Have Faith

A lot of you know I want to get a tattoo of the word “faith” on my left wrist. I intend to do that eventually, when the money is available, obviously, it isn’t right now. But, today a lot was on my mind and it reminded me of my original intention, why I want the tattoo in the first place. Yea, it will look cool when it’s done, but that isn’t the point. I would never get something permanantly etched on me if it wasn’t signifigant.

When I was in 9th grade I went through a period of being depressed a lot. It’s a hard thing to describe, most people had no idea I was struggling with it, and to this day my parents don’t know. I eventually sought out help from my mom, to see a counselor or whatever to make it stop but she wrote it off as me overreacting to “teen angst”. That was after 2 years of struggling on my own. Anyway, when I was in 9th grade I started cutting. It’s not something I just tell people, and this is the first time I’m putting that out there on a public basis. Before this only a few people knew. Freshman year when all this had started I had a really close friend, Nadeem, who held me accountable. He had the same struggle, and the only thing that ever kept me from it was knowing he was going to check on me, and if i had, I was letting him down. So, because he cared about me, and vice versa, we we’re both okay for a while. The next year he left town, and I started having issues with it again.

I can’t explain it to you in any other way than to say when you get in that habit, it’s an addiction, and I didn’t know any other way to handle it. Through high school I went through times when it was really frequent and got extremely hard to hide from people. And I had times where i didn’t cut at all, and I was fine. But it was peaks and valleys and the valleys always led to cutting. I remember the last time I ever got caught. I was riding the subway in New York with Allie, and she saw one. She grabbed my arm and just looked at me funny. I was used to this at that point so i just smiled at her. I remember she said “that’s not good” and never said anything else about it.

After that I haven’t cut since. Not that i remember anyway, it all blurs together.

It’s not to say I haven’t wanted to though, it’s not something that is easy to get away from. That’s why I want to move so badly. No one in the world knows how to make me feel lower than my father. he’s amazing at finding the right words to say to make me feel completely worthless. 90% of my issues with cutting started with something he said to me affecting me too much. I’ve gotten to the point where I ignore it, but it’s still hard. Today it was hard on me, which is what reminded me of the tattoo.

The reason I want faith on my left wrist, is so that anytime I ever get tempted again, I will see that word “faith”. The love that Christ has for me far outweighs anything that could make me want to do that. He wouldn’t want me to do it, and I just know it would be a good roadblock to keep me from it.

The only thing that’s kept me from it the past year is my faith in Christ. The faith that Jesus loves me. I don’t know why it’s been more effective this last yera than the rest of the time, but it has. 

I’m not saying a word on my wrist will cure cutting. It’s so difficult and I feel lucky I’ve been able to quit. But I’m also aware that I can easily fall back into it. Today was a huge wakeup call on that. I don’t want that.

The tattoo I plan to get will also stand for the fact that I know God is bigger than my problems in general, and anything I give to him, he will handle in his own way in his own time. I just have to have faith.

Anyway, I’m a little reluctant to post this because I’m not sure I want everyone to know about it. I kept this to myself as best as i possibly could for 5 years, so I’m obviously a little scared posting it. But at the same time, if anyone else was struggling with it, I’d want them to know that it doesn’t have to stay that way. You can beat it. It’s not easy. But you can.

By the way, To Write Love on Her Arms is an amazing organazation that deals with self-injury and suicide, there is a link on my blogroll.

oooo fun :)

This year was the first one in a long time where I hadn’t planned on being at any racetrack at any point. I still wound up in Daytona for testing, Lakeland to see Trevor race, and Bithlo for Sara & Amanda’s dad. So, I’m not entirely shocked that I am going to spend next weekend in Daytona too. I was talking to Alysia and Mel, and Alysia has spare tickets so I will be with her friday for the Nationwide race (and maybe see Joey for the first time in like 2 years). Right after that I got a call from my mom, she had gotten a called from Rob Cox, he had an extra ticket for the 400 and invited me. I’m looking forward to that too, I went with them to Homestead last season, it was kind of hilarious. The car ride will be a lot shorter this time around, but Robs antics will be just as crazy I’m sure.

