over, there will never be another love like that for me, so I am setting my heart at accomplishing something other than love, because I can never love like that again and I doubt that any other kind of love would ever be worth it. And eventhough I try to use the "faith talk" that I have learned since losing Dion, that God is big enough for my pain and big enough to brings someone else into my life and blah blah blah. . . I still, apparently will always long for him.

Is this the rest of my life, to pine after and cry for someone who I once loved so dearly, or will it be like the movie and somehow, someway, we will end up together? What is God's will? What was I too learn from us, have I learned it yet? Will I learn it ever? This is why I hate the movie, because I'm back in the Dion saga again and though I want to fast forward to the end of the movie, I do find some ridiculous pleasure in expereincing the drama in the moment at hand.

ALL SHOAL CREEK INTERNS REUNION UPDATE:

The date for the intern renunion is Thursday, January 5th. Unless I recieve a huge response that this date does not work. Exactly what is planned is undecided. I am considering having everyone over for dinner and then going ice skating. Let me know what you think! Comment on my xanga or send an email.