Home

As I was reading an article on (in)courage, there was a quote I really liked. I started writing it down when out of no where, I was suddenly hit with this sad and depressing feeling.

Here's the specific quote: "...home is much more than four walls and a familiar neighborhood. Home is the God who understands each of the unique languages, thoughts, hopes and dreams of our individual hearts. Nothing can separate us from His love. Not time zones or cultures or the things we wish we could change about ourselves." [emphasis the author's]

So as I'm writing this down, I feel this deep pain in my heart, because I haven't felt like I had a "home" since I was 9 years old or so. My childhood "home" quit being a "home" when I realized my parents' marriage was not happy, how selfish my dad was (and still is), and I guess just how human my parents really were--when they stop being able to do everything and you realize they're not as amazing as you thought as a kid and they are two ordinary people trying to survive. My mom wanted to leave and divorce my dad (she finally left him in 2007 and the divorce was finalized in 2008), but wouldn't because anytime she mentioned it to my brother and me, my brother always asked, "But what about daddy?" I don't think he realized or knew just how miserable our mom was; I'm not sure if even now he has any idea or clue. I was always the one to say, "Let's Go!" or "Where do you want to go?" I was just as miserable in that house, city, and area. That's part of the reason why it's so hard to go back, when we have to make trips for holidays or birthdays. Even now, as a married woman (I still don't feel like I'm qualified to be an adult, even though I'm 26.) I still feel weird referring to anywhere as home. Anytime I refer to our apartment as "home," I get this slight twinge of pain in my heart and feel like I need to correct myself, because this isn't home either. I don't know if I'll ever have the home my heart desires, while I'm on earth, but I do look forward to going home to my Heavenly Father and feeling His warm embrace.

Background, Illustrator, & Spirals...

Right now I'm feeling like such an idiot! I'm working on making my own background using Illustrator. Ok, so last night, I'm searching through all of these blog backgrounds, etc. trying to find something I like, well I come across the current one, but I don't like the diamonds (ETA--it was a border of actual diamonds) down the side. I decided why can't I make my own then, so I found instructions and went to it. I want (for now anyway) to have spirals/swirls, so I try select just the spiral from the background (in Illustrator) and end up with one of the dots, so then I'm trying to get rid of the dot, etc. Essentially wasting A LOT of time and energy trying to do something that you can do *simply* with the line segment tool, which I didn't realize until today. Geeze. Anyway, let's hope this works out the way I want/hope.

P.S.--Happy Valentine's Day!

ETA (2-11-11): As you can see, I never made my own background. It never worked the way I wanted/hoped.