new blog

for when i'm feeling crafty, adventurous, wistful, and just plain happy

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i suppose this blog is reserved for whiny days

career

i want to wake up early because i'm excited to go to work

i want to do something different every day

i want to write

i want to talk

i want to see children

i want to hold the hand of the elderly

i want to speak with the sick

i want to be smiled at

i want to travel

i want to have a snuggly, homey home

i want to see my kids in the afternoons

i want to laugh

i want to be in charge

i want to dress up

i want to make people feel better

i want to be creative

i want to be spontaneous

i want to create new ideas

i want to keep people safe

i want work to be work and home to be home

do i even want to work?

i want to cook good food and teach my children to be ladies and gentlemen and make homemade Christmas presents

i want to write cards

i want to video and memorialize my children's lives

i want to do things

i want to be my best


so if anyone has a career to go with that, you can let me know

tonight i want to cry because we're the church, and some person may only catch one glance of the church, and it will be your facebook status about how God hates sinners, and they will turn away

and all the while we spread hate, other people are trying to find love in other places

they can't have love without Jesus. stop making them look other places.

let them see the love in you

hmm

I never feel the need to blog anymore.

Except just now, when I realized that I never blog anymore. So I'll do what I normally do when I can't figure out the answer to something. I'll blog about it.

Possible reasons why Shauna has stopped blogging:

1. I am becoming more independent, no longer needing the attention of an undetermined audience to solve my problems or absorb my irritation, but learning to solve my problems and quench my irritation on my own.

2. I'm becoming less sure of myself, uncomfortable with expressing my deepest thoughts in fear that I will be judged. *dun dun dun*

3. I forget.

4. I rarely sit down at my laptop anymore since my recent acquisition of a smart phone.

5. I like change. I get bored with stuff. Maybe I got bored with blogging.

6. I'm possessed of a devil that wants me to bottle emotion rather than express it.

7. I'm learning to express myself to actual people rather than to said undetermined audience.

8. Blogging ceased solving my problems, such as in this case in which I am definitely more befuddled now than I was before I decided to blog about it.

weaknesses

I think my weakness is fault finding. Or call it judging, if you want. That doesn't seem to call it just right. It isn't so much a measuring of the individual but rather imagining a better scenario with perfect human beings, or imagining myself placed in that individual's position and how my actions would always be better than theirs. Seeing other people's faults.

It scares me that finding my own faults is actually a pretty hard thing to do. I know we profess all the time that "I'm not perfect, I've got flaws" but do we ever actually meditate on what our flaws might be? It's hard. We don't get to watch ourselves live our lives. Just like when you think "oh, I look pretty cute today" and then somebody takes pictures and looking back you're thinking "wow, I so did not look cute that day" or when you're singing in the car and feeling like a rockstar but listening to a recording of you singing... yeah, I'm so not a rockstar. But nobody is recording my life to play it back to me. I've gotta figure this thing out by myself.

So I guess it's natural. To want to fix things, and to see so clearly where other people are doing life wrong, to want to show them a better way. But that's missing the point I guess.

I lied, I said I've gotta figure this thing out by myself but that's completely impossible. I need God to help me figure it out.

I gotta get past trying to make the world better until I figure out how to make me better

while drinking milk

I'm feeling blogsy. Very blog-esque today. This could be dangerous.

Hey guess what? I will never be a high school student ever ever again. Did you catch that? I'm moving on up in the world.

Lately I've been quite obsessed with stalking a thread/staying in a chatroom with my fellow freshie freedies. They're all so cute. Such cute people.

I bought an amazing combination of comforter/sheets/pillow/BODY pillow (love whoever invented that, probably a woman) and it's all just so cute that I just giggle looking at it. And it matches but not really, which is the best feeling ever. I feel like a real lady.

Also I found a way to stack my t-shirts in my drawers in such a way that twice as many fit and you can see every. single. one. How magical.

Did I mention I'm SO READY FOR COLLEGE



Shout-out to all those amazing freedie freshies. You're my favorites.

I live in a country who murders her own children.

That's SICK, America. It's so SICK. And you know what else is sick? We talk about the mound of shoes in our closets and what in the world we're gonna do with all of them and who slept with who and who's wearing what and how we need to feed these poor starving children overseas and that's all just great but four thousand babies died in America today because we're not talking about THAT enough. Four thousand.

