All The Wild Horses

 

        So, its been awhile.  I may have had many things to write about but, I chose not to.  This is a common theme in my life right now.  I may have many interesting things to say, but I choose not to.  For whatever reason, I have felt like being a little selfish with my thoughts.  I do have something to write about now, or perhaps hash out in my own mind.  Whatever it is that I am doing, this seemed like a logical place to do it.  Maybe you can gain some insight from it.   Here it goes....

        I  think if I had not had so many strings holding me to one place my whole life I would have wandered more.  I have a restless spirit.  Staying in one place too long makes me anxious.  I long for adventure and to be free.  I am a little seed of dandelion pollen, a drifter, a runner, a wild thing.  I was not meant to be caged or stay in one place so long.  I was meant to be scattered by the wind or by the air from little children's lips and sent to a new place to be planted, grow, and then scattered once again.  A grand cycle of freedom and new beginnings.  Yes, I know you can have new beginnings and freedom even if you stay in the same place but for the sake of this work of writing, lets keep it simple.

        Perhaps a drifter is a more adequate description.  Free from the emotional responsibilities of relationships and homes, they roam from town to town, from city to city, from place to place.  Their life, one giant adventure.  Unburdened by people's opinions of them, they isolate themselves and their favorite traveling companion (Usually a dog, or a pretty rock, or a guitar, or a mute orphan child they found on the side of the road. Something that doesn't talk is preferred....perhaps that's why I love Johnny so much.) and go where the road takes them.  No rhyme or reason, no vision or purpose....oh wait, that is the hitch with using him as the example.  No purpose.  I have a purpose, therefore I cant be a drifter.  Rats.

        One thing I am most definitely, is a runner.  No, I am not athletic in any way shape or form.  I don't think I can run 100 ft without becoming uncomfortably winded.  I am, however, an emotional runner.  I run from bad feelings; pain, anger, sorrow, discomfort.  I run from things that might be dangerous to me; being truly emotionally vulnerable, letting my heart do the thinking every once in awhile, conflict, change, bees, potential muggers and molesters (If you don't run from the last three things listed, I would definitely encourage you to start.  Bees, muggers and, molesters are not to be trifled with).  I run from things that could be good for me; being truly emotionally vulnerable, letting my heart do the thinking occasionally, conflict, change.  Funny how things that might ultimately be good for you seem dangerous at the time......I don't like that.  Not to say that there aren't times when being emotionally vulnerable or being guided by ones emotions are definitely not good ideas but....you get the gist.
       I get spooked and run in the opposite direction at the first sign of strife.  When something looks like it might be going south, I abandon ship so I don't have to go down with the sinking boat.  I am 100% flight...absolutely no fight.  Self preservationist. All. The. Way.  Instead of dealing with the bad feelings, I put them away for later and distract myself with happier thoughts and feelings.  I have been getting better in that area and find myself trying to make sure I address feelings when they arise.  Happy clap for improvement!  I still find myself running from those things that could be dangerous to me though.  Instead of investigating to see whether it might be good for me after all, I put up my wall, turn tail around and, head for the hills.....I don't know what this section had to do with the rest of this blog except for the fact that when your a runner, you have to run somewhere away from where you started.  Once you finally tire of running, you settle in the random place where exhaustion found you until something spooks you and gives you another reason to run.  The runner is always looking for somewhere they can proceed with their normal day to day living.  Only when something interrupts their living pattern do they need to run somewhere new and start afresh.
        Interesting how all of these examples live in some kind of cycle.  They never just stay in one steady direction.  There is always somewhere that the pattern must start over.  Absolutely riveting.
        It is not always running that drives me to go somewhere else though.  There's more to it than that.  I have the desire to see things.  Collect knowledge.  Explore.  To run free and uninhibited.  To have adventure.  I am the wild thing.  Living in the wild.  Eating, breathing, exploring, the wild.  Roaming throughout the wild.  Being wild.  Dissatisfied with being one place for the rest of its life.  There is the constant desire to move on for the sake of just moving on.  To go, just to go.  It has no motives for doing so.  That's just what it does.
        For some reason, Wild Horses have always been the perfect example of a wild thing to me.  One of my favorite movies as a kid: Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron.  (Which I recently learned is not everyone else's favorite movie?!?!?!.....which, is stupid because its excellent...Bryan Adams does the soundtrack.  Get with it people.)  I discovered this song by Ray LaMontagne the other day called "All the Wild Horses", which just blew me away.  I could see so much of myself in the lyrics....even though it was about animals.

