Learning to Dream Again

Remember when you were a kid and you used to dream of what your future would hold? I remember as a little girl I dreamed of becoming a cowgirl. I would own my own ranch and have horses that I would ride all the time. I'd ride the hills in my boots and hat and chaps and vest, not a care in the world.

Slowly that dream died. I realized that would never happen. Horses were expensive to take care of and I was told my love of horses was a phase that I would grow out of. I did get to take some riding lessons and learned that I hated English style riding. Western had always been the way I wanted to ride anyway. When I finally got to take western riding lessons, I loved it. However, the horses didn't always like me. And thus after a while, my love for horses diminished and my dream of riding the hills and plains faded into the past.

As I grew, I came into the thought process that any dream I had was foolish and would never amount to anything. I wanted to be a singer in a band, but knew it would never happen. I wanted to be an author, and pursued that for a while, but decided that my stories would never be good enough.

There were things I dreamed, and let myself dream about, because they were realistic dreams. Like, I dreamed I would marry a wonderful man who loved me fully and we would have a beautiful wedding. That came true. But I never really considered it a dream. It was realistic. It was something I was sure would happen.

So, when people talk about dreams, I'm at a loss. I grew to loathe the question: "Where do you see yourself in [x amount of] years?" I hated it, and still do, because my answer never changed. "I don't know." Part of it was because God has plans that I don't even know about. I thought I was going to go to Harding and graduate in four years and then get married to a man I met in person, probably live in Texas and never work with youth. After my first year at Harding, God took me to Washington where my aunt, uncle, and cousins lived. My plan was then to live there. I got on eharmony and was only looking in that area. Then I met Tanner. A man from Ohio who loved working with the youth at his congregation. I moved back to Dallas to work at my mom's law firm and started planning a future in Ohio. Now, here I am 4 years later in Lafayette, Louisiana. On top of that, I'm working with the youth and teaching a women's class and in leadership role.

The other part of my hatred of that question was that I didn't have any dreams. I decided to live day by day, week by week. I squelched any grand dreams or hopes that I thought were dumb or unrealistic.

Recently, though, I was convicted to try and dream again. Not just dream, but write them down. Any dream. From cooking the perfect meal, to my future kids graduation and wedding and kids. I realized I did have dreams I'd been shutting out. I had labeled them as hopes.

That's the funny thing about dreams is, we can end up calling them different things. Hopes. Wishes. Prayers.

So as I started writing these things down, I allowed myself to dream without fear, without abandon. I was shocked how many I ended up writing down. And I didn't even include the traveling I would like to do or my future kids graduations and spouses/weddings and their future kids. One that will never be crossed off for me, though, is growing closer to God and learning more about him and his love.

I encourage you to dream and write down those dreams. One day I'm sure I will look on my list and see that many of them have come true and will need to make a new list. Dream. Continue to dream. And don't hold yourself back. God can do so much more that you could ever hope for. You just have to let yourself dream and then give them to Him.

What was Unknown is Now Blatantly Apparent.

I found out something I didn't know about myself yesterday. The sermon yesterday morning was eye-opening. Not in the way you would think when you listen to a sermon. I didn't find out something about my spiritual life that I'm doing wrong or right; I didn't find out something that was hampering me from having a better spiritual life or that I have a suppressed sin in my life. No. What I found out was something about me.

I deal/have dealt with depression.

I'm not talking about feeling depressed because of something that happened or those days when it just a bad day. I'm talking about the real mental illness.

Yesterday, I was looking at how to know if you struggle with depression that was in our sermon notes (portion above). As I was reading them, I realized that what I was reading sounded exactly like my high school years and my year at college.

