I Want to Wake Up, I Want to Restart

When I got the e-mail about a second blog carnival, I didn't respond because I wasn't sure what I could do with it. The word we were to write on: fresh. I mulled over it and realized that that really isn't a word I use much in my life. I wanted to participate and I wanted to feel like I could write about anything, but I didn't want to do it just for the sake of doing it.

But this morning as I started to think about it more seriously, I just realized how many fresh starts I've experienced in my life over the past 6.5 years.

I moved to Tennessee. The freshest restart of my life.

I went to New York for the first time.

I started dating Garrett.

I graduated high school and started college.

My grandfather died, and then just days later I went to M-Fuge as a counselor. A very moving healing process.

I got engaged.

I took the class Fiction Writing.

I graduated college.

I got married.

And now? I'm jobless. It didn't feel so fresh at first, but finally I decided to make an opportunity out of it, and get a fresh new start on my old novel. I spent 12 weeks studying the book of Daniel. I was also given a chance to serve as a co-leader for a small group of seventh grade girls. As the new year and decade has come, I feel it's time for another fresh start, but I haven't completely figured out what that is yet. I know I want a better relationship with God, I want to finish my novel, and I would love to finally find a job that I like. And when I start that job, that will be a fresh start. What I did not realize until just now is that I am constantly being given ways to start over.

I've been listening to Paramore's latest CD "Brand New Eyes" lately. I got this from Wikipedia about the making of the album; it proved to be enlightening:
After the release of Riot! and a nonstop year, a blog post that stated they were having "internal issues" in early 2008, coupled with a week of canceled shows, speculation arose that the band was going to breakup. Not long after, it was resolved and claimed to be an issue of the members never having time to talk about things such as how they "were all growing up, and sometimes, when you're growing up, you're not always growing together". Further struggles to write new material had singer Hayley Williams speaking of the doubts she had surrounding the writing of the record and meeting the expectations placed on the band after the success of Riot!. She was also concerned about lyrics that involved current issues, as opposed to resolved issues that she had written about in the past. "I was like, 'This isn't a feel-good song, because I'm writing about something I'm going through right now, and it's still painful,'" she continued. "And I confused that with actually not liking the songs, when actually I was prouder of them than I've ever been before. They're heavier emotions for me... I'm still going through some of this stuff, and these songs are really healing to me." The band as a whole treated the writing as a therapeutic experience, which helped them hash out old differences. Now that "all those words were out on the table", they were able to have their first real conversations in a longtime, resolving the internal struggles they had been facing, by going back to the reasons why they started the band and had wanted to play music in the first place. Consequently, Paramore decided to name the record Brand New Eyes because of the allusion to seeing things from a whole new perspective, "Just trying to let go of whatever we might have struggled with the past and just see each other in a new way," explained Williams.

Even when there are struggles, or even when I feel my life feels as if it's at a standstill, there's always room for a new perspective. There's always a chance to start over, to begin fresh. Everyone else may not recognize it, but that doesn't matter. I used to care very little what people thought of me, and I am working towards not caring again. I have a wonderful husband who understands me, as well as some great friends. And instead of focusing on the one professor who dragged me down, or anyone else who has dragged me down, I can focus on the encouraging words of many, many others in my life. I can focus on my Heavenly Father. That ought to be my fresh focus this year, as I job-hunt and write and cook and clean and do whatever else I may do: Him. He's the one who not only gave me brand new eyes, but made me a brand new creation.

Title from the song "Heartbeat" by Remedy Drive.
This post is part of a blog carnival. Check out Gears Turning to see what others had to say about "fresh."