Through My Eyes: A Journal

By Liz Root

Contact Liz by emailing her at liz@vagrantcafe.com

Click here for weekly archives

7/28/2002
i would like to take this opportunity to say that distraction sucks. it rears its ugly head and challenges me to a staring contest. who will blink first? i sit still...staring. i will NOT be the one to blink first.


- liz r. - 7/28/2002

7/27/2002
for a good read, go to www.adamvoith.com.

i was talking to jill on the phone about an hour ago and we got talking about the concept of "where we're going with our lives." and how some people don't know. and this set off a whole river of different thoughts about it. i came up with the following conclusions. (conclusions are so elusive..you think you've got them, and you change your mind in an hour.) so the conclusions i currently have are these: people who don't know what they want to do with their life make it seem like they'll never know, and it's so much easier to find out than you think. i mean, you don't have to know specifics, i sure don't. but assess your life. look at the things you're good at. look at the gifts God has given you. study the pattern of your life, and remember the compliments people have given you. take all those things and i think you'll get a good idea of what direction you should probably be heading. i mean, for goodness sake, what do you LIKE?

i know that as someone who grew up going to church (and i still do), we get the impression that the desire to do anything that's not like, directly a "ministry" is somehow less than acceptable to God. but that's ridiculous. i recommend you all read the Journey of Desire by John Eldredge. desire is what makes us who we are. and if we try to get rid of the desires God's given us, we're basically erasing ourselves. we could be having such an huge impact on the world for the better, and i don't mean that in some kind of "let's go out and evangelize the world" kind of way. although if that's your calling, awesome. but i mean that as Christians, we have the opportunity to show the world love and grace in all we do, we have the creator of the universe inside of us and could be making the best art people have ever seen/heard/read, and we live so far below our capabilities because we've been told our entire lives that the only thing acceptable to God is just going to church every week, and preaching the gospel wherever we go, and growing up to be a pastor or missionary or in some kind of "full time ministry". simply, we have no idea what's available to us, and if we did, we would be living much, much differently than we do now.


- liz r. - 7/27/2002


you know, i'm really starting to hate it when i miss a day of writing in here. because it makes it so hard to write when i actually do get around to it. i don't have anything to say right now though, or at least not the mental capacity to say what's on my mind right now...but check back later.


- liz r. - 7/27/2002

7/25/2002
well, i met Moby last night. yup. i'll spare you the details. but he's a very nice guy, and very approachable. i got home around 1 a.m., didn't go to bed until 3:30, and didn't fall asleep until after 4. and woke up at 8:30. go figure. still i think i'm more awake today than any other day this week. the day is good, life is good, God is good, and this coffee is good.

you want to know what a good feeling is? it's when i finally get it through my thick head that i don't have to try so hard to make my life happen. there's a situation that i've been saying I trust God with, but have still been trying to hang onto a little bit of it, not quite willing to let go. and maybe i'm still not, but i woke up this morning with a sense that i simply don't have to worry about it. whatever the outcome, it will be the best. and if God decides to let me have it, then His timing will be perfect and for now i can just take a breath and move on with life. what a wonderful thing.

another good feeling is knowing that awesome things are in store for my life. i can't see them now, but they're there. for now i can just enjoy this time of preparation, however long it takes.


- liz r. - 7/25/2002

7/24/2002
i think i'll continue with the fuzzy day topic. sometimes you have those days that just don't seem real. nothing really different about them. maybe emotional smog is making my day hazy. i don't know.

woke up after a pretty depressing dream, got dressed and ready to go in 15 minutes, got to work, looked in the mirror and thought, "hmm...maybe i should take better care of myself." worked for 3 hours, came home, took shower, look halfway decent again, and later on i'll be driving north to see Moby, unless the show is sold out. i hope it isn't. i've tried calling to find out and looking online, but no such luck. i'll just get there and find out. and if it's sold out, oh well...i'll just go sit in starbucks or visit a friend. which honestly sound like nice ways to spend an evening. because sometimes i find myself in random coffee shops in random cities i never would have thought i'd end up in, and i think, "how in the world did i get here?" the way life winds is absolutely mind-blowing. you meet one person and the entire course of your life changes. a few years later you meet someone else, and again the entire course of your life changes. and if you think about it too long, it can really mess you up. you start thinking stuff like, "if i wouldn't have gone to Dairy Queen that day, my life would be totally different right now." and it's true. but you should still try not to think about it. trust me, it's for your own good.

