Reflections

  I've been feeling this incredible urge to write lately. Like, it's been driving me nuts, and I've been ignoring it, hoping it will go away. It's not that I don't want to write - it's just that I keep coming back to the same thing, and I feel like I've said it before. I'm not sure if I have or not, but I feel like I have, and I don't want to come across as a parrot.
  But... A month later, with the same thoughts running through my head, I feel like maybe I need to get this out...

  I've been listening to the Eli Young Band song Guinevere a lot.  Partly because it's the alarm tone on my phone, so I get to hear it whenever I have to wake up or get something done; but also partly because I just can't get parts of it out of my head.
  The beginning of the chorus especially gets into my mind. "For as much as she stumbles, she's running; For as much as she runs, she's still here."
  For some reason, those words always make me think back on my own past, and how the things in my own life have laid the foundation for me to be where I am right now.
  "For as much as she stumbles, she's running."
       There have definitely been times in my life when I was stumbling, and even falling. There were times when I made terrible decisions that turned my life upside-down and drove me to my knees. But... I needed those times. Because I needed to be on my knees so that I could learn how to pick myself back up and to stand on my own two feet. And I desperately needed to be able to stand on my own two feet before I could be ready to stand next to someone worth standing next to.

  "For as much as she runs, she's still here."
       It's strange how sometimes life brings you around in such a neat little circle, taking you away from things and people and places in your life only to bring you right back to them in the end.  I've been stupid enough to allow myself to lose some pretty important people in my life. I've been foolish enough to forget the way certain places I've been have made me feel. But now that I'm on the other side...now that those people are back and those places are in my heart again, I realize just how much I needed to lose them. Because had I not lost those people, I wouldn't hold them in such a precious place in my heart now, and I wouldn't know exactly what it's like to live without them. But because I do know, I also know what I'm willing to do to make sure that doesn't happen again. And the places... When I go back to somewhere I haven't been in a while, and realize just how much that place feels like home, even if it isn't where I grew up or anywhere I plan on being forever, I realize just how hard it is to find that feeling. And I don't want to take that for granted, either.

  I guess that what I'm trying to say is that the more things progress in my life, the more I realize that I was looking at my past completely backwards. Because I always assumed that my life was moving forwards in the good times and completely stalled in the bad times. And maybe, in an overall sense, that's true. I did move forward, bit by bit, on the days when I was laughing and smiling and feeling like I had it all figured out. But the greatest growth in my life, the times I learned the most about myself and what I want in my life, those were sudden leaps that happened seemingly overnight - and they always happened during or immediately following those times in my life when I felt like I'd hit rock-bottom.

  I'm not sure why I felt so compelled to write an entry like this. I feel like, when I look at my life and at how amazing everything is right now, this seems rather down.
  I guess I'm just so very thankful for where I am right now. My sister and I are talking again. I've been with an incredible man for a year now. I have a car. I'm one semester away from my Associate's degree. In 18 weeks, I'll be closing this chapter in my life and running headlong into something new.  And those are all things that I am so excited about. And...they're all things that I don't think I'd be able to say I have, had I not been through the other times in my life. I honestly believe it was precisely those hardships that brought me to where I am today.

And this...
This is such a beautiful place to be.