  "

All the wild horses ,

Tethered with tears in their eyes,

May no man's touch ever tame you,

May no man's reigns ever chain you, 

And may no man's weight ever defray your soul, 

And as for the clouds, Just let them roll away."

        I hate being tied to one place. I love my people who I walk through life with but, there is always the deep churning in my chest to drive past the exit to my house and just keep going until I run out of gas.  The restlessness to go somewhere else, the frustration of having to stay put.  The cage of a day in day out routine.  I need spontaneity, I need to be able to not have a plan.  I need to be able to wake up every morning without knowing how this day will go...within reason.
         No person can keep me from being wild.  I won't change who I am to be more docile and tame or, to fit what someone else thinks I should be.  No circumstance can keep me from being free.  I won't allow others opinions to dictate the road that I choose or the decisions I make.  No oppression can make me give up.  I won't stop fighting against obstacles or things that try to break me. I will come out the winner in the end.  

TAKE HEART

  Do you ever go through a dark period?  When you feel cold and dead inside, like nothing will ever go right again or the sun won't rise again tomorrow?  Your just stuck in this darkness;  this yucky, funky, depressed, comatose state, where you feel half alive?  Like something inside you is dead?  

 

Yeah....sometimes I feel that way too. 

Not right now.  But I have before.  

It womps.  Big time.  

  If the person that is feeling that way is you, I want to personally say, I'm sorry, to you.  If a person made you feel that way, they don't have the right to, and it wasn't okay for them to do that.  If your circumstances made you feel that way, there is hope at the end, I promise.

  Can I tell you something else?  God is always faithful to follow through on His promises.  I am dead serious.  If God tells you something you can bet your bottom dollar He will do it.  It doesn't always seem that way but thats because we can't always see the way that He is getting things done....sometimes the way that He fulfilled the promise is so small that it goes easily overlooked.  Or, He's just waiting until the perfect time.  

  The best thing about this whole darkness, sad, depressed, funky, blech, place...Is that if your trusting Him, your gonna get out.  If you place your everything in Jesus, He will get you the heck out of there.  It may be a slow gradual transition, or you just may wake up one day and look outside your window to see the sun for the first time in months (or years even)!  You will feel renewed, re-energized, ALIVE!!!!  It will be like you were never in that pitty, gross, sad, place to begin with.  Everything will be illuminated and seem brighter and cheery.  

 

 In the words of Mrs. Doubtfire "Hold on!  Help is on the way dear!"  It will get better.  You won't always feel that way.  It feels rough right now, but just wait, oh wait till you get there.  I am at the top, looking down right now, and the view is great!  The best part of being at the top, is being able to see down and understand why you had to climb so hard.

Waiting for you at the top, 

Halei <3

Just a lil bit.....

Hi.  I changed the name of my blog.  It's now Halei A Little Bit.  Which has a funny story behind it....Would you like to hear?  I promise you will not be disappointed. :)

Once upon a time when I was still a wee lass, people would ask me what my name was.  Since, at that point in time I could speak, I would reply "Halei Alittlebit Clark".  Some of you are thinking "Oh gee, I really hope Caryn was not loopy enough to give that poor girl such a wacky middle name"  Fear not, she was perfectly sane, as proved on my birth certificate where it says Halei Elizabeth Clark.  However, Elizabeth is a really hard name to pronounce for someone whose only 2 years old.  The End.

