Lets get emotional girls to all wear mood rings...

If perceptive is a mood than my mood ring reads: Blue with perceptiveness

The blog title is a quote from a Relient K song....

I actually don't really like the song much....but I do ....sometimes... depending on my mood...hahaha...see what I did there? Did you? Because it was clever...

So if you are interested, the song is "Mood Rings" by Relient K.

I feel like I've been having mood swings lately... but they're more like perspective shifts, and more painful than a mood swing....

I have had a tendency towards a very secular thinking the past few months/weeks...and it has definitely effected my moods. "Secular" is a word used to describe ones mood only by someone who has been immersed in a lifestyle that is completely, COMPLETELY, Christ centered...intense non-secularism, such as living in a van doing Catholic teen ministry for two years. To a missionary, even just a retired one that worked with American teens, 'secular ' is considered a dirty word. Secular...its like knowing that Jesus is your soul's water, food and life force, and deciding to be a spiritual anorexic.

It seems no matter how far time removes me from that experience it is still so intensely ingrained in my psyche, that whenever my life starts to slowly divorce from that way of life and thinking, something feels fundamentally 'off', as if I'm spinning out of my own orbit.

Let me try to explain that thought process...

I know I have told many a negative horror story about that experience. But nearly every negative experience I had on that 'van trip' derived directly from the negative actions of a person, whether that person was a teammate or myself, it had nothing to do with God's love for me, yet everything to do with his plan for me. In Roman St. Paul says, "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" "I do what I do not want to do, and I do not do the things I should." That part is easy to understand, its the human condition. Being part of a mission team in no way eliminates the human condition. If anything, the circumstances you live under are a catalyst for situations hat exacerbate it. The difference for me was, that for most of my time there, not only was I the best version of myself I have ever been, but that I was keenly, super sensitively aware of that fact. Which made the time, when I was that better version of self, so sweet, like basking in what heaven would be like someday. A ten hour travel day across North Dakota seemed like an amazing opportunity to spend with friends and see the country and 'be' together in God s presence, and pray, and sing and laugh and love and be in His beautiful world, and months seem at times like minutes....when I was that best version. And when I would fall away, The ten hour trip from West Virginia to Wisconsin was a road that was never ending and riddled with potholes and anger directed at these people I forced to spend countless hours with....minutes would seem like years and every emotion became so intense and painfully realistic due to my heightened awareness of self and of those around me.

It has been 7 years and I can still so easily tap into the negative emotions and experiences that are very easy to share with friends and family. its always easier to gossip than to hold ones tongue or *gasp* to evangelize....And so, the positive experiences, which far outnumber and outweigh the negative in both substance and truth, are so much less tangible to me, so much harder to grasp at with my memory and emotions...and it frustrates me...

And I've realized, it is because I have to be that better version of self in order to feel the positive emotions clearly. And I've come to understand that the reason I fall into my "mood swings' is because being that better version self takes more hard work and prayer and discipline of the human will than I give these days.

Working at a church is a price club of excuses that I am all too willing to shop for and have an limitless credit card.

Hence the mood swings, because I do the things I do not want to do, but have a keenly sensitive awareness of what I'm doing to myself and to others by making poor choices...

I feel so very happy and fulfilled when I'm playing in my praise and worship band or when I take time to journal and pray, like I used to live my life on my mission...
Conversely, watching TV and living without journaling or doing active things for my personal faith, not work related stuff for others...makes me feel depressed and empty.

Yet, I don't even take time to do what I know will help me because I don't feel like I'm worth the effort...and its a vicious circle...

Music has played a big part ion my moods the past few weeks
So, here are is what have tended to listen to when I've been down.

I call it play list for depression, not bad songs, pretty good actually, but they don't help me pull myself up...they don't have any focus on a positive emotion, it is as if emotions just exist without anything outside of self or others that can influence the human condition, they are 'secular' in that they contain no Christ figure...and I know that it is only Christ is what will help me...so the music is good, addictive almost. It doesn't help me but I keep listening anyway:

Second hand serenade: "Fall for you"- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_JDeA8uTVU
Linkin' Park: "Shadow of the Day"- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_eEE12R8Gw
Blue October: "Hate Me"- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOziJi-1hHE
Cold Play: "Fix You"- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBEYyHGbwto


And my transitional song that brought me this realization and is encourages me to be happier and focus on the positives and live a life of love without regret or doubt or sloth...

Brave Saint Saturn: Daylight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ48C8z7aOQ
My favorite lines from this song are:

"And this silence is for nothing, desperate, I search the skies, aching for a spark, trembling in pitchest dark!!!! Daylight save me, daylight save me, tonight oh tonight"

"Jesus Christ light of the world, you never did forget me, and when I fell in darkness, you held me, still held me. When desperate nights I cursed you, you loved me, still loved me. Jesus Christ you dry the tears, you break my heart of stone."

"A heart of flesh you gave me only you can save me"

Listening to this song that is sung with such painful passion, reminded me of everything I want to be about, and how intricate Jesus is to the plan for me, pain and suffering on the path to his love and glory...and how completely whole and happy I feel when I live that way...

Jesus is my gravity to sanity...that's my own line and its a cool one...and I want to remind myself to listen to this song when I start to slip into my human sinfulness again, so that that gravity can pull me back, no matter how hard it is to submit to the gravity, the truth, the Lord.

Sometimes people wonder why I work for the church and a large part of my answer is: Because I'm constantly 'chasing that feeling' from my mission trip. Because I know my only hope of my best version of self is immersion...intrinsically selfish if you think about it...

And when I get back to my orbit of Christ....this is my happy Jesus Play list:
Songs full of passion and hope, that bring light to our world. This is more to me that just music. This music defines my emotions for me in a tangible way, especially when I'm playing it. This music is a conversation between myself and God, in thanksgiving for the past, hope for the future, embrace of his plan and love for his people. It is music that ignites my spirit and brings meaning to my presence within his plan for his people and for me.



Chris Tomlin: " God of this City"- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d61LamkXfwk
Charlie hall: "Marvelous Light"- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oA2ka7tnh8
Hillsong United: :"Mighty to save"- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR8rlTIU8_Y
and Chris Tomlin: "Everlasting God"- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXsYaBQGbM0



Now I just need to remember all that and I'm good to go...but I have no doubt, my mood will swing again, and acutely at that...

ahhh the humanity

I love Jesus :)