Pardon Our Dust

I got bored and want to change the look of my blog, so, please bear with me while I make some changes.

I wanted to be a superstar!

I've been thinking a lot in the last year about what my life is and what I had hoped it would be. As a young girl, I had all of these aspirations of being famous, traveling around the world singing to the masses and wearing beautiful clothes and having people take care of my every need or whim. I thought my life would consist of multiple episodes of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The world would be jealous of me and want my life. Of course, I would also have a gorgeous husband and maybe a couple of cute kiddos running around my feet. I wanted to be a star! I wanted everyone to love me and think I was the greatest thing that ever happened. Watch out Whitney Houston (great role model, right?). My hopes for what I would be were great. They were all pretty selfish too. I could hang out in my room for hours dreaming about what my life was going to be and how fabulous it would be.

I am realizing at 29 that my life is nothing I'd hoped for it to be. I have great friends and family, I have a pretty great job, I have a great church family but I feel as if my need for more is never quenchable. I never feel satisfied. I need more for my life. I feel like I am missing something huge from those dreams as a little girl and it's not about the money. I know that money will not make me happy. It isn't about the fame, I know that it won't satisfy. This is about knowing that God created me for great things and I am not living up to that potential. I feel like I am wasting the life I am supposed to be living. I feel like I am not making a difference in the world. I keep thinking about Meg Ryan's character in You've Got Mail and the struggle she has about what she does for a living running the children's bookstore her mother started. As her livelihood and the thing that matters most to her is threatened with closure by the big bad chain store, she wonders whether or not her life means anything anyway and whether or not it's worth fighting for. She wants so badly for her life to mean something and I guess right now I'm feeling the same way. I want to live my life and when I come to the end of it have people say that I was brave, that I did things that mattered and I wasn't afraid. I am afraid of so many things. I am afraid of failing, I fear that my life is pointless and that I haven't been kind enough or loving enough. I feel selfish and think only about myself. This isn't the life God created for me to live. I'll talk more later.

Have a good night. Talk to you soon.

Random Conversations

Yesterday at work I had a student stop by my office. Now, this happens quite often with the work I do. It is the best part of the job. The reason I felt this was worth posting was because the student that stopped by was one of the least likely to stop in for a chat. You have the handful of consistent stop-in students who want to catch up about life, ask questions about college policy or tell me about the date they had on Friday night. There are even the students who stop in sporadically to "confess their sins" and ask me to pray for them or hold them accountable because they want to change these parts of their life. There are also students here with some animosity towards the office I work in because we have to do the disciplining of students who violate the rules (this is the least fun part of the job). This student is one of those "we know you're doing stuff that isn't the best but we can't prove anything" kinds of student. He usually avoids us and doesn't do much socializing with any of the faculty or staff. I was just struck by the fact that he came in for a chat. He was in my office for a short amount of time (5 minutes maybe) and we didn't talk about anything particularly deep but I keep trying to figure out why he stopped in. Is he really lonely being here on campus and was desperate for human contact? Does he feel guilty about something he did and wants to see if we've heard anything about it (we have students who get struck with paranoia at times)? I have been working here for three years and I have never had a real conversation with him. I was confused but excited about the exchange. I don't know why it happened or if it even means anything but I can't stop thinking about it. I could very well be trying to analyze it way too much.

What random conversation have you had that made you think, think about why that conversation happened or made you think about the way you thought about something or someone, made you change a behavior or even change the way you felt about your faith, about God, about humanity? I'm curious to know if anyone else has felt this way.