Well I got what I asked for

Several months ago I told God I was tired of feeling like I was crying all the time.  Well I got what I asked for, I’m not crying anymore.  That’s a good thing right?  Well, maybe.  Now my immediate reaction to things that upset me is anger.  *looks chagrined*  Maybe not the best thing ever, but before you go thinking this is a bad change, it’s not really.  You see instead of sitting back and bemoaning and crying about my situation in life, I get mad and do something about it.  So really a good change.

This kind of thing has happened to me before you know, asking God for something and expecting one thing but getting something completely different.

For example about a year ago I was living in Colorado and my parents had just moved to SD when me, my bro and my grandmother were all invited out to visit the parentals.  Well, much to my bro’s frustration, the route we took was one my grandmother had mapped out.  It took us through Nebraska’s deadest two-lane roads EVER!  It was boring, the roads were as straight as…something and there was nothing interesting to look at.  Well after about, oh I don’t know, fifteen miles of me complaining (to my grandmother and to God) about how boring this drive was (I was driving my car by the way) it started to rain.  I was pretty happy, something new was happening, man I had no idea.  My bro was in his truck following us when we came up to the sharpest turn that existed on that whole road and wouldn’t you know it, it was of course one of those turns that you have to slow down to 25 mph to take.  Well, Surprise!  My car wouldn’t slow down!  I had my brake pedal pressed all the way down to the floor and it felt like I was driving through mud.  I managed to get the car slowed down enough to get around the turn safely and honestly I panicked when I saw the turn and simply told God “Okay your turn to take the wheel.”  Anyway we made it around the turn but the car still had to be stopped.  It took me pressing all the way down on the brake pedal, putting the parking brake on and shifting the car into neutral to get it stopped.  *cringes*  It was not pretty.  My grandmother’s response?  “Well you said you were bored!”  LOL.

Another example of this took place fairly recently, like 9 months ago.  I had known for a few years that my spending habits were really bad, like there was a permanent hole in my pocket, money just couldn’t get a grip.  Well I’d been trying to discipline myself for a long time when I finally asked God to help me learn how to save money.  His solution?  I was out of a job from August ‘07 to February ‘08.  Yeah, trust me now I hold very, very tightly to my money.  :)

One more example before I’m done for now.  And this one is a bit more serious.  I have this really good friend that I’d managed to hold on to for about six years (a big achievment for me) and even though we’d had a few discussions about God and life I’ve never felt like she really understood what I was saying.  Well about a year ago I decided to move to SD with her and I felt good about it.  I distinctly remember the night before I left feeling God telling me I was ready.  Well I misinterpreted Him, as I’m wont to do and figured this meant that I’d finally be able to reach her about faith and life and etc, etc.  So I moved up here and things quickly went sour between her and I.  We had several fights over the summer and decided not to live together though we agreed to be next door neighbors, shortly afterwards I found out she was engaged to a recent ex.  So we moved in next door to each other and I found myself alone and ignored.  First I got upset and cried for several months feeling very used and like the only reason I was there was for her to unload all of her problems.  Well after 5 months of crying I got mad.  And I stood up to her.  That was about two months ago and things have pretty much ended between us.  Well last night I was thinking about that feeling I got from God and after thinking about it for a long time I realized He was right!  I was ready, just not in the way I thought.  I realized (95% certain) that this move wasn’t for her benefit (though it may benefit her, I’ll likely never know as C.S. Lewis’s Aslan said once “…It isn’t your story.”) it was for mine.  I was ready to learn some fairly big life lessons and to grow.  This move, even though I may wish I’d not done it, was exactly what I needed.  And I don’t regret it.

I can wish that I’d stayed in CO but I know that this move was the right thing.  It’s like Frost’s poem about the two roads (it’s not about nonconformity by the way but how our choices affect our lives), I took a different path than the one I’d thought I’d be on “…and it has made all the difference.”

So there you have, the moral of these four little stories is…Be careful what you ask for because you may get it though God’s solution likely won’t look at all like your solution.

:)  He’s awesome like that!  Lol.

Hometown

So I’m sitting in my living room this evening watching the Reese Witherspoon movie Sweet Home Alabama and I’m thinking while watching this that people who have a hometown are so lucky.  Don’t get me wrong I like my childhood and wouldn’t change a whole lot.  But I would’ve liked a hometown.  You see my padre works for the government and so we moved, on average, every three years growing up so I don’t have a place to call “my hometown.”  And I’ve been thinking about that sort of stuff a lot lately.  I don’t really have any friends right now and the person who I’d considered my best friend for the last five or so years is leaving and it’s highly unlikely that unless I decide to go to my high-school reunion I will ever have any contact with her again.  Or any one else I went to high-school with for that matter.  And I’m not even considering the people I went to middle school or elementary school or homeschooled with.  I’m fair certain I won’t see them on this earth again.

And I guess I feel like I kind of missed out.  I don’t blame my parents, not one bit.  My parents did the right thing by me.  And my madre always made sure that wherever we moved to didn’t feel alien.  She had a special touch like that.  But I still feel like I missed something that near everyone else seems to have had.  That darned hometown.  That one place where everyone knows you and your family, where when you come into town you see people you know and they recognize you instead of looking at you like some sort of outsider who will never fit in or like someone they might’ve know once.

I don’t know how my brother feels about, not sure he even cares that we don’t have a hometown and maybe I shouldn’t either.  But damned if it still doesn’t affect me.  I’m the person that when people ask where I’m from I respond by asking them “Do you want the most recent place, my birthplace or would you just like the list of every place I’ve ever lived?”  And they just kind of look at me.  I feel like any more I should just say something like, “my hometown is heaven,” or “I’m a modern day gypsy.”  Either way I’d still just get this blank stare.

So I guess all this change (yet again *sigh*) makes me wish for a moment anyway that things had been different, that my padre had chosen a different career or that his job would’ve allowed us to stay in one place or that I’d developed the “screw-all” attitude to convention that my Bro did or that I’d kept in touch better with the people I cared about and moved away from.

Oh well.  Can’t change the past.  Can’t predict the future.  So I guess I’ll try living for the moment.

And maybe once I do that I will finally stop wishing I could know the future or alter the past.

We’ll see.