Opposite of Speechless

-I constantly feel judged and that I come up lacking. 
-I don't call the Virgin Mary the "virgin mary" in my head, I call her "the holy mother" which is just...incredibly Catholic of me, and I have no idea when I picked that up. I like it though. 
-I will risk everything for love. Hands down.
-I am incredibly stressed even though nothing seems to come of it. ie there's tons of stuff that needs doing and even just sorting out in my head and heart, and although I stress over it all, I don't have enough to show for it. 
-I have a thing for Europeans who are technically Americans. Who saw that coming? Here's a hint: not me. 
-I desperately want a tattoo with my parent's handwriting, and I think my father won't contribute to it. And by that I mean won't write what I need him to write. If that happens, I think that will be a defining point in our relationship, and that scares me. 
-I am purposely not confiding something to my friends because it will make all of us sad if it comes to happen, but it might not come to happen, so what's the use in telling them? 
-My laundry never seems to be done...
-One of my friends from my Creative Writing class lives one street over in my neighborhood, we just found out the other day. I'm so psyched. She has a stutter and I find it refreshingly wonderful. I know what it's like to struggle with words, why do you think I learned sign language?
-Holy Week in Spain looks amazingly weird and awesome, you've gotta see these pictures. You're gonna have to google to get the full effect [well I guess for that you'd actually have to GO, which I want to do, but only when I have someone to hold my hand] It's really amazing what cultures all over the earth do in the to celebrate Christ's death and resurrection, I'm currently loving this website cause it has great pictures. It is sort of strange to me though, that they do all of this ceremonial stuff, some as penitence and some as tradition, but I wonder if they know that they are forgiven and loved without doing any of it?
-these sculptures [Another Place] speak to me! I'm just...in love with them. I want to be there and have my life interact with these around me, if that makes any sense. Like a road I take everyday, I want these in my life as much. Link!
-I took down my facebook. I'm aware that I'm letting stress overwhelm me, but I figured it was one less place that stress could come from. I normally only last a few days when I do this, so lets see how long I last this time! 
-Do you guys get annoyed with my random lists? I think you should share thoughts with me, and let me know...just sayin! 

Are you ever just overtaken with someone's inner beauty? I was thinking about it today, mainly because I have a new friend who is just the total opposite of me, and I find whenever I'm around people who really surprise me by the things they say or the way they think that they cause me to deeply think about the things I know to be true. Two of my best friends, Amber and Marissa, don't really seem to worry about what they wear. They wear what they like and they fit their own personal style. When I'm around them I'm comfortable and I don't feel out of place, which is really saying something. Sometimes it can be difficult around people who truly care what they are wearing and how it looks and how much it costs because...I don't really fit in that world. 

But these girls are b-e-a-utiful! It helps that their outside bodies are rockin, but more importantly they have beautiful spirits! Both of them make me want to sit outside with them under the sky and just talk about life and smile and laugh. I have other friends who do that as well, and I love it. I love the inner passionate side of people that shines through, and it always astounds me when I find that some of my friends [girls and guys alike] think less of themselves, when I know people who are 'all that and a bag of who cares' who don't inspire the same in me. They don't ooze passion or love, they don't even seem to genuinely smile. 

They seem lost.

And I gotta admit, I'm partly talking to myself here. I get wrapped up in not how I look, but how I don't look. I often feel uncomfortable around people because I know that they look good and I don't. And that's something that doesn't just go away, and I'm tired of thinking that I'll stop feeling that way when I'm finally skinny. I have to live for today, and who I am right at this very moment, even if that means that pants don't fit me like I want. People don't enjoy being around you because your pants fit just right, or because you smell like a king (that's an inside joke with one of my friends, and he's gonna laugh when he reads this post months from now). They love you because they just love YOU. They want to hear your thoughts and what's going on with your life, they love your heart, and they want to share their heart with you.

is a phrase that annoys me so much. I love love, and the idea of it, and the actuality of it, and how it will make people do crazy things, like die for someone. It's awesome, and special, and NOT EASILY ATTAINED. 
It's a pet peeve. I know I sound like a jerk. 

I think you're in love when you know the sound of your person's sigh better then your own. When just holding hands is enough. When you know what makes them cry late at night. What they're biggest insecurity is. What smells trigger which memories. When your heart is no longer in your chest because you've given it so completely to them. When you don't have to worry how you look around them. When you can trust them with anything, and you have. It's when you love them enough to have huge fights and yell and throw things, just so you can work through your issues. It's loving them through resentment. It's work. Love is deep and passionate and truly amazing. There is a big difference between being in love and crushing on someone...just saying. 

I've been in like. I've been in lust. I've loved the idea of a person. I've crushed hard and long. And I've thought I've been in love, and on some level, I was. But at the end of the day I knew the relationship would never work, so I couldn't love them completely, because I knew they would leave. That we wouldn't have forever, because they weren't meant to be a part of my forever, not in the role I had placed them in.

In a few weeks I'm going to go and visit my friend in Chicago. I done heard it had itself some tall buildins and whatnot! 

Sorry about that, I just had to break into a hick voice, because one of my many reasons for going IS to see the really tall buildings. Yes, I live in/near D.C....but that's different! There are no sky scrapers here. And honestly, I've grown up here, here is normal. 
I want to go THERE, which is really anywhere but HERE, to see something different! And other than gas and food, it's free, cause I can stay in a dorm! Really, it's a wonderful situation, especially for someone who loves road trips and has a very gas efficient car. But that's not what this post is about, stop distracting me! 

