After all the dreaming, I come home again

Somehow it’s worked out that the only weddings I’m actually attending in 2006 are those that I’m really excited about. (I’m also a bridesmaid in all of them.) The second of those three is this weekend, and while I’m thrilled to see the bride and groom finally united in holy matrimony, I’m also really, really excited to see bunches of friends.
That’s got basically nothing to do with the fact that love and marriage have been on my mind lately (and in that order). What I realized in all of this daydreaming is that while I’m totally opposed to the idea of “settling” any time soon, I am not at all against the notion of running around the world with somebody else. (In fact, I kind of like the idea of finding someone who would be up for leaving the country for extended periods of time, even though it doesn’t maybe make sense.)
On the other hand, I’m still very good at being single. 🙂
I am seriously considering doing something crazy, though. Of course, by the time I take action, it’ll be a carefully thought-out and sensible plan. This means I’ll probably wait until summer-ish 2008 to do anything, although I am also open to January 2007. I kind of wish I had it in me to just be foolish, but I’m probably better off being me.
One thing I’ve learned lately is that I’m living and working here too soon. Or rather, I think maybe I’m here at the right time, because I’m learning that it’s the wrong time. I love this city, and it’s absolutely the kind of place where I could settle (we’re back to that notion) and raise a family. It’s just that I’m nowhere near ready to settle! I want to see so much and meet people who aren’t like me (even more of them than I know now) and see the world outside my sweet Southern bubble.
I’ve got the daydreaming bug, but as a friend said this weekend, maybe sometimes you need those daydreams to keep you going.

9 thoughts on “After all the dreaming, I come home again

  1. Hi Carla,

    As promised, my photo album is completed for you and other peers to look over; I hope it is a help to you. (Wow, I actually managed to limit a reply to one sentence; oh wait, never mind.) 🙂

    Genuinely,
    From a friend,
    Rick

    P.S. If it might be a compliment to you, I also admit to daydreaming too, from a male perspective about the ideal woman. It helps to know that you’re not the only one thinking about these things, as it were. I think daydreams should be exposed in a life-story with the Lord, and I would encourage you to that. If it might help your own daydreams, I would say that, being a Dylan fan, I also like the following verses of a lesser-known song, “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” from the albums “Biograph” and “The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3,” for daydreaming about what I would want to provide to a soul-mate relationship.

    You will search, babe,
    Search at any cost.
    But how long, babe,
    Will you search for what’s not lost?
    Everybody will help you,
    Some people are very kind,
    But if I can save you any time,
    Come on, give it to me,
    I’ll keep it with mine.

    I can’t help it
    If you might think that it’s odd,
    If I say I’m
    Loving you not for what you are but what you’re not.
    Everybody will help you
    Discover what you set out to find,
    But if I can save you any time,
    Come on, give it to me,
    I’ll keep it with mine.

  2. Well, actually, I should clarify: the song verses help me think about the sort of stuff I would want to say to a girl. And hopefully these favorite verses of my life-story might help your life-story in thinking about the sort of stuff you would want to say to a guy, speaking as a friend to you. Sorry if any other message was conveyed in confusion. (Said while glancing around the room nervously, letting steam loose from the collar.) 🙂 Anyhoo, hope this finds you well. ~Rick

  3. Thanks, Rick, but boys aren’t really what I’ve been daydreaming about (that is, any more than is normal for a 25-year-old single woman!) … if you’ve read the last few entries then I guess everything makes more sense. Or maybe none of it makes sense, but since when is making sense my point? 🙂

    Out of curiousity – how’d you initially end up on my blog?

  4. Carla Jean, I’ll go on an adventure with you. Going on adventures is my new favorite endevour, whether it being climbing out of bed and jetting up to Niagara Falls to watch the water at midnight, or wish I had more willing participants to go on even greater adventures with. I still propose we have our Nickel Creek adventure, and maybe even a country hopping one. :o)

  5. “I am seriously considering doing something crazy, though. Of course, by the time I take action, it’ll be a carefully thought-out and sensible plan. This means I’ll probably wait until summer-ish 2008 to do anything, although I am also open to January 2007. I kind of wish I had it in me to just be foolish, but I’m probably better off being me.”

    Don’t ever think. JUST DO IT!

    Call it immature, call it stupid, but that kind of thinking has gotten me through good times, bad times, and the great time I’m currently living through.

    The next time something scurries across your cerebellum, do it. IMMEDIATELY.

    And in response to the first sentence I copied from you: You don’t consider crazy. You DO crazy.

    Otherwise, you’re just trying to talk yourself into a bad idea, or planning to ensure a good idea comes through. Or you’re drunk.

