i use the word superfluous in everyday conversation

This turned into a resolution-ish statement. Not really intended to be... but whatever works, I suppose.

Six-ish hour car van ride happenings
(events, discussions, and my own meandering mind)
with myself, Stephanie Haila, and three sleeping persons.

Hour One: Hidden Acres Reminiscing / Story time/ Everything changes so muchhh.

My thoughts during hour one: 

I'm building a legacy at this place I love,

but who am I doing it for?

Is the legacy

"Grace was great counselor"

or is it

"This camp is 100% Christ-centered,

and I want my kids going there to strengthen their faith 

and to learn what fell0wship really looks like"

 well,

there are people who were around camp for years

investing time and sacrificing better-paying jobs

to impact kids' lives.

They were legendary counselors,

but nobody remembers their names after a few years.

What they left, though,

the thing that was immortalized,

was the effect they had on camp and the kids and the people they were working with.

How they glorified Christ through their words and actions.

I don't want to do anything for me,

I want it all to be for Him.

My sinful selfishness gets in the way.

but I'm working on it.

 *end thoughts*

 

Hour Two: Steph = driving. Me = joining the other slug-a-beds in a brief slumber.

Hour Three: Listen to all Jon Foreman's season EPs. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  
 

My thoughts during hour three: 

I have a rock 

that I need to depend on

MUCH more than I have been.

Why would I want my future to be in my hands anyway?

- - - - -

Nobody likes it when a relationship begins rapidly and flawlessly.

Seriously. It's the worst.

Pam and Jim finally got together,

got married and had a baby...

what happened?

>> Steve Carell leaves <<

And the office starts to look a little bit

like the plane 5 minutes into Madagascar 2.

hillarious, but depressing.

also, shut up. I know it's not the best analogy. 

- - - - -

I WANT CONFLICT

and thennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

I WANT RESOLUTION
I want  a written, choreographed, real-life journey.

"Oneday,

I will walk with you,

Across this bridge,

We're building,

And my heart will say,

What can't be said.

But for now

I'll keep my tongue tied,

And let the pages unfold,

If time is against us,

Our love will be young,

When we're old."

I want to struggle and lament and wrestle with my singleness.

And find peace.

And THEN, well.

"Whatever, God...

Do with me as you wish."

I want to give my life over to Him,
but I still have all these things that I'm longing for;
I want to take the wheel,
...But I wouldn't know where to go if I had it.
"We're either riders or fools behind the reigns" 
It's a work in progress.

 *end thoughts*

LUNCH BREAK!

HOUR FOUR: What are Grace's life plans for the next five years? Gab gab gab. What is going on in Steph's life? Gab gab gab gab gab. Lot's of quality catch-up chatting. (shocked that we didn't start with this? samesies.)

My thoughts during hour four:

I know where I want to be

I know who I want to be

I have no clue where I'll actually be

But I know without a doubt that,

if I let Him,

my God will shape and orchestrate me and my life.

So where will I be in five years?

Where ever He wants, I guess.

It's a hard thing to have complete faith in.

but I'm working on it..

it's a work in progress.

*end thoughts*

HOUR FIVE: personality analysis  = my favorite thing. It's my favorite thing.

Thoughts during hour five:

I am SO motivated by recognition.

At least in terms of creating something,

I'm 100% fueled by positive acknowledgment

it scares me a little bit.

It's unstable,

unreliable. 

It reminds me of how human I am.

"This blood is fire rushing through my veins"

It's just another example

of how much I cling to worldly things,

opinions, expectations.

Last night I made a new page in my book

with a poem someone in my church wrote, 

and a song someone at my church performed..

And then I sat in my room

and cried.

Thanking God for the inspiration that came straight from Him

to bring different mediums together,

all intended to glorify Him.

I want to channel all that praise back to the original Author,

but it's hard when that pride is my energy.

I can't pry it from my clenched fists,
though;

I want my heart to be in the right place--

I want to give it back willingly.

sincerely.

genuinely.

I'm working on it...

it's a work in progress.

*end thoughts*

HOUR SIX:  Listen to Mark Driscoll on Joy in Suffering.

Thoughts during hour six:

Suffering isn't God punishing me for my sin.

I sometimes get tricked into feeling that way.

But my sin has been bought.

It's been paid for.

Jesus was tortured and murdered for it,

and He is no longer in the grave.
HE IS NO LONGER IN THE GRAVE

Suffering is an opportunity.

