I have been writing things down a lot in the past month

I am pretty illiterate with grammar and writing so I won’t call this a blog, but I have been writing things down a lot more in the last month and figured I would bring you suckers a long for the ride. Today I heard the phrase “Fear wrapped in hope” at church. They were speaking about how Mary was scared of all of the whole birth of Jesus sneaky around stuff but Gabriel gave her hope. While she was overcome with fear it was surrounded and over taken by hope. Let us do a little catch up with my life in like a paragraph.

Chapter 1…

Just kidding. So in August I moved from Nashville to Lexington KY, jumped back into school, and tried to start making a life there. Great friends to be around again, learning new stuff at school, and not to mention starting a coffee podcast with my best friend. After a month things started to seem shaky. Not like in a “everything is going to hell” way just in a “why do I feel like something is bothering me all the time?” way. Then a month after tI ended up not having the money to continue at school. Then it got reeeeeaaaaal juicy. I called my friend Kat and caught her up and told her that something was off. I told her I felt like I have an uneasy feeling and I don’t understand what the hell is going on. Kat told me that maybe I wasn’t being honest with myself. She told me to “Tell the Truth to Yourself”.

I got out a sheet of paper and started writing down simple things like “I don’t really care about finishing school I only do it so I can feel some sort of belonging” WOO off to a good start. Then it got deeper and deeper and deeper till I got to one of those “Holy Shit” moments. I found that I had buried down some things and forcefully never let them surface. The reason it was so surprising is because I, just then, realized that I was doing it on purpose and was putting shackles on my emotions. The last thing I wrote was “I moved away from Nashville because I was scared”. The only problem with that phrase is I didn’t understand what the fear was or where it came from.

Where does this come from?

I sat and prayed about what the heck was going on and just like the song says “Tell the truth to yourself and the rest will fall in place”. I realized this hasn’t been a recent fear that has come up in the past year, It has been consuming me since 2013. WHAAAAAA?!?!?! Two things happened that year that made me what I would continue to be for the next 7 years. I got dropped suddenly in a relationship that had talks of a really serious future. It wasn’t a simple end either, I went back and forth with her for almost a whole year after till it finally came to heart-ached stop. The other was that I started to attempt to become like someone I looked up to at the time. He used his over critical thoughts, hip christian mind set, and his “I’m just being honest” type of mentality to gain peoples “trust” and get respect.

These two things created something that suuper sucked in me. I decided to keep everyone new that I met at an arms length until they proved that they could keep up. Even then they would be more like elbows length. I would literally push peoples buttons when I first met them just to see if they were faking nice to me or not. The worst part of that whole storm of suck was that I told others AND myself that it was a way of just guarding my heart and not falling too hard for people that are not intentional. I became hyper critical of so many things. Tried to assert myself in a way that made me not able to learn. I would specifically not do things like go to “game nights” just because I didn’t want to seem like too much fun. To put it a little simpler, I lost my goofiness. I used to be a wacky freaking dude. Now I was kinda wacky but more “seem deeper than you actually are to get people to like you”.

…. man, this is getting longer than I wanted it to.

Who cares you are basically half way there.

What am i doing with the fear

Let’s get to the real reason I am writing this. I wrapped my fears in something dumb. I wrapped them in a lie. I got hurt by someone that I gave my goofiness, emotions, and all the gooey romantic stuff to and got dropped (I might add that I am not mad at this girl. She is an awesome person. I took the issue hard. She didn’t intentionally hurt me). I wrapped that pain in a blanket of “protection” that ended up actually hurting me. It made me, not hard to love, but loving has been hard for me to do. I wrapped my fear in barbed wire and called in protection from the outside.

Do you know what barbed wire is for? It’s not just to protect what is inside, it’s control what is being held inside. I didn’t want my fears to surface so I covered them with over criticism and seeming like “it’s not a big deal”.

In Lexington I had to strip away the barbed wire and that left me all scratched up and tired (this is getting kinda poetic). When I was left with that fear it was all damaged and beaten from trying to escape. There were times that I wanted to fully give my heart over to a person but I shoved those thoughts away trying to “protect myself from others”. I even became too scared to be a sap cake in front of friends. GOD THIS FEELS SO GOOD TO JUST TYPE!! Now I am in the process of keeping the things I have learned that are healthy like boundaries, owning up to my mistakes, and having confidence in what I am good at, but I am leaving the rest behind. Now I had to find peace in this.

I picked my fear up off the ground and had to be delicate with it and I am starting to wrap it in hope. For me that hope is that Jesus keeps his freaking promises. I keep beating myself up that I should have figured this stupid thing before I moved to Lexington before loosing a lot that I cared about along the way. Moving to Lexington was a mistake, but God went with me and walked with me everyday in my stupidity and I came to a choice of unboxing some stuff I had locked up inside. God was with me in that mistake just like he was in all of the ones before and I thank God for people in my life that align my thoughts to him.

Last bit I swear.

I have not perfected this whole “Wrap your dumb in de Lord” thing yet but I am starting the process. If I have learned what this phrase means it’s that having fears is just apart of life. Being willing to let God, and even ones close to you, help you wrap them in hope will lead to true peace. Letting God and that close person say “yeah that sucks” or “Hey I car about you and want to help” leads to peace faster than “Protecting your heart” from God and those amazing people!

My “hope” that I am wrapping this specific fear in, is that God will help me find those parts of me that I miss. Like my goofiness and wreck-less abandon-ness. That God help me in my breaking and lead me to know more about myself. All I need from the people around me is grace in this mess (That was a super white girl thing to say) and have some patience.

Honestly that is kind of it. You can go back to eating your salads and watching Gilmore Girls now. I feel like a sap but I just don’t know if I care about looking that way anymore. Thanks for reading. I hope that you can find some kick ass thoughts for yourself in this thing.

CYA!