The-places-that-are-not-home

     Life is about moving forward. Time goes in one direction and that is ahead. But sometimes we take moving forward to the extreme and have to constantly be looking for the next best thing. We do this in stages of life: when you are in High School you want to be in college, then in college you want to be married, then when you finally reach that *unreachable, idealistic, glorious, magical end* that is marriage you feel incomplete without a child. It just goes on and on. Having goals is great. But pushing and dreaming for the next best thing to the point where we forget to live and just be is unhealthy and even *gasp* sinful. I do this just as well as others. I am constantly in my own head, dreaming up my next big adventure and dredging up those dreadful "what ifs,"  but I go a step farther and do it with places.

     I always have an idealistic city where I want to go and live independently, where I will accomplish all of my goals and meet all of my unrealized potential, and where I am never discontent with my city that I love as dear as a friend. I think that it will be this supernatural thing when I see my city for the first time. I will get there and see it and just know that I belong. Until I meet that magical place that I feel fits me so well, that makes me feel as comfortable and content as hot coffee on the coldest winter day, I feel like I am dating the places I live, and I suppose that makes the places I visit a weekend fling. 

     I have gone through many cites in my mind and I'm sure they will come back around and be the city of the moment again. But I think it has less to do with the actual city than with the person I want to be and am not now. When I dream about living in these cities I always think of being strong and independent, happy and friendly to all I cross paths with, being a maker and discoverer of beauty, and a person who finds the eternal value in everything she sees and finds joy in the small things. I could probably be that person and do those things just as well in Albuquerque, New Mexico as I could in New York City, Seattle, Chicago, or Los Angeles.

     It's not that I hate the place I live now, or even dislike it. I do like a lot of things about good ol' ABQ, though it did take me awhile. Before I moved here with my dear family I had never lived anywhere else but the place we moved from. I spent the first 18 years of my life living in Norman, Oklahoma. It's the place I knew as home for a long time (and I think deserves a post in itself) and when we moved for the first time something must have broken in me, twisted just the right way to make it snap, to make me forever feel displaced. If we could move from Norman, we could move at any time to any place, so how can I put down roots if I don't know where I belong? Even through this feeling I have learned to like it here, learned to love people here, and let several people know me. Sometimes, though I just can't escape the feeling that there are more worlds to discover.

     So, yes dreaming is good to a point and moving is good (depending on how you look at it), traveling is great, but there is something to be said for staying put and living where you are.

     I think I need to rediscover my current city and be more intentional about looking for beauty in everyday life. After awhile, any place can become normal and mundane, and I'm sure that if I was able to move to New York tomorrow, after 16 months the rose-colored-glasses would come off and I would be looking for a new city to set my dreams on. If I change my mindset my life would follow. This won't happen immediately and I know myself enough to know that I can't really give myself ultimatums. I will still dream about other places and live vicariously through amazing people that get to see amazing things (Read this blog. Read all of it. Start from the beginning.). But I think that this is a small part of a life-long lesson for me. It's only a tiny part of being grateful and thankful for everything that is given to me.

     Eventually maybe I will be able to get to the point of what Jim Elliot said: "Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."

Slowing down to speed up again

It is nearly Christmas, which is crazy...It seems like this year has flown by faster than most. Of course I spent the first half of it being lost in a depressed stupor and then several more months to get back to "normal," whatever that is.  But seriously I feel like I just blinked and eleven months flew by without me seeing much. I hear that it gets even more that way the older you get.

I was thinking about this last night while I was watching the meteor shower on the roof of my house. My siblings were with me for most of it, but there were several times when they had gone down to get something and took awhile to get back, so I had time for deep introspection. Shooting stars are amazing things. Some are brighter than others, some are slower than most, but they all last just a few seconds or less. If I wasn't looking at exactly the right spot or blinked I could miss the beginning of a brilliant shooting star and only catch it dying at the end. It was also very cold last night and every time I talked smoke would come out of my mouth and disappear into the night. By these things I was reminded that life is a vapor. We live and then we die.

