A long way from love.

"The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything." -Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club


7 months.
That's all it takes to go from one extreme frame of mind to another.
7 months ago, I was in Malawi, Africa, without a care in the world. All that mattered was loving people and experiencing life. I didn't care if I was dirty or if I had acne or if I had clean clothes. I cared about loving people. I was free.
Now that I'm in the "land of opportunity," where I can get an education, buy anything I want, grow up to raise my 2.5 children, and live completely oblivious to any hurt in the world, I feel so trapped. Ironic.
Sometimes it makes me sick how much I've allowed myself to slip back into the comfortable life I had hated and cried over 7 months ago. I have it so backwards.

A few months ago, when Logan and I decided to date again, I decided that I would learn what real love means. Not infatuation, not "loving" someone because they are nice to you, but thick and thin love.
I had been reading 1 Corinthians 13 over and over, trying to gather at least a little bit of meaning. If you've never read that verse, it is just crammed with descriptions of love... all of which are powerful and hard to reconcile with "love" as our self-centered, divorce-ridden society knows it. I have written in the margins of 1 Corinth. 13, "I'm a long way from love."
I guess it's good that I haven't reached the point where I'm happy with who I am as a whole, because I want to keep striving, I'm just feeling kind of frustrated. The person who, ideally, I want to be and the person who I am are just not matching up today.

-HallieMarie