I wanted to sleep all the time figuring that if I went to bed, when I woke up things might be better. I either wanted to eat all the time or didn't eat at all. In college, there were times (mostly Saturdays and dinner time on weekdays) that unless someone was going with me, I just didn't go to the caf (cafeteria) because I either didn't feel like getting up or I didn't want to go in sit alone or get take out and sit in my room alone. If I got really hungry and my lips and cheeks hurt enough from biting them (because apparently that is what I do when I get hungry), I would just find a dollar and go to the vending machine in my dorm and get some chips or a candy bar and a drink to hold me over. Sometimes, the lights didn't even get turned on all day Saturdays because there was enough light coming in through the window during the day and the next thing I knew it was dark outside. I felt worthless and that no one liked me.

When I shared with my life group (Sunday night "church") that I realized I was actually depressed in High School and college, one of the ladies asked what I thought the trigger of it was. I gave her the answer that I thought was right at the time, but, after thinking about it longer, I realized what really triggered it.

3rd grade.

I had just moved from a private Christian school to a public elementary school. I had a great teacher, but that was the beginning of the worst three years of my life.

The year before, I had gotten glasses. I didn't need them all the time, but I did need them to see the board. This girl and I sat next to each other and became best friends. We had a good time, but soon she started stealing my glasses out of my desk and hiding them in hers. Later a boy liked me and gave me a beautiful lapel pin when he asked me to be his girlfriend. My mom had told me that I couldn't have a boyfriend and made me give it back. He then turned his liking of me to a disliking of me and began to pick on me. I tried so hard to be friends with him and his friend, but they wouldn't let me be friends with them. It started with pretend fighting, a few of us girls against a few of the boys. It wasn't real fighting. There was no punching or kicking or hurting. That is, until this certain boy pushed me hard to the ground. Later, I was hit in the face with a kickball that he threw, though he kept saying it hit my back. Perhaps he just felt bad for hitting me in the face because it was an accident. It didn't feel like an accident at the time.

Needless to say, things spiraled from there. My supposed best friend kept being my best friend and then lying about me behind my back. The boys kept picking on me, I was called a cry baby at lunch by my "friend' because she hurt me emotionally.

In fifth grade, my grandpa on my dad's side died. It was the first death in our family. I was so hurt because the last time I saw them I had thrown up on their floor. I didn't get to see them very often. I knew my grandma was sick way before that, but I didn't know with what (Alzheimer's disease), so I couldn't spend the night like I used to be able to. I had seen him once in the hospital and I thought he was getting better. What I was too young to know was that he had cancer. I just knew there was something wrong with his kidneys. I told my supposed friend at school during a project that it reminded me of my grandpa and that was why I was sad. She replied with couldn't they just give him a transplant, and when I said no she counteracted with that she had been whipped hard the night before. A year after my grandpa died, my grandma, his wife, passed away as well.

Come to think about it, maybe it was my grandpa's death that triggered my depression. More likely, I think, is that his death was the last straw. With all the pain and torment I suffered with almost everyday from my "friends", loosing my grandpa was probably what struck the final blow.

Throughout High School, I thought it was just all the pressure to be an all A student like my mom and my sister and that no one liked me. Looking back at college I thought it was the continued pressure to have at least a 3.6 GPA to be able to drive my car and the continued fear that no one liked me or wanted to be my friend and the fact that my boyfriend, at the time, stopped talking to me and just played video games while we were on Skype. However, there was a reason I had the insecurities of not thinking people liked me or wanting to be my friend. That came from 3rd thru 5th grade. I know that now. My fear of loosing the people I love spawning from the losses I experience at a young age.

Perhaps those three years were the years when I became the not-so-talkative, withdrawn girl that I was in High School and my year at College. I have made strides in not being that girl, but I still struggle to be the outgoing person I want to be.

During my senior year of high school, there came a point where I decided it all needed to stop. I visited a teacher, who also had a degree in counseling, and asked for help. Of course, it took all the guts I had in me to write the e-mail to ask if I could talk to him and then to actually walk into his classroom. He told me to write out my story because I seemed like a writer, which I am. That lead me to start my blog.