So as I laughed at my sister's pure, childlike giddiness at each falling meteor and smiled as I and my brother had to remind her that we had neighbors who would not appreciate her exuberance, I cherished the moments. I  cherished listening to Andrew Bell with my not-so-little baby brother, and listening to my brothers argue whether Professor X or Q (Star Trek: The Next Generation, for those of you that are less nerdy) would win in a battle if Prof X was given omniscience by some magical stone in the Marvel Universe, or who would win if they added their allies. I cherished bundling up in mountains of covers, and being sandwiched between my brothers to stay warm, and too-chocolatety hot chocolate in a thermos which lid wasn't screwed on right so I had to drink it with my lips right next to the handle.

After the craziness of this past semester, dealing badly with stress, trying to figure out where my life is going, and trying to find a place to fit by expanding my list of places I want to move to, it was good to slow down and just enjoy the time I have in the place I am now, with the people I love the most.

Complaining to the Moon

Little sliver of moon

outside my window pane

and out above the world

You see so much

while I see little

Your vantage point

 is so much clearer

The sun that makes you shine

was hours ago

 above this place of mine

But now belongs to vistas far away

that I hope to see someday

Only in this time

I am stuck in this place of mine

doing droll things

that have a deadline

-Katina Hembree

Diverted Heart

I know this isn’t what you planned,

You’ve held your heart out in your hands

Waiting for someone to take a chance

On you

You’ve waited for so long

And have patiently been strung along

Wondering if it will come at all

For you

With so much love to give

A heart of gold and a heart to serve

Aching for someone to give yourself to

And for them to do the same with you

Oh dear, do not despair

For you won’t always tarry here

With lonely heart and aching soul

And searching for the perfect one

That seems to be the other half of you

There’s someone who’s being prepared

To be your number two

To fit with Christ

And fit with you
-Katina Hembree

Echos of a creative Creator

I have decided that the things you love to do and the best things to do are the hardest things to do. Everything that I am passionate about I procrastinate the most with. Everything that I get the most joy from I avoid doing. If I begin something it somehow becomes the hardest thing in the world to finish. Why is this?

I shall propose my theory...

The things that make us happy, things that fill our hearts with joy till they are ready to burst, are the things that we were made for. We were each uniquely created with different talents and personalities to display those talents and each of those unique things are a reflection of the unique and magnificent God who created us. I am in Christ, but I still war against the flesh. My identity has changed and my heart made new, but sin still clings to this frail humanity of mine.

Working, and fighting, and struggling against the flesh is not a natural habit for me. I must learn to do battle against taking the easy road through life. My flesh wars against these things that I long to do, because these are the things that bring the most glory to God and give me the most joy in Him.

So, here's to throwing off encumbrances, running the race, and fighting the good fight; for the glory of he who created me and in whom my heart exalts.

And for me doing this means...

being a better student, in school and of the Word
singing
writing
drawing
seriously learning to play the guitar
turning my writings into songs I can play on my guitar
ministering to people I am around
being a part of the Church, locally and globally
being around children
learning to be a better cook
eating well
disciplining my body to LOVE exercise : /

This means not spending hours lost in random social media and unedifying television. Not that there isn't any value in these things, or that they can't be used well, I just have had more than my share of them in the past years and want to choose to do the BEST things and more valuable things. I want to learn to use various forms of media, but not be dependent on them.

I hope to become less "connected" and more developed in the coming years.

off to cultivate a lifetime of pursuits,

Katina ;)

Writing about writing

The problem with the blank page is not that I have a blank mind and empty thoughts, but that I have so many thoughts that I do not know where to begin. The drive to write something worthwhile and personal and maybe something relatively profound has filled my mind for the past week at least. So instead of picking one of the many subjects that have been running around in my mind like (insert clever simile here), I am once again writing about writing.

I suppose if I analyze my entire writing process for you, unnamed and perhaps non-existent reader, it would be telling and personal enough for now. Plus, I suppose that a deeper relationship where one shares their secrets and pains sometimes take time, so I will let my relationship with this blogging world develop slowly and share with you a bit of surface drivel with just a peek into the pool of my psyche for now.

