The Turn of the Decade

In light of the New Year, I thought I would start something new. I'm challenging myself... because I like a good challenge. It will be good for me to stick to something worthwhile for a change, but I'm going to keep low expectations so as not to stress myself out too much. My idea, which I'm sure you're now curious about, stemmed from my incessant over-analyzing nature. I get excited about something and then the next moment I'm like "well... what if this and what if that?" I can't afford to be doing that anymore for my own sanity. So my New Years Resolution is to just go with the flow and not get overwhelmed by the things that pile up just because I make them into bigger things.

In order to facilitate this, I will be (hopefully is the key word here) blogging once a day about something that touched me. The goal is to see how 365 positives, however small they might be, worked together to change my life and my annoying tendency to over-analyze things to the point where I think they won't work out unless I take care of it right away and get it right the first time. I'm really just hoping to leave room for God to move mountains in my personality here because I need to learn the ins and outs of a single word: TRUST. I am a very loyal person and I trust myself, but that doesn't mean that it is easy for me to trust anyone else... it just isn't and I didn't realize it until this past year.

Anyway, I know I also have a tendency to write excruciatingly long blog posts, so this will force me to keep them small and keep my readers (whomever you may... random people tell me they read this thing) satisfied. So here goes...

As some of you may know, my family is HUGE on going to the movies. If you think that's a waste of money, that's your prerogative. As far as Joe, Lindsay, Tim, and Mindy (Melissa isn't so much) are concerned, however, we're all about the movie theater. Why? Because there's something about just going to the theater and not having any other distractions like laundry, dishes, phone calls, etc. We like it, so we go... a lot. Today my parents and I went to go see the Road. It's a tear jerker and pretty depressing as well, which I wasn't exactly prepared for because I did not read the book beforehand, but overall the message was beautiful. It's about a father and son in a time where the country has been destroyed by all kinds of fires or nuclear warfare or something (you never do find out what caused all the mass chaos and loss of life) and the father's goal is to just get his son to the south somewhere near the ocean. I won't spoil the details, but basically it's all about survival and reminded me that you can't take it with you. What keeps us alive is something worth fighting for... money, cars, phones, clothes, a great career will always be the first to go when times are really tough. It's the people that stick with you. If anything is worth fighting for it's the future of mankind, and especially for the one or ones you love, otherwise life's a crapshoot. And if you think about it, all those material things are just things that only bring about evil. I want this car, I want that skirt, I want this BCBG dress, I need those new Ray Bans, I want that Michael Korr bag--if you think about it, those things are what cause all of our problems. We want it and we can't get it, we're bitter. Maybe we push ourselves to work harder for more money but than our appetite is still insatiable. They are comforts, but they do not keep us happy and alive.

To sum it up, today I was touched by the reminder that people, not possessions, are forever.