Inadequate.

I have been recently thinking about inadequacy. Not for the purpose of beating myself up, but just a realistic look at who I am. I have come to the conclusion that I am ultimately inadquate in everything. I will never be the friend, roommate, Christ-follower, daughter, student, leader, or sister that I should be. I am very confident in the fact that I will ultimately fail. This thought could be stifling, but it doesn't have to be.

Which is why I don't mind posting things like this, thoughts that aren't just interesting analogies or insightful lists. Letting the realization that my life is be defined by inadequacy stop me from trying to be better is fatal to the person I want to become. Yet lying to myself in thinking that everything is always perfect is equally dangerous.

It's okay to not understand life sometimes or yourself or why you feel like you want to cry but never can.

What's not okay is letting that stop you from moving on, looking beyond the meladrama in your mind, and making life better.

Top 30: Things Girls Wish They Could Say to Guys

So I was thinking the other day about all the things I'd tell guys if I could and started talking about it with my friends.  Turns out they had a few opinions on this matter as well.  This list is a compilation of girl's unspoken wishes from across the hall, across campus, and across the country.  Girls, see if these ring true for you.  Guys, read carefully.

1) Please don’t buy us gifts.  It’s sweet but it just makes everything awkward.  Spending time with us and listening to us > anything you could ever buy us. (caveat: this depends on love languages aka not a universal rule for all girls)

2) Your attractiveness level increases exponentially with personality.  Not necessarily outgoingness, because we can see through that.  Just having a solid character works.

3) Don’t play games. 

5) We aren’t looking for the cookie-cutter romantic night out.  A walk and a cup of coffee will do just fine.

6) Don’t tell me I’m perfect or the most beautiful girl on campus.  I know I’m not, and you’re not, and that’s okay. 

7) Along the same lines, don’t change for us.  Holding yourself to higher standards is fine, but if we like you, it’s because we like you just the way you are.

8) Mostly, we just want you to make us feel safe.

9) We like to feel confident and self-sufficient, but deep down, we just want someone to take us by the hand and lead the way.  Even the leaders don’t want to lead all the time.

10) Flirting is overrated.  We don’t like having to do it and there are better ways to show you are interested.

11) Never treat us any differently in front of your guy friends.  If we are good enough for you, we are good enough for them.

12) Don’t tell us that we complete you.  We should be compatible and need/want each other but ultimately, God completes us.  If you need a girl to complete you, you probably shouldn’t have one.

13) When we cry, you can’t do, smash, or fix anything. We just want to be held.

14) What we love most are the moments when you are truly yourself. Those are tender and romantic. Don’t engineer things to try to be what you think we want.

15) Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Don’t tell us what you think we want  to hear. Trust us, the truth has a way of coming out in the end.

16) Females are typically the ones that are stereotyped as being the insecure ones, so we have a hard time understanding that you are afraid of rejection too. That being said, we still want you to be willing to put yourself out there, and…

17) Initiate. Say something. Tell us you have feelings for us. BE A MAN (cue Mulan music). Because the girl that’s worth waiting for is one who is going to wait for the guy to lead the way. A pushy girl may make things easy for you, but as fast as you get into that relationship is as fast as you’re getting out.

18) A sincere compliment is the key to a girl’s heart.

19) We want to be able to build you up, but don’t belittle yourself in order to force the encouragement. We’ll give it without asking, we promise.

20) As much as you can, try and notice the little things. We feel special when you tell us that you remember something about us.

21) Your attractiveness increases TEN-FOLD if you show us that you are good with children.

22) Poetry/notes/letters are not over-rated.

23) We like guys with a good sense of humor, but you don’t always have to try to be funny.

24) Don’t be a different person around your guy friends than you are one-on-one with us. It’s annoying when you are a different person depending on who you are hanging out with.

25) We will judge you based on the quality of your friends. Choose wisely.

26) We LOVE figuring out what you are passionate about. Don’t be afraid to tell us.

27) It’s great having someone to go out on a date with, to hold, to kiss, and do all of the things that people in a relationship normally do. But above all, if we have feelings for you, we really want to be your best friend. Because YOU are OURS.

28) As mentioned previously, being a leader is important. But being the SPIRITUAL leader is essential.

29) Can you dance? No? LEARN. (Singing is a great alternative.) 

30) We love hugs. The end.

There it is!  If you're a guy, what would you like to tell us?  Comment if you so desire.

Misaligned

midslihnrf. 
Here is a phenomenon about myself that I have never been able to understand.  Every once in a while, I start typing too quickly or too lazily and my hands get one key off.  Instead of making nice coherent sentences, everything comes out like s nunvh og hinnrtidh ( translation: a bunch of gibberish).  What I don't understand is that I always follow this illogical pattern:

1) Notice that all the letters I typed on the screen aren't actually forming words.
2) Frown
3) Erase the half page of gibberish.
4) Start typing again without fixing my hands.
5) Frown at my incompetence when I make the same mistake again. and again. and again.

It's like running the vaccum over the same piece of string 50 times in a row because you are convinced that the 51st time will be the charm.

The sad thing is, I do this with my life too.   I wake up one day and realize that everything is a mess and run around like crazy trying to fix everything and once I do, continue living in the same way with out realigning my life with God.  Sometimes, its because I'm just going too fast to notice that something is wrong or I'm too stubborn to admit that the problem is me.  Either way, I don't particularly like my life story being a bunch of gibberish.

Which is why I'm thankful for nights like this, when my schedule becomes so busy that I refuse to pick between four different plans and instead stay in my room and think and pray and realign. 

It's time to start making sense.

How's your heart?

Evidently there is only one way to learn the alphabet as a small child in your stereotypical American home.  You take the letters, set them to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and then impress your other four year old friends by rattling them off as fast as possible as many times as possible in one playdate.  This speed memorization by rote process of learning the English language had two side-effects.

1)  It took me about 10 years to figure out that the tune of the "Alphabet Song" was the same as our favorite celestrial nusrey rhyme.
2)  For the longest time, I thought "LMNOP" was a letter all in itself. 

Obviously, once I started reading I figured out that there were in fact 5 distinct letters.  Yet I think we still have a tendency to sing-song our way through conversations.  When I see someone I know, we always sing this little diddy.

"Hellohowareyou? Imgoodhaveaniceday."

Maybe its not to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but it may as well be.  To give myself some credit (since I'm writing this and I can)  I genuinely do care about how someone is doing and if I ever got an answer that wasn't "Greathowareyou?"  I would be more than willing to continue the conversation in that direction.  Yet I can count maybe three times that I have given a non-positive answer to that question myself and feel like that is the case for most people.

My friend and I were talking about a different question you could ask.  Her thought was to instead ask "How's your heart?"

At first, I thought this was a neat, if not mildly intrusive, idea.  Yet I kept thinking about it and tried to play out a scenario where I would ask someone that and it terrified me.  Am I really ready to know what's on someone's heart?  Do I secretly take comfort or at least rely on the fact that no one will really share their heart so that I don't drown in the depth of others? 

I hope that isn't the case.  More likely,  I'm too afraid to inquire after the condition of someone's heart because I don't want to have the questioned turned on me.