Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love. 

Here's my heart, 
Oh, take and seal it.
Seal it for thy courts above. 

I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel so lost and so everywhere at once that things get... confusing. 
There's all these questions about who I am and where I'm going and what I even want to do with my life. 
On one hand, I know the answer to all of those questions. 
On the other hand, I'm constantly wondering what if I'm wrong. 

Because there's so many places to go and people to meet and jobs to take and words to write and things to learn, how am I ever supposed to know if I'm in the right place? 

I think we put too much pressure on knowing. 
We spend too much time asking people what their major is or what school they're going to or how their love life is or what types of jobs they want or where they see themselves in ten years or when they are putting in their mission papers or when they are planning on having kids and things such as. 
And we spend hardly any time asking about dreams and feelings and the complete absurdness of it all. The complete lack of knowing. 
Why aren't we comfortable with not knowing? Why aren't we comfortable with the idea that what I want and love today might be 100% different when I wake up tomorrow? Maybe I simply don't know what I'm doing at all. Maybe I'm just sorta doing it.

And maybe this isn't just about whether I'm going to go for my masters after I finish my undergraduate or if I'm gonna join the peace corps or if I'm gonna get married or if I'm gonna serve a mission or whatever. Maybe I'm unsure about a lot more things than what I'm going to do tomorrow. 
Maybe my testimony isn't always a sure thing.
Maybe my love for God isn't always a sure thing. 
Maybe my faith in God's plan isn't always a sure thing. 
Maybe I  have no idea where I stand in His eyes and maybe tomorrow I'll be a saint and maybe two months from now I will be crying and praying and wondering who I am. 
And why aren't we okay with that?
Why do we get uncomfortable when people tell us that they don't know? That they've faltered, fallen off the wagon, were never totally sure? 
And then why do we try to explain it and make sense of it?
If someone comes to you and says, "I don't know if God exists today," you don't need to question it. You don't need to make sense of it. Because things like that don't always make sense. Sometimes there's no reason. 

We are prone to wander. 
We are prone to be confused. About anything and everything. 
Things don't always make sense and they don't need to. We don't need plans and structures and timelines set up for us. 
We just need to live this messy life and be confused sometimes and know exactly what we're doing other times. We need to change identities on a sometimes weekly basis.
And most of all, what we need is to know that this is okay. 
And that in the end, we will always end up exactly where we are meant to be. 
Just wander, and you'll get there. 

On being forgotten.

There are some people that just walk into my life and the moment I meet them I know that I will never be the same again.
It's not like things change right then, but over time, they kinda just ruin everything. They take things I've known all my life and make them in to something entirely different.
It's things like french fries and NyQuil and rubber-bands. Places like stairwells and seminary buildings and drama sheds.
And then they just kinda leave. Not all at once, just, you know, they slowly fade away. And that's just a part of life. One moment they are teaching you that you should never wear brown shoes with a black jacket and then the next thing you know it's five years since he said it and two years since he died. Time passes and the people who changed everything are just sorta gone.
I think, sometimes, I spend too much time thinking about them. I just spend all of this time thinking about how they changed everything and now they are gone and I think that they probably don't even remember me.  I'm just little insignificant Maren. It happens all too often that I'm walking through Walmart one day and I see a face of someone who hugged me when I was sad in the hallway one time and instead of saying hi, I look down and decide not to bother them. Not because I don't love them still, but because I think they've forgotten me and how awkward would that be to have to remind them of everything when it meant so much to me?
Of course this isn't exactly logical. But don't we all sorta do this to some extent? Convince ourselves that everyone else can make these huge differences in our lives but we can't do anything to theirs?
Wouldn't it be interesting to know who you've changed though?
Just for a moment I want you to realize that there are probably people who think about you on a weekly, if not daily, basis. They tell stories of  you and laugh about the good times. They stalk your facebook occasionally to make sure you're alright. They miss you.
You're not just someone who remembers everyone and was forgotten.
People leave, but that doesn't mean they forget.
Sometimes you walk into someone's life and they just know they will never be the same again.