On a walk today, I realized I’d rather be confident and wrong than unsure and right. There’s much to be said about the health of a confident mind vs. its counterpart. Boldness is rich, uncertainty seems weak. Afterward, I picked up Paul Harvey’s America and I’m surprised at Mr. Harvey’s unyielding contributions to Christianity through his broadcasts. Without his identifiable brand and army of an audience, I wonder if Harvey would have survived this generation of patriarical impartiality– that’s what I’m calling America’s abolition of remnants that credit God for this nation and those that declare the allegiance our founding father’s had to His Majesty. I would have loved to have heard Harvey sound the trumpets on the newest wave of “political correctness”. It’s a shame the Harvey days of, what I’m claiming as uprightness, are disappearing with the sands of liberal times.

On another note, I’ve read quite a few scripts, speeches and writings by Mr. Harvey. One particulary captured my attention as a powerful, seductive challenge. He said “Trust me to paint pictures on the mirror of your mind and I will let you feel such agony and ecstasy, such misery and majesty… as you would never be able to feel by merely looking at it.” I lose my breath just typing it. I’m a videographer by trade, but I think Harvey’s daring confidence has made me a believer in air waves!

It’s amazing, scripture has all the answers I need and sometimes I fail to recognize the truth. There’s an old story about a man drowning, pleading with God to save Him. The guy dies. When he gets to heaven, he asks God, ‘why didn’t you try to save me’? God says ‘I sent the boat and the helicopter.’ This rings true in my life a lot. Why do I insist on things be done my way? My thoughts are but a small speck in God’s infinite wisdom and possibilities. Failure is not falling down, but staying down. Thank God He has the patience to see me stand back up. And thank God for the ‘boat’ and ‘helicoptor’!

Have you ever wanted to cry so bad the tears wouldn’t come out? Or prayed that this life was all just a dream? Each day when I think it can’t get any worse, something comes along and pushes me just a little closer to the edge. I want someone or something to blame, but all I have is myself.

I’m trying to stay positive. My hopes are hyped up on optimistic opinions and then the inevitable happens and I’m right back to where I was yesterday and the day before that, in a miry pit of hopelessness. What a crude joke this is! Lord, I seriously need a break! To the devil and his constituents, give it a rest! I search scripture for a glimmer of light, but I time out in darkness. I feel like I can’t break what has me bound; I can’t escape the cycle of waking up to a meaningless existence. My soul hides from the days and longs for the nights. Freedom feels like just a tear away, but my hardened heart won’t even wimper.

I have disappeared; leaving behind no evidence of where I am, not a phone call or google search will reveal the depths of where I’ve gone. I need an escape from life, a few days of uninterrupted peace. A place where the burdens, drama and realities can not find me and distractions won’t be mistaken as answers. Life and love is meaningless in a lost soul. It is aching. That is how I feel waking up in paradise and falling asleep to magenta sunsets.

I hope to get lost in a fantasy that brings out my inhibitions and unlocks fear. I crave the raw core of my heart to be revealed. What am I most afraid of? What is it I want more than anything in the world? I pray for a revelation of biblical magnitude and the strength to follow it.

I like to eat dinner in the bathtub. I write poetry and when I was 15 Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul asked to publish my writings. I actually think I’m a really beautiful girl without an ounce of makeup or my hair done up 😉 I own more dresses than t-shirts and enjoy being out in nature more than anything. I’ve always had a loud laugh. I make friends faster with people twice my age than I do my peers, I enjoy hanging out at the bingo hall and listening to live music. I’ve been the subject of jealous rivalries in the workplace during the majority of my career 🙁 I love to research and have a fetish with colors, textures and smells. I’m a health nut, I like to order dessert first and have had a crush on Jack Black since… I can’t even remember. I have the heart of a 5-year old; simple, innocent and in awe by most things. I’ve never considered running a marathon as even a plausable challenge to take on. My family inspires me, my heart breaks for children and I enjoy everything I do in life. There you go, a few things you probably didn’t know about me.