Things on my mind/that I've learned/am relearning:
1. I will always want to worry and be insecure when it comes to certain relationships, and sometimes it takes myself forcing me not to care to kind of be healthy, in some weird way.
2. Most of the time it's easier to just stay in the fast lane then try and hop out every once in a while.
3. I definitely don't like hanging out in large groups of people when I feel like everyone feels awkward because I'm there.
4. When I ask out someone [which I will shortly], I'm going to be direct. None of this "wanna hang out?" business. I want to date you, not 'hang out'. I feel like this should be said before any dating/hanging out business occurs.
5. When I'm someplace and I'm uncomfortable, I miss my best friend like I miss my home, which is odd, because we've been far away friends longer than live here and go to the same school friends.
6. My jealousy of skinny bodies is becoming more and more prominent in my thought life, and I don't know how I feel about that. Part of me feels like it's so vain to be so consumed by such a superficial thing. It's not even a yearning to be healthy or having good eating habits. I just wanna be super skinny! Grrr to you who have amazing metabolisms :)
7. I absolutely love having deep or at least non-superficial conversations with people that I just met. I met my friend's roomate and almost automatically got to talk about two authors that I greatly enjoy (Rob Bell and John Edlridge) and their books and got to hear her views and...we just really connected! It was great and such a blessing.

this list is on going and really just a result of me not being able to sleep. So I'll add more soon...or maybe I'll wake up in the morning and realize how stupid this blog post was. Guess we'll see!

I'm sitting outside on our screened in porch enjoying the smell of rain mixing with the scent of grilling burgers; summer is coming. The sound of rolling thunder and far away rain bring peace just as surely as lightning will strike the sky any moment. God is showing off his colors as the sky fades to dark periwinkle; stark silhouettes of newly budding trees make the sight perfect. Once again I am reminded that I do not have the peace the country brings as an owl hoot fades to be replaced by a car siren, having lived like this all of my life though, I find it oddly comforting. Wind chimes blow softly and a plane flies over head as my laptop's screen glows brightly: the mixing of new and old.

I feel this old and new in my bones, in my very existence. My phone and my iPod feel like a part of me, but the wind rustling the trees echoes inside my soul reminding me that I come from the earth. Born naked and with nothing but love, I will die with nothing but my memories and return to the ground. The same ground that smells like fresh dirt in the spring and gets sprinkled on by April showers. I am a part of all this the same way as the fiery sunset or the unexplainable hush brought on by nightfall; all created by a Maker for a purpose.

what this blog post is going to be about. Yesterday one of my new friends asked me the equivalent of why I believe in Jesus/why I'm a Christian/Christ follower. And I had no idea what to say, which I'm quite aware, is the wrong response. 
But to me, the answer to that shouldn't be a jumbled mess, which was all I could offer. I'm a broken messed up person going through some crap right now, and even though I know I should lean on God, I haven't been. So when faced with that question I went to grab out to God and realized that He wasn't where I had left Him. Or maybe He was, and I had just walked farther away then I realized. So I bowed out of the question, and I was deeply sad. 

I just watched this weeks Glee, where they go to Regionals and I am so super happy. I literally have a Glee high. Why you may ask, well I'll tell you! The two people I've been wanting to get together DO get together [Kurt and Blaine] and it is just so awesome. I love that there's such a cute gay couple on Glee, and even just on mainstream television. Hopefully it will help the homophobes see that...
it's a beautiful thing!
[[[It's no wonder my old church kicked me out of their small group, huh?]]]
hahaha. Worth it! 

On a side note, one of my close friends recently hit me below the belt when they threw it in my face that our mutual friend (the guy I've liked for ages and ages) "wouldn't date me" and I really had no idea how...gosh...
       mean 
it was until today. I have no idea when that will get resolved between us, and that's not what this side note is about. I'd like to instead point you to the real thing, which is how I did not cry, or feel the need to. I told him he was acting like a butt, and I desperately wanted to tell him what he could go do to himself, but that was it. 
No tears. No feelings of worthlessness.

I'm growing. Or more like, God is growing me.*


*I'll be blogging about how I don't really feel close to God right now...tomorrow. ish. 

I have missed blogging! I feel like my last blog post was just very overwhelming for me, so I've been almost avoiding updating. So this is going to be one of my famous Erin lists, that will maybe be expanded on later.

Before we start, I'd like to point out the difference between blogging and bashing. What I'm about to write is blogging, I am purposely not bashing. Just thought I'd share that before I started talking. So!
 I once read a post on StuffChristiansLike, an amazing blog that has ministered to me like WOAH, where the author wrote about leaving a church, and how it can go well, or sometimes it can't. Then he asked 'have you ever left a church? how'd that go?' What I'm learning is that...it's hard to leave a church. However, the church I left, awesome as it was, actually preached against one of my passions [yay for tattoos!] and also, I wasn't okay with them speaking out against gay people. There's enough of that in the world, and I mean come on, what happened to the love? Basically, it was just time for me to leave. The people were awesome, but I definitely didn't feel called to be there. However, I missed the people and they missed me, so I decided to join a small group of there's, and join one at my new church as well. 

------And then everything blew up last night---------
Last night I met with two members of my old church, and they informed me that I couldn't go to the small group I had been going to (at my old church, led by two of my beastly friends - shout out to Michelle and Jo, y'all be awesome) because I didn't go to their church. I go to NCC now, and unless I could come back to my old church, well......
[It was phrased like it was my choice. Which it wasn't]