You know how sometimes you wake up and you just think, man I don't want to go to school today?

Or you think, I really don't want to go to work today?

That's how I feel about youth group right now.

I'm so frustrated with everyone and I'm sick of rude people and I'm just fed up.  I don't even want to go anymore.  I used to look forward to going, I don't anymore.  The only things that keep me there are Bry, and worship practice.  Otherwise I wouldn't go.  I get in a bad mood on Tuesday nights and I just want to leave immediately after Andy's sermon. 

Last Tue Bry and I went to the park after youth and I just wanted to brust into tears, of course I didnt, because I don't do that.  When Bry leaves what reason will I have to keep going?  There won't be any worship during the summer so I won't have to prepare for that anymore.  I'm torn because I LOVE JV.  I look forward to that more than Varsity.  If I don't go to Varsity though, Andy won't let me help out in JV.  I'm irritated because I know that I need a change in attitude, but at the same time it's really hard when you don't even look forward to it anymore.  I'm not getting anything out of it other than anger, is it really worth it?

Career Aspirations: An essay I actually enjoyed writing!

 As  young children we think about what  we want to do for the rest of our lives.  When we are little we stretch our imagination, we have so much faith in our own abilities.  We dream of being amazing people, with amazing careers.  As we grow up we lose that faith, and we begin to doubt ourselves.  It’s easy to start looking at the “bigger picture” and wonder which career will have the best salary. Which career will allow me to raise a family?  We think to ourselves, “am I even capable of being a firefighter, a teacher, a fashion designer?”  Wouldn’t it be so much better, if like little children, we believed in ourselves, and chased after that idea that made us most happy?

                I can remember the moment I thought I wanted to be a nurse.  My dad had been in the hospital for back surgery, and I was taking care of him..  He was in so much pain, and it was the first time I ever saw him cry.  That vulnerability in my dad broke my heart, but it opened me up to a world of possibilities.  I thought how much I enjoyed taking care of him, and how much I could enjoy taking care of others.  Little did I know, the nursing world has a load of secrets unknown to those who have never experienced it for themselves.  As I go through the clinical experience I lose more and more of my child like faith.  I also begin to wonder if I truly have a passion for it.  The frustrating thing is, I love the learning aspect, I’m just not that into the doing aspect.  It’s a soul crushing career, a back breaking career.    

                When I signed up for my eleventh grade year the idea of being a nurse was still strong in my heart, so I took all the necessary classes to become a nursing assistant by the end of the year.  I was fine about the idea for all of the first semester but as second semester approached and we had to sign up for clinicals, I got scared.  I almost didn’t do it.  A friend of mine was feeling the same way, but we decided to go ahead and do it, so we signed up together.  Even during the first three weeks when clinicals were just in a classroom at school, I was doubting if nursing was something I really wanted to do.  Once we got to the facilities I gained a little more confidence and thought maybe it was something I was capable of doing.  However, my first few times in the nursing home I didn’t have to do much of the dirty work.  I got to feed a few people, and tuck a few people into bed.  When our group moved from Cheyenne Health Care to Life Care, I froze up.  I lost all my confidence in one night.  I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not strong enough for this career.  My back is weak, and my emotions are fragile.  There have been several times when I thought I might just have to leave the room.  Some of the residents at these facilities just want to die, and it breaks my heart. 

                Since my experiences in health care classes, and at the nursing home, I’ve come to ponder new ideas.  I picked up a book at the library that has altered my direction.  It’s a medical book, but it compares the difference between traditional Western medicine, and the not so traditional healing methods of the Hmong tribe in Asia.  It’s an incredible anthropologic novel and it has caused me to wonder if perhaps I wouldn’t be better suited for a career in social science.  I’ve always been attracted to things of other cultures.  When I was little I can remember going to the Indian Village at Frontier Days and being absolutely captivated by their culture.  The way the dressed, the way they danced, and the way they talked.  I’ve always had a longing in my heart to travel and when I had an opportunity to leave the country, I took it.  Paige, the U.S. field director of Peace and Hope Trust, came to talk to my youth group about a mission’s trip to Nicaragua.  I knew I wanted to go almost immediately.  I grabbed all the pamphlets and looked at all the pictures.  I rushed home and told my parents about it, and to my surprise they replied instantaneously with the answer I wanted most, yes!  Going to Nicaragua has been the greatest experience of my life.  The country is rich in culture and seeping with life.  When my team was leaving last year, I began to cry.  I didn’t want to leave!  At that moment I knew I was going back the next summer.  It’s an opportunity I will never cease to be thankful for. 

