w a n d e r l u s t.

I have been in so in my feels lately.

I have been a mood where I just want to hop in a van and drive until I hit the Pacific Ocean. I have been wanting to paint until I have no more paint to paint with. I have been wanting to watch so many movies in a row to the point where I would have to roll over because my butt would fall asleep. I have been wanting to just go far away for a weekend. I have been craving the waves crashing on my ankles. I have been longing to breathe fresh air from a mountain top. I have been wanting to sit in my church by myself and sing my lungs out. I've been missing sunrises and wanting to prolong sunsets. I have been wanting to write all the thoughts in my head (but can never find words when I want these thoughts to go elsewhere). I want to bake for no reason. I want it to rain really hard so I can go running in the rain. I want to lay in bed all day with my blankets, a good book, and a cup of coffee on a rainy day. I want to throw a barbeque for friends and entertain people and eat like kings for no reason. I want meet a stranger and become friends (everything is only a matter a time!). I want to lay on a blanket on a clear night and stare at the stars until I fall asleep. I want to go into an open field and set off fireworks. I want to go for walks in early summer and watch things come back to life. I want to do so many things. Routine is killing me.

I want to be a l i v e.

dust

Sometimes I wonder if my inability to sleep is from an actual physical ailment or just because the internet is available to me.

Anyways.

I really can't sleep tonight.

One of my aunt's passed away tonight. This is the first death in my family in a very, very long time so I can't really process it. (Pray for my dad y'all...seeing him like this breaks my heart more than anything.)

I didn't really know her. She lives in Mexico, so we haven't seen or talked to her in years, but she was the youngest of my dad's siblings. Entirely too young, and just like that she is gone.

I can't sleep because I mean, yeah, we hear it all the time that we will all return to dust and that death can happen to us at any moment, but we don't think about it on a daily basis, only when it actually happens and then we think of life as this tangible timeline of things we did, qualities we possessed, things we didn't do, things we weren't....etc.

Not quite sure how to put this feeling it into coherent sentences but I can't sleep tonight because life can become so mundane and we can get used to the everyday routine but are we actually making our life count? And I don't mean like huge accomplishments or anything, but what are we doing to create change in our near environment? What are we doing to create joy in a world that's fallen in love with cynicism? What am I doing to love those as Christ has loved me? Am I being the best me I can be for others? Am I being as forgiving and loving as I need to be?

Everyone always talks about what 'life is all about' and I quite frankly don't know what this life is about, but all I know is that everyday I'm learning more and more to love the simple and to learn to live in awe of everything. I'm learning to be excited about life...I had let myself be so cynical for way too long (and how sad I am now that I wasted so much time in that state of mind) and it's work, but I'm learning to just see everything as miraculous because it truly is because God created it...like this morning I peeled a tangerine while I was eating breakfast and I stared at the individual chunk of tangerine (is there a term for this?) and I just stared at the detail of the chunk of tangerine and it was so beautiful, like this mosaic of sugar and organic things and I was like, there's no way that this world is merely accidental with detail like this...I saw God's creative power in an orange this morning. But such detail! And if God is so detailed with a fruit then I can only imagine how much detail and purpose and potential there must be in each and every one of our lives and how we have the rest of our lives to live out these dreams that we stay up thinking about... 

Maybe life is about always being in awe of things. People want to know everything but I don't so I can always grow and keep that wonder factor in me...

We are once in a lifetime.