Great story right? I told you I was going to bring it in the story department!!! (In real life, I am gangster leaning as I say this)  But, the point is that there was something in who I called myself at that point that still rings true.  I am not just one solid mass of consistency.  I am eclectic.  If I were a living room, the decorations would consist of a giant purple couch, a cow print chair with a little flowery ottoman, an assembly of garden gnomes arranged in a playful manner upon the mantle, a table made out of one of those giant spools that could hold enough string to sew a pair of pants for everyone in China, and some really legit porthole windows (because if we're being honest, porthole windows are SOOOO COOOL!)....see what I'm saying?  There are so many facets to who I am that just don't make sense when you put them all together...but it's who I am.

A little bit  of everything <3

I'm Halei Elizabeth Clark.
I'm a little bit crazy.
I'm a little bit too honest.
I'm a little bit shy.
I'm a little bit peculiar.
I'm a little bit naive.
I'm a little bit mischievous.
I'm a little bit creative.
I'm a little bit awkward.
I'm a little bit scatter-brained.
I'm a little bit misunderstood.
but,
I'm a whole lot of me.

and that is better than anything else I could ever be.

I Am His and He is Mine

So....I don't actually feel like blogging right now.  But, I want to keep things current for you.

Two weeks ago, I had to make a very hard decision.  The decision to follow God wholeheartedly and step out in obedience and in faith.  God told me that it was time to end something that was very near and dear and close to my heart.  I had to let go of something I loved so much, I didn't know how I could live without it.  With everything in my being I wanted to fight it, and not do what He urged me to.  Even so, I did it.  It was very hard but, it was right.  In return I received peace and a settled spirit that just would not come from anything else, but thats not the least of it.  The most amazing thing is that, in the midst of my broken heart's troubles, he spoke to me.  He pulled me out of the pit and called me by name, He spoke to me and said "Halei, let's go."  So i'm following right now and He just won't stop talking.  Which as precious as it is, sometimes it's hard to handle so much at once.

  I will tell you about somethings God has revealed to me in this time. I'm supposed to be a missionary right now so I'm going to Mexico this week, then possibly Peru over Christmas, and Honduras next summer.  Exciting right?!?!?!  I know :) Also, I recently I had to cut my hair.  It was dry and dead and the ends were split and would keep splitting upward if I didn't cut it.  Now, my hair looks healthy and fresh and sassy and bold.  God gave me an illustration based on my haircut.  Right now, I'm in a new season of my life.  I'm cutting out everything in my life that is unhealthy.  I'm getting rid of everything thats not breathed by Him and allowing myself to heal, so that I can have a more wonderful, vibrant, and full life.  I had to cut off my unhealthy hair that was damaged from lots of styling without any protection and in the same fashion, I have to cut off the parts of my life that are damaged and broken from the living I did without any covering or protection so that my heart can be whole and perfect again.
 

  Now, I told you I was following and it's hard.  Remember when I posted that blog about the Brook Fraiser Ligertwood???  About that song Like Incense/Sometimes by Step.  It has become my prayer.  I didn't understand the significance that song would hold in my life but, I get it now.  "Please still my anxious urge toward rebellion, let love keep my will upon it's knees."  As a young child I frequently engaged in what my Mom affectionately calls,  a battle of the wills, where I would struggle and struggle with her about doing what I wanted to.  I would fight her tooth and nail, with vigor and strength than is rarely seen in a toddler...and toddlers possess quite a bit of those two.  I would have temper tantrums that lasted for 3-4 hours over simple things.  Non-stop screaming and wailing because I didn't get my way.  It got to the point where they would have to put me in my room and let me scream it out.  I would throw my toys and pull the drawers out of my dresser so they had to lock all my things in the closet.  Just me and my bed for hours screaming because I needed to get my way.  Praise God they left me in there, otherwise I'm pretty sure I would have become some sort of delinquent.  Anyways, eventually they subsided and I began to realize that no matter what my parents would always win.  Why?  Because their will was stronger.  Currently I'm reliving my toddler days and engaging in a battle of the wills with God.  If I don't back down, I'm pretty sure he is going to put me in my room for hours by myself until I'm done screaming.  I don't want to go to my room so, I'm fighting with God against my own will in order to do what is best for me.  Unfortunately I haven't stood up to my will in quite some time, so it's grown to a monstrous size.  So be praying for me as I slay the dragon.