In the end the clinical experience has been a good one.  If anything it helped me discover what I don’t want to do.  It has also allowed me to broaden my horizons and explore new ideas.  I have a tendency to marry any idea that crosses my path, and when I lose interest sometimes I start to panic.  I have my whole life left to learn, and I expect that when I get into college things will start coming together and I’ll figure out what it is exactly that I want to do.  This school year alone has been a whirlwind of learning experiences, and although most of the things I have tried have been things I won’t pursue, I don’t think that any time spent has been wasted. 

                 

Push me, I'll overflow.

you show no fear do you?

who are you underneath that brute mask?

with your staff in hand you trudge ahead, never thinking to stop for a drink, for a break.

you're lazy, yet you have such a will to not give in to matters of the heart.

stop blaming your past.

you're old enough now that what you do is your own choice.

a choice possibly bred from days long ago, but have you no identity?

I feel as if I am all locked up inside.  I never spill, I never tip over, you can't unlock me.  Vulnerability is a beautiful thing.  To put your emotions out on the table, to bring to them that tangible characteristic so others know, that's courage, it's beauty.  I have such a struggle with this.  Even with my parents I'm reluctant to open up.  I have my moments where I'm an open book, but that's often with the small petty things.  It all builds up inside stressing me out.  Push me, I'll overflow.  Often times I want so bad to erupt and say what's on my heart.  I want to cry and blabber, get it ALL out.  I'm ashamed though.  I'm ashamed of who I've become.  This girl of the world.  The ONE thing I used to protest the most, I'm tempted with the most now.  I want someone to know but my heart breaks to think they would see me differently.  Then I feel like I'm living two lives.  One for God, one for the world.  Trisha, you can't have both!  I know that.  I also know I want the life for God.  I'm just so full of anger from this girl I'm turning into I can't seem to back out of this cornenr.  I feel stuck in her shoes and I want out.  I feel tempted by 14 year old me.  Taunting me like in Mirrormask.  "Real life, you couldn't handle REAL LIFE!"  Just like Helena I'm looking through windows and seeing me, but I'm seeing the me I wish I could be.  The me I truly want to be, the me I could be if I could just stop saying ME and turn to Jesus.  Just like everything else though, I'm lazy.  I'm not stupid, I'm not dense, I'm just lazy.  

God, can I walk with you?

 

purpose

I think probably one of the biggest things I struggle with is finding a purpose.  I live my life three days ahead of the present and I never seem to allow myself to live in the moment.  One place I can truly say I live one hundred percent in the moment is Nicaragua.  I can't wait to go back!  I've been doubting my desire to go, but whenever I talk to Bry or Kirstin about it I just light up.  When we had our fundraiser dinner a lady I went with in 07 was there and she told me she thought I would never go back, but talking to me then she said she just saw a light in me.  I can't seem to find purpose in Cheyenne though.  When I think about it really hard I know there is one, and I know I'm right where I should be right now.  However, I just can't get that feeling when I'm up on stage doing worship, or in small group, or wherever.  I feel more alive doing spontaneous nonsense that really, doesn't have any purpose except fun.  Which is awesome, I'm 17 I have the privelage of being obnoxious and having fun and working one day a week and making it through 7 days on 50 bucks.  I wish I could live that up.  Sometimes I just feel too preoccupied with the future, what I'm going to do, what I'm going to be.  I need to find purpose NOW.  HERE.  My purpose may be to someday work for Peace and Hope and work in Nicaragua, but that's not what it is now and I need to stop living like it is.  If that's my purpose for the future, then my purpose now is to prepare for that.  However since I have no idea what God has planned for me then my purpose varies from day to day.  Tuesdays my purpose is to show up to youth group and maybe help some new people feel more comfortable.  Can't say I'm too good at that, but I'd say that's my purpose there.  Wednesdays my purpose is to help those kids praise God.  It's to be a role model, and I truly hope I am, especially for the young girls.  Fridays my purpose is to give The Marlow's a clean home and then whatever else I end up doing, babysitting, hangin' out, whatever.  Saturdays I hope I fulfill some bigger purpose at work... anyways... each day is a new purpose and it varies even from that schedule.  I gotta LIVE IN THE NOW!!!

