Through My Eyes: A Journal

By Liz Root

Contact Liz by emailing her at liz@vagrantcafe.com

Archives

8/7/2003
i am aching for autumn. i want to wear sweaters and jackets. i want to walk around with the crunch of fallen leaves sounding beneath my feet. i want that feeling in my face i get after walking around at night...those nights when you realize you can see your breath. for some reason, it seems my memory works best in autumn, all of my senses are hightened. oh, and the best cd to listen to in autumn is Over the Rhine - Good Dog, Bad Dog. (a fine cd any time of year, but completely perfect in autumn.)

some quotes from Thomas Merton:

"In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying oursleves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in Him and to do whatever He wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of His reality which is all around us in teh things and peole we live with."

"Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. It is, therefore, a very great thing to be little, which is to say: to be ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are."

"We do not live more fully merely by doing more, seeing more, tasting more, and experiencing more than we ever have before. On the contrary, some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience less than usual.

A tourist may go through a museum with a Baedecker, looking conscientiously at everything important, and come out less alive than when he went in. He has looked at everything and seen nothing. He has done a great deal and it has only made him tired. If he had stopped for a moment to look at one picture he really liked and forgotten about all the others, he might console himself with the thought that he had not compltely wasted his time. He would have discovered something not only outside himself but in himself. He would have become aware of a new level of being in himself and his life would have been increased by a new capacity for being and for doing."

(all quotes from the chapter "Being and Doing" in the book No Man Is an Island)

in my desire to be re-awakened to life, i don't want to get sucked into the mentality that i have to experience everything i possibly can to have life "mean" something. there's a deeper life i want to experience, and for now, it's one without definition.


- liz r. - 2:24:21 AM

8/6/2003
it's 3:02 a.m. and i'm eating pringles and french onion dip, and drinking white wine out of a coffee mug. i just laid in bed for an hour tossing and turning, thinking i was tired, and only finally realizing i wasn't, and had too much on my mind anyway. which is why i'm back downstairs, posting here.

so...what thought kept me up tonight? (er, this morning?) i've been thinking about touch. and how i've never been known as a particularly "touchy-feely" person. though with certain people i have no problem with it. but what i think it is, is that i'm kind of afraid of it. i consider touch to be a very important thing...something not to be taken or given lightly. and so because of that, i think i've held back a lot. too much. there have been countless times where i've just wanted to reach out to someone to hug them, take their arm, hold their hand, put my hand on their shoulder, etc. but i didn't, b/c i was afraid. of what? so many things...things i mentioned in my last post. fear of rejection. fear of showing emotion. fear of emotion in general. fear of being hurt again. and also, fear of change. i'll explain.

i think i've created a version of myself that i try to live up to. the tough, unfeeling, emotionally non-expressive, cool and collected self. the safe self. the self who won't get hurt. i've done a pretty great job of convincing myself this is who i am. what i've done is i've isolated some of my personality traits, and used them as an excuse to be this person who is so much less than than i'm meant to be. i kind of wonder why/how i turned out this way.

it's usually at night when i'm trying to go to sleep that i realize the sort of person i really am. i'm a girl who wouldn't mind being held. i'm a girl who wouldn't mind some romance. i'm a girl who wants to be more compassionate. i'm a girl who doesn't want to be afraid anymore. tonight as i tossed and turned, barely finishing the thought before the words came from my mouth, i said, "Jesus, wake me up." And so i say it again, Jesus wake me up. help me find the person you've created me to be. more importantly, help me to become that person. help me to face and challenge my fears. help me with the things i don't even know i need help with. amen.




- liz r. - 3:33:22 AM

8/5/2003
i posted the other day about how i sometimes feel like i'm waiting on some kind of event that will tell me that life has "begun." and i realized that i think my move back to omaha was possibly that event. it seemed so subtle, but i feel like such a different person since i moved back. i guess maybe i'm an adult now. i never knew being an adult would feel so restless, so unsure. i never knew all my insecurities would come back in full force.

i suppose i'm realizing how temporary everything really is. this life is incredibly meaningful and significant...if we choose to make it that way. it has much bearing on our eternities, and yet i see so many people (including myself) striving for things that have little eternal significance. i want to be the person i'm supposed to be, and i simply don't feel like i'm being that person. i'm bound by so many different fears it's difficult to know which ones to tackle first. fear of relationships. fear of leadership. fear of failure. fear of rejection. fear of going to school. fear of taking risks. so many fears. and i'm realizing life is too short to hang onto all these fears, and let them keep me from living life the way it's meant to be lived. if i make a mistake, so what. if i get rejected, so what. i think shutting my heart off because i'm afraid of life is worse than the mistakes i'm sure to make from actually going out and living. it's time to live. jesus, help me.
- liz r. - 1:44:26 PM