Apparently the fact that I’m driving to the complete opposite side of the country and that it’s just me and another girl is……worrisome. So I will be sending texts to Maurice to let him know I’m okay. If you want to be updated as well, go here.

Listening: ‘This Is Not A Love Song’ by Nouvelle Vague

Reading: ‘Rebels With A Cause: Why Some Shy Away From the Label “Christian”‘

Thinking: I am never watching Nip/Tuck again. Those people are DISTURBED!

How to Annoy Me: Sneeze loud enough to wake the dead, giving me a heart attack on a regular basis.

How to Charm Me: Laugh when you walk in and find your wife and her two best friends snuggled up in your bed, eating Taco Bell and watching ‘Ocean’s 13′.

Quote of the Day: I’ve had a wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it. - Groucho Marx

“Where will you go?”

“America.”

“We’re in America right now, Don.”

“Yeah, I know. But there are other parts to America. I’d like to see the other parts…..there were….places that were more green with big lumpy mountains. I’d like to go to those places.”

“Do you think God is out there somewhere? Out there in the lumpy places?”

“I think God is everywhere.”

“Then why do you have to leave?”

“Because I can’t be here anymore. I don’t feel whole here. I feel, well, partly whole. Incomplete…..Something got crossed in the wires……Do you know what I am talking about, about the green lumpy places?”

The conversation went on like this for about an hour. I went on and on about how the real me was out in the green lumpy places. I wasn’t making any sense. I can’t believe my pastor didn’t call the guys with the white coats to take me away.

(Excerpt from ‘Blue Like Jazz’ by Donald Miller.)

A little over two years ago, I wrote this post. After reading through it again, it is as true today as it was in 2006. Except now, my faith is floundering even more. That is unbelievably discouraging. It’s like I’ve made no progress since then.

On Wednesday, Shelly and I leave for Washington. We will be driving through some of the green, lumpy places. I doubt it will be much like ‘Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance’ but we’ll see.

I want to use this trip to reflect and to come to some decisions. I don’t want to believe in Jesus because it’s all I’ve ever known. I don’t want to serve God because of some fear of what will happen if I don’t. I want to know that I made a choice that was my own and that I can believe in. Even in the face of the extreme doubt that I have been dealing with. In the face of pain and heartache and death and sickness. I know the quote says “the deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure” but if that’s the case, then I must be up to my ears in faith and don’t know it. Because I am drowning in doubt.

I am “23 and so tired of life“. Is that normal? Is this some sort of quarter-life crisis that no one talks about? Because if it is, they should talk about it. It is exhausting to feel so alone and abandoned. Yesterday Ro, Jenn and I spent the day in bed watching Nip/Tuck. (Which, that was just a brilliant idea…..) I was between the two of them and we were all cuddled up together and that is the safest I have felt in a long time. Together we made it through that horrible, awful, no good, very bad day. This group has a lot of “bad anniversaries”. But it is small moments like that that restore my faith in humanity. My group, we make mistakes. We screw up in really big ways sometimes. But we work through it and we still love each other. We get each other through the bad days. Babies deaths and the anniversaries of the days we were attacked and the nights we couldn’t sleep because of nightmares.

“Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It’s harsh, and cruel. But that’s why there’s us. Champions. It doesn’t matter where we come from, what we’ve done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world were as it should be, to show it what it can be.”

Maybe, if my little group can love one another and help heal the world, maybe life isn’t hopeless. Maybe this struggle I’m in is just something that I have to go through right now. For reasons I don’t know. Which bothers me. But then, why should I get to know? “We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”

On Wednesday, I leave for the green, lumpy places. When I come back, I don’t know what I will have encountered or what I will believe. But I will have made some decisions. I will let you know what they are when I come home.

Listening: ‘Dancing with Myself’ by Billy Idol

Reading: ‘The Many Dimensions of Douche’ (This is not a word that I tend to use. However, I found her descriptions hilariously accurate. Particularly The Musician. I’m just sayin.)

Thinking: Not my proudest “report card” but I passed all of my classes. After this semester, that is enough.

Feeling Guilty: For returning two seasons of Gilmore Girls to Maurice last night that Mom and I were done with in March.

