hide and go seek

hmmmm. crazy. here i am again. i was thinking about blogs the other day... they're like journals, obviously, and deep down i think everyone wants their journal to be read. even the most secret part of it... by someone who they dont know or even someone that they do, so that someone else will know the deep needs of their heart and hold them while they cry or just say, "you're a special person... different than everyone else" (in a good way). and so plenty of people pour their emotional stuff into a blog, which i think is fine dont get me wrong, but then when something happens and i think "hmm i should write about that online" i have to ask myself why... am i trying to get attention from people? or worse, pity? i love reading blogs to find out what people are up to and how they feel about certain things... but i guess with my own life i feel like my deep down stuff doesnt belong on the world wide web. of course this is coming from someone with chronic trust issues and a first-class "stuffer." i guess my theory has always been that if someone doesn't need to know... don't tell them. sounds simple huh? yeah well you know that it's not. but if you say something to someone, anything from being attracted to someone or being annoyed or that you laughed so hard one time you peed your pants... someone else is going to know. it might be that person's boy/girl friend or best friend or mother who would never say anything and really isn't a part of it to matter whether they know or not... but regardless, another person knows. we just cant hold things inside as humans. for whatever reason, god made us that way (i think). now that's probably all of my cynical anti-trust crap coming out... but it's proved true time after time after time so now i just dont tell people things. and lots of times, i dont listen to others because i dont want to run the risk of saying something of theirs to someone else. yeah. that got me through high school. with basically no close friends. good job, leah. hold that thought.

so i started going to a new church... first time since 8th grade when i started going to first church back home. i've "tried" a couple churches out here but i hate looking. i hate that they jokingly have a label for it here: church shopping. who am i to enter a church and pass my struggling eighteen and a half year old judgment on it. and besides, you end up criticizing every inch of the service to see whether or not it's "right" for you. ugh. suck. i just want to go to my church back home... but, oh yeah, no i dont. i forgot. well to jump ahead i started going to the mercy house, trying not to "try it out" but just to go and tell god that i love him and let him remind me that he loves me more. it's definitely a very genuine place which is more than i can say for the other churches i "checked out." ugh. but yeah- so yesterday matt connor talked about truth. wherever truth is not, there is death. spiritual, emotional, relational (or physical in peter's community...). true, genuine, and christlike community cant be built by people who cant be truthful. so where do you draw the line between telling people the truth about something (not opposed to lying but rather opposed to saying anything at all when maybe you dont need to) for the sake of telling truth, and telling them for the sake of looking for attention and pity. i hate complainers... but i long to do it just about every minute of the day. i neverknow what to say to people who confide in me because i dont want to say something just for the sake of making an awkward silence less awkward, and i usually am just thinking about what they said, not what to say in response... i dont know yet. at the same time i dont want people to necessarily say anything to me if i confide in them (which i usually dont do) but i just want to get it out. ugh. but, i dont. because i dont want people to know whats wrong with me, or what i struggle with. i just want to complain. and have someone tell me that i'm not like every other whiny eighteen year old girl in the world. hmm. well... i'm not. not like all of them. like an unfortunate few, but not all. bummer. poor us. so anyway i hope you are thoroughly annoyed by my negativity and vagueness. it's working, i guess. that just has to do with something that, well, i cant tell you. back to truth. what if the truth that isn't told cant be told? then what? how do you build community then? or if some people know the truth and are helping you through it... what do you do with the rest of the people? you're living a lie but there's nothing you can do about it. suck. sorry- i guess i'm a little bitter. but god loves me. and he knows. and he is holding me tighter than i could ever imagine. i know it, i just have to let myself feel it.

there. i'm sick of living a lie. i guess i still am, but now you know that i am. maybe that takes care of part of it. ..