The way I react to it entirely determines the fruit of it.

If I get bitter and angry at God,

I'm no different than the world.

If I take it with continuous joy and patience

and let a love that I could never comprehend pour out of me...

"You shine like stars in the universe."

I have to constantly remind myself to be a lighthouse.

That's why I'm here.

 And it's not easy, but it's not my own strength that I'm depending on, anyway.

It's hard, but He's helping me work on it.

*end thoughts*

Andddddddddddddddddd..... I'm HOME! 


Jesus,
Thank you for suffering.
For directing
orchestrating
shaping
uplifting 
encouraging
and loving me more than I could ever,
with this earthly body and human mind,
comprehend.
Help me behave like a person who has received more than I could ever deserve
Help me shine. 
Always, only, ever for You.

burn, burn

All I want is time.
Free, expansive, unimpeded time.
to do with as I please.
Time to play my guitar.
All I want to do is play my guitar until my fingers bleed.
And then I'll superglue them shut and play more, more, more.
I want time to create art,
as much as I want, in whatever medium I want
at my own leisurely pace,
with no one telling me that taking the ACT
and applying for colleges is more important.
My grandchildren won't care how many colleges I applied to.
They won't treasure my test scores and show them to their children.
My great-grandmother's paintings are hanging all around my house.
I want time to read,
and not, like, obscure excerpts from King Lear
or random short stories about racial tension that my AP lit teacher piles on us.
I want to get lost in scripture for hours
and not have to worry about anything but what is pouring into me.
Last night I was 34 psalms deep
...when I got a text from a friend.
There are other distractions in my life that I want to have the option of escaping from.
I want to re-read all my favorite books,
and I want time to sit for an hour after i've finished them,
and just revel in their poetic construction and meaning.
I want time to laugh with my nieces.
And not worry about all the other pressing, 'important' things I need to be doing.
I want to swing and play dress-up and sing for hours.
I want time to go on a walk.
just walk around
in the cold and the still and the silence
and marvel at my Creator's creation.
That would be the greatest christmas present ever,
besides maybe the guitar that my mom is trying to hide in her room,
if someone were to simply ask me if I would like to go on a walk.
where to?
where ever we end up.
nothing else to do today
nothing we should be worrying about
no deadlines to meet.
I've already taken the stupid ACT...
I want to take an entire day
to just call all the people I haven't spoken with since summer,
people whose lives I wanted to invest it to a great extent,
until I let my busy schedule get in the way.
There's no excuse for that.
There were ministry opportunities that faded away
as I watched from behind my planner
filled with scratchy notes and reminders.
I feel like there isn't enough time in the world for me
to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do.
to be whoever it is I'm supposed to be.
to blossom like a flower in early spring,
growing in my creativity
and my understanding
my faith
my love
my joy
my influence
my conviction
I want to grow into whatever sort of woman God wants me to be.
I want to calm the chaos
I want to invigorate the mundane.
I want to never say any commonplace thing
or settle for mediocre.
I want to be set ablaze
to have an insatiable thirst for more of beauty, light, love, my God.




I want more.




The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
...And miles to go before I sleep.

-Robert Frost

i am strange.

i fidget incessantly.

i hate the smell of roses.
i will spend days just reading for hours and hours.

i am always tired.

except when i have way too much energy,

which is really often.

i am an underground musician.

i am loud.
i am obnoxious.
but i also love spending hours in perfect silence.

i can waste astonishing amounts of time on art projects.

i'm quite irresponsible.
i frequently burst into song.
i am never satisfied with myself
i have an impressive lack of coordination.

i have seen almost no disney movies.

i am easily irritated.
i have an astonishing memory...
i can memorize massive chunks of scripture
and huge passages from my favorite books,
and i will remember them for years without trying,
but i forget things that people tell me almost instantly.
i say oof-da when i sneeze.
i whistle. a lot.

i make dozens of paper cranes every day.
i'm incredibly passionate about seemingly random things.
i love biking.
i think pictures tell the best stories.
i want to write a book with my camera.
i really love hugs. a lot.

i laugh at things that aren't funny.

i cry over things that aren't sad.

i argue about things that don't matter.

i constantly procrastinate

with almost everything,

but if i have a task that i'm set on accomplishing,

i will not rest until it's finished.

yesterday, i had at least three hours of homework that i could have done.

instead, i literally spent seven hours making christmas cards.

