Day 6: Benches

Gethsemane: I have this friend. She's wild. She speaks her mind. She loves passionately. She tells you how she feels. She forgets about filters. She has these fears that I giggle at. I know I'm an awful friend. But with these traits, comes a friend who loves you is honest, who drops anything for you. She listens to you. She laughs with you. I used to think we would never mesh, but I have never been able to say I have this friendship that keep my faith pushing forward and that craves adventure more than anything. You should find yourself a friend like that. Anyways, this morning she sent me a tweet she saw. It said ,"everyone has their gethsemane crisis where you are given the choice to say not my will but yours be done. It sets your eternity". Do you ever have changes or new things in your life, and you want nothing more than to grasp on to it. Hold it tightly. You're saying God I trust you, but really inside you're expecting your plans. Career, financial, relational, ministry. You name it. Or you start to let his plans come in but at any moment of uneasiness, you go back to those clenched palms. Those fighting hands that say no. Reading that tweet really puts it in perspective. What if Jesus had done that? What If he had clenched those fists and said okay I guess god. Would he have let Peter continue to defend him and change the plans? Would he have run when Peter attacked? Would he have had the strength to carry his cross the whole way? Would he have begged the people for a chance?

It would have all been different. Less poetic, romantic, mysterious, confusing, but it wouldn't have set his eternity. Our eternity.

What am I missing out on when I forget to stretch those arms out, lift up my palms and choose to say not my will but yours be done?

Symbol: In Philadelphia, the liberty bell is there. I figured it would be a neat bell with a story. You turn the corner and you see this thing and it's small and less majestic than I pictured. I back tracked and decided to read the museum. This want just a bell. This was a symbol of their freedom. This bell rang during the constitutional convention, it was carried away when the British attacked to protect it, women threw their babies on it to grab any piece of what this bell stood for. They dreamed of a free future for them. This little bell soon became a symbol around the world for free liberated people.

Taylor: Miss Swift is in town. It's my mission to find her. #girlcrush

Pensive: I remember the weirdest things. I feel like my head is this storehouse for facts that are strange. We got in to Philadelphia and I kept thinking there was a famous publishing place here I wanted to see but I couldn't remember which I saw the Curtis Publishing Company. I knew there was something exciting about this. This was it. The publisher of the Saturday evening post, the beginning Of comic books, the change in the focus of publications. The beginning of women publications. If you know me, I have an obsession with books. I have a list of 243 books that I want to read. Classics, philosophical, children's, and so much more. The entire works of Steinbeck. Lewis. This place helped out so many of those ideas out there within reach of our fingertips. Those thoughts that you can get lost in and forget your world for that chapter and be a part of theirs and you subconsciously allow your world to interpret theirs. Their building was just a magical as what they've done.

Trapped: you drive down New York. Honking. Rushing. Calling cabs. Lights. Hotdog smells. Foreigners. Languages accents. Wrapped in this place. After I got a little used to this, I realized you can no longer see the sky. These people could go months without seeing a sunset. You feel sort of trapped by a cage of buildings and people. When I finally got to Central Park, the sounds stopped. The cars vanished. There were runners, dogs, kids playing, and finally that sky was bak. I love the east coast, but I wasn't made to live here. Tourist only. I need my sunsets, coffee shops. All I wanted to find was a bench to sit and soak it up. Where you soo take it in, rejuvenate and head back in to the day. I live off of benches.

They weren't lying: when they told you this was the city that never sleeps, they weren't lying. My pictures below show what this city looks like at midnight. It feels like the sun is out from the lights. The rush of people doesn't ebb and flow. It literally just keeps going. Santee shuts down at 10. This girl ain't used to this.

G. Bliss

Ps. One of my favorite stories, Once, is on broadway :)