Also, just got home from the House Of Blues, went to see Locksley and Rooney. I stinkin love Locksley, I was soooo stoked to see them again. Weird with Jordan on bass instead of Aaron, but it was still an amazing show and Jordan was a pretty cool guy. You can totally tell him and Jesse are brothers. Totally just as crazy on stage. Kai was as Kelly put it “looking especially Josh Hartnety” tonight, and Jesse and Sam we’re.. well Jesse and Sam.

Rooney was on point, as always. Ive seen them 3 times now unintentionally. I like them, it’s just, I never go specifically for them, they just happen to be playing.

Also, I at some point said something like “ohhh right, Mark & James we’re here the same night as Locksley last time” and some girl walked up to me and said “OH! I knew I saw you somewhere, it was Urban Flats for Mark & James!” I don’t remember what I said, probably “ohh, yeah!” but I have no idea who she was so.. I can blame that one on Mark for calling me out at that gig. Idiot. But there were a bunch of M&J fans there so I was ready to leave at that point, and we got outta there. But it was an awesome awesome show and I still will reccomend Locksley to anyone and everyone who appreciates good music.

Last but not least, I just freaking LOVE this dance and want to share it. This is my favorite couple of this season and this is my favorite routine so far.

 

Thank God

I’m honestly still a little shaken up right now. When I was a kid, my biggest fear was tornados. Plain and simple, I was terrified I was doomed to die in one for some reason. It was extremely unrealistic and kind of paralyzing, anytime there was a strong storm (basically all the time in Florida during the summer) I would freak out and hide out in my bedroom. I distinctly remember hanging out in my bed-tent (I constructed a makeshift tent over my bed for an entire year or so) a lot, reading to keep my mind off the storms. Anyway, my fear turned to fascination and i ended up studying tornados a lot, and now obviously, I don’t have an insane fear of them. So, why am I freaking out right now you ask, well, I’ll explain.

I was about to leave for class and this storm starts kicking up. I’m standing in the carport kind of trying to decide whether it’s worth it to drive through this for my class.. my parents insist I go, and against my gut feeling, I decided to go. I got a lot of dirt in my eyes in the 12 feet I ran to the car. First indication I shouldn’t have kept going, but whatever. I started driving and the rain really wasn’t bad, just super windy. Then a block later I hit a wall of rain, it went from none, to “what the crap, i can’t see anything except blinding flashes of lightning”. Whatever, I can handle this, so I kept driving. GOt on Goldenrod, and it wasn’t too horrible, hard to see but I was going slow and it was fine, it’s florida, it rains. Get on VCC Lane and soon start to hear clicking.. I’ve never experienced hail first ahdn so I thought maybe it was just big raindrops.. or soemthing, and figured otu pretty soon it was definitely hail. Storm kept getting worse and worse, hail was defeaning, I was a bit uncomfortable at this point. I was coming up on the 417 overpass thing, and I was like ok.. maybe i should pull over, because this is kind of bad.. when I saw about 10 other cars had already done so, I thought I was in good company and pulled over. I have NEVER experienced anything like this. I was totally alone, surrounded by cars parked uneer and overpass, hail flying around in the break between the two overpasses, and crazy wind and rain making it hard to see very far. So, I at this point start to panic a bit. I tried to call home and get a weather report, and my phone wasnt going through, I think the overpass was messing with the reception. I kept trying, it finally staretd ringing, just as it did, for whatever reason, my car started shaking and moving off toward the right, the huge truck parked in front of me did too. Oooooookay, that was the final nail in the coffin, I was freakin. When a huge truck starts shifting around I start to think this storm is a bit more than rain and hail. I finally got ahold of my mom and asked about the storm. Apparently there was no rotation in it, so that calmed me down a little, though I honestly thought I was about to die. I felt like I was in that movie Twister, as soon as my car started moving around funky, I just knew in my mind there was a tornado coming and I was going to die. It was the most terrifying few minutes of my life. Everything about that storm screamed tornado to me, but apparently it wasn’t the case. Anyway..