"I could drown in your kerosene eyes"

Where Do My Bluebird Fly?

today... is a monumental day.

it's important for at least five reasons:

ONE: it's Greer's birthday! YAY, you're finally... like... 13? I kid, I kid. But seriously, I hope it was a good one, you big 17-year-old, you.

TWO: today is the last day of No-Shave November. I might cry...

THREE: in exactly one hundred days, I will be in France! *AHEM* I WILL BE IN FRANCE IN ONE HUNDRED DAYS. again, I might cry.
FOUR: I became a novelist today. Seriously. I HATE writing fiction, but today I wrote a short story and DIDN'T hate myself at the end. THIS IS A BIG DEAL.

did I say there were five things?

Oh, yeah...

I just decided which college I'll be spending the next four years of my life at, no big.

UNI, if anyone cares.

mark.

I love that you still think puns are the best kind of humor.

I love that when you're driving, you take seemingly random routes to destinations.

I love that it's always so you can drive past your favorite old building or bridge

I love that whenever I'm sick, you always bring me ramen and seven-up.

I love that we can always agree on what movie to watch.

I love that you would ditch an afternoon of plans to go on a walk with me.

I love that we could sit on the porch and watch lightning for hours.

I love that you think RAGBRAI is better than Christmas.

I love that you always have advice tailored perfectly to the way I think.

I love that we think in exactly the same way.

I love that you would drag me across town just to see an awesome icicle.

I love that we both laugh at the worst times. Together.

I love that you've been taking me on dates since I was four, and that I still haven't outgrown it.

I love that you insisted on taking me to buy every dress I've ever gotten for a school dance.

I love that you are way too protective.

I love that, despite it, you still trust me to make my own decisions.

Tu,
mon père,
est les plus merveilleux,
personne influente dans ma vie.

Et je t'aime.

whelmed.

Apparently, by virtue of being me, I'm not allowed to act solemn. Or somber or gloomy, or even be quiet, at any time. Anything other than ecstatic, actually. At least not without my mother asking me if I am depressed. I almost laughed when she said that, but then I was momentarily curious. I've never been a real believer in depression. I mean, I acknowledge that there are people out there who are genuinely depressed and really do need help, but I think a lot of the time it's just used as an excuse by people who are going through a bit of a rough patch... (We all have them)

Anyway, I humored that perhaps I really am depressed and proceeded to look up the symptoms of depression.

It turns out I currently have like 93% of the symptoms. Yikes, kids.

After we sorted it out... "Come on, really? Let's be honest: it's me; I'm not depressed," my very astute mother proceeded to wonder aloud if I should see a doctor. For what? Well, maybe there is something tangibly wrong with me.

Other than....

having a poorly functioning immune system that lets me be sick for 34% of my life,

being anemic and hypotensive (crappy blood and not much of it),

having a severely crooked spine that has been recently accused of causing frequent migranes and joint pain,

.... frequent migranes and joint pain,

and being an obscenely stressed, over-worked senior in high school?

naww, I'm good.

And I'm not being sarcastic when I say that, however difficult that might be to believe. I don't need a doctor poking and pricking and testing me only to inform me that I need vitamins or something... The determining factor between going through some difficult stuff (with physical or mental health), and being depressed, is something to lean on and trust it. My mom could tell when I hadn't been giving stuff up to Jesus; my joy was gone. My level of energy and happiness is down to an earthly level, and that is unusual for me, apparently. I hate when life and business crowd out my quiet time, but it happens a lot. And it's sooo obvious to the people around me. I love and hate this. I hate when God gets shoved aside and it affects me negatively, but how cool is it to see what a change Christ can make in a person :)

I guess I don't want to hide when I'm writing in this thing. I don't really know who will read it or what they'll think of it, but what I really don't want is to be artificial. Sometimes I think that if I can be 100% open and honest with everyone, (literally, anyone and everyone could read this) then people will see my sincerity and be drawn to Christ through something I said or wrote. But that's not what it's about, really. It's about what I do. And when my actions are negative because I haven't been drinking in the Word... Well, that particular brand of conviction makes tears come to my eyes.

But we're called to confess our wrongdoings out in the open. I don't just want to be the type of person who only writes about awesome stuff that happened, or be all preachy to whichever poor soul may have stumbled upon my blog.. If God shows me something amazing, I'm won't hesitate in writing about it. If at all possible, I'll probably take a picture. But life has ups and downs, and right now I'm in a valley. I think that's a fair thing to say.. I'm striving to be genuine here... I'm tired and discouraged and overwhelmed and in pain almost constantly. But my Father is breaking me so that He can mold me.