    Remember, when you’re nervous, just remember that that fear is nature’s way of telling you’re acting like a bitch. Don’t be a bitch.

  6. Hi Carla,

    No problem about the daydreaming. On my part, I thought that an excerpt from my daydream attitude toward soul-mate relationship might be a friendly help from my life-story to yours. Then I worried that the help might be misinterpreted, so I made an addendum to my response. Then I realized that my worry about misinterpretation led to misinterpretation on my part anyway, which made nonsense out of something you made sense of in your previous writings, even though you thought your own writings of making sense are often nonsense. Which, oddly enough, seemed nonsense to me. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m living proof that our future economy is in good hands. 🙂

    If it might be relief to you, comic or otherwise, I read the previous posts you mentioned, regretfully without providing an encouraging comment. (Or epic hyperbole, if you will. 🙂 ) Do I daydream about the world? Oh yes. I’ve thought about places like Switzerland, where Francis Schaffer’s L’Abri Fellowship was developed, or Old World England, the sites of William Tyndale’s life-story. I think it is neat to come across world history sites and take in the moments that ancient heroes lived, the single hours that defined whole movements and cultures, like the parliamentary hall of Martin Luther’s saying, “Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me, amen.” And aside from reading, I prayed for you. I didn’t really have time to write between my promise of the photo album and the completion of the album due to work issues. But I wanted to at least set aside times to pray for you, a wise alternative.

    In regard to how I ended up in your blog, I apologetically confess that I first came across it while looking for a college crush. This is not a dig against you; I think you would hold your own quite nicely in a beauty pageant. This is just an explanation of stuff I mentioned in the recent pastime to you, that you had a good influence on me in a way that I never would’ve expected. This is also a very sensitive confession to me, so I’ll say I’m very sorry to you in advance if the following narrative upsets you.

    I had huge feelings for a girl I knew after my graduation from college, but didn’t handle the feelings responsibly. I wanted to look her up to see how she was doing in a Google search. One of her friends, someone I don’t know, had a photo album featuring her, and along the way I came across a photo album of you. My first impression was that I thought you seemed very pretty and very bright, but I didn’t think anything more beyond that, since I was on a mission, as it were. I tend to be the “charge ahead first, ask questions later” type, as you might see. The crush’s friend also had a blog link. So when I came across the blog, looking for the apple (idol?) of my eye, I also randomly came across your blog. So, in terms of semantics, that is how I ended up in your blog, so to speak, or merely came across your blog in the first place, the whole experience being random, like something out of the movie “Being John Malkovich.”

    In terms of your influence on me, two things happened that changed my mind about you. The first thing was coming to conviction of conscience about handling relationship with the crush from a Book of Daniel study. Dan. 2:43 says, “And in that you saw the iron combined with the common clay, so they will combine with one another in the seed of men; yet they will not adhere to one another, inasmuch as you saw the iron combined with pottery.” Daniel’s literal emphasis was Israel’s future intermingling with pagans in the Roman Empire. That would be the way of Israel’s rejection of God by the time of the New Testament. But Dan. 2:43 also drew me to thought about soul-mate relationship, and about covenant relationship with God.

    Men and women often seek each other in idolatrous relationship apart from God. And these relationships fall apart to sin, like iron smashing pottery. God provides a different type of family relationship, the covenant, or what I nicknamed the “family-bond” from the Daniel study. Communing with the covenant of God also brings the fruit of finding a soul-mate in the covenant. And soul-mate enjoyment in the covenant involves learning struggles about sin between soul-mates, the work of repentance, reconciliation, and forgiveness. That work of the Christian marriage should be continuous, in soul-mates’ learning about each other and the big strifes between each other, and growing on each other in relationship with the Lord. I like drawing from a Bob Dylan lyric from an initial cut of “Shelter from the Storm,” featured on the “Jerry Maguire” soundtrack, in describing this continuity. “It’s a never-ending battle for a peace that’s always torn.”

    The “never-ending battle” of Dan. 2:43 became a personal heartache for me with the girl. I wrote to the girl about careless behavior toward her and repentance and forgiveness. But she never wrote back. As I wrote to her in explanation of repentance and forgiveness, I could sense that she grew distant from me. We were going in two separate directions. She finally wrote back one day that she didn’t want anything to do with me ever again. Later, I learned through one of her friends that she never wanted to be a friend to me in the first place, externally behaving in nice friendship to me but secretly hurting my image with peers by gossip. She claimed to be a Christian in college, joining a campus fellowship organization and joining my home church at college. She might still be a certified laywoman in my home denomination. But in examining my encounters with her life-story, I think she secretly left Christianity in her heart, and her hurting of me was part of the process. On my part, I knew that I hurt her too, in expressing a crush by behavior toward her without responsibility. I learned that at the time I started seeking repentance with the Lord and reconciliation with her, the schism started to develop. So Dan. 2:43 became a Bible lesson of head knowledge, admittedly my personal favorite, and personal heartache experience, admittedly my least favorite.

