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 **Make sure that you pause my regular "blog" music before watching the video by scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page and clicking the pause button on the Playlist.

For some reason, every time I watch this video and hear this song (which has been a lot lately), I have had the overwhelming urge to write.

I had started a blog relating to this video about a month ago, but never managed to finish it (kind of the trend lately). After watching it a couple more times, my feelings for it seem to have intensified, so here goes attempt #2 at a post!

I have come to really like this video for numerous reasons. Of course one of these reasons is that it reminds me of North Carolina. I have no idea where it was ACTUALLY was taken, but I DO know that the singer—the girl in the video—was on a TV show for 9 seasons that was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina. So there’s a good change it IS actually North Carolina. But, oddly enough, that’s not the reason I am most drawn to the video.

The #1 reason I like this video? It doesn’t look staged at all. It looks like there was no script, no plan, no “set”. It was just her, having fun, doing whatever she though of doing in that moment.

In many ways, it inspires me. Would I ever be caught dancing in public? Probably not. Trying to hurdle a barrel/garbage can? Probably not. Doing any of the things she does in this video? Probably not. Well, I have written in the sand before, but only after making sure no one was watching me.

It makes me wonder though. What’s so wrong with doing those things in public? What’s so wrong about being yourself and just having fun (and maybe making a fool of yourself) and doing things that make you happy. What’s wrong with doing whatever you feel like doing in that moment?

Nothing.

So why is it so hard? What is so difficult about just living and not worrying?

If there is one thing that I wish I could change about myself, that is it—that I could let go of inhibitions and just live. Just be. Just do whatever makes me happy in that moment. To be the girl in the video. The girl that isn’t afraid to do something out of the ordinary because it will make me happy. I with I could stop worrying about EVERYTHING and just live and enjoy life.

In addition to the video, I have found myself pulling meaning from the song itself also (while walking around the house singing loudly to myself).

“Hunny I just can’t get around it anymore, you make me feel like homes is where you are. Baby I just can’t walk around it every morn. It’s time that I believe that home is where you are.”

Little by little, this song (and my moment) have been helping me overcome my lack of an “at home” feeling. It continues to engrave into my head that “home is where you (my husband) are.” And if he is here, and wants to be here, then I guess that I am home. And it’s time that I believe that.

That being said, I guess that the main overall lesson I am pulling from all these “mini lessons” is this- just because I am back in a place where I grew up. Where everyone thinks they know me, doesn’t mean that I can’t change. That I can’t create a new me. That I can’t become the girl in the video who is happy and has found her home. I CAN change. I CAN be that girl. And someday, I will be.

“I’ve never been to half of these places, but your postcard collection makes me crave a little space a little ways out of the city into the grace of another land, another tongue, another time.”

The Great Unknown

 (**I have been desperately trying to generate a second post about our Vegas trip, and after 2 separate attempts, and the discovery that over half of my pictures from the trip “disappeared” from my memory card, I have decided to just give it up and move on to something else)

Tonight I seem to have found a recurring theme amongst my Facebook friends/acquaintances. That theme is the unknown. I mostly see it in a group that I am a part of that is a support group for military spouses. This group, is very unique. It isn’t like most other groups on Facebook. It is very, very different. In a very good way. It is a sorority type group that does fundraisers, and potlucks, and everything else you would do with a group of friends.

After a minor panic attack from one of the girls whose husband is currently deployed to Afghanistan, we somehow got on the subject of the unknown. I discovered that many of them are much like I am. Or was, anyway.

One of the biggest struggles, as I have probably mentioned before, of the Marine Corps, is having to conform to their way of doing things. Having to take your schedule and make it fit theirs. Because they don’t “adjust” their schedules to fit yours. Ever. Anytime you try to plan something, it’s like the Marine Corps KNOWS that you have it planned and purposely throws a kink in it. It’s very hard for people who are like I was, to adjust to that. People who always have their life planned out. Who know what they are doing, when they are doing it, and where they are going to do it.

Many people—military and civilian—cling to that as their support. They see it as their way of having some kind of control over the future and the unknown. Unfortunately, most people never realize that it doesn’t really work that way. This is one of the reasons why I am very thankful to the military. The Marine Corps broke me of this habit. It took time, and a lot of frustration, but it did.

My big leap off the edge of “preparedness” into the Great Unknown, came when I moved to North Carolina. I finished college in July, quit my job (without another one lined up) at the end of July, moved back home with my parents with the intention of finding a job. And after about 2 weeks of looking, I bought a plane ticket and was on my way out to North Carolina in the middle of August, with 2 bags worth of stuff to last me for 4 months, or however long I decided to stay out there. This was so uncharacteristic of me. The last time I went to North Carolina (for a 10 day visit, mind you), I bought my plane ticket about 5 months in advance.

After 4 years of being jerked around on the military’s VERY short chain, I was done with it. I decided that I would just willingly go. I would willingly jump through hoops. I would willingly do what they wanted me to do. And if that meant packing 4 months worth of “stuff” into 2 bags, then that’s what I would do.

I still am not really back to my “old self”. And to be honest, I’m not sure I want to go back there. There is something very liberating about having no plans, and no schedules, and not trying to control things. There is something very liberating about being able to “fly by the seat of your pants” and not over think things. To not constantly be thinking about “what if this happens, or what if that happens”—but to just live it, and see what DOES happen.

Let be honest. You can SAY that you are going to that Pampered Chef party next weekend, or you can PLAN on going to you cousin’s best friend’s sister’s baby shower, but does that really mean you have control over your future? Of course not. What happens if your sister is in a bad accident the day before the Pampered Chef party? Or your son breaks his arm the morning of the baby shower? I would bet you’re not going to either one. You can’t control your future. You can plan, and hope for the best, but that’s all you can do. There will always be the Great Unknown.

God is the one who is in charge, and he will put you where he wants you—which is not necessarily going to be where you are “supposed” to be according to your calendar. Which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t keep a calendar—order is good. But, it’s important to not view that calendar as your way to control the future or attempt to make the unknown disappear. Because it doesn’t, and it won’t.

Embrace the unknown. Trust that God will put you where he needs you, when he needs you there. And take a leap out of the world of “structure and control” and do what you feel like doing in that moment. Even if it’s only for a day, leave your schedule behind, let your plans be broken, and just live.

A random moon picture from North Carolina, because I thought this post needed a pictures...and I seem to stuck at remembering to take new ones..

“Sometimes an interruption is actually a divine appointment”

(my mom told me this after we missed our flight to Vegas—not sure if she read it somewhere, or if it was one of her own, but either way, she’s right)