just a little rant because I'm human and it's okay to rant. right?

I'm just... I'm frustrated.

     I'm so self-centered. Everything is seen through a lens of "how does this affect me?" And then afterwards, I take off those glasses and see everything clearly and blur things again with tears of frustration and annoyance. I want to take those "all about me" glasses and smash them under the heel of my shoe.

     I tell myself that I'm not a very self-absorbed person. When I was younger, I was told often by pastors and my mom's friends and nice stranger ladies at the grocery store that I was such a well behaved little girl (not bragging here: I'm was a little introvert who didn't talk except for please and thank you and I have a mother and father who know where it's at when raising children).

     But now I'm in the real world, where things don't like to happen the way I think they should. People don't act the way I think they should. If I didn't want to play on the playground at preschool recess, I didn't have to. It was okay if I just wandered around, singing Sound of Music and eavesdropping on my teachers' conversations (Sorry, Mrs. R and Mrs. D). Now it seems like people are forcing me down the slide. I don't want to go! 

     School isn't sitting at the art table drawing all morning anymore. It's blood and sweat and tears and due dates and research and periodic tables that I don't want to memorize and geometric constructions I don't want to draw. It's late nights because I am too tired in the morning - a vicious cycle of sleeplessness. It's constantly throwing off the stress and inwardly screaming for God to make it easier.

     Friends aren't the little girls who invite me over to make soap and play with American Girl Dolls after preschool anymore. They are so, SO much better, and yet it takes more to keep those friendships alive. Business gets in the way of relationships. Online school means friends who live across the country, or at least a few hours away.

     Money isn't something that just comes with having a lemonade stand just for fun anymore. I need it to keep my commitment with Compassion. I need clothes (don't worry - I'm, like, getting clothed and stuff. I'm provided for. But it's hard when you're that girl who wears a sweatshirt and jeans to church because you wore the only two good dresses you have the last two weeks, and you see all of your friends with amazing clothes and everything...). It's no longer as simple as owning a favorite sweater and wearing it every day.

     Prioritizing according to the Bible is hard in a world where the culture wants you to do otherwise. To be honest, I didn't think this particular aspect of culture would hit me this hard at this point in my life. Grades are just the most important thing if I want to go to college. Grades... grades... grades. I always thought I was a pretty good student. Like most kids, failing tests was a nightmare for me, but it was never one I actually experienced until recently.

     It makes me wonder if I'm becoming less of a person. I know... it's just called "real life," and I'm no longer in my little homeschool bubble of "I'm accepted all the time for exactly what I am by everyone and everyone thinks I'm awesome and I don't get graded on my tests because I'm young and my parents don't want me to find my worth in grades and I am content with my clothes and my talents and my life and YEAH."

     I know I'm getting all teenage-angst-y on y'all, but life was just so much SIMPLER as a little kid. There was no poking and prodding if you mentioned a guy twice in the same hour. No yearning for independence, because, quite honestly, grown-ups have to do work and that's no fun! The only good reason for being a grown-up is you can pretty much do whatever you want. Right? RIGHT?!?!

Hah!

     Ugh. What a lie. I'm not even totally grown-up yet and I know that's a lie. I know people talk about "middle-aged crisis" and all that, but what about "teenaged crisis?" It's haaard, folks. And you know that! Because I know that pretty much all of my readers are either in the middle of this or have "been there, done that." Y'all know. 

     I'm just overwhelmed. Like I said. Screaming. God is there, I know. I constantly have to zoom out and see more than my computer screen and my bedroom walls. I constantly have to stop comparing myself to others. Seriously. I have to JUST. STOP. (link)

     It scares me sometimes when I think that my life before I turned... well, say fifteen, was pretty much trial-free. I might as well have been wearing a "life is good" t-shirt 24-7. Maybe I didn't think so then, but gosh darn it, I look back and that's totally what was happening. Sure, I thought I had such a hard life sometimes. But then I hit my first real trial, when God knew I was ready for one. If he had asked me, "Sarah, are you ready for a trial?" I would have said, "um, no! MY LIFE IS PERFECT, GOD. DON'T TAKE AWAY EVERYTHING I'VE DREAMED OF." And, well, he did. To my fifteen-year-old brain (I know, I know, that was only a year and a half ago. But the then-brain and the now-brain are wayyy different). From then on, my life has been different. It will continue to be marred by the results of The Fall, until I die and leave it all behind for eternal felicity in heaven. That scares me, to a degree. Just being honest.

    Today at my incredible, amazing, mine-is-better-than-yours youth group, we talked about how to deal with it when God says "no" to our prayers. I have to say, not my topic of choice; at least not at first glance. When we got into it, I learned a lot about how God has something better for us when he says "no." A lot of my youth group leaders said they were glad God said "no" to them in a lot of situations, because things ended up being infinitely better for them. I'm not entitled to share any of the stories, but dude, you should have heard them.

     The thing is (whew, I'm not writing a paper so I can say "the thing is"), I do believe that. I totally do. My real question is: WHEN? When do I get to hear the other half of the story, the half that comes after the "no"? The part when everything works out to my advantage?

     Well, would ya look at that. Just spilled to the internet. Heh. Why not. It got a little bit off of my chest, and maybe someone will read this and kind of feel a little bit better about life.

Hopefully there's some stuff in there that isn't totally depressing.

Also I wrote this in two different sittings, so the first half might have a different feel than the second half. You might say that mood swings and I are on a first-name basis.

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