(I feel a little bit conceited to put a picture of myself up here, but it is a self portrait I did a couple years ago and I thought that as I am striving to become a better person everyday, that it would be excusable. :)Recently I have really been pondering the meaning of life. Everyday I realize how much I really do encounter so many different people in different walks of life. Yesterday I played the whole day with a 2 year old, and as I was leaving I looked at his hands and pictured them 10-20 years later. His precious little hands would no longer be holding my fingers on the playground, but would be much bigger and before long he would be all grown up. Then I examined my life and realized that my little two year old hands of the past, would never have expected to be sitting here typing this today, and these same hands today, are not expecting what will happen when I am an old lady with most of my life behind me. I am sort of in the "think, realize, and scold myself" mode right now, my brain will go off on these long tangents about the future and imagining what will happen someday, but then I realize and remember that I should be living in the present, then I mentally scold myself, and jerk back to the present. It is like a constant battle for me to keep time in perspective, time has always been a rather daunting and confusing prospect to me. To think that I am me and I live now and not in some other time, and that someday I will no longer be on this earth, and all those other befuddling concepts. When I was 9 and 10 I used to just lay in bed and cry, I wasn't exactly sad but I just couldn't comprehend time, it didn't make sense to me.
So basically I think what I am getting at here is, (if you haven't lost me on the strange path my brain takes me on,) is that I must make the best of this confusing time that I have been given and make sense out of it, become better because of it, and always strive to look for the good in it, and in the meantime be grateful for it, and not try and rush the future.
5 comments:
Beautiful portrait, Julia!!
Such a lovely self portrait, and such lovely thoughts as well. I have similar thoughts about time myself. How is it that I exist here and now, and am me and not someone else. Time especially freaks me out when I look at old photos, and I think to myself, everyone in these pictures is dead and each one of these people had their own life, and it seemed to go on for so long (as our own lives do) but it's now over. (Hope that doesn't sound morbid, but it's what I think when I see old pictures!)
On that philosophical note, I guess I better get dinner....gotta eat so's we don't wind up in an old photograph any sooner than necessary. :)
I was in church yesterday and the most uncomfortable thought came to me. I don't know where it bloomed from and I exasperatingly had to push it away eventually. We will be in heaven FOREVER. Most people immediately jump for joy at that statement. Well...yesterday it freaked me out. There will be no end. What does that mean? NO end? There is always an end, in sickness, in hate, in the day, hour, week, month and most of all our emotions. They finish and begin just as quickly as the latter! To say the very least I was scared. What could it mean to live in a perfect world where none of it ends. I don't know if there will be sunsets or seasons...who can tell of the holiness of God? Who can say what will and will not be in heaven and the new world?
Anyway how shallow is it to be frightened eh? I should be excited. Instead, I feel like I will be a child taken out of the jungle and plopped into the city. Such a difference!
Thanks Julia for telling us girls that your brain makes you cry too. Maybe I think too much? Ha.
Don't worry about that freaked feeling, God did not make our little minds to comprehend eternity or 'non ending'. Everything in our world ends at one point or another, whereas things in His world always go on. Living in our world, our minds can't wrap around eternity. So for me, I chose not to dwell on something I can't comprehend and instead I just try harder to trust the Leader who understands all things. Amazing isn't it? Try as any human might, it's obvious that none of us will ever understand -everything-, but He already has and will forever. Now why can't everyone see that and have no doubt in their minds whom they should be serving? :-(
Anyway, nice thought provoking post Julia!
Wow thanks everybody! And I guess I thought I was the ONLY person who had this problem, but I see that I am not alone (fortunately:)
Aunt Caroline and Faith that is both EXACTLY what happens to me, and old photos really start to make me scared of death, but then I remember that I am sure i will be far happier in the long run when I am in heaven than on this measly little earth. And sometimes my brain will go the course that Faith's went and say to myself, but eternity will never end? I remember one day that I just cried and screamed because I would NEVER die, I would live forever and ever and ever. And yes (as you said Faith) that seems absolutely ridiculous because of course we should want to live forever. But see the hard thing for me to understand is that well first of all there is no time in eternity so you wouldn't be counting the days in heaven, and secondly why would there need to be an end, an end to what? In the times on this earth that I wish I could stay here forever, is when I am surrounded by Absolute beauty, or I see an incredible flower or beautiful place, and I wish i could just stay forever and ever and never leave. So I believe it will be that way in heaven, we WON'T want to leave,it will be like living in a field of wildflowers or in the middle of a heavenly concert. (Now obviously I don't know what heaven will be like,) but I do believe that we will be so happy that we would not even have a speck of a desire to not be there. This is how I console myself when eternity seems really daunting to me.
That is very true Mary, and that is the other way I am able to feel at peace about it all. But then there are those times where it is almost completely impossible to stop your mind from going into thoughts about eternity and you can't very easily choose to feel freaked out or not, it just happens, (though you can choose how you deal with it.) And I actually haven't felt REALLY freaked out about it for a while, but I am always having thoughts about time, and life. I think the more you put EVERYTHING in God's hands the easier life is to handle, but man to are my hands still pretty full.
Oh I just had a really interesting analogy come to mind:
In our spiritual journey, our normal human desires are always pushing us to grab and put and hold more and more of our lives and of everything else, and have them in our hands. It is human nature and human sin that drives us to be in control of it all instead of God. But all the while we don't realize that the more we have in our hands the heavier we feel and the harder it is to keep going up. That is why we have to keep putting those things in God's hands, and the more we place in His hands the freer our hands are, and the lighter our burden is. It is a long struggle because we may give something to him and the next moment grab a hold of something else and then have to surrender that. It is a never ending process to free our hands and give it to God. (Then this is where the vivid picture that flashed through my mind comes in.) I pictured an old woman's hand, wrinkled and worn, finally letting go of the last thing and giving it to God, and her hands are FINALLY free, they are light and open and able to reach up to heaven. And because she had given up the last thing in her hands to God, he was able to open them to his and she could put her whole, free, hand in Gods, and He pulls her hands up to Him in Heaven.
Well that is the picture that flashed through my mind at that second. It is not exactly an analogy, but hopefully it was clear to you all the same. Well this is long enough already so I will stop now, but thank you for being such supportive readers, I am so grateful for it all. :)
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