Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the skies.
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your justice like the great deep.

there's a part of the ocean that's so deep mount everest could fit into it with 1.25 miles of ocean still above it.

so totally nuts.

jumpin on the bandwagon.

this song makes me sing.

Run, run so fast
Over fields and grass
At last, at last
We escaped from the trap
With the rabbit and the bear
And the sparrows of the air
Come one, come all
The hunter is gone
And this is our chance
To crawl under the wire
Through the darkest wood
On up to the mountain of fire
Where everything is free
In the light of the sun
Where every creature sings
Oh Lord, you rescued us all
Don’t listen to the snake
For he lies and he takes
Your hope, your faith
Away from you
But when the lion comes around
With his claw and his crown
Follow, follow
His every move.

this is our chance.

i keep thinking about how peter denied jesus. peter denied jesus not one, but three times. jesus's bff. that's like if your best friend, or your husband/wife, or sibling, or parents pretended like they didn't even know you when you were in trouble. you're being wrongly accused, they know you're being wrongly accused, and they pretend they don't even know who you are. that had to be the hardest thing ever. for jesus and for peter. and yet it was peter who jesus still entrusted to build his church upon. peter was still the one jesus gave the keys to. i say that i have a lot of forgiveness and grace inside of me. but i look at a story like that and i'm completely blown away. its like if i was wrongly accused for something and knew that someone i loved had betrayed me three times, and i knew that i was going to die because of the mess i was in, and then, i leave all of my possessions to them right before i die. they betray my trust and i entrust unto them every single thing i have.

i've been thinking a lot about my own capacity to forgive, to offer grace to those who need it. i want to think that i have this immense amount of forgiveness for others, in big and small things, and then i look at the ways i'm hurt and the ways others have wronged me in my life, things that i pushed away because i couldn't forgive or judgments i've given because someone wronged me. but all i can do is keep looking at jesus. the more i look at jesus, the more i see this outpouring of forgiveness. it's the answer for everything. and it's not the easy way out or about just living in this fantasy world of love and peace and happiness, because forgivness is hard. forgiveness is a million times harder than harboring bitterness over messy situations. forgivness is a million times harder than building walls to keep the wrong-doers out. forgivness is harder than anger, it's harder than violence and hatred, it's the hardest thing in the world.

we stem from the root of sin and that root is embedded so deeply within us, some, it seems, more than others. and we separate ourselves and say this thing is worse than that thing or that person is worse than i am because they're committing this kind of sin and that's a lot worse than the stuff i give in to. and we forget we're all rooted in the same place, we've all grown out of the same ground. and so bad things happen, and we wrong each other and some people just wrong and wrong and wrong and never even feel any remorse about it. and we forget we're from this same place, that we came from the same parents - adam and eve. and we say how could you do this? how could you be such a bad person? how could you lie, cheat, steal, abuse, abandon, take advantage of, give in to, give away, give up...on and on and on. how could you be this kind of awful being?

we forget that it's sin. we forget that we all have just as full of a capacity as everyone else. we forget we're in this together, we're one, we're helping carry each other's loads and burdens and junk. and we let the sin take over. we let the sin win. it's so easy to forget that we're all in this same place together when we've wronged one another. we lose sight of our understanding about who we are as humans, and how we've screwed it up. but jesus? jesus gets it.

and jesus had opportunities to let the sin take over. during his emotional turmoil in the garden, i could only picture him crying and praying and begging for god to take the burden away, and upon seeing judas walk up, knowing what was to come, just completely getting swept away in his emotions and yelling and cursing him and tearing him apart for what he'd just done. but he doesn't.

he even knew about judas's betrayal earlier that night during their last supper, as jesus washed his disciple's feet.

even judas's.

if i knew one of my friends was going to help have me killed just to make a few bucks, would i be able to kneel down, take off their dirty sandals, and wash their feet?

even as he told peter he would betray him, i can only imagine jesus's voice. it was probably sad and quiet, but not demeaning. a knowing sort of tone, carrying deep understanding of this human condition. but still knowing that even though peter would betray him, that didnt' make peter who he was. that didn't change the peter jesus knew, the peter jesus had discipled and taught and cared for. he saw this deep potential and endless possibility in peter's eyes. and jesus, the only one who didn't give in to sin, the only one with boasting rights about being better than when it came to sin, understood our human condition so much more than most of us ever will. jesus is the only one who could ever truly say, "how could you do that to me?" and he's the only one who never will.

i just want to breathe that kind of life for others.

its days like these that the only question i have for myself is, "what the heck happened?"

i guess i'm realizing a lot about humility, about bringing brought down so that i can come up completely changed. i just wish it wasn't like this, so messy, so complicated, so out of my own control. i remember days when i would ask myself why i couldn't just get it right, now i'm realizing that i can't just get it right because i'm not willing to try. he's given me opportunities every single day of my life to just get it right, and i pass them up. but can't you just stop the temptations, god? can't you just control my behaviors, my thoughts, my actions?

we weren't made to be robots. we're not computers. god isn't just typing in commands and orders