Isn’t it interesting when you watch a movie and the climate for characters start to become perfect to the point of utopia, the audience can predict something very bad is about to happen. I wonder if that kind of thought process goes beyond just watching movies and rubs off on our own lives. At a moment when things seem surreal, we expect catastrophy. And because our focus is placed on the worst, those events actually do come true.

Then I wonder if perhaps God saves us in a manner from critical thoughts creeping into our lives just before death. He doesn’t manipulate minds because the bible says He gives us free will, but perhaps his human creation is made in such a way that whatever, just before we die, makes us so undeniably happy happens to a point that the mind can’t even comprehend that a negative is imminent.

It’s just a thought.

Isn’t it amazing the depths we go to in our lives to find the fullness that God created in us and yet one day we wake up to find that over time, we have sacrificially let ourselves deteriorate to a stripped away version of all we worked so hard for? I have a lot of turmoil surrounding my place in life and I’m searching for the fork in the road where I took a left instead of a right. I’ve been reading in Proverbs that when we cry out for understanding and wisdom, God will give it to those who are faithful. Have I not been faithful? Have I not given every ounce of blood in me to better the lives of everyone else? Then should I not have more conclusions than question marks?

Perhaps all that God has for me is too much to handle… maybe it’d just blow my mind if He gave it all up at once. With my lack of patience, I’d probably attempt a fasttrack to the end, leaving behind all those lessons I need to get there. So all I’m asking for is discernment. I don’t want a spoiler alert, just discretion and discernment to get back where this all went wrong and take a right when I want to take a left.

In the last six years, I have spent a good portion of my time traveling to lands far away and seeing the most incredible creations God has given. I have journeyed alone and discovered a whole new me that I didn’t even know existed. I look back at this time as God calling me into the wilderness, as if to find who He made my core to be. There comes a point though, when we have to leave the existential and be awakened to reality. I feel my heart being revived in a sense. At the deepest of my makeup, there’s a yearning to do life with others that I hadn’t realized before.

I’ve been planning a trip to Nepal in the Fall; I wanted to climb Mt. Everest and do a little humanitarian work while I was there. But as I look back at my time ‘in the wilderness’, there’s a longing that I had someone to share smiles and those treasured memories with. So I canceled the trip. Why continue with a plan, if it doesn’t align with my principles?

For some time, I have been gathering a list of places I’m saving; memories I want to share only with that special someone. Now I’m producing another list of all the experiences I want to go through with the dearest of family and friends. Living is more than just a ticket stub, passport stamp and a few photos. I want one day to sit in my rocking chair, staring out from the porch and laugh with someone about the time when…

Have you ever thought about writing a mission statement for yourself… a kind of constitution that you live by or refer to when something questions why you do what you do, make the decisions you make or think what you believe? I’ve been fleshing out a sort of constitution for my life. It’s more than a strategic plan or goal setting, it’s the why before the what. I’m constantly defining the what; what I’m doing, about to do or want to do. And I have a quick answer for the why; the bible says so, but nothing in writing that incorporates all that I want the why to be –like what’s important to me, values I have and talents I’ve been given.

I think having a self constitution would lend more balance, more harmony and maybe better decision making! If it isn’t found within the mission for myself, it’s a no… done! It could be that simple. In a couple days I’m going on vacation for a week. I hope this will be a time to let my imagination play a huge part in dreaming up this constitution of Trisha Keehn.

Let a man radically altter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are. – James Allen

Just for today I will be happy. Happiness is from within; it is not a matter of externals.
Just for today I will try to adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires.
Just for today I will take care of my body.
Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind.
Just for today I will exercise my soul.
Just for today I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with praise, criticize not at all and not try to regulate nor improve anyone.
Just for today I will try not to tackle my whole life problem at once.
Just for today I will have a program. I will write down what I expect to do every hour (and I may not follow it exactly). This will eliminate hurrying and indecision.
Just for today I will have a quiet half0hgour all by myself and relax.
Just for today I will be unafraid.