Blog Names Change with the Times

One of my friends asked me a few days ago why I periodically changed the name of my blog. This post is a result of that conversation.

Name changes are never planned for me. It's always a spontaneous thing that happens and then I realize the significance after the fact.

When I first began giving blogging a shot I created "The Fishbowl" (see picture below)

The fishbowl was titled so in that I felt a bit like a blog put me in a fishbowl of sorts- the world could get a nice look at me from any angle. You get the concept. Kind of like a display case. - which now makes me kind of nauseous.

About a year into the blog I grew up a little bit if you will and realized that the point of my blog was no longer to display my thoughts for the world to see but rather to tear down the image I had created for the world to see and reveal the nitty gritty dirt that was a part of my life. I wanted to focus more on what I was learning, what was painful, the challenges, the lessons etc and less on the appearance I was trying to give off. Thus, the blog name changed to "The Crumbling Facade" (see picture below)

And now the reason for the name change is not so much that my aim has changed but just that change itself is happening. I renamed it Technicolor Dreams and The Stages of Sleep because (get ready for me to get all deep and silly on you) I feel like life in general (specifically the spiritual journey) is very much like the stages of sleep. We are in this process of learning to know the Lord and who he has created us to be. The idea of the name is just to promote progression in that journey- you dream in the final stage of sleep (REM). That is where I want to be. I want to discover what dreaming in color is like in Life with the Lord.

Yay for new names!

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I have always had this love hate relationship with money. (Don't we all?) In the past few weeks I have been learning a lot about the difference between being able to afford something and the need for something. In general I feel like I do a pretty good job with budgeting and not spending much but I have started to notice more and more my attachment to things...regardless of their worth- in that most of the things I am attached to are thrift store finds or homemade gifts. It's interesting how things hold power over people.

A wise older woman that I know once told me about a lesson she learned where she felt that the Lord was asking her to give her things away to her friends. For instance, when anyone complimented things in her house, things she wore etc she would give the complimented item to the person that paid her the compliment. She said it was very freeing, hard, but a good look into idolatry and insight into her attachment to things. I tried to imagine what it would look like for me to do that and I automatically started praying, "Lord, please let no one like anything that I own" hah. On the other side of things, I'm trying to find the balance between enjoying the beauty of things- the Lord gave me great taste(in my opinion :p ) and being idolatrous. It's not really the money value of things, it's the thing itself that poses the problem. So I'm in this place, trying to discover healthy giving and healthy buying, healthy sharing, and healthy sacrifice.