(I know this bloggity blog is somewhat all over the place....Are you following so far? haha)

  The last thing before I wanted to share before I left you all was something that i saw and heard on Owl City's blog this morning,   Just go read and listen.  http://owlcityblog.com/2010/10/25/my-hope-is-found/
You'll be ever so glad you did.  Also, if you want to save that awesome lil song to your computer go to this link:http://owlcityblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/In-Christ-Alone.mp3 and right click and click the save as option.  Then you'll have it as an MP3 and you can put it on your ipod, or make it a cd, or do whatever you want with it :)

Love love love love love you sooooo much whoever you are thats reading this,
Halei the Sassy

Not What I Expected/An Interesting Turn of Events

  So today, I had it completely mapped out what I was going to write.  My hands were eager to spill out onto the blank world wide web exactly what thoughts rambling around in my head needed to be shared with everyone.  Then, I had to suddenly take a break and drop someone off somewhere.  While I was on my way back, I just happened to have my Hillsong Live CD playing.  So i turned the dial to track no. 7 and I listened.  Thinking about the words and humming softly to myself.  My thoughts turned to my life the past couple of months.  I've been waiting for something that would inspire me to draw closer to God.  An experience that would cause His spirit to fill me and just light me up and set me aglow for all the world to see.  Sometimes I astonish myself with how little I think things through.

  It's been said forever that God is a relational being.  God gave his only Son so that he could have a personal relationship with you.  God desires to be close to you more than anything.  He loves you.  Those sentences have been ringing in my ears since the moment I heard them...and I thought I understood them.  Still, here I was waiting for him to do something.  Then it occurred to me as I'm listening to Brooke Fraser Ligertwood sing these words:

May my prayer like incense rise before You

The lifting of my hands as sacrifice

Oh Lord Jesus turn Your eyes upon me

For I know there is mercy in Your sight

Your statutes are my heritage forever

My heart is set on keeping Your decrees

Please still my anxious urge toward rebellion

Let Love keep my will upon its knees

To all creation I can see a limit

But Your commands are boundless and have none

So Your Word is my joy and meditation

From the rising to the setting of the sun

All Your ways are loving and are faithful

The road is narrow but Your burden light

Because You gladly lean to lead the humble

I shall gladly kneel to leave my pride

  Halei.  Relationships are work.  You have to work with God slowly and with perseverance to change yourself.  Rome wasn't built in a day.  I'm sure at this point other drivers on the road were pointing at me with wide open mouths, ogling at the brilliantly illuminated light bulb floating above my head. Have you ever had a moment where you truly understood something that you already understood?  Yeah...me too.

  Then the music shifted.  The drums started to beat heavier, the voices were singing in unison, and the Holy Spirit gave me a vision.  I was standing on a giant hill, I could see everything.  My hair was blowing behind me in the wind looking gloriously unkempt.  My face was beautiful despite my wild appearance.  I looked pure and natural and I was glowing.  Beams of sparkly light were shooting from my body and they shined light on everything below me.  My arms were in the air and I sang just like the people in the song 

Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You

  Whenever think of who I am, I always see the wild girl on top of the hill with her hair flying helter skelter.  This girl was soo much more beautiful and more pure and natural and she was GLOWING!!!  I wanted to be her so badly. 


I realized I can be her.  If I work relationally with God, If I stop sitting around waiting for him to just make me into that, I can be her.  I want to share this experience with you guys and for you to listen to the song and go back and read this entry again while its playing.  Then at the last part ask Him to show you your potential...what you could be.  Ask Him to show you, your very own version of what He showed me.  If you want, and I'd really appreciate it if you did, post a comment of what He showed you.  You can do it anonymously even.  


HERE IS THE SONG



Click on the big words right above this sentence. 


