Maybe, just maybe.

Life has been beyond amazing lately. I don't know if it's all the travel or being surrounded by family or just the peace that overcomes when times are really really good. Regardless, the struggle isn't real right now.

It's funny how that works though. How things can be really tough one minute and really good another. How bad things come in droves but when good finds you it really, really finds you.

I don't feel like I have a lot to blog about lately. I don't feel like I have anything worth sharing. And then I remember this space and how it's for me to look back on in later days and remember -- the good, the bad, and even the ugly.

I've been trying really hard lately to become a nicer person. It's a hard thing, though, to smile in the face of your enemies, to act cordial around those who secretly, or not so secretly, leave a bad taste in your mouth. It's becoming easier though, as the days go by, to just give it all to God. To let him take control of every situation, the good, the bad, and yes, the ugly too.

And I'm also trying to improve my health, which never seems to go the way I want it to. I can't stick to a diet, or healthy eating. Don't get me wrong, it's not because I don't like the food or the way it makes me feel after I exercise, it's just that I like caffeine and chocolate more. And those are hard things to give up. Terribly hard, and if you say they're not, well, I just don't know that we could be friends. But then I think about the long run of life and how many it's okay to endulge a little every now and then. To be young and careless and free, even though I'm not so young anymore.

And how maybe reading all these articles about how being a twenty something is the prime of your life and it's time to make mistakes and do this and do that to fall in love and make the money, but money's not that important, and how your small space can be the cutest ever isn't the best thing. Because comparing my life to other's highlight reels isn't for the positive.

And maybe, just maybe, my life isn't supposed to be this cookie cutter life and I'm not supposed to have or be all these things the world is telling me to be, but instead being me is better. Being clumsy, and silly and quiet when I'm tired, and full of opinions is okay.
Because at the end of the day, this is my life and me and I think it's time I really start shaping this world for myself.

Keep them alive.

via

I've missed blogging, or more so, just having a space to come to to spill my mind and thoughts and life. Which reminds me, life is a lot of crazy and a little more frustrating some days. Lately, everything has been really good or really bad. It's kind of like there's not middle ground. No okay days, no eh, just two total extremes. 

Pappaw was hospitalized not too long ago. He was at the same hospital my Mammaw passed away in. Pulling up to his driveway and seeing the firetruck and ambulance there, and not knowing, took my breathe away. He's older now, 93, and I know that we all will be called home one day, at our appointed hour, but I just don't want his to be any time soon. The hospital he was in, the memories of Mammaw being in the ICU for so long, are something that I've tried by best to block out of my memory. But every time I'm there and I walk through the doors and step in the elevator, the memories rush back, all at once, and catching my breath is the hardest thing to accomplish. 

It's not something I talk about often though. It's not a subject that I can bring up in casual conversation without tears rolling down my cheeks.

I remember not too long after Mammaw passed and I had just started a new job, the one I'm still working at over four years later, I went to eat lunch with Pappaw, and he told me "Your Mammaw would be so proud of you." And I remember leaving his house and getting in my car and just crying. Sad tears, happy tears, the I'm so lost right now kind of tears. 

My aunt's father-in-law passed away recently. He had cancer and had at the most almost two months of life left in him when he found out. 

I guess all of this is just to really remind me to hold tight to the ones I love, over use I Love You's, and that even when they are gone, they'll still be with me.

Rambling.

I learn something every day. Today's lesson has been how much t-bone steaks typically weigh and that they cost way, way too much. Seriously, $9.99 a pound? Thanks, but no thanks, I'll stick with some pasta. It's funny though, learning. I remember when I was a teenager and thought I knew everything. Yes, literally, everything... and if I didn't, well I would have never admitted to it. 

Now, though, I feel like I know nothing. Like I should be on the constant trying to learn and fill my brain with sometimes useless information that at the moment seems so necessary. One day I'll figure out what all this researching, information and time spend reading and writing and thinking is going to amount to.

Speaking of learning, right now I'm on kick to learn any and everything about Dublin, London and Paris. And it's so interesting. There are so many things that these places offer that Alabama doesn't. Maybe I'm placing them too high on a pedestal, but really, the more and more I read and learn and research the more I fall in love with places I have never been. I don't know if that's normal, but for right now, it's my normal.

It's so hard to focus on the present when I have so many things to look forward to in the future.