And I think that process just began, here.. in front of this stupid Dell with tenth avenue north playing and a hundred million tabs and word documents open with home-workings and obscurities vital to the never-ending application process, where I decided that I needed a moment to breathe before plunging back down into the demands of my station in life.

Thanks for sharing this moment with me.

this season

I love.

Guy Fawkes Day

Remember, Remember

The fifth of November

V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villian by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengence; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Evey: Are you like a crazy person?

V: I'm quite sure they will say so.

What I was sure of yesterday...

I now know to be false.

But what I am sure of today is absolutely true.

....for now.

Life spins off in crazy directions, and sometimes we lose our balance.

I think I get caught up in the stress of it all and forget where I'm actually headed.

what's important

why I've been put here

who I'm becoming.

And I get a moment to come up for air and realize that I'm terrified, and I have no idea what the future is gonna look like. And that feeling in my stomach, in the back of my mind, it starts to creep in until I don't feel anything but worry. It doesn't accomplish anything.

Worrying is a synonym for not trusting if God's plan.

And he has a plan, I've been shown that over and over and over. But I'm insatiable and insecure so I guess I need to be continually reminded-- and I THANK GOD that he is a merciful and patient and loving god.

When I get lost in worry or stress, I peddle backwards through my mind until I find something that I can grasp, something to hold onto and put my trust and faith in.

And the simple truths that always stand are these:
> Jesus died for us. And HE ROSE.
>He LOVES us in an indescribable way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCunuL58odQ

>God has made everything beautiful in its time. There is a plan for us and it is incredible, and if he showed it to us, wouldn't it ruin the surprise?

>He has set eternity in the hearts of men. "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

>Everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing can be taken away from it. He is perfect and so is everything he has orchestrated.

So I'm giving this up to him.

Autumn's colors

Sometimes, when I'm writing or typing something, my ideas flow too fast for me to keep up with them. I'm chasing after leaves on the wind, able to snag a few before they blow away... but not all of them. I feel like those are lost forever, but I don't know how much it matters, because I don't know how valuable they were to begin with.

I write without thinking, carelessly throwing words onto paper. Maybe because, through some narcissism rooted deep in my subconscious, I think that every thought that drops through my mind is a jewel to be cherished...

I don't know what it is, but the whole blog thing probably isn't very curative in that regard...

These leaves weren't caught in chronological order.

People used to chisel their ideas into stone.

I wonder how many actual jewels were lost in that grueling process...

I take everything for granted.

I don't want to take advantage of anything anymore.I want to appreciate and cherish every blessing I have.

I want to see people loving each other and be in awe of creation's beauty and wonder at my existence....

and I want the result of all of that to be me simply longing to know God more.

I want to be thirsty for a closer relationship with Him.

I want that relationship to be obvious to the people around me.

I want it to catch them off guard

and make them wonder at their existence.

I want....

'Want' kind of means desire, it doesn't seem necessary.. You have "wants" and "needs", and apparently that makes the things you want superficial.

It used to feel more like you were lacking something, a deeper need. "In want of..."

So I think that maybe I should go back to every place I used the word 'want' and change it to something like, 'have a deep, inherent, longing need'

Needing to know more of God is buried in my DNA.

inherent. not unnecessary.

do you know what day it is?

It was a free day to take broken appliances to the dump.
My dad and I spent most of the morning working on all that shenanigans, and at about 1:30 it was decided that we were hungry. He asked what I was feelin, but it was unnecessary because the answer is always the same: gyros. And it was silently understood that there is, of course, only one place in Ames to get gyros.
So to Pammel Grocery we went.
My dad (who, in case you didn't know, knows EVERYONE in story county) is good friends with the man who owns the store. Who happens to be a Muslim.
We chatted for a little while, ordered our food and sat down. He brought us our salad and went back to the kitchen. As he brought out our gyros, I caught the glint of tears in his eyes. Before heading back to the kitchen, he said, "Mark, you are an honorable man-- you have an amazing heart, to come into my store today..." and then he walked away.
I didn't understand, and from the look on my dad's face, he didn't either, at least not at first. We were silent for a moment and my dad said quietly, "It didn't occur to me how meaningful it would be for him to have a white, christian American come into his store today, for the first time in years, on September 11th, and treat him like the friend I consider him to be." Neither of us had even thought about what day it was; we just had spent a day working hard together and decided it would be nice to eat out.. and gyros sounded pretty tasty.