I promise you my life is gonna be about more than buying more shoes to fill my closet and raising pretty little perfect children and training them to ignore the world around them because it's impolite to talk about those sad things. They better be warriors, my children. Because that's what I want to be.

one day i hope i'll be able to take a guitar and play it in such a way that people can see my soul from the outside. i love to hear that. i like songs where the words aren't even important. even without the words, you just get it. i want to learn to do that.

deep

Haley asked me to tell her a deep thought I have had recently. Or "the thing you contemplate most." Or something like that.

I felt very simple minded in that I didn't really have anything pressing on my mind that I felt the need to verbalize. And this bothers me. I don't want to be shallow.

Everything that I think about, college and grades and chacos and the mountains and boys, it all seems so simplistic compared to what she thinks about. What causes people to choose good or evil. Why does childhood seem to be becoming shorter and shorter as our society's morality declines. If you were born of a different race, into a different family, into a different era of a different continent, would you be the same? How would you be the same? And so what really defines us? And on what grounds can we be judged when our personalities are so distinctly affected by uncontrollable circumstances?

It must be very burdensome to have a mind that always contemplates questions for which we can never really know the answer. Personally I would rather relax, let the worries slip through fingers onto guitar strings, let the world keep turning and keep its questions to itself.

sad post

I feel like tragedy is striking all around me full force and logically I've got to be next but I'm not ready.

I want to hike, into a high high mountain, far away from sadness and dying and leaving. Closer to God and His beautiful things and far away from the sad things. So I won't forget that there are beautiful things.

And maybe I can get ready.

the temple of God

your body = a special present that (should be) for your husband

walking around naked (yes, you're naked) = letting everyone else see the present

your wedding night = giving your husband a box that's been opened and resealed numerous times, a present that's been used but made to look like new

purity isn't just about sex. it's how you dress, how you carry yourself, how you TALK, WHAT you talk about

also, watch this


^"Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s." 1 Corinthians 6:18-20


"I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Matthew 5:28

clippings of my soul for today

How long have I been in this storm?
So overwhelmed by the ocean's shapeless form
Water's getting harder to tread
With these waves crashing over my head

If I could just see you
Everything would be all right
If I'd see you
This darkness would turn to light

And I will walk on water
And you will catch me if I fall
And I will get lost into your eyes
I know everything will be alright
I know everything is alright

I know you didn't bring me out here to drown
So why am I ten feet under and upside down
Barely surviving has become my purpose
Because I'm so used to living underneath the surface


"Storm" by Lifehouse



"Inside the bundle Ama packed for me are: my bowl, my hairbrush, the notebook my teacher gave me for being the number one girl in school, and my bedroll. Inside my head I carry: my baby goat, my baby brother, my ama's face, our family's future. My bundle is light. My burden is heavy."


"I have been beaten here, locked away, violated a hundred times and a hundred times more. I have been starved and cheated, tricked and disgraced. How odd it is that I am undone by the simple kindness of a small boy with a yellow pencil."


- "Sold" by Patricia McCormick


Tomorrow is my very last band banquet. I miss my best friend. I am confused and startled. I am lucky. My burden feels heavy, but to some it's light as glass.

hmm.

My exact thoughts right now.

Thank you, God, for letting that happen. I got angry. I didn't understand.

But now I don't know who I would be if it didn't.


It's almost a little hilarious how upset we get when people do us wrong, plans get changed, priorities get shifted, people leave. Who would we be if nothing were ever wrong? What character can be shown when there are no obstacles to overcome? And all the while we think the world is ending, God is guiding us down a path we didn't even know existed. And that's why He's in charge.

puzzle pieces

I think life is composed of transition. I used to think that there were only humongous transitions like SAVED and MARRIED and BABIES and RETIREMENT but that turned out to be not true at all. A lot of things I used to think have turned out to be not true at all. Maybe life is composed of those realizations too.

I just got back from my very last honor band. To most people that sounds about as significant as losing a sock but to me it felt like a part of me died, quite literally. Because I'm me when I'm at honor band. So I feel like that part of me died. Not to be a Debbie Downer, but I did cry a little bit.

But really I didn't intend to talk about honor band, I was gonna talk about this one song we played. I say we: this band composed of extraordinary musicians that I somehow came to be a part of played this song. And I knew during the 11 hours that we rehearsed that I would have to cry when I heard that song for the last time. And sure enough, I did. Funny how I can gauge my emotions like that, I think I'm beginning to get to know myself better.