How to Annoy Me: Your mere existence is sometimes plenty.

How to Charm Me: Be the calm, rational one when I snap at you because I’m tired and emotionally drawn.

Quote of the Day: Christianity has become our Shawshank, and our redemption will only come if we find the courage to escape the prison we have created for ourselves. - Erwin McManus

That is what I just had to promise to the gas company.

I had to sign it.

In blood.

Little do they know, I don’t plan on having children.

So all they’re getting is my limbs.

I have a feeling I still lost out on that one.

Listening: ‘Flying’ from ‘Peter Pan’ (An edited version of this is what we walked down the aisle to in the wedding. I hit the end of the aisle at the drums part every time and it was all I could do not to mimic playing the drums during the actual ceremony.)

Reading: “My belongings fraternize when I leave the house.” (I won’t say whether or not my bedroom has a similar look.)

Thinking: The problem with being the one who people know will listen without judging them is I find out a lot of things I’d rather I didn’t know. My heart is broken.

Feeling Guilty: For still not changing that light bulb.

How to Annoy Me: Turn up the television so that all the way down the hall I find myself singing along. “La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la, Elmo’s World!”

How to Charm Me: Text message me because you just found out that I have a new phone and have been dying to text me since we met.

Quote of the Day: We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies? - Edward Young

And though she swears it doesn’t listen, there’s still a hope in her it might. She says “I pray….oh but they fall on deaf ears. Am I supposed to take it on myself to get out of this place?”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I love Dave Matthews. I am the Grey Street Girl.

Watching: How to Get A Man to Do What You Want Him to Do

Enjoying: Automatic Flatterer

Thinking: If I ever start a bra company, our motto will be “We love supporting our customers.”

How to Annoy Me: Ask me one more time if I’m going to kiss a boy!

How to Charm Me: Leave me a message to make sure I’m doing okay.

Quote for the Day: A husband is one who stands by you in troubles you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t married him. - Liz Curtis Higgs (I think)

In him I found the person whom I knew I would never get tired of, even in the most monotonous of times, even in the routine of being together every single day. I never thought I would find that.

If you haven’t already, you will, too.

I’m glad you did, Dooce, but tell me one I haven’t heard. Thankfully, I didn’t have to hear it at the wedding this weekend. Because after the stress-filled, sanity-losing, please-don’t-let-me-jump-off-this-pretty-pretty-cliff week I had last week, I don’t think I could have handled it. The look of pity and disappointment that I am 23 years old and *GASP* not anywhere near being married! Scads of horror!

I haven’t told Grandma S. that I don’t see myself as married because I really don’t want to be responsible for giving her a heart attack. (The skinny dipping incident was close enough.) Finding a man that I wouldn’t kill and who wouldn’t kill me (because, contrary to popular belief, I am not a bowl of joy and sunshine 24/7) and who I could live with in the monotonous day to day just seems like a huge production. I am thrilled for people who do find it. It makes me happy to see women like Dooce content in their marriages. Women and their husbands who are not trying to make each other’s lives miserable. Because I have witnessed *plenty* of the other. (Hello, therapy…..)

As I told the Best. Boyfriend. Ever. recently, I would much rather be single and occasionally wishing I was married than married and always wishing I was single. But I will always raise my glass to and commend women and men who, despite any insanity or baggage they bring to the table, are able to make it work.

Here’s to you, Dooce! May your marriage and family be abundantly blessed!

Watching: “Men have the ability to think about nothing and still breathe” (Thanks Seth!)

Reading: What Do Jerks and Shoes Have in Common?

Feeling Guilty: For putting “porn” as one of my tags, *knowing* that it would get people to click on it. (Don’t mind the maniacal cackling. I have no idea where it’s coming from. )

Thinking: I really don’t want to change that light bulb. I just did, like, 6 months ago.

How to Annoy Me: Give me that disbelieving look when I tell you I’m going to read your book now that I have time to breathe.

How to Charm Me: Promise me that you will always tell me the truth. Even though you already do, you understand that today, I need that reassurance.

Quote for the Day: As you sojourn through life, forgive. No matter what has been done to you, said about you, or how painful it may be. In the end you will feel the warmth of the tapestry of love you’ve created. - Juan L. Christian