Different

Have you ever felt yourself being changed? Not so much by any specific event but just as you're driving down a highway you feel that... differentness in your heart. Sometimes it's a good feeling but often it's this ache inside you that says "You're never going to be the same".

I'm on a road trip with my parents, little sister and her husband and son. We just left my father's mother's house. As we're driving, I look at the Texas city-scape and the run-down buildings, all the differentness from my Kansas home.

I look back and see that because I visited my grandmother today, this visit has changed, has affected my view of her. As has every encounter we've ever had and every encounter we will have in the future. I don't think any less of her or anything but... because I visited her today, as my 19 year old self, I will never look at her or remember her the way I saw her when I was say 7 years old. She's not the same Grandma and I'm not the same Erika.

Sometimes I love the new, the changing, the freedom to transform and experience variety. But today I ache of loss. Today I wish I could feel the same I had back then. But I can't. And such is life.

Tapestry

As my count down to last days in Lawrence begins, I look back at the incredible adventure these 3 years have been and my heart... sinks. I'm sickened with this feeling of not-quite-sadness, a feeling like "I miss that feeling" I still have happiness everyday, But it's different, and it always will be.

What does that say about me and my life? What are good times worth if you can't remember them with a smile and warm heart?
Although I'm no longer getting lost driving in circles in between Baldwin City and Eudora, a pizza in my best friend's lap, and the Beatles cranked up on the stereo of my '91 GMC sonoma, I still have adventures like finding an abandoned campsite in the woods by the river and going to Hawaii. Although I'm not back stage wearing an old-lady costume hushing giggles from my cast mates while biting my tongue to hush myself, I still have fun walking down town with the same people, no destination in mind and planning the most adventurous lives we could live together.

The sad feeling of remembering the happy that's no longer there should never keep us from looking back at those times. Because if we don't draw out those memories, we'll forget what a wonderfully tangled life we've lived. Good and bad, hard and flippant, we are given the ability to remember and we should use it wisely.

Even though it hurts to look at what times have passed, look and look hard. Draw out the good and dwell on it. Build on it using moments from today. You should never get so caught up in todays pains that you forget yesterdays faundest memories.

The Lord is good always, always, always. Try to find out how good by looking back. God is amazing. What looks like a tangled mess of events to us, is a beautifully woven pattern to him... and He's just getting started.