He came back when we were almost finished with our food, pulling up a chair and sitting down, saying, "I have a story I want to tell you."
Within the first sentences of our three-hour long conversation, I wished I had some means of recording his words. He spoke of the heart of a person, the nature of love, the relationship between God and creation. The story was from the Quran. He went on bunny trails, discussing the symbolic meaning of each turn of events in this story about Moses. He spoke of current events, ancient events, philosophy, personal experiences, scripture from the Quran, the bible, the Torah... But there were such misinterpretations about the trinity, about Christ and his purpose, about covenants. We discussed and listened and shared. It was beautiful, and the whole time my thoughts danced between what amazing faith this man had, how much I wanted him to understand the actual implications of what Jesus Christ did, and how sad I was that his words, while they were being grasped and cherished in that moment, would be lost in time and the vault of my own memory forever. He had an amazingly poetic way of saying things, and despite the fact that his English was not amazing, his mind truly was.

He had read the bible three times in it's entirety. His reason for this was that, "so many people are trying to convert me, and I want to understand...everything."

In the words of my dad, we spent three hours wandering through the forest, beating around the bush. At 4, he resolved that he needed to get back to work, but wanted desperately to continue our conversation. As soon as we got to the car, I wrote down the words that were spoken in the moments before we left:

My dad said, "At the end of all of this, there is something you will have to decide for yourself. Do you need redemption, did Jesus die for you, and could you accept that amount of grace?"
He responded with a metaphor, saying there was no way it could be that simple. "If you were going to die from cancer, Grace, and I promised you that I would find the cure for cancer within a year... Would you believe me? Would you have enough faith in me to depend on me completely, not getting any other treatment for it?"
"No," I said pretty blatantly, "because I don't trust you." And at my dad's laughter, added, "at least not in the same way that I trust God. You're right; it isn't simple... Because that amount of faith can't be simple. We want inherently to earn our way to heaven, to do it on our own, but it's impossible: we need redemption by some other means. And the means... No, there's absolutely no way we can deserve what Christ did for us, but he offers it freely. And to accept that and have raw faith... It's not simple. But we do it every day."

And that's where we left it.

...self-therapy.

A week ago I cut off THIRTEEN inches of hair.
AAH!
I haven't had short hair since third grade.
... I feel light-headed.
aha. ha. hah.


But it's been a week and I still feel ghost-like wisps of long hair falling around my shoulders, down my back, brushing my arms. My neck is constantly cold. I want to twirl my locks of wavy, long brown hairs around my fingers and throw them over my shoulder.


But they are in a bag, in an envelope, in a post office or a mail truck somewhere, rubber bands tied around them. Destined to be made into a wig...They're no longer a part of me.


Do I sound sad? I feel like I'm mourning or something. But I'm not actually upset. I like my new cut; I know I'll miss my hair, but it can always grow back... It grows really fast, too. And besides...
It was time for a change:


Let all that hair bless somebody else for a while.

Ohhhhh... THAT'S what shirt I'm wearing!

all creation sings your name

Psalm 63:4
I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.

Lifelight was a huge blessing.
I'm so humbled by all the work put into this thing.
This thing made free to the public,
allowing people to come from all around
for a weekend in South Dakota
to just praise God, together.

The Gaze of Ra

"Ancient Greek Tradition has Prometheus stealing fire from heaven, fire used to light the path toward civilization. You can see the sun this way, if you wish, as Prometheus riding his horse into space and time, a lantern in his hand, held out toward the planets, a bit of it spilt into the belly of a furnace, forging steel, the steel splintering off to spark and die away on a blacksmith shop floor, little smidgens of fading heaven, little cosmic mysteries, plucked from the sparkling hair of God.

In Egypt the sun was the eye of a god: the sun god Ra, in the evening, closed his eyes and opened them again in the morning, thus the light by which we work and see and have our being is the gaze of a god...

In the Hebrew tradition, which splintered off into the Christian tradition, which is how I was raised, light is a metaphor. God makes a cosmos out of nothingness, a molecular composition, of which He is not and never has been, as any thing is limiting, and God has no limits. In this way, He isn't, and yet is. The poetic imagery is rather beautiful, stating that all we see and feel and touch, the hardness of dense atoms, the softness of a breeze (atoms perhaps loose as if in play) is the breath of God. And into this being, into this existence, God first creates light. This light is not to be confused with the sun and moon and stars, as they are not created until later. He simply creates light, a non substance that is like a particle and like a wave, but perhaps neither, just some kind of traveling energy. A kind of magnetic wave.