I fianlly thought I could maybe drive to school, so I pulled out.. and I guess the overpass was misleading because I immediately hit hail and blinding rain again.. so I turned around to go home, I’d rather be flipping out at home then in my phsycology class. About 50 yeards from the overpass coming home it just stops.. I got to the light at Godenrod and look around and the cloud is so abrupt, looked like a wall cloud so I was completely baffled that it wasn’t one. Weather is crazy. Anyway, the rest of the way home there was no rain, nothing. Compeltely crazy.

They lifted the severe weather alert thing about 5 minutes after I got home. Awesome timing, I’m on the road for the 10 minutes this storm exists.

I was so scared it’s ridiculous, I have only been that scared once before in my life. True fear I was about to lose my life. I’d rather never have that fear, so to have it twice is not so pleasant. Though, the good thing is I can really sit back an thank God for my life right now. I complain sometimes about petty things, and I really need to sit back and realize my life in itself is a gift from God, and know he takes car of me. I felt really alone in that car until I started praying, and then I felt okay, like God was sitting there in the passenger sit, all chill, saying “hey, relax, it’s gonna be fine, just chill under this overpass for a few minutes and it’ll all be golden”. It’s a good reminder for me that I’m never alone, I’m bever left to my own resources, God is always going to be there, and he is always looking out for me.

It’s the most comforting thought I can imagine from the scariest feeling I have ever experienced. God’s cool like that.

Don Dawn…. oooooookay

Apparently I am the only person in the world that says these 2 words the same. Apparently I’m retarded. I guess they are similar but not the same. My parents are trying to teach this to me, but to me the conversation is basically this “No no no, you’re saying apple, its APPLE!” What the craaaaaaaap. Then I got called out on how I say “both”, which yes I do say wrong. I say it as if it was spelt “bowlth”.

So, me and my parents took accent tests. I got western, which is the one that means you have NO ACCENT. Sooooo I win. My dad got southern and my mom got northeastern (like wisconsin). According to Chrissy I have a ridiculous southern accent. Which, okay, I will admit to the fact that occasionally I speak with one, but I do not believe it as intense as she claims. I don’t think anyone that reads this has heard my accent. Better left that way I say.

So, my question to you is, do you hear a distinct difference between “Dawn” and “Don”? If so, I will shut up and take it. (Though from what I read online southern folk don’t hear a difference/say it differently, so I have an excuse).

Mixed Feelings

Today was a little intense on my emotions. So, the last thing I needed was to recieve a text from someone from my past. But yet that’s what life threw at me. Hooray.

Basically this guy wants to have dinner this week, and I agreed. To which my best friend got pretty ticked off at me. She wants me to cut ties with him completely, which I basically had for a long time, he would still contact me every month or so, but we havent seen each other in a long time. So what changed? I don’t really know, but we physically saw each other the other day, and I guess that got him thinking. Becuase he called the next day, and wants to see me now. It was probably in my best interest to say no, but I obviously didn’t. Here’s why I didn’t: I miss him terribly, and I want the friendship back. I don’t think it will ever happen, because too much happened to ruin it, but I can’t miss my chance to try to fix things as best as I can. He was a huge part of my life for over a year and I don’t think it’s right that we don’t even speak anymore.

I am aware that this is all pretty stupid. And Kelly is seriously not happy with the fact I’ll be seeing him, but I for some reason am going through with it regardless. I don’t actually remember why we totally lost touch, because for a while we we’re able to maintain a friendship, but we kept fighting, and it got hard, and I guess we just drifted when I got closer to all my friends now. So, I think now that I have really totally forgiven him and moved on, it may be easier to keep a friendship without snapping at him all the time.

I struggled with forgiving him for a really long time, but I was able to do it a while ago. The problem is, the time I forgave him was the same time we stopped talking.

Basically  I have mixed feelings because I am glad I am going to see him, he was so important to me at one point and it will be great to catch up. But at the same time, he really broke my heart at one time too, and seeing him may bring all that back. I just don’t give up on people that easily though, so I’ll be seeing him this week.

It’s been a long day, and I’ve got some stuff to deal with tomorrow too. But thats been on my mind all night and I needed to blog about it and be done with it.