I am anxious to hear what the result of this experiment is.  Also it helps if you turn up the volume really loud. 


Have a fabulous Thursday.

Not All of us Were Meant for Toy Making

Sooooo


  It's been a massive amount of time since I wrote last and I know you guys are all dangling from your computer chairs (When I wrote this I imagined you as a miniature version of yourself grasping to the edge of a giant chair, ready to fall to the floor at any moment where you would be left to the mercy of the dog sitting next to your feet)  wondering, "Whats going on with Halei?  Why did she desert us like this?  Is she ever coming back?"


  The answer is..... Of course I am you goose. ;P 


  I just feel like a giant lame pants because I have absolutely nothing to write about.  Well, that's not true.  Really, I just don't feel like I have anything bold or exciting or magical to share.  Lot's of things happen to me, they just aren't so awesome I want to shout them out to the whole world.  When people read me, I want them to see something so awesome that it blows their socks, shoes, and toe rings off.  


  But, since activities aren't all that exciting, I will tell you about scary things.   You guys can deal with scary right?  It's October, so here's my scary post about really scary stuff. Legit scary things like, my thoughts.  Mostly my thoughts actually.  My thoughts are scary.  Scary to explore and scary to share.  Sharing makes you vulnerable and being vulnerable is scary. That makes sharing a scary thing.  Also, just plain exploring the going-ons of my cranium is a dangerous activity as well.  So bare with my you salty brutes, as I dangle me-self from the plank e'er so recklessly.     


  I am lonely.  


*GASP*  "But, Halei you have all-"...Silence! This is my blog foo! (and if you'd just wait until the end for questions and comments I'd radically appreciate it)


I have friends, yes.  I have a boyfriend, yes. (most wonderful boyfriend ever actually)  I have family, yes.  I have a Saviour and a Father, yes.  There's something still left that I don't have and want desperately.  I'll prelude with a little mini bio about me:


  I'm different.  No one is like me.  Not a single person.  I am unique.    I'm extraordinarily unique.  I don't mean to sound boastful, rather, i'm just trying to to express my singularity.   I see the world differently, I react to things differently, and I think about things way more differently, than anyone I know.  No one desires the same exact things I do, no one wants what I wants.  I've grown accustomed to living this way since it's basically how it's been my whole life. 


  I'm somebody who sees things like a child.  I look at life through gloriously unexposed glasses, through eyes that are so blinded by the sun's splendor that I fail to see the ugliness in everything around me.  I measure something's beauty or coolness by how absolutely, flat on the face, awestruck, it leaves me.  Everything is an experience.  Everything is a miracle.  I am childlike in several different ways: my spirit, my mannerisms, sometimes my logic,my enthusiasm, but mostly my heart.  People are quick to judge my childlike whimsical personality and they make harsh and cruel assumptions.  "Immaturity" one will claim, "A facade; clearly a front" others will deduce.  Hopefully you'll get where I'm coming from when I tell you that a lot of the time I walk around feeling defeated and misunderstood.


  Which is honestly where the loneliness stems from.  Misunderstanding.  If there were someone else out there who knew what it's like.  Who saw what I saw, and felt how I felt, and thought how I thought.  I wouldn't be lonely, I wouldn't be misunderstood.  There would be someone who I could share my struggles with, who gets it. I know they exist.  There are at this exact moment in time 6,872,890,499  people living in the world.  There has to be one who is just like me.  


  I feel like Tarzan.  Living in a world of apes (metaphorically) and being a man.  Living your life being different from everyone, always feeling slightly off.  Never feeling truly 100% accepted.  Imagine how wonderful it is for him to meet someone just like him.  Knowing he isn't by himself.  That there is someone out there who knows what its like and understands his feelings, emotions, thoughts and what causes them.  Someone who isn't going to look at him with disgust and think "Gee, what a wierdo."  