something i've been thinking about lately is how much of my life has been spent looking out windows. when i was a kid, i'd hang out by the back door in my kitchen. the door had three square windows, one on the bottom, one in the middle, and one on top. and i remember at one point only being tall enough to look out the bottom one. then the middle. then the top. and i remember the middle window had this funny little sticker on it that we never got around to taking off. it was an orange flower with a smiley face in the middle, and was kind of see-through. and i'd just stand there and stare out the window with the sticker on it. stare at the maple trees. stare at the tree swing. stare at the snow in the winter. stare at the tall grass in the summer. stare at the rain. stare at my brothers shooting off fireworks. stare at the robins eating our leftover popcorn.

i really don't know why i stare out windows so much, but i still do it. maybe i'll build myself a glass house in the woods and be the happiest person alive.


- liz r. - 7/24/2002


i had this dream last night that felt like it lasted two hours. a storyline dream. i know it was an anxiety dream. i hate those. i woke up at 6:30 a.m. b/c of it and my ears were all plugged up as well as my nose...it was awful. so i spent a half hour trying to clear everything out...bleh.

i hate days where i get kind of frustrated about something that i can't really control. and so in the end i just kind of have to take a deep breath and let God take care of it, b/c i'll kill myself trying.

i wish i had more to say today, but i don't. it's kind of a fuzzy day.


- liz r. - 7/24/2002

7/22/2002
I just started reading Philip Yancey's "What's So Amazing About Grace". I'm only on chapter 2 and already it's kicking my tail. It makes me so sad to know how much grace i've witheld from people, including myself. and it hurts to know how many people out there are walking around broken because of the lack of grace Christians show the world. there was this story in the book that got me teary eyed. a mom was in church and her small boy kept smiling at everyone. not talking. not giggling. no noise at all. and she whispered very loudly to him, "stop that grinning! you're in church!" comments like that change people forever. this boy could have grown up to be someone who would bring joy to the whole world, and maybe because of one word, he won't. any thoughts i have about this topic right now will be really lacking in coherency as i'm just starting to think about it. i've studied grace before and been knocked off my feet, but for some reason i think it's time for a deeper lesson for me.


- liz r. - 7/22/2002

7/21/2002
kind of an addition to yesterdays entry...

i'd like to talk about the past. some people have a pretty bad past...bad families, bad decisions, bad relationships, etc. i wouldn't say i've had a bad past. but until very recently, i've still felt bound by it. i would watch movies and see all these beautiful places and think, "i'll never get to see those places." and these thoughts weren't based on facts, but rather on mindsets created by my past. i'd say the three biggest influences of my past were probably the town i grew up in, the church i grew up in, and the schools i went to. obviously my family and my friends influenced me...but in good ways, not bad.

where i grew up, nobody ever had any aspirations to be anyone or go anywhere. if someone went "away" to college, it was usually in the same state. then there was the church i went to my whole life. although it was really a great church, it's like if God was calling you to something different than ministry in that church or that denomination...then you were kind of cut off from things. nobody understood why i quit going to youth group and started hanging out in a dodgy coffee house instead. the coffee house was real. youth group wasn't. in its indirect way, my church said that to desire anything else than what it could offer me wasn't good. i didn't want to be in "full time ministry" (according to their definition), and I didn't want to be a missionary, so everything else was sub-par. and then in high school, if you didn't go to college they thought you'd never be anything. and of course their definition of "anything" was getting a college degree, settling down, making money to pay the bills, etc.

so when i left nebraska, in a way i felt like i was leaving that all behind. but it was all still inside me. there are still things i've felt i could never do b/c people like me and people where i'm from don't do those things. so anyway...i've recently come to understand that i've had this mindset for far too long. and that well...if i feel like going to europe, i can. i could even live there if i want. i could live anywhere. the world isn't too big for the girl from nebraska.




- liz r. - 7/21/2002