(And sorry for those of you that don’t really know the whole backstory with Michael, it’s kind of long and complicated, not secret just hard to explain so if you need it explained just ask me someday I just dont want to type all the history here right now)

Swirling and twirling

So much stuff is always swirling around in my head. It’s kind of an irritating thing really, but I just think a lot. So, to get my mind of the twirly swirly craziness that is my brain right now, I will ramble a bit about the past few days, starting with the one I p[romised to blog about in my last entry.

 

• Went to Chili’s with Sara, Amanda, John, and Lizzie
• Some 5 year old boy kept popping up over the partition making wierd noises. It was hilarious.
• Went to the racetrack and watched qualifying and time trials.. didn’t really accomplish much of anything other than establishing that I know a lot about racing. Lame, I know.
• Drove to Winter Park, and saw Michael.. that was bizarre, and turned into a phone call the next day.
• Immediately afterward got pulled over and given ANOTHER freaking ticket. $118. Thanks winter park.
• Got to Urban Flats, M&J already played Best I Never Had, which is one of my faves, so that was sad.
• Got to hang out with some crazy awesome friends and goof off at dinner. (Well, they had dinner, I had water since I ate earlier and was officially broke because of the ticket)
• Goofed off with Jordan and Mark.
• Got Mark to play I’m In Love With A Stripper, it is actually quite pretty when him and James sing it. haha James got flava.
• Mark played Best I Never Had again at the end for me since I was late, and dedicated it to me, which was sweet, but a little awkward.
• Drove home rapping to Grillz with Kelly.
• Had an amazing message Sunday morning from a Canadian pastor.
• Had a good time with the kids in Powerhouse
• Had a delicious lunch with some friends
• hung out with my dad watching the race for fathers day
• went to see Phil Freakin Wickham at Status
• Status by the way, is awesome.
• Went to Chrissy and Karens and laughed my butt off.

I’ve also figured out I say “Not gonna lie” a lot. And I also say “On the for real”, which technically makes no sense.

Tonight we went to Gators and then went to Josh and Barrys to watch a movie. Had a great time as I always do when I’m with all of them.

This blog served absolutly no purpose, and I really hope no one wasted thier time reading all that mess. But, I wrote it anyway. (WordPress shouldnt even function at 1:30am, what could I possibly write at this hour that makes any sense??)

Excited

I’m excited for tonight. At 5 me and my friends from work are meeting for dinner and then headed to the racetrack. I probably won’t really see much racing, but just being at a racetrack in general always makes me happy. And I’ve never been to this one before! It’s basically the only track in Florida I’ve never been to. Okay that is kind of an exageration, but I’ve been to Daytona, Lakeland and Homestead, which are the big ones.

After that I gotta do some speedy driving myself to get to Winter Park and hang out with a collaberation of people at Urban Flats. I’m excited about the blend of people that will be there. It always makes for interesting times.

I’ll post about what happens later. For now I’m just excited.

It’s been a while since I’ve really blogged.

I have totally been slacking off on blogging. Katie Cornell just wrote her first blog today and it inspired me to get back on here and actually write something.

First of all, I wanna say how amazing my church really is. Tonight Monica, Chrissy and I had dinner and shopped around Waterford. On the way back in the car Chrissy said something that got us talking about church, but her one statement really has stuck in my head all night. It was basically this “I was really suprised when we first started going to C3, I mean we’ve only been there a few months and I hang out with you guys all throughout the week..”

That just stuck with me because it occured to me we really are creating a community for once. Not just a building for ‘church folks’ to come together once a week. When I think of C3 I don’t think of a building, I don’t think about Sunday mornings, I think of the faces of my friends there. I talk a lot about how much C3 does to really reach the community, and to truely spread love the way Christ intended the church to, but theres a whole other level to this place.

I have been going to the same church since I was a freshman. We obviously made a huge change when it went from Parkway to C3, but it is essentially the same church. In the 4 years of highschool I attended that chuch, I never made a real friend there. I went Sunday mornings, and went to Bible studies after service, even went to camp. Never made a friend. It was all completely surface level and honestly annoying. My best friend at the time, her name was Mariel, she went with me, she got saved there, and we would talk after church. We were both completely irritated by the fact that it felt like these people would talk to us out of obligation. You could feel that these girls were only talking to you because people were watching them.

