February 3, 2013

• Big steps

  So, I’m really happy about a lot of the changes that have been happening my life.

  My car officially became mine as of Friday, so that meant a few things that I have been waiting on for awhile. My family forbade me from going on the highway with said car because of somethings that happened (see backstory below or skip it…)

  ~~~~Backstory~~~~

  Backstory: My family, specifically my mom and my aunt, got rear ended by a tracter trailer in my car on the highway. The steering wheel was shaking, and “We almost went off the embankment”. This was around 10 years ago. Anyway, because of this my aunt (who owned the car before me) said no highway. As it was her car and I needed to be able to get to school I followed said rule. I was concerned if I didn’t she would take the car away from me and I would have no way of getting around….

  Needless to say, I have been thinking about my future. I don’t want to live in Connecticut the rest of my life. Right now it is fairly easy for me to get around without taking the highway. However, I probably will be living out west/not on the east coast where it is very spread out and not taking the highway would be idiotic. Also, I don’t want to live in fear of anything like my family does. I understand being afraid after something like that happens, but eventually it becomes unhealthy and it is just better to move on. Also, sometimes it really does not make sense to spend a 1/2 hr in the car when you can get there in 10 minutes by taking the highway (or when it takes forever to get somewhere via the main roads). So I decided as soon as we talked about these things that I would go on the highway when the car was officially mine.

  I had been on the highway before, mostly in driver’s ed (though that was a 2-lane highway that has no trucks/RVs etc allowed on it, not a 4 lane highway). One other time with my dad, in Delaware. But this was going to be the first time by myself….

  ~~~~End backstory~~~~

  So yeah, today I went on the highway on the way home from church. Totally by myself for the first time. And I got home in one piece. I didn’t die and for all those things I am grateful. Here is to taking a big step to asserting my independence as an adult and not letting my family control what I do. It’s also a big step because I rarely ever push myself to do things that make me uncomfortable. I guess for me something like this has really been a symbol of part of what it means to be an adult, making these decisions without your family telling you it’s right or wrong. Because I may not always make good decisions, but I know I’m an adult at this point and making decision on my own is my right now.

   

  And on another car related note, I might be replacing my brakes soon. I have to pull my tires off and look to see if I can wait, but I was perusing on amazon and found out they have car parts! So that’s a good thing !

   

  Anyway, more unrelated things now.

   

  I told my friend some stuff that I thought was in confidence. Nothing bad, but nothing I wanted other people to know, just because it’s not really their business, you know? So we go to school together and during some study time we’re chatting and she casually tells me that she told her grandma what I was just talking about that I told her. Initially I was kind of mad. However, I realized a few things. I know she didn’t do it to be malicious. And I also know I have done the same thing. This taught me a few things….

  1. Even though I already have been working on this, I have learned how much more important it is to be a more private person. 
  2. Don’t tell this friend anything that I would not want 100% of the world to know. She’s a nice girl, but I need to be smart about what I say about myself.
  3. I trust people too easily and this is part of #1, but stop being so trusting of people and make them earn your trust/learn how to tell from the get go who is actually trust worthy…

   

  Through a large portion of my life I have been kind of pathetic. I have played a victim to my circumstances and just defeated/broken down to said circumstances (whatever they are at the time). I had some things happen and I have been doing a lot of thinking about that lately. I obviously can’t re-live what I have already done to make it better, but I can move forward. And to me, right now, moving forward is not being so pathetic. Part of my pathetic-ness is that I was trying to do things on my own without any help. Nobody can live like that. I don’t want to live like that anymore. But I can’t share my thoughts with a lot of my friends, it just wouldn’t be a good plan especially when I am trying to be more private. I guess I’ve realized recently that I really can find my strength and the will to change and be emotionally stable through my faith in Christ. I never really understood that until recently. I know there are verses about Christ (or at least God, I’m not very good at direct quotes) being steady, constantly with us, a rock, stronghold etc. Things don’t have to be ok. I just have to put my faith and my attention in the right place no matter what is going on. I’m happy God has brought me to a place where I realize that. Hope that makes sense. I don’t really know if that was the best way to describe it, but it made sense to me.

  And on a related note, we have been talking about something I find really interesting to think about in church/bible study. My pastor, Keith, and I talked about this a little bit in bible study and then after church today everybody was talking about it at fellowship time. We have been discussing the seemingly paradoxical idea of Christ as both fully man and fully God. I used to think that Christ was just fully man and fully God in that he had the sin nature but he knew everything that God knows (the future, etc) and so via being fully God he was able to evade sin and die on the cross and all is well (aka “God in a human suit”). Then I forget when but Keith brought something up about Jesus in bible study. I forget exactly what part of Mark we were going through but I think it was the part where Jesus has the disciples go out before palm sunday and get a donkey for him and stuff. We were talking about how Jesus either could have known about the donkey in advance or he could have gone there and gotten it set up. Either way, Keith explain, Jesus is still fulfilling the prophecy he had to fulfill (which, I don’t know off the top of my head). Anyway, this brought up a different image of Jesus as man/God in my mind that we have been talking about in greater detail. The idea is that Jesus was fully man, with the sin nature. But he was also fully God, except he emptied himself of the knowledge of the future/things that would have given him an advantage on earth and kept only the ability to forgive sins and something else that I can’t think of right now. But basically, everything he did beyond that was through the guidance/blessing of the holy spirit. Initially I was kind of like :S about this, but as I’ve thought about it more I’ve been like ! Because Keith explained it more and was like “think about how much more we can follow Christ’s example if he wasn’t just God in a human suit. If God is just being God in a human suit it was definitely impossible for us to follow his example. But if we’re like Christ and we can follow the leading of the holy spirit he is truly showing us how to live our lives.” Not that it couldn’t be the way I was talking about before, but yeah…this has definitely given me things to think about. Anyway, I could go on about this, but now I’m getting lazy explaining what we were talking about. And I’m sure books upon books have been written about this (which is why it cracks me up when I think about stuff like this because I know I’m just scratching the surface sometimes…….)

   

   

   

   

  • 6:13 pm
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