But everything inside you
Knows there's more than what you've heard
There's so much more than empty conversations
Filled with empty words

-Switchfoot

[link] <<<< 100 Horse Challenge and 100 picture theme challenge!!!

i'll be back on for the summer. starting fresh and starting new

i'm sorry for dropping everything here. i've decided to try and finish the few trades i'd agreed to



my life had taken a turn for the worse a few months ago. i waas (and some days, still am) plagued by post traumatic stress disorder. the fall of 2008 is non existent in my head- it's as if i made myself erase that part of my life. a very stressful time, i was pushed to my limit. i broke. and i was so affected, i completely stopped art. i gave up. on everything.

for a long time.
but life is hopefull again. i renewed my relationship with God. clouds over my eyes, and heart, began to lift. i tried loving. i tried changing. the crush stopped, but the change continued. i grew stronger, trying to forget what had happened to my life. i had become depressed and worked day and night, while awake and dreaming, to try and recompensate for the months of my year that i had lost. it was too late to try and bring up my grades- they'd tanked after the season that took away everything. try as i might, i had lost too much in school to make it right for the end of the year. most of my grades are D's and C's.

and yet, i wake up each morning with something different to learn and enjoy and laugh at and cry about. i try to find the inspiration i had before that fall. i listen to new music, and i feel that God's pulling me closer to where i'm supposed to be. my family is...healing. many things went on through last fall and winter, and into the spring, that i wish had never happened. and even with all of this, i am better off then most.

a few months ago, during this pain, i realized what i wanted to do with my life. i am going to be a youth pastor. and a traveler. and a minister. and whatever god wants me to be- i'll be that. i know he sees the simple and complex ways that i enjoy and thrive in the world he created, the way it was before cars and polution and people destroyed it. the way the birds used to sing and the sun used to rise, the way the tides used to change, the way people sang and danced and simply enjoyed the world for what it was- the earth beneath their feet would breathe... the sky was bluer then ever, the rivers clean and free of possesion, and nothing had a name, unless it could call itself one.
maybe one day, we'll have that again.

i've decided to major in photography and youth ministry. i don't know where i'll end up along the way, but i know it'll be where He wants me to be. my life is going to continue to change and maybe even get worse somehow, but for now, for the summer, at least... i know i'm going to be okay. i'm so different then everybody, and yet i'm the same. we're all on the same road, we simply find the different ruts and footsteps made by others, and try to even them out or make them deeper. or we go away from the beaten path and choose our own way, make our own sidetracks, but we stillend up back on the wide and twisting road of life. God's going to show me where to go. he'll lead me down that path, and i'll try my hardest to follow.

thank you for reading, if you came this far, and i hope that god blesses you in everyway, even when you can't see it or don't know it.

<3
-Shay

i will open commissions starting this summer, end of june. please feel free to request!
i do not do trades, except for trying to finish what i had been requested of before. my apologies for having to leave for so long.