It's The Little Things In Life..

Since it's 2010, people have acquired an extremely distorted list of priorities. These days, it's only cool to be on facebook, or to go to concerts, or to party, or whatever else. It's really upsetting to me that people have let themselves forget the importance of the little things in life. I think it's the greatest thing in the world to go on walks with my friends. No facebook, no expensive car with the top down, just a walk that consists of talking about everything in life. I love sunsets, and how looking at one can make you just KNOW that somewhere out there, someone exists that's unfathomable. I love seeing my friends smile, and hearing them laugh, because in my opinion, God reveals Himself the most through your best friends and/or family. I love butterfinger blizzards (if you haven't had one, you've gotta try it!) I love a summer day, where all you have to do is throw on a bikini, a tanktop, some shorts, some flip flops, gather some friends, and do whatever you feel like doing all day long. I love when people who don't know me hold the door open for me. Not because of guilt that they did something to hurt me, not because they have to, but because they genuinely wanted to. I love driving with my friends with the windows down blaring whatever ridiculous backstreet boys song the radio decided to play at that moment. Sometimes it's the spice girls, and that's even better! I love love love playing Hey Soul Sister on my ukulele while my friends sing along. I love riding four-wheelers and listening to country music, even though that day I chose to wear my vans and have tattoos. The point of this isn't to just list off things that I love. The point is to make it known that the simple things in life still exist. Forget about your 9:00 a.m. appointment to the plastic surgeon that your hand-held calendar just notified you of. Forget about how you can't go a morning without a visit to Starbucks Coffee. Forget about that perfect manicure/pedicure you get every month, even during the winter. The simple life is the best life. Why does everyone think it's so important to follow a routine life that never lets you have fun anymore? Go on a walk with your best friend. Go try a butterfinger blizzard even though your $100 an hour dietitian told you it'll cause cardiac arrest by late 40's. Stop being so obsessed with the material world and realize what's really truly important in life. It's not your caramel latte from Starbuck's, it's not your expensive sports car, it's not how the competition you have every year to be better than your neighbor at putting up a Christmas display, it's not how much you spend on your refined tucked-in pinstripe button up shirt with a fancy tie that you wear to the job you can't stand. Life is about doing everything you can everyday to make sure you're doing your part to make God's earth a better place to live, and doing the things He calls us to do. I'm nowhere near perfect, there are times that the material world gets the best of me and I forget what really matters in life. But after a short time, I catch up to myself and realize that I'm wasting my life on things that won't matter in 5 years, heck, even in five minutes. Don't wait until years later to decide you're ready to make things count, make them count right now. Instead of that shopping trip to Abercrombie to buy that new bikini you're just dying to have, call up your friends, go out for some ice cream. Make today matter, and notice all the small things. The sky. The birds chirping when you first wake up. How your best friend looks hilarious when she's sleeping. How if you put your thumb out and close one eye, you can cover the sun and realize how small you really are. Realize that loving each other and being there for each other are the only jobs that you can't get fired from, you can't get a really cheesy sticker that says super! And most importantly, let God teach you everything there is to know, instead of thinking you have it all figured out.

Oh Man, My Life.

