Where has time gone..

It seems like just yesterday i was hoping i would wake up with my hair magically looking awesome and school being delayed due to foggy day schedule! Now i hope i wake up to being completely done with school and knowing exactly what i am going to end up doing with my life. i look back and realize that slowly every day i am changing and growing. the kind of growth and change that isnt drastic.. and if you see yourself every day in the mirror it looks exactly the same. but its also the kind that if you havent seen someone since graduation, and you run into them at your reunion, you cant help but notice the change. with the way life has gone the last few months.. i found myself reflecting on the last year and realizing in how many ways changes have occurred in my life, and ultimately either helped or forced me to grow a bit

Some friends have been consistent. whether that means we talk every day or hang out each week is irrelevant. They are the ones you know at a drop of a hat would be there for you. they are the ones when your world falls apart are there to help you pick up the pieces. Some friends were seasonal. and the season we did life together was awesome. other friends helped be apart of me learning some lessons.. and i appreciate them for that reason.

i said goodbye to a few friends. not like ill book a plane ticket and come visit goodbye.. but like wait.. we arent even 25 yet and your life on this earth is done kind of goodbye. the hardest of them all was chris. the chris that made sacramento feel a lil more like home cause he was from fresno and played polo.. the chris that could make me laugh when i was stressed and about to lose it.. the chris that sat on his front porch with me more times than i can count and walked through hell and back with me... the chris that introduced me to Newcastle and told me it was the "classy beer". the chris that would drive us to shaver to see the stars when there were no words to make life better in the moment. the chris that taught me punching a truck when you were angry was a really bad choice.. the chris that showed me you could truly change when you let the Lord really have your heart. the chris that made me realize tomorrow really isnt promised.

then there was the moment i realized it was stupid to try and control your life. i cant. the saying has become etched in my brain "you cant choose your circumstances, but you can choose how you handle them". i definately havent always chosen to handle them the right way. no matter how much i think i know, or how many answers i can spew out.. sometimes i have made the really wrong choice. i learned that there is grace, but there are also consequences. it didnt click until recently that most of the time decisions i make also effect other people. when i mess up, it hurts others. when i choose sin... i choose to reject christ. thats not who i want to be.

i have become best friends with some of my family. particularly my cousin. she couldnt be more of a godsend in my life. my good days.. my bad days.. my hair did, make up on, and her clothes looking awesome on me days.. my face-forgot-im-not-in-jr-high-and-broke-out-in-zits days.. shes there. with arms wide open, and a plethora of diet cokes. she encourages me when im succeeding, and reminds me why i need to get back on the wagon when im struggling. ive learned what a person full of joy truly looks like. on her good days and bad days. shes there when i need to process.. and shares memories when i want to remember my mamma. she has taught me the kind of friend i want to be.

and there are the days i am confident my body hates me. but its a love hate relationship. it hates how much it loves the pain i put it through. the runs, the workouts, the best stress relief i have ever found.. its so good. and im learning how to love the journey of getting to my goals.

im learning that i still love kids. after all the time i spend with them... i still love them. alot. thats a relief. :)

life is filled w/ never ending lessons

i feel like its the moment you feel you finally have most of your crap together, that you are hit with a brick and realize you still have so much to learn. maybe i knew that there were feelings and emotions i had found a way to stuff so deeply in me that i could ignore even existed, or maybe i truly believed i was fine. i am chelsey.. i am a rock. i can control my emotions. you want to know what i have learned the last 2 years? especially the last month?

i am not in control.

i wish i was... i wish i could control how i felt, how other people responded, ect.... well.... i dont know if i really do. i would probably mess that up pretty good.... ya.. lets stick with me not being in control. so then i am realizing the only thing i can do is work on me. how i react, why do i feel the way i feel. o and i was just informed that its ok to not be tough. WHAT? you mean there are people that i can be totally safe with and feel broken in front of and they wont be overwhelmed and walk away? wow... my world is currently getting rocked.

i can count on one hand the amount of people that i have let see me truly broken. you know.. the kind where you sound like your from a different country whose language is chokes and snot? i dont like doing it often. im actually not a huge fan of the crying thing in general. i just figured out how to use mascara... and as soon as the tears hit i have now experienced the effects of water and mascara and your eyes. its a scary picture. anyways, the point is im learning sometimes its more healthy to scare the world with your racoon eyes than to continually stuff things so deep they effect everything, but you have no idea where the root even stems from. cause in the end you will probably scare more people with your pyscho-ness then with something a good face wash will clean up.