    The way that this changed my mind about you was that my repenting about my dysfunctional crush relationship with the Lord brought fruit of wanting to say sorry to you about the blog invasion. As I said earlier, I like charging into things first and asking questions later. I came to understand that I charged into your private space, your blog, without permission. Even though the crush break-off was a painful experience, I think it provided the firstfruit of wanting to be mindful of a female peer’s life-story, struggles, and preferences. The first time that I wrote in your blog, I didn’t care about my action. In the present time, I wanted to provide an apology to you about my reckless action of the first time. The reason I mention this life-story to you is that, in my coming to more mindful consideration of female peers, I think that this life-story moment might be something you can draw from for fruit in your own life-story. You might learn from me about appreciation in your own life-story for the never-ending battle for the peace that’s always torn. I confess that this is something I never hoped for in coming across your blog, but also that I’m glad that I came across your blog, since it became part of my Dan. 3:43 life-story lesson. I’m sorry if I hurt you, in the beginning and now. But at the same time, I don’t regret encountering you; I think my encounter with you was valuable. I also admit that I long for the hook of Dylan’s song, the longing for peacemaking comfort from a soul-mate in my learning about dysfunctional male-female relationship. “ ’Come in,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you shelter from the storm.’ ” I hope this will be a helpful lead to you too, to your own learning about dysfunctional relationship with the Lord that would drive you to longing for peacemaking comfort from a soul-mate. I think it is good to bring such longing out into the open in your life-story with the Lord and with your peers, right where such longing should be for soul satisfaction.

    The second thing that changed my mind about you was my attendance to a conference by Dr. Dan Allender, “Learning to Love Your Story.” I came into the conference in literal crying about my male image, because of being abused by betrayal from another female friend. I came out of the conference with value of wrestling for manhood reconciliation with the Lord. I also came out with a new view toward my past strife against your private blog. Prior to the conference, I felt very ashamed about my abusive action toward your blog. Dr. Allender said in the conference that a life-story shared with peers then becomes personally owned by peers. The life-story no longer belongs exclusively to the storyteller, but is also owned by others. And I think this was true about my past encounter with you in your blog. Your life-story was something I should draw from for my own new life in my own life-story. So I offered response to your blog this time with apology, but also with compliment to you. Your writing inspired me to want to create my own life-story blog. I talked with a church peer on Sunday about making a confessional blog. I checked out Blogspot earlier today, and plan on researching WordPress in the next several days. And the church peer will help me set up the fine details, such as creating a printer friendly feature on blog posts or server insights or other riff-raff. Dr. Allender’s conference is something I would hugely recommend to you, if you can make it to the conference.

    My confessional blog is planned to mainly emphasize wrestling with God, the reconciling of personality with God. The tentative title of the blog is “Filioque Discipleship.” “Filioque” is Latin for “and the Son,” the statement in the Nicene Creed that the Holy Spirit proceeds equally from the Father and the Son. Christian discipleship consists of wrestling with the Holy Spirit about joyful relationship with the Holy Spirit through the Son’s sacrifice on the cross. I decided on “discipleship” rather than church-oriented words like “fellowship” because I want to express the Christian testimony as a life-story learning experience for myself and for my peers, Christian peers and non-Christian peers. I want my blog to be an open writing about grasping of relationship with God, the moral influence that draws non-Christian life-stories to Christ. Above all, I want my blog to highlight the struggle with grasping of new value of my life-story with the Lord God. And I think the fruit will be leading of peers toward learning what I’ve learned.

    I’ll say again here that I’m sorry to you about blog invasion in my first encounter with you. But I’ll also say that I’m glad I met you. And I would be glad to get to know you better down the road, drawing from Dr. Allender’s influence on me about shared life-stories. I have an AIM screen-name, “RMPalma,” for you and other reading peers to communicate with beyond blogging. (Hum, I just made my AIM name public to the known world in this blog comment here. Yes, I do believe it is time for a “Calvin and Hobbes” “asterisk over the head” moment. 🙂 ) I hope to draw from your life-story in the future, and I’d be glad to let you draw from mine too. And I hope this finds you well.

    Genuinely,
    Rick

  7. That last comment was entirely too long.

    I say start your adventure now. It doesn’t have to be big — explore the deep south if you must.

    Do know that there is a couch bed for you in Roanoke should you venture to my neck of the woods.

    Hell, I’ve seen you enough job postings to at least have the paper pay for you to interview here!

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