In August/September I'll be traveling to El Salvador with Living Water International. I've never even ventured out of the country but am so excited, so humbled, that I'll be getting to take part in this. The fact that there are people in this world that do not have clean water, something we all take for granted each and every day, astonishes me. The impact that this trip will have on their lives, and mine, will be something that I never fully understand, but something that will stay on my heart for the rest of time. It'll be kind of like a breathe of fresh air coursing through me to remind me how amazing I have it and how much I take for granted. And hopefully it will be a huge course of humble pie on my part. Prayers. So many prayers for this trip are already taking place and I hope that if you read this you'll include me, the team going and the people who we will be with in the communities of El Salvador in your thoughts.

Ten days until Disney. There's really nothing I can say other than I hope that I don't cry when I walk into the gates. I don't know why, but I truly believe this will be one of the most magical trips of my life.

All of this is kind of just a brain dump. I need some place for my thoughts and ramblings to be put down so I can look back in life and remember where I was, all the stumbling blocks I face and over take and just exactly how far I've come in life, love and happiness.

Growing up.

Twenty-four, almost twenty-five, is such an awkward age. I’m torn between wanting to be the young, wild and free girl I was at twenty-one but also wanting to grow up, settle down and have my life in order. It’s such two different, broad spectrums. I know that by society’s rules I should have already been married with a kid on each hip. And while one day I would love for that reality to be truth, it’s not my time. Do you ever feel like you have so much growing up and preparing and ‘getting ready’ that the time will never come for you? And not with just starting a family, but with so many other things. A new job, a big move, being vulnerable and putting yourself out there. And all the while, of panicking and stressing over how you’re going to pay this month’s bills, you have to find yourself. But how do you even begin to understand who you are when you really don’t understand, all the time, what’s going on in the world around you? 

You want to have friends but aren’t sure where the time will come in for them. You want so bad to have a life but it’s such a hard line, of whether going out on a work night is worth it to feel like crap the next day or feel like life is passing you by all the while you’re doing nothing but sitting at home knitting. And nothing is wrong with that. I like where I am right now. I like that I can say no. I like that though I can be stubborn at times, and maybe my feet aren’t firmly planted on the ground, my head isn’t all the way in clouds. I still am able to find enough room to breathe.

I’m a dreamer. Dreams so big not even I understand how they could possibly come true one day. But that’s the thing. Some days I have such a hard time remembering they are just that, dreams, and not my reality. But who’s to say they won’t be some day. I feel like being able to dream and having these huge aspirations in life are what keep pushing me to succeed. Keep pushing me to have hope that I’ll find myself at the right place, at the right time and just know. Know that’s where I’m meant to be, maybe just for that day or for the rest of my life. And I rely on that a lot, knowing. Knowing what’s right or what’s wrong or what’s supposed to happen and all those other crazy emotions and thoughts and feelings life throws at me.

Growing up is weird. But a good weird. Though tomorrow is never promised I do know that in my still young mind I have the room for mistakes, broken hearts and bruised knees, successes and ‘oh my god did that really happens’. And it’s perfectly okay that at the age of almost twenty-five I don’t have it completely together. Not everyone does. And I also know that one day all these twisted sorts of fate of luck and love and life will come together to transform in front of me the most beautiful life I’ve ever known.

 
I just know it.

Loving.

 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

1/// Lately I've been drawn to water colors. Something about them is so subtle, simple and pretty.

2/// Bread is my favorite part of the meal. I can't wait to try out this recipe.

3/// Getting another tattoo has been on my mind more and more frequent recently. This watercolor bird is something I could definitely see on me.

4/// This globe of the constellations is out of this world.

Conversations with Pappaw

It's the small things you never want to forget about your grandparents. You never remember what they bought you for Christmas or your birthday, but rather the life lessons they teach you day in and day out.

Every day for lunch, pretty much, since I started working at EWAM four years ago I've gone and had lunch with my Pappaw. He's my great-grandfather and is so full of wisdom and life that I can only hope that when I reach my nineties I have half the spunk of him.

These small conversations and laughs we share over lunch each day are things that are slowly fleeting from my memory and as sad as it is I know he won't be here with me forever. Though his memory and all he has taught me will remain, it's these moments, the ones where we laugh or he lectures that I want to remember. It's this small thirty to forty minute time frame I share with him each day that I cherish so much.

Talking about his upcoming birthday... 'raises his hand and points finger around as if he's in a crowd' "Tell Everybody I Want Fertilizer!"

Starts going on about how I called him once and it hadn't snowed any the other night, then I called him back to check and see if any snow accumulated "and I went outside to look and everything was covered. Looked like a wagon full of the stuff had turned over."

He's my valentine tonight... I know, I'm super lucky... So I was trying to convince him since we are going to my Aunt's he should buy us all Bright Star... "You've done gone crazy. That snow froze your brain."