im also realizing that guilt can eat at a person more than anything. especially when there is nothing you can do to change it. maybe i wasnt the picture perfect daughter. lets be real. i was a brat sometimes. but i also loved. i loved my parents so deeply. i LOVE my parents so deeply. there was never a question about that. the more i learn to let go of something that i cant change... the more i can really truly remember the good.

one of the few phrases i can still audibly hear my mom say was... "yeaaa!" and she did it with a big smile and both arms outstretched. usually after a game (proud that i played.. no matter how bad i sucked or if i was lead scorer) or after i showed her a new song i had been practicing, or when she was so pumped/really proud of me. thats just it. she said it so much that i can still hear it. she was proud. she is proud. her biggest prayer/hope for me was that i would fall in love with my saviour. i am madly in love with him. He has become my rock... and i am striving to truly make him my everything. she would be beaming! i have her love for music, i can picture her face laying on the couch listening to me... proud. im not some epic failure of a daughter. i went through a phase. i thought i was all that. i thought i knew it all, and she didnt. i was so wrong. and i realized that. the coolest thing is that i got a taste of how sweet a friendship we could have. and for the time we had it, man... i learned a ton. a buttload of people were at her funeral. she touched a lot of lives. so she lives on. i can go try and find pieces of her in all of them.

i miss her. but i am learning what it means to celebrate her. truly celebrate.

i dont want to be a person with a bunch of crap stuffed deep inside. i want to be free.. i want to live life w/ a light heart and a huge genuine smile. i want to learn how to let people make me better by having an interaction w/ them... but not letting them wreck me when i feel i have failed their expectations. i am chelsey. i do have emotions, they arent stupid (3 weeks out of the month). i love christ with everything i am, i love people, and i am learning how to really trust people. i am not in control. and thats a good thing. and as stupid as it sounds, i am proud of myself. i am growing and changing as a person and i like it! i dont want to be the same girl today that i am tomorrow. life is short. i want to learn how to radiate christ more each day till my flesh is merely what keeps my bone structure intact. i want to be worthy of my mammas pride.

well that was more wordy than i intended when i started. but i am a processor, so i realized most o what i was thinking as i was writing it. welcome to my brain :)

I am Blessed.

life is such a funny thing.... there are ups and downs.. highs and lows. but one thing has continued to be a constant. The Lord absolutely loves me. There have been a lot of different seasons, childhood at the niles house.... growing up at the quincy house... jr high (yep, definately its own category ) highschool sports, proms and formals, boyfriends (both good and bad relationships)... bible college.. quality time caring for mom... living w/ the bells... moving out on my own.. learning what it means to spread my wings.. what it means to have Christ as my absolute center. going from a scripted prayer to learning what it means to get on my knees and pour out my heart to the Lord.

the last season of life has been pretty sweet... i met some of my best friends. you know, the ones that are friends for life, despite distance, or the amount you actually see their face, they have done life with you in such a way that they will always have the "fast pass" to your life. i had a good solid amount of time being single and learning what it means to be content w/ just me and jesus. i got to be discipled and trained for 9 mths in the Word. i got oppurtunities to serve in ministry in leadership positions..i ran a half marathon.. i learned what it meant to say yes to way many things and way too many people. i learned that i wanted to be the woman God has created me to be... not the woman of my flesh.

With summer coming to a close, a new season has already started.. hannah moved to A&M (if you are confused as to who hannah is let me help you... one of my best friends. lived in a small room w/ me on bunk beds for 6mths. challenged me more than anyone. knows me better than most. saw my best and worst and doesnt judge me. i love that girl) with her moving it left me and another roommate in the apt, and we decided to go seperate ways, so i moved in w/ another girl. her name is hannah. it must be a sign. cause she is pretty awesome. i am working at the church and im nannying some of my favorite kiddos. (started potty training sam.. your jealous. you wish you could get a prize if your pee hit cheerios in the toilet) my relationship w/ my dad has grown leap and bounds, and for the first time in years we spent the day together yesterday racing segways on the beach. best trip i have spent with him in a long time.

o and my best guy friend became my boyfriend. if you havent seen me the last little bit then you cant tell, but i have had a permanent smile on my face. its not something either of us planned.. its not something i would have predicted at all when i met him. but i am so glad it did. i want to spend most of my time with my best friend. he has seen me on my best day, and he has seen me at some of my lowest. he has seen me all dressed up and hair did, and he has seen me covered in nastiness wearing gym shorts and a tshirt w/ no makeup. there is such a sense of comfort in that... he knows me. really knows me. and he chose me. i am excited for this new season of our relationship.. excited to see where the Lord takes us. cause we sure as heck arent doing this on our own. im thankful. im excited. im happy. im blessed.