That song was so beautiful, and I think it really summed up why honor band is such a part of me. You take 170 people and bottle up all their passion and then everything is silent and then the silence breaks with all of our passions flowing together. And I really think in that moment I got this little puzzle piece for my soul that God saw I was missing. So I cried. I played horribly. But it was worth it.

best love story ever

"He made steps up to the front porch, seven real wide, shallow ones. When I asked him why so many small steps, when four would have done the job, he said, Well, children have short legs, and he grinned. Luckily I was standing real close to him when he said it, because the idea of it made him want to kiss me again and I was glad to be handy."

"I wonder if we are just a little part of the world, like that rooster, and that the real things go on around us while we strut in our own yards trying to take charge of things."

"Our children weigh hard on my heart, and thinking about them growing up honest and healthy, or just living to grow up at all, makes a load in my chest that is bigger than the safe at the bank, and more valuable to me than all the gold inside it."

"It seems there is always a road with bends and forks to choose, and taking one path means you can never take another one. There's no starting over nor undoing the steps I've taken."

"Mostly I just raise my children and cook and clean, flirt with Jack and enjoy his company, and read aloud the books he gives me for silly holidays he makes up. Like, Oh, here's a gift for The Third Tuesday in October, didn't you know that's a holiday? Well, I bought you a book. He is amazing."
 (that pretty much describes the perfect life to me and I can't wait to have it)

"My life feels like a book left out on the porch, and the wind blows the pages faster and faster, turning always toward a new chapter faster than I can stop and read it."

"I've been a hard man to live with, I know, he said, but I've always admired you and loved you. You are some kind of woman. You'll be fine. You keep your powder dry, and an eye on the horizon."

- from These Is My Words by Nancy Turner. Read it.

my God is so Big.

twitter and devilish social networking sites

You know, I think twitter is the most tempting thing to me right now. It's my biggie. It's like my Godzilla of temptation. And I'll tell you why.

If I get a twitter (as I've been inclined to do lately), I'm sure I will end up saying things directed at certain individuals( though indirectly, without using their names) but that should either a) be said to them in person or b) not be said at all. It's all too easy to let off steam through that "indirect verbal attack" that people like to use on Twitter (and Facebook statuses too) and pretend that no one will ever know who they're actually talking about. That's immature, but tempting. Because while we're trying to act Christlike and love our enemies and give blessings to those that curse us, we still want the attention from others of "hey, that person did you wrong and you have a right to be angry, I'm on your side". But letting off steam in this way just isn't Christlike at all. It hurts other people and it hurts us. And I know this because reading things other people have posted, and knowing that it's directed at me, hurts worse than if they'd even really said it to me. But if I go to this person and question them about their feelings toward me, it only seems that I'm trying to stir something up. And I'm not a drama stirrur upper.

I don't know, maybe that's what I do through this blog sometimes. I need to let off steam and the typing feels so good under my fingers and maybe it wouldn't feel so good if I didn't know someone was going to read it and sympathize. But what if the person who reads it believes I'm ensuing a verbal attack on them? I don't want that. I want selective readers but that can't be guaranteed at all, can it? It can't.

But anyway, I've become so attached to it, an addiction, of reading what a certain person says and figuring out how they really feel about me. That shouldn't be the case. First of all I shouldn't even be that concerned about other people's opinions of me, but second of all it only continues to hurt. I need to stop it. I'll never forget if I don't.

So this is why Twitter is the devil.

delirium

remember when i said i'm trying to rediscover the version of shauna baker who doesn't always have to have her phone on her because she isn't obligated to text anyone anymore and how i'm trying to fill my empty places?

i found her. she likes books


"You know you can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes, right?"

"Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side."


- both from Delirium by Lauren Oliver, a book about a dystopian version of the United States in which love is seen as a disease that must be driven out by government intervention. And a girl who chose to love anyway.


"You have to understand. I am no one special. I am just a single girl. I am five feet two inches tall and I am in-between in every way. But I have a secret. You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear. I love you. Remember. They cannot take it."

"Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are course; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity."

- Margaret Dyreng Nadauld

"Only a few hairbreadths make the difference between this face and faces I have seen many times before I knew you; yet what a difference- the difference between everything and nothing at all."


- The Return of the Native