Sometimes I just have to get down what I am feeling. Writing helps me process what I am thinking and feeling into coherence. There is a sense of relief and release when I successfully write something that is what I am thinking and feeling into a coherent series of sentences or paragraphs and post it here, on my blog. This blog has not only helped me therapeutically  but it has helped my writing skills as well. And I hope it helps someone else out there who just wants to know that there is another person out there who isn't perfect and knows what they are going through. Because I have been there.

I have been depressed.

Occasionally, I still struggle with it. And it's not just the one day that everything is just going wrong or just a case of the blues.

If you struggle with anything, know that you are not alone. It's okay to be depressed, it's not a sin. Seek the help you need.

Keep on keeping on.

A New Chapter

Right at this very moment, I am 38,999 feet in the air. That's right. I'm on a plane. With WiFi. How cool is that?! It costed me $5, but it's worth it! Ha ha! Anyway, I am on my way back to Dallas after being in Vancouver and packing my things for five days. Six months I've been in Vancouver, Washington, and I look back and see how much I have grown.

When I got to Vancouver, I had just finished my first year of college. I was taking a step out on my own and, quite to my parents dismay, not going back to school and moving what seems like a bazillion miles away. It was a scary step. I had no car, hardly any money, and no job. But I knew I would be with family, and I hadn't seen my cousin, Ry in over a year. I was with my ex and honestly, on an emotional roller coaster that went hand in hand with that. In three words, I was young. It's funny to look back and see who I was then and who I am now. The change isn't drastic, and it happened little by little, but there is a big change.

Because of my time working at Vancouver Pizza Company and being pretty much out on my own, I found myself. Sure, I still am finding more and more of myself everyday, but I gained clarity in areas that I would never have found had I not left Dallas. (Or at least it would have taken me a very long time if I did.) I have become more solid in my faith and find myself closer to God. I have become more outgoing and more outspoken. I'm no longer the girl who hardly talks and strays away from people. I still have to warm up to people, but I don't just stand in a corner and sew my lips shut. I found myself greeting customers that walked in the door, occasionally seating people, taking food out to tables, and handing customers the pizza they ordered to-go. I goofed around with my fellow co-workers, while diligently doing my job of course, and learned to come up with joking, witty remarks to whatever got thrown at me jokingly. I also became more clear in what I wanted in my future husband. Sure, Eharmony helped with that, but so did my experiences. Eharmony just matched me up with the wonderful man I am with today. Though if it hadn't been for God, we wouldn't have found each other. Nor would any of this have happened. God gets ALL the credit. It is through Him that I get my strength.

It's crazy to look back and see how much I have changed and grown. And I know that I will say the same thing six months from now about who I am today that I am saying about who I was six months ago. And so-on and so-on.

I will start my new job tomorrow at my mom's law firm. I am extremely nervous, but I know that I can do it because God has opened this door and lead me to this decision as he did with the decision to move to Vancouver. He has a plan and I place my trust in Him. I am going to miss my family in Washington dearly, in fact, I already do. But I know I will see them again and I am so grateful for the time that I had with them. I love them all very much.

On a side note, what's really crazy is to think about my future. In five months and five days I will turn 20! I won't be a teen anymore! What's even crazier is that I could be married in three years and by eight years there is a possibility that I could have kids! I'd be 28! (Well, in eight years five months and five days.) It's just crazy! And before anyone gets any wild, crazy ideas, no I do not know when I am getting married or anything else. The possibility of that happening is just there. Ha ha ha! But I mean, if you think about it, it really is just there. I'd be 22. ANYWAY, I'm going off on a tangent about that.. ha ha! The thing is, I don't feel old. I don't feel like in eight years I could possibly be pregnant or have kids. It's just freaky. But those will be chapters of my life to be written later, when the time comes. :)

And so a chapter has ended and a new chapter begins.

Keep on keeping on.

Elisabeth