So it begins....

I started realizing the only way i would actually check blogs of people i really wanted to keep updated on was to actually have one of my own. i am not actually writing this for anyone except myself... life is hard sometimes and for me writing something out usually helps me mentally process it. so here is me... the side that not everyone always gets to experience :)

Life is so funny.. the whole school year i kept thinking that once summer hit, my life would slow down and i would have free time to do things. you know normal things, like sleep. but in regular chelsey fashion i instead decided the best thing would be to keep committing to things so that i stay real busy. i stay out of trouble that way. dont get me wrong though, i LOVE what i am doing.. i get to nanny some of the best kids, i am on staff with a fantastic Student Ministries team and i get to pour into students on a daily basis. I get to jump in a pool and teach swim lessons, meet w/ people over coffee to hear how they are doing... i love it. but its busy.

I am realizing that my heartbeat is truly for people. it energizes me, fills my cup and i leave a deep conversation w/ someone feeling truly refreshed and loved. He has continued to bring people into my life for whatever reason who challenge me and cause me to lean on Him in a greater way. for that i am thankful. The last several months i had a great opportunity to live w/ a girl who truly challenged me and called me out on crap that only a true friend would care to have those hard conversations with. I am thankful for that sweet season, and as life has already started pulling her in a different direction, it will be a hard transition seeing her move away knowing that there is no point where she will definitely come back. But i am also thankful for the girls he continues to bring in my life as sweet little surprises. i feel like the Lord drops someone in my life w/ a smile and "your welcome chels... have fun".

Today as i was working (before i got sidetracked w/ the whole blog idea... but dont worry.. i finished all my work before i started this.) i was listening to Miranda Lamberts "the house that built me"... easily one of my favorite songs right now... but it gets me thinking... you know those things that just trigger memories? i started thinking about summers. when i think summer there are certain things that come to my mind. i think of the quincy house that i grew up at. We never really used air conditioning, but we had a whole house fan that my parents would turn on at the crack of dawn. it was loud, and they would come around opening all our windows. i remember walking into the kitchen, the windows all open, air blowing in, you could hear the pool sweep on and the little water fall flowing.. i would wander around the house, and eventually either find my mom in her room sitting in the lazyboy spending time w/ jesus, or sitting on the swing out on the patio drinking a cup of coffee with my dad. o the swing. 99.8% of our really good conversations happened out on that swing. from relationships, to friendships, school, sports, church, feelings, consequences, to just snuggle time.. thats where life was done. when there was nothing left to be said... the silence became the reassurance that no matter what.. they would always still be sitting there. i can remember many big decisions that came as a result of the swing. from going to fiji that first year, to deciding where i would go to bible college, to talking out our fears about the cancer... there was never a subject off limits. from the moment i decided i wanted a family one day, the swing has always been a necessity that i have realized i will have.

What i have learned from my parents to do w/ my kids:

- that i will drop everything when you come home and make convo w/ you a priority

-you will never leave the house without saying i love you and giving me a hug. (i remember having to turn the car around and go back home because i walked out w.out doing that)

-i chose you. God gave me all the choices of kids in the world, and i picked you exactly how you are

-i love your friends like they were my own. but i will always love you more.

-works never important enough to miss your games

-rice and walnuts.

-you are loved beyond comprehension.

a dad of some kids i hung w/ for a weekend was amazed at how much i looked like my mom, from the hair to the way i interacted... but because of that it gave him a sense of security for me to have his kids while they were gone... thats when you know someone left a legacy. when because of the way you lived your life people give your offspring instant trust. i miss my mamma beyond anything you could ever imagine, but i am thankful for what she passed on in the time she had. sigh.. back to work.