  I will say though...for a wierdo, I do have it pretty much made.  I still have some ape (again metaphorically) friends who think I'm a lil cooky but befriend me in spite of it, and I have that crazy elephant kid who isn't like me but is unique and different from everybody in his own way and has to deal with the same things I do.  Then, you have those people like the ape mom boyfriend ;p. The people who look entirely past any difference whatsoever.  Who are unconditionally excepting of you, who do their absolute best to try to understand anyways, and who will tell off all of those who misjudge and hastily discredit you.  Those people are awesome and I just adore them.


  Whatever role you play in my mixed up jungle fairy tale,  I appreciate you all.  You guys keep me going and I'm really sorry I haven't been the most consistent author.  I'm working on improving.  Eventually I will be perfect. (thats a lie just in case you couldn't sense my sarcasm)
  
Love from the Land of Misfit Toys,


Halei Clark- The Elf Who Wanted to be a Dentist

Boots and Me....

So today, I purchased some boots.  At Cavender's.  These aren't my first boots.  I've owned three pairs before.  But these boots are special.  They are the boots that will stay with me the rest of my life.  Needless to say, I am absolutely in love with them and have yet to take them off of my feet since the minute i returned from the store.  Isn't it amazing how names like Cavender's, Shepler's, and Justin's Boot Outlet Store can make you all of the sudden feel like riding a horse and pulling out your pistol?

  These boots mean a lot to me.  They aren't just a prop in a little girls wardrobe.  They are a symbol of me breaking away.  Freeing myself of all the crap I've buried myself in.  You see, the person I am today is only a small glimpse of the girl I was.  I've hidden myself away and tried to be somebody else.  At heart I've always been a small town country girl.  The one who you see in movies riding bareback with her hair falling out of braids as her trusty mare buttercup canters through a field of flowers on her parents land....well, perhaps not that exact girl but you get the gist.

   I've stumbled through high school trying to fit into the crowd.  Trying to be the girl who always looks absolutely flawless, the one who makes every body's jaw drop as she walks by.  The girl who wears all the fashion forward clothes and listens to the cool music.  Don't get me wrong, on some level I am the girl who wears those clothes and listens to that music.  But it's become all I am now.  If you met me a year ago, you might never have known I'm the girl who likes to drive down dirt roads with her Pops listening to George Strait and Brooks & Dunn (sad face that they're splitting).

   I'm the girl who likes to fish and ride horses and be outdoors all day long.  I'm the girl who would swim in a creek if I wasn't afraid there would be all sorts of scary critters in there.  I like to climb trees and drive out to where I can see all the stars in the sky...  I love the stars :D  I'm the girl who lives with her grandparents and her mom and dad in the small town of Krum, TX.  The one who wears braids to sleep every night, wakes up in the morning and pulls her boots on to go help feed the horses.  The one who gets back from mucking out the stalls to change into her overalls or her long prairie skirt.  The one who looks in the mirror with no makeup on and thinks she's beautiful no matter what anybody else says.  I'm the girl who isn't afraid of having a deep emotional talk with her mom because she hates to cry.  I'm the girl who runs to her daddy at the first sign of any trouble.  I'm the girl who doesn't let a single persons opinion impact who I am.

  In the words of Miranda Lambert " I got lost in this whole world and forgot who I am" from the song The house that built me. The first time I heard that song on the radio it dawned on me.  I had forgotten about that girl who was me. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I was running from myself, that after I moved away from Krum and fell in love with a boy for the first time, I changed.  I stopped being me.  The pressure was too much and I wasn't ready to handle it.  So I lost myself.

  But, not to worry friends.  I'm going back to my roots to see if I can capture the heart and the essence of the thirteen year old girl I used to be.  With the help of Jesus and these brand spanking new boots I think I've got this in the bag.  I'm going to move forward and be me again.  With the help of my Father guiding my steps, I know I can do it.  He's restoring my confidence and it won't be long now until I am back to my old self.  :D

In conclusion I would also like to ask the question: WHO is Conway Twitty??????  I keep hearing about him but I'm not really sure I've ever heard of him.  I will give the person who solves this mystery a crayon and a large hug.

Blessings to you on this fine Tuesday,
Halei <3