So, believe it or not, writers go through periods of time where they hate writing. Well, that's why I haven't written. Allow me to summarize what I've been up to. I went to Tennessee for spring break, can't lie, that was pretty rad. We blew one of the speakers in my grandma's buick jammin to kesha on one of our nightly adventures to Gatlinburg. When I got back I got to hang with my bff, whom I adore. I'm back at college now, and I brought three razor scooters with me. My fellow hallmates and I thoroughly enjoy riding these around. But, if I'm honest, I don't have too much going on. I'm going to Illinois this weekend with my buddy Sarah. Overly pumped! I'm ready to experience some serious fun.
Right now, one of my biggest issues is trying to figure out why relationships EPICALLY fail. Any ideas? How on earth do people who claim to love you, whether platonic or romantic, decide that they don't care anymore? What happens to driving in the summer with the windows down, hanging out at someone's house doing all kinds of random stuff, staying up till five a.m. talking about everything in the world. Two personal scenarios come to mind. Summer of 2006 was probably the best summer of my life. We would be in the car driving to go ciffjumping, dancing to whatever came on the radio. We'd drive around town with the windows down blaring Jack's Mannequin, and laughing at how our 'stunna shades' made us look so ridiculous. We'd sneak out onto Mary's (the aunt of my best friend at the time) roof and stargaze at ridiculous hours of the night. It was the summer of my first love, the summer that plays a big part in who I am today. There was a group of about ten of us who conistently hung out, my boyfriend and his friends, me and my friends. My hometown is small already, but everyone knew who we were. We'd go through Wendy's drive-thru blaring/singing What If God Was One Of Us, and Black Betty. Haha, oh man, those were the days. Doesn't this seem like a sort of friendship circle that we'd still be together now, four years later, talking about this together? You'd think so, but it all turned out very differently. I miss them terribly, but we all just stopped talking. There's no explanation, no way to even begin to fathom why it all fell apart. Was it school, work, loss of interest? No one can really say. Why does anything like that fall apart? There's never going to be a direct answer as to why life has seasons, and why we can't hang onto the same people our whole lives. I know where all of them are now, and if you ever want to know, just ask. The point of all of this is, why don't we fight harder to maintain stable relationships with people we care about? Why do people you love right now become that great story you tell three years later when your new best friend says "what's been the best summer of your life?" When do bonfires in mid-July become something that you've stuffed under the rug, only voicing if you run into those friends at Wal-Mart, or someone new asks what you used to do. What is the exact day that that happens? Do we wake up and tell ourselves that none of that matters anymore? I don't think that anyone will really understand. Most of the time someone's common answer is 'that's just life.' But if you think about it, that ISN'T life. Life is when you're with those people, everyday has an agenda for history in the making. When you meeet them, they aren't supposed to become history. The things you do together are memories, things of the past. But is there any reason why you can't wake up and call that person and go out for coffee anymore? Very recently, I was just with my friend (whom I'll refer to as.. hmm.. Jessie) and she was crying over this exact same thing. Jessie and this person were unfathomably close, they were best friends. They were together everyday, creating their own history in the making. Right now, they don't talk. Who decided that? What day, what time, what hour was it decided that things couldn't ever be the same between them? Jessie, like myself, has no idea where it went wrong, why it can't be the same. NO ONE knows. Moral of these stories, I know that you remember a time with someone, or several people, when you felt like nothing in the world could change the current circumstances. But now, they're not the same at all, why? Pick up your phone and text them. Remind them of that bonfire when Alex burnt his pants, or that time at the mall when you belched really loud in Blondie's Cookies. Re-connect with them, it can't ever be too late to continue history.


just for random information.. "I'm Ready" by Jack's Mannequin was the song we'd drive around to with the windows down. check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx7LZxpUS50

Relationship, Relationship, Relationship

My Adolescent Psychology professor, Dr. Grill, used the phrase 'relationship, relationship, relationship' in class one day to describe a mechanism of attempting to get your counseling client to open up to you. While I was sitting there, I remember trying to figure out what my definition of a relationship is. Here's what I came up with: a relationship is when your heart and mind are devoted to displaying immense love to another person. Fair enough? When you decide to allow your heart and mind to care about someone enough, your love for them never disappears. This love can grow stronger, or weaker, over time, but once the relationship and love have been established, it should be indefinitely. Stop and think to yourself what your definition of a relationship is. Is your definition the feeling you get when someone lets you borrow their pencil in class? Is it the feeling you get when a cute guy opens the door for you? Whether your definition is one of these or something else, there are several different explanations as to how a relationship starts, how a relationships maintains, and possibly how a relationship ends. First, I'm gonna talk about how a relationship starts when it comes to dating to find your potential spouse. This typically happens over the internet, when you're at the gym and that cute guy smiles when he catches you watching him on the treadmill, when you realize that you have something in common, or when your best friend introduces you to this guy she met from school and thinks they could hit it off. (Erin, that was for you. :) There are several variations of ways that interest in someone spreads and eventually evolves into a relationship. When the attaction is set, it's really important not to rush things. Ladies, it's ok to just be friends for a while, but it's also definitely ok to jump on your bed and blare Taylor Swift after you've just had an incredible 'date.' Boys, yes, we do do that, even if it's such a simple date like going stargazing. Not all girls want to be taken to dinner and a movie everytime you take us out, just sayin. The most common misconception with dating I thnk is that there has to be a label right away. When you're friends, everything stays so legit. Once you say the words, "will you go out with me," everything changes. Once it's 'facebook official' you're pretty much in it for the long haul. The difference between friends and going out isn't just that you can hold hands and kiss eachother and blah blah blah, it's that you've chosen to care about that person on a higher level than just going to Wal-Mart with your best friend. You've decided that that person means something to you, and qualities that they possess are potentially ones that you could see your future husband/wife having. Do you see how complicated that is? In my last post I mentioned something about a dumb head boy. Him and I were great, went to dinner, went on walks, watched sunsets, yada yada yada. But the biggest problem that I see right now looking back on it, is that we rushed certain things that didn't need to be rushed at all. We talked about marriage, when we should've just been concerned with how thankful we were for the opportunity to have found a relationship in itself. The most important thing to make sure you've established is TRUST. If you can't trust this person, don't jump into a relationship with them, it's that simple. Take it from me, it WILL cause problems throughout your entire relationship. And no one wants to fight all the time. If you do, that's weird, just sayin. Boys, make sure you're ready to deal with that girl being obsessed with Forever 21 and how she cries when she sees a dead cat. Girls, make sure you're ready to deal with how his shirt looks wrinkled when you've got a date to go to Olive Garden and how he refuses to stop wearing that grungy Chicago Cubs hat. Take baby steps, do not rush into things. Do not say yes to a boy who you can't trust, and vice versa. Right now, if you're desiring a relationship, you're all for it, the words relationship, relationship, relationship are in correlation to I want, I want, I want. But, if you rush into things, and things start to get a little rocky, you'll start to question the qualities of that person and it all becomes a big mess. Right now, my replacement words for relationship, relationship, relationship are most definitely be more cautious, take it slower, and be smart about it.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Take the name of the person you have a crush on, you're dating, you're engaged to, or whatever'd to, and in this verse put their name in the place of everytime you see the word "Love." If their name is before a sentence and then that sentence isn't true about them, then that's something that needs to be worked on about that person, and even try doing the same thing with your own name to see what you may need to be working on in that relationship. Example: Eric is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. If this sentence isn't true, talk to him about it, and talk to God about it.