As I have already said, I think and rethink before I ever put anything onto the page, testing words and sentences, seeing what works well and what I should discard, and then I lose all of it because I never write it down. There is this fear in me I think, that if I put my thoughts to paper, make them physical and real, then I will suddenly find myself out. It is so human to want to "find yourself," to want to know who you are really, beneath the person you think yourself as, and find if you are something more or are just as fearful and weak as you think you are, or worse, that you are more terrible than you have ever thought up to the particular point of self discovery.

I am discovering that this is exactly what happens when I write or draw or really work on learning guitar. I see myself in the mirror of my work (or complete non-work aka laziness) and am a bit afraid of what I see there. The truth be told, I really am more boring, terrible, and weak than I think I am and am still discovering how much so.

I am afraid of doing what I long to do because I am afraid of failure AND success. I am afraid of never being able to do something I love well and am afraid that I can do and be and succeed. Why is this I wonder? But for whatever reason, there lies the deeper question of "why in the world am I so afraid that my success or my failure hinges on me?" Whatever fears and insecurities I have and no matter how little I think of myself, I am still thinking myself great to put the weight of my future accomplishments all on me. If I really determine to be disciplined in writing, disciplined in art, and disciplined in music there is not an immediate log & cliff formed in the distance for me to trip over and then fall headlong into the chasm of the death of all my hopes and dreams.

I need to determine to be faithful with the gifts and talents that I have been given and know that if the Father wills to use them for His glory and my good they will flourish or fade as He desires.

Ha, in my second attempt at public writing I have put words to feelings I have had for years by intending to start with "surface drivel." Ha. God knew this would be good for me.

Also telling is my constant editing as I write. If you ask any experienced writer how to write well the great majority of them would tell you to write whatever comes to mind, to let every thought you have flow to your fingers and onto the page, unhindered by any condemning thought from yourself or thought of what others might think. I like to think that I am independent, that I don't need the approval of others, that I could (if I wished) live exactly how I want and say, "screw the world" if they disagree with my liberated life. Well, I have a more confidant view of myself than is actually true. As I write things that are revealing my thoughts and fears I am simultaneously fearing what others will think of these personal revelations of mine.

So, to finish with a flourish... The beginning and end of anything is the hardest for me. This is where drawing a blank usually comes in, in my writing. I remember in both my English Comp. 1 & 2 classes I would be writing furiously to finish my paper an hour before class was to start only to be stuck in the last fifteen minutes with my concluding paragraph. I would sit there tapping on the table, chewing my nail, and typing gibberish before I would finally get a mental breakthrough in the last eight minutes and then frantically type to the finish not having time to stop to proofread. All that reminiscing said, I still have not come up with a way to finish.

This is where I usually give myself a mental pep talk or change the music I am listening to, to give me more inspiration. If that doesn't work I start freaking out a little and begin to think in incomplete sentences. "I could say... What about... Dang it, why can't I..." on and on and on. Then comes the mental cursing if I am really frustrated... ok just mental cursing if I am the least bit frustrated.

This is where I give way to the lame, half-hearted sentences that I am not really fond of just so I can be done, even if it won't end the writing as gloriously as I would have liked.

Writing is a learning process and I am finding that the more I do it, the better I like it and hopefully I will improve as well.

Turning over a new leaf

Ah, the blank page. A blank page is worse or just as bad as a blank canvas. There are so many ideas swirling around, so many thoughts, jumping from one idea to the next, procrastination by indecision.

A blog is a funny thing. One places bits of the innermost thoughts of the mind and heart out into the void not knowing what will happen with the words that have flowed in the caverns of the spirit, to fingertips on keys, to a journal online.

This strange experiment I am endeavoring to begin again, hopefully with more maturity than in many years past when sometimes careless and vain words made their way onto these "pages". I am starting afresh. Why you ask? Well, I have recently been inspired by several friends who have done the same. Plus, I wish to improve my writing and this form will give me more accountability. Lastly, it has been something that has been pressing on my mind for quite awhile now and so much so that I would feel disobedient if I stalled any longer in writing it. I actually have a longer list of reasons why to not write a blog, but I shall save it for later and make this first post a short one so I don't start criticizing all that I have written so far and delete everything. Sigh.

Oh dear, so now I have really begun. I suppose I shall have to commit to it.