Light, then, becomes a fitting metaphor for a nonbeing who is. God, if like light, travels at the speed of light, and because space and time are mingled with speed, the speed of light is the magic, exact number that allows a kind of escape from time. Scientists have played with atomic clocks, matched exactly, setting one in a plane to fly around the world, and another motionless, waiting for the return of its partner. When they reunite, the one that traveled rests milliseconds behind the one fixed. The faster you move, physicists have found, the less you experience time. And if you move at the speed of light, you will never age; you are outside of time; you are an eternal creature.

But before you strap on your running shoes, you should know scientists warn us that with speed, matter increases in density, so an attempt at the speed of light will have you imploded by the time you hit Wichita, your atoms as dense as bowling balls. And to make matters worse, your density increases on a curve; the faster you go, the greater the density, and though you can get close to the speed of light, matter and that magic speed can never meet; the faster you go, the steeper the trajectory on the graph. You and I, made from molecules, cannot travel at the speed of light and cannot escape time, at least not with a body.

Consider the complexity of light in light of the Hebrew metaphor: we don't see light; we see what it touches. It is more or less invisible, made from nothing, just purposed and focused energy, infinite in its power (it will never tire if fired into a vacuum, going on forever). How fitting, then, for God to create an existence, then a metaphor, as if to say, here is something entirely unlike you, outside of time, infinite in its power and thrust: here is something you can experience but cannot understand. Throughout the remainder of the Bible, then, God calls Himself light. The perfection of the Hebrew metaphor is eerie, especially considering Eratosthenes wouldn't play with sticks and shadows for several thousand years, discovering Ra was, in fact, never closing his eyes."


Oh Donald Miller... Even while reading Through Painted Deserts for the fourth time, you are a breath of fresh air.

We serve an awesome God.

author of my life

camp flew by
undetected by everyone in my life
except myself and those who shared my experience there.

every summer I think I know what God is going to teach me
and every summer I'm smacked upside the head
with a lesson utterly unanticipated
that I usually don't notice until months later,
the full impact taking much longer to truly sink in.


I didn't think I had a "real" testimony, a God story, until this year.
I didn't think there was any stuff that had happened in my life
that God set in place for a reason.
Or maybe I just hadn't taken much time to think about it?

But I had to share my testimony this summer,
so I was force to comb over my life.
These things, significant things...
mom having cancer
a cousin killing himself
friends getting in a serious car accident
a life-threatening experience
grandparents getting divorced
struggling through the ideas in a class at church
a cousin-in-law dying
As I looked back, the stuff God taught me
hit me like a giant station wagon.
My experiences, good and bad,
were woven together like a perfectly told story.

Romans 8:28 - And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Three things:
He loves us
He works for our good. (IN ALLLLLLL THINGS.)
and we've been called to serve Him.

Take a minute and reflect on what He's taught you. If we don't slow down and take the time to appreciate that every good and perfect gift comes from above, (James 1:17) We might not realize what an amazing story He's writing for us.

the reason blogs exist.

I'm speaking from a completely singular perspective when I say,
I think every person has a desire, if not natural tendency,
to express their thoughts to others.
Maybe that's just the way I am,
and no one else shares this sentiment.
But it seems to me that even those
who aren't audibly opinionated
still have something they're passionate about,
something to contribute to discussion,
and they have a longing to do so.
The back side of this is that, for the majority of people,
again, many of them being in the not 'audibly opinionated' group,
have a difficult time doing this.
And it's not because we lack eloquence,
diction, the required vocabulary,
or literacy for that matter..
It's because we're unsure of how others will react
to our passionate way of thinking.
What we perceive to be others' opinions of us
severely affects how we act and what we say.
"I am not who I think I am, I am who I think YOU think I am."




The most important things are the hardest to say.
They are the things you get ashamed of,
because words diminish them --
words shrink things that seemed limitless
when they were in your head
to no more than living size when they're brought out.
But it's more than that, isn't it?
The most important things lie too close
to wherever your secret heart is buried,
like landmarks to a treasure
your enemies would love to steal away.
And you may make revelations that cost you dearly
only to have people look at you in a funny way,
not understanding what you've said at all,
or why you thought it was so important
that you almost cried while you were saying it.
That's the worst, I think.
When the secret stays locked within,
not for want of a teller,
but for want of an understanding ear.


Stephen King