Fun

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Have you ever known someone who didn't know how to have fun? I can't stand it. There are some people I know who always hold back. They always think they're having fun, but when you look at them, you see that their smile doesn't go all the way up to their eyes. They've tricked themselves into thinking that they're having fun, but they really aren't. It's all pretend. They never let go. It's good to let go sometimes and be completely crazy. Ahhhhhh I don't know why this has been bothering me so much. It makes me sad when I see people who are pretending to have fun. Laugh obnoxiously loud. Snort. Be crazy. It's good for you.

xoxograce

Randomness

I have been avoiding blogging lately, and I don't know why. Granted, I just got back from my service trip and college searching on Wednesday evening. I'm not going to post about my service trip just yet. I just want to think about it for a while and then decide which aspect to write about. It was a life changing experience, that's all I'll say right now.

I've been thinking about how I must seem so different to people on my blog than I do in real life. I'm not great at communicating through speech, but through writing I can always find the right words. This blog is composed of my thoughts. I wish I could communicate my thoughts as well in every day life as I can when I am writing. That's something I need to work on.

It seems really weird to think that I'm a different person than I was, say, going into freshman year. Do people really change that much? Am I really all that different? Or have my experiences changed me? Or am I the same person I was three years ago but my experiences have changed my outlook on things? It's all so confusing to think about.

I'm really just rambling in this blog. Thanks to anyone who has stuck around to read this far. It's August. School starts in twenty days. July went by way too fast. This time next year I will be packing my bags to go away to college. It's scary. I'll be the first to admit that I'm freaked out about this coming year. Finding a college. Applying. Waiting for the Acceptance letter. Trying to figure out how to pay for it. It's freaking me out.

Okay, I have to go do the laundry. This has been the most random post yet, I'd say. I don't even know. I just needed to blog so that it wasn't hanging over me. I couldn't keep postponing it.

=]
xoxograce

Service Project

I'm going to be leaving on a service project tomorrow and I will have no access to the internet or anything electronic, so I will not be posting for at least a week. I will be journaling while I am there, so I will post some reflections on my return. Please pray for me and have a safe week.

xoxoGrace

Prayer

I've never been one to pray, but fortunately I gave it a shot a few weeks ago. Basically, I always felt like my faith was forced on me. It felt inherited, and I felt like I wasn't the one who had found this faith and had personally connected to it. Growing up with Catholic schooling, my faith was just always there, staring me in the face, but no one I went to school with actually practiced their faith. It really was just there.

Last year, something happened to me that made me have even less faith in God. I didn't try not to sin because I wanted to be good for God. I tried not to sin because I was scared of what would happen if I did.

I would go to Mass and would participate in it, singing and sometimes playing violin, but I never had a spiritual connection to it. I was a Catholic just because I wasn't anything else, and I wasn't anything else because I was too scared of what my family would do and what would happen to me after death if I ever converted. What if it was actually the wrong choice?

Then my friend (who has a much heavier cross than I) inspired me to find my faith. It took a while, about three and a half months, before I actually went out and looked for God, but eventually I did it. Because faith is so complicated and hard to understand sometimes, from the outside it appears easier not to even bother with it, but once you have it, you realize that you could never do without it.

Sunday, my friend and I went to pray the Rosary at the Perpetual Adoration Chapel at his parish. Last night we went to Benediction and the Rosary at his church. Today I drove out to his church by myself and went to the chapel by myself to pray the Rosary. I find it so much easier to pray when it is quiet and Jesus is right there before me. At Mass, the prayers seem so rehearsed most of the time, but at the chapel, it's just God and I. I can say whatever I want, however I feel, and God listens. And He answers me, too.

I started asking God for signs to know that He is hearing my prayers. And He gives me signs. Just little things that when I see or hear them or even feel them, I know that he must be listening to me because something that beautiful or that coincidential could not happen without Him. I think He knows that my weak faith needs these signs to hold on for one more day.

All I can say is, prayers do get answered. On Sunday, I thought that a chapter of my life was being closed before I wanted it to, but really a new chapter was just beginning. I now know that I have to heal the relationship that I hurt through my neglect of God and my friend, but because of God's guidance, I know what to do. I just wanted to say thank you, God. Thank you for sending my friend to lead me to you.

Amen.

A Little Inspiration for the Week Ahead

and she said yeah,

my life may not be something special

but it's never been lived before

-Ani DiFranco, "Brief Bus Stop"

My friend Teresa is an exchange student in Chile right now, and she sent this quote along with her travel journal. I thought it was quite inspirational.

xoxograce

Facebook vs. Blogger

I recently deleted my facebook. I couldn't stand it anymore. I was addicted to it, and it annoyed me. Now, I'm addicted to blogger, but not quite so much as I was to facebook. I feel more productive on blogger. I'm writing, which I haven't done in a while even though I love it. I'm practicing communication through writing, and I'm even learning new things when I read other people's blogs. Not just what they did during the day, but about the areas they live in, different faiths, and even how to bake the perfect cake. It's not all just a bunch of gossip, so I feel so much better being on blogger than I did on facebook. I still sometimes think... uhm, I'm communicating with people I don't even know!! But when I start my writing career, I'm going to be doing that, so it doesn't seem so strange anymore. I just wanted to point out that blogger actually helps me get something done.

xoxograce

So I'm a Weird Teenager...

Last year, when I played Tuptim in "The King and I," I met a really great group of people from a parish near by my house. We all seemed to have a lot in common and it was just a lot of fun to hang out once in a while. The only weird thing about it is that we are all different ages. Our group is comprised of the most "normal" people from the parish, and our ages range from 3-48. Last summer, we used to have barbecues over by Dina's house every once in a while and then we'd just sit around the campfire while Jeremy played guitar and we all sang along. We became just a big family. It was really just like being with my aunts and uncles. There was just no blood relation.

This year, the play was really stressful for me so after it closed, I just took a long break. Tonight was the first time I'd seen everyone since April and it was so wonderful. It was wonderful to sit there with Jeremy playing guitar, with people encouraging me to sing, and to just know that everyone there loves me for who I am. They are a separate life that I have. They don't know about my problems with Will or anything else that is going on in my life other than what I tell them. To them I'm just me. Just Grace. And it makes me feel so wonderful to have that. When I was sitting there with all of them singing, I just felt safe. I was in a safezone. And after a few days of stress, I really needed that relaxing time with some fun, chill people. And when I left I was ready to go back and take my cross up again. You know, you can always take a rest from carrying a heavy cross. You just have to remember that when you are done with your break it will still be there waiting for you, but if you use your break wisely, it won't feel as heavy to carry as it did before.

xoxograce