Surprise

It's funny how I have this strong inner feeling that blessings are about to come into my life.  It is as though that inner voice, as small and quiet as it is, is so clear that I am holding onto it despite the loudness and the screaming going around in my head.  Or in my life.  

Today my dear friend has gone through hell on earth - she was given an ultimatum between "doing her job correctly" or leaving.  She decided to leave.  And so she landed on my doorstep with her luggage and accessories.  She also went on a date with her ex-boyfriend which she has been looking forward to very strongly, only to be disheartened and disillusioned about love, and the power thereof.  My heart goes out to her.  Besides these two major events in her life, she can't find her charger for her phone, making her out of contact with just about anyone, and that is merely frustrating her situation.  

And as bad as all this is, God is telling me otherwise.  After all, she has a dream, and she is a wonderful character, full of spunk and liveliness.  She is funny and fun, and easygoing.  She loves welcoming people, and she loves caring for people.  She likes to be sexy but best of all is simply her charming ways, and facial expressions, and her artistic manner of being.  There is really no one quite like her.  

I guess there really is no one quite like anybody else.  We are all unique.  That makes us all special.  But by default we no longer are special then, because to be special means to be different to everybody else.  This comment can make us feel empty rather than filled with love and appreciation, if we don't believe it, and thus don't celebrate our uniqueness, our individuality, our personality.  It is not easy to like yourself sometimes.  It is not easy if you see someone else as better.  It is not easy if you don't love who you are.  And convincing yourself to love yourself, or even writing down a list won't help, because sometimes feelings are overbearing and overpowering.  Feelings.  

They can bog us down.  They can turn our world upside down.  One of my students told me that in the Korean culture you do not expose your feelings.  And ever since (it was only a day ago) I have challenged myself to do that very thing - to live with feelings but without showing them.  Why?  Because I am starting to believe that this culture is far wiser than I have given credit to.  As much as I believe in openness and honesty, I also think that exposing feelings is exhausting for the listener or reciprocator, because he has to deal with those emotions.  He has to confront the feelings in their base form.  

What am I saying?  That I don't like it when others show me their feelings?  Actually I am not bothered by it at all.  But I admire someone far more when I see them smiling all the time, but when you hear what they go through, their lives aren't easy.  These people who smile are admirable because they are like everyone else but instead of burdening the world with their burdens, they seem able to drop their burdens and be as weightless as feathers.  

I'd like to smile a lot.  I'd like to have the inner strength to smile even when I am experiencing turmoil inside.  I would like to smile even when my heart is breaking, or I feel lost, or frustrated, or all of the above.  Smile, because it's like a zap sign to the world and its burdens.  Without offending the world and the people in it.  Instead smiling is an attitude of trust.  

"What are you smiling about?" a bitter old man might ask.  It would be smug to smile without reason, it appears.  In a little book entitled "Don't" that dates back to the 1800s there are many phrases on etiquette which are partly outdated and therefore hilarious and partly still valid, in my opinion, and one of the rules written down in the Little Book of Don't was not to smile without reason.  If you are simply driving or going about your business, it might seem smug to smile to yourself.  It's as though you are lost in an imagination in your head that no one has access to, and it seems as though you are thus showing off the pleasures in public without sharing the source thereof.  And that would simply be considered rude.  

I am not quite sure how I got from blessings to bad boyfriends to smiling, and I am thus reminded of a dear old friend of mine once made of me, "You might be a Virginia Woolff", to which I took great delight, only to learn later that I did not enjoy her writing style much myself, and she committed suicide by simply walking into the ocean and drowning.  How morbid to end life with suicide, and how cliched.  Sorry, I mean no disrespect to the departed, nor any fan or family thereof, but it is with stern determination that my life should not end as one whom I have been compared to.  

There is a tendency to ponder on a good ending, even of one's life, perhaps as a writer, but moreover, as a human being.  After all, there are many ways to die, and most of the time, we cannot choose our own death, so some have taken the onus on themselves and decided to take control of their death rather than their life.  It may seem easier, obvious even, only that is doesn't solve anything, and what I personally believe every person desires is a solution to a problem, an answer to a question, a response to a prayer.

Turning to God at that time will be their saving grace, if indeed that thought crosses their minds, or someone has mentioned Him recently, or somewhere along their path, someone planted that seed.  People who have been suicidal, or even not, have spoken of the turning point.  "What was the turning point for you?"  someone might ask an ex-druggie.  And some people don't turn to God per se when they have their turning point.  They just turn, as though the road bent that way, and they were simply following it.  

I can't speak for anyone else, but there was no way I could have moved forward before first realizing my need for God.  I knew I needed Him as the deer pants for the stream, and the desert needs the rain.  I knew that He was going to turn my life around, for good, for the better. 180 degrees.