mortality

I hit it again, that long confusing stretch where I am lost in translation.  NO idea what I want to do with the rest of my life.  Okay, let's rephrase that, I know I want to do something amazing, something fulfilling and rewarding but I basically haven't the slightest clue exactly what.  Clinicals have been going okay but we switched to lifecare and I like it a lot less than Health Care, of course I've only been twice, both of which were rather cruddy experiences.  There is in fact something rewarding about working with these people but sometimes it's incredibly soul crushing.  It's the realization of my mortality on the earth.  I know that essentially I'm "immortal" because I do believe in Heaven and I gotta say I plan on ending up there but there's a sadness in thinking about leaving this earth, and not knowing what Heaven will be like.  I think about Heaven sometimes as a thoughtless emotionless place.  We are all like these clones bumming around looking for Jesus, waiting for our turn to touch his cloak or hear his voice.  I know it can't possibly be like that, but goodness, sometimes that's how it comes across.  I want to be able to lie under that night sky with Jesus and look at the stars.  I want Heaven to be a lot like earth, only better.  You know, the same sort of environment.  Trees, forests, jungles, animals, my dogs!  Duke and Bella you know... but they won't be nearly as important to me as Jesus. Obviously, I mean they aren't now but since Jesus will be tangible and visible in Heaven it will be a lot easier to be like dogs : )...  OOOH JESUS!!!  

There is an experience I had at Cheyenne Health Care that I can not push out of my mind.  We were changing this woman's brief and putting her to bed and she was pretty much dead weight.  It was like she was a live corpse.  Even her eyes were dead.  Basically she was dead.  It was the most terrible feeling.  I can handle the men and women who have alzheimers and say and do crazy things because they are mostly lively and attentive.  They're scared but they're alive, there's still some light left in their eyes.  This woman though, she was dead.  It makes me wonder why she was even still alive?  It completely broke my heart.  What point is there to life if you can't even participate.  It brings me back to Lorenzo's Oil where Lorenzo was completely incontenent.  Basically he had aged back to a baby.  He lay there in bed, moving his eyes from side to side seeing all this life happening around him, but he couldn't say anything, he couldn't get up and join in.  I hate to question God's reasoning, but I just wonder, why?  If I ever got to that point I'd really just like to die.  I can't imagine being trapped in a body that couldn't do anything.  Your minds functioning, you can see and hear and smell, but you can't get up.  You can't wipe your own tush, put on your own clothes, take off your own socks, light your own cigarette.  (there's a man at lifecare who smokes, and the CNA's or nurses or whoever have to light his cigarette.)  There was a picture of this man when he was young above his bed and I got incredibly sad.  He was very handsome as a young man, and there was a picture of him with his wife.  It's interesting to have to start realizing your mortality.  We all know we are going to die, we've always known, but we live as if we won't.  Which, is a good way to live for the most part.  But you do however have to picture yourself at the end so you can take better care of yourself in the present to keep going til the end.  I know I don't ever want to end up in a nursing home because I've seen first hand the way residents are often treated, and forgotten about.  I don't want to ask for a box of tissues and end up having to blow my nose in my shirt cause I never get any.  I don't wanna be left sitting on the toilet waiting to be put to bed.  I want to live to a decent age but I pray I never get alzheimers or dementia or anything like that.  

I kind of rabbit trailed for a ridiculously long time...

basically I don't know if I want to be a nurse anymore.  There is so much ridiculous he said she said drama in health care.  A lot of health care workers smoke.  I went out with my CNA for her smoke break and it was pitiful the way those women talked.  They were acting like 12 year olds who just figured out how to swear.  I still feel connected to health care though because I'm oddly good at it.  I really enjoy the challenging ethical topics and I like studying word parts and organs and abbreviations.  I have kind of gone back to the idea of an emergency med tech.  I'm excited to go to the hospital in May for clinicals.  Hopefully I'll get to experience the fast paced chaos in the ER.  Well, maybe not so much at CRMC but who knows, stuff happens.