the american dream

i came to america when i was 18. bright-eyed and bushytailed, thinking that this country was the epidemy of hapiness. that summer princess D died. JFK showed 90 F and humidity was like nothing i'd ever experienced in the north. i was ready for something new. i was so young. and thought i knew it all. i was so ready to take off and to experience the world. i had wings that could have flown that boeing over the ocean themselves.

i am 27 now. in america i found myself. when you are growing up, you are not aware of who you really are, you are who your parents are, what your surroundings are, who others tell you who you are. here i was, in a country, all by myself, willing to plow mountains to be able to have this experience. i was able to get through because i was so young and naive. if i had to bounce checks again to buy gas to get to my internship or work 4 jobs to make ends meet or put up with people who treated me like someone who has crossed the border illigally, i would not be able to do it now. then i could because i didn't know any better and the pride factor was not quite as pronouced. or i was willing to put up with it because i wanted this bad enough.

through all those things i learned how tough the iron in me is. what i believe in. who is my god. where i start cracking and when i stretch. i learned what are the things that make me tick. i learned who this person is that carries the body that i constantly obsess about having a butt that's too big.

i grew up by the baltic sea. in some parts of the coast, there are stones - big giants and very small ones. all of them are different in shapes and colors but all have something in common - they all are perfectly smooth. it's because they've been washed in the sea for so long and been bumping against other stones for so long that they have become smooth. the edges are all smoothed away. that's what i feel has happened to me in america. some of those edges i had have been smoothed away. here i was prepared for the next chapter of my life. all those things that were scary at the time were crashing against me like waves against a coast. but they made me realize who i am and how reliable is this god who says he died because he loved me.

there are people who get through life without believing in god just fine. i was told that there is this jesus, i had no clue who he was but i believed because i was told that i have to do it so i don't burn in hell. for the longest time i had no clue what exactly i was believing in. until i started questioning who he is and asking him to show himself in my life. i am so sad to see people who turn away from god because of what people have done to the word christianity. because it has been scewed, twisted, used for the wrong reasons. but the very essence of god has often been forgotten and left out.

because easter has really nothing to do with eggs, my wish to you all is to find for yourselves who is jesus christ. and if you truly seek and realize that he was just a dude then i have the utmost respect for you. but if you avoid thinking about god because you feel like there is still plenty of time and everyone says that church is corrupted and people who go it are two-faced, then i encourage you to search god for yourself. find him for yourself and see who he is in your life.

these nine years have been beautiful and hard but possible because i wasn't getting through them alone. even through the times when i was far away from god, he was near. i would not change anything about my life because of it.