light trails and falling leaves

two week old flowers still lay on top of my microwave, their shriveled beauty just a shadow of what they once were. try as i might, i haven't found the heart yet to place them in the trash bin. seeing them reminds me of a whirlwind of emotion: new people, starlit talks, and spending time with someone who made feel like the most special girl in the room, even though i wasn't the one in the gorgeous white dress. it seems, as the weather turns and the leaves fall, i am finding myself doing the same.

and yet somehow through it all, my mind is supposed to be here. this term is so different than the past three. work work work, but i don't have a single grade for psych 22 yet; its a little scary. i feel increasingly disenchanted with the psych department as this class drags on. i find myself praying prayers too big for my little heart and mind to handle, yet too small in comparison with a ginormous God. i have been pondering what my passions are as of late, thinking about the things i would do if there was nothing on my schedule for the coming years. i want to take pictures, millions and millions of pictures, each documenting a specific, wonderful, heartbreaking moment in the lives of those around me. i feel like peter pan, not wanting to grow up or old; i wonder if photography is my way of slowing things down, taking things one frame at a time. life is more manageable if seen through a viewfinder. and yet i don't want things to fit inside my parameters; i want to be messy and free. i want to dance in the streets, have my heart bursting with joy and passion and brokenness for the world i live in, the world i am not bound to forever. i want to fingerpaint and graffiti about the Lord's promises, sing praises loudly and not care how they sound, shout my questions and doubts and fears to the wise One in the middle of fields and not be ashamed, because He is bigger than all of them. where is the major where I do all of that? i know majors are hardly everything, i just don't want to waste my time sitting in a class discussing stimulus control when there is so much to be done, so much living and loving and praying and crying and hoping and healing to do.

it is times like these, those rare moments where i truly feel alive and the fire is kindled that i think i get glimpses of where my heart was meant to be.