It changed so drastically when we transitioned. I disspeared for a while because I didn’t have a car and my parents wanted to follow thier bible study group to Aloma. So I went there for a little bit. When I got my own car I went back to what had become C3.

Once I started going to Community Group a lot of it changed for me. I actually got to know people. What? Getting to actually know people at church? It was kind of a foreign concept to me. But pretty quickly it went from being a ‘church activity’ to feeling more like all my friends were getting together to hang out. The community group did its job, it built community. I honestly don’t remember everything that led up to the friendships I have now, I know it involed a Cheerwine, Crave, and mostly, the college community group. I started going in January, and now I feel blessed to call all these people I’ve met through C3 my friends. Not my ‘church friends’ as in people I see at church and tolerate more than the others, but my friends.

I also havent talked about working with the kids at all on here, so I wanna hit on that a little bit. I’ve been working with C3 Kids and Crave for a little while now, and I gotta say it’s one of the coolest things I’ve been able to do in a long time. I am planning on being a teacher, so obviously working with kids and students is something I love. Powerhouse is a blast for me on Sunday mornings, I get to see Andrea sing and dance with the kids (and yes, on one occasion, I danced, but I will never ever do that again..), watch some interesting skits, and even bet on crab racing. It’s pretty fun. Then we actually break the kids into groups and go over some stuff with them. I co-teach 4th/5th with Nathan right now, and it’s always interesting. The kids are actually pretty cool and for their age level, pay attention enough to get the point. It’s always a fun challenge trying to figure out how to make the lessons work ith our group, but I think we do a good job, and Nathans Bible stories have gotten better.

Crave is a ball too, the students are really awesome and they havent given me any issues yet! Hooray! But really, I love working with those kids too.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m reading a book right now called “The Irresistable Revolution” and you should really go read it. I’m not too far in to it, but I love it. It’s really encouraging, and it’s challenging me to really love people more, and to truely live more like Jesus. Go pick up a copy, it’s awesome.

 

Lastly, tomorrow night Mark & James are releasing thier first CD at Virgin Megastore and playing a set at 6:30, everyone that can make it should come. Also, Friday night there is a truck race my friends Sara and Amandas dad is driving in, anyone that wants to come with, let me know and I’ll grab you a ticket. It’s free. And also, that same night Mark & james are playing Urban Flats in Winter Park at 10, please come and eat if you can make it.

Pictures

I made a new page of pictures, some old, some new.

 

I really love pictures. I took photography for a year and learning more about it made me seriously considering doing that for a living. Then I realized a reliable income would be nice. Art is too hard to make money with, but it’s fun for the side. So for now cheesy pictures with friends will work. So check out the page, appropriately titled pictures. If you are reading this, you are probably on there.

For the record, some of my actual “photography” is on facebook in an album for that if you are interested in that type of stuff.

Friends

It’s 1:30 in the morning so I don’t want to really blog, but I want to say that I love my friends a ton. There are a bunch of them, and somehow in the past week I’ve been able to spend time with the majority of them which is incredible. All my C3 friends I see all the time, but I have had great times with all of them as usual this week. I also was able to see my friend Genesis a few days ago for her graduation party. I ran into some other high school friends randomly when I was out today, and that was awesome. Tonight at the bowling alley there we’re probably 20 kids I knew from high school (that happens when you bowl in winter park) and talked to a few of them. It’s been great. It’s kind of interesting seeing how many people I’ve had in my life, especially seeing a bunch of them all in a few days.

Anyway, I wanted to basically use this blog to say thanks to all the friends I spend my time with now, they are all a blessing to me, and I love all the time I get with each of them. Time on Sundays at church, lunch after church, hanging out at work, going to Gators, bowling, community group, going to the pool, watching movies, and yes, even house hunting and going to class. All of that is fun to me because of the people I share it with.

Thank you all. I love you all.