God Always Manages to Take the Last Piece Of Cake, AND Eat It Too. :)

Isn't it frustrating but comforting when you realize that God really does know what He's talking about? It's kinda the same feeling as when you're at the supermarket and the cashier tells you you've short changed them. Your pride gets in the way, and your immediate reaction is to act like it isn't true. You try to think of all the ways the cashier is wrong and how there's no way possible that you're gonna let someone else tell you you're wrong. But, at the very beginning of the whole fiasco, you knew you the cashier was right, but wasting time arguing would've been "better" than admitting your fault. Isn't this the same thing we do with God? When we do something wrong, whatever it may be, God always, or should always, become our immediate thought. He's there saying, "No, that's not right. What you just did was wrong. While you're already thinking about Me and My unfathomable-ness (since we all know that that's what you consume your mind with), why don't you just go ahead and confess to Me what you just did." And then we, humans with a cute little prideful way about us, respond something like this, "No, God, that wasn't wrong at all. It was one beer. It was one answer that I looked at on that person's test. It was one elderly woman who needed help but I was late for work so I didn't help her. Just one God, just one." It's one thing for us to act dumb at the supermarket, but is it really that intelligent to try to win with the person who told the oceans they can only go so far, heck, the person who created the human thought process? Oh pick me, pick me, I know this answer! Yeah um, the answer is no. That's not an intelligent thing to do at all. I struggle with all of this myself, the whole admitting I'm wrong thing. Discipline is kind of a foreign concept to me, so my natural instinct is to assume that as long as I didn't commit murder, then it's not something that's gonna put my salvation in jeopardy. My current situation is that I need to forgive, but I'm too busy TELLING God that this boy is such a dumb head, yes, let that sink in, a dumb head, when I should bebusy ASKING God what I can do to make myself look like less of a dumb head and accept that this situation is happening within His will for my life. He's basically sitting somewhere random everywhere I go waving His arms saying, "Taylor, hello, do you want to come talk about it instead of giving her dirty looks? Would you like to take My hand and allow yourself to fall in love with ME instead of regretting that you gave your heart to this young man?" God is everywhere, just sitting, waiting. Whenever we're doing something wrong, we feel this inevitable emotion called guilt, or at least we should. According to Webster's Dictionary, guilt means this: the state of one who has committed an offense especially consciously. Hm, guilt happens when we directly notice that we did something wrong, especially consciously. Stop trying to hide from God, He realizes what you did, what you want to do, what you have done, and He still loves you anyway, isn't that incredible? God always knows what He's talking about and we always run away because there's no way someone's gonna tell us that we're wrong. Take the time to admit to God when you know you did something wrong, opposed to arguing and spending days drowning in sinful pride and keeping it bottled in. Don't short change God, for He is the decider of your salvation.

Proverbs 11:2 - "When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom."