Fly little butterfly...

I knew an angel once. You may think I'm kidding, but I'm not. She had perhaps the most beautiful and loving soul of anybody I have ever known, or ever will know. Though I was young and my years with her were few, knowing her has forever shaped me into the person I am, and somehow, the person I am constantly growing in to.

The strength and grace that she maintained through her beautiful life have inspired me since I was a little girl bobbing awkwardly around the dance studio, and despite my absence from any studio for almost five months now, her memory continues to inspire me.

Her name was Terra Ann Johnsey [Rosborough] Caldwell. She was Mrs. Rosborough, she was Mrs. Johnsey, but to me, she was and is Ms. Ann, my ballet teacher.

She was strong, but she was so graceful. She taught me how to dance, but she also taught me how to love people unconditionally. She corrected my turn-out, but she also corrected my judgements of others. She developed me as a dancer, but she also developed me as a woman of God.

Her husband described her as having "infectious joy," and I don't know if he could have said it any better. No matter what hardship or difficult situation she was enduring, she came to class, taught, and had a smile on her face that brightened our moods. If we weren't feeling well, or were having a bad day, she would find some way to make it better, whether it was with one of her signature crushing hugs, or a piece of chocolate. Despite the seven years it has been since I saw her, I picture her bright smile as easily as ever.

Ms. Ann always encouraged us to make decisions based on our happiness. If something wasn't making us happy anymore, she encouraged us to stop doing it... even if it was dancing. She encouraged me to be my own person, and I do what I wanted, based on what was best for me.

And that is why, after 12 years, I was able to quit taking classes without feeling guilty. I knew that I wasn't happy, and I knew that she would have been the first in line to tell me that I needed to stop.

However, knowing her, and then losing her, has left me as one of her dancers forever. Without dance, I feel less connected to the world. I feel a little less in control. And, in what is one of the biggest ironies I know, a little less happy.

I've said it before, but I'll reiterate. Dance will always be a part of who I am. My heart will always yearn to be dancing, no matter what capacity I will be able to do so, because of the time I was blessed to have known her.

I saw God in this woman before I even knew to be looking for Him. She was amazing, and I want the whole world to know about her, so I start here by sharing this with you. Though I was young when we lost her, the pain of having lost her was no less, nor is the joy of having known her any diminished.

It is probably going to rain tomorrow, just like it has on October 23 for the past seven years. And I'll hold in my memory Ms. Ann, and sit for a while and enjoy some chocolate, and flutter my butterfly wings.

Hanging over my head...

I have always had a problem with consistency. I don't know why. Maybe it's because my attention span is short, but it is a struggle for me to have habits, much less good ones. In fact, the better it is for me, the harder it seems for me to habitualize it, be it exercise, eating well, or praying.

I don't like that. Actually, I can't stand it. My lack of consistency negatively affects so many things in my life-- my friendships, my schoolwork, this blog, my relationship with God (to name a few.)

This blog has been hanging over my head (along with the mold that is currently flourishing on my ceiling...). It taunts me. A reminder of (yet another) thing that I fell through on. I am sorry. Please do not take my inconsistency in posting to mean that I have not been seeing God. I have, and I do, in everything, every day.

I have been thinking about what the cause of my inconsistency is. I have come to the conclusion that it is because I do not know who I really am.

I always thought that was such a dumb thing to ask- "Who am I?" Um, hello, you're you, I'm me, what other answer are you looking for, can we move on, please?

Now, I consider- What makes me me? In searching for the answer, I find so many hollow, meaningless things. What I've realized is that I don't know who I am, because I don't know why I am.

Recently, somebody brought up that I am "different" from my sisters, in that I am singular from the other (more cohesive) three. When I was younger, I would have loved being told this. I was hell-bent on not being associated with them, because I was my own person, and too obviously amazing to be compared to anybody else. (Hah.)

But as my amazing, beautiful, smart, funny, successful sisters became more amazing, beautiful, smart, funny, and successful, I somewhere along the way decided that being like my sisters was something that I wanted. Yes, I'll take some of your sense of humor, your love for this musical instrument, your expression for this, your taste in music, and these bits and pieces of the way you look at the world.

And for the first time in years, I heard those words. "You are different from your sisters." I was taken aback. My first (shocked) thought was, "No, I'm not!" My world felt challenged. In recent years, I have built my life around being part of the set; one of four.

And then I thought about it.

I am different. I was different from the beginning, and I'm different now, because despite all the external changes I made to be more like my sisters, I remain me. And so much unhappiness (unknowingly) came from that. I was making decisions based on my sisters without any other justification (not saying this is their fault, certainly).

I think it's because I hate, and always have hated, being left out of things. Honestly, it is something that still gets me quickly upset over "nothing." When people are laughing, I have to know why. If I'm not let in on the joke, I am disappointed. But it has a deeper root. It brings back the feeling of my childhood, the feeling that I am living on the outside of a world.

I'll admit that sounds a little over-dramatic, but I am honestly telling you that in the deepest parts of my being, what I fear more that anything is being left alone, in an all-encompassing, terrifying, irreversible and uncontrollable sense of the word . I just wrote that now, without realizing it was true until the words were already there. But it's true. I will share with you a dream I've had since my childhood.

Now, realize something about me and dreams. I don't dream a lot, at least not ones that I can remember. And the ones that I do are often surreal, and totally weird. But there is one dream that stands out from all the rest, and it is the one dream that has recurred, at the very least, annually, for as long as I can remember.

The world- what's left of it- is dark. It is rocky and barren; a scene of desolation. I imagine it to be the end of the world. I am standing alone, in the bottom of a crater. And I'm calling. Not for my friends, not for my parents, but for my sisters. Calling for them, because they've left me behind somehow. My cries echo emptily in the still air.

.... oh, wonderful, this is going to make a great wedding toast when they all start getting married. Fits very neatly with the "I'm thankful you're moving out so I can have your room" story.

All joking aside, there is a tricky balance between being someone your sisters, and in the grander scheme the world as a whole, can stand, and being a person created of your own accord. I think it takes maturity to figure out, and is a scary time when you're at an age where approval is what your heart cries for more than anything else. (Gotta love those early teen years. Thank you Drake Middle School!)

And so I've realized I didn't know who I was because I hadn't accepted who I was. Without recognizing the me free from approval, influence, or regard from anyone else, I was literally blind to myself. I have to overcome that fear of being alone, and that irrational fear that if I am different, I will be left behind. (Because, ultimately (and as a bit of a tangent (wow, look at these triple parenthesis!)), when we love somebody, it is their differences from us that we are truly loving. The qualities we have in common with them we do not love because they have them, we love because we have them, and what we are loving is ourselves in them, as we all have that unfortunate tendency to love ourselves inordinately. Does that make sense?)

Now, every decision I make warrants a second look. Why I am doing this? Could it be that my failure to be consistent in something has to do with why I chose to do it in the first place?

Is my lack of consistency in this blog because I only chose to start it because it's what my sisters did? Do I really want to be doing this?

Honest answer- yes. But I need to take on reasons of my own. Because I want to share my love of God with other people. Because I want to ramble to the world, and pretend like the world is actually listening. Because it's what I do when it's 4:3o in the morning, and I can't sleep.

I see now that it's not what I do that's been bothering me, but rather, it's why I do it. And with acceptance of the fact, that yes, why thank you, I am different, I can rest easily. Though I am of a set of four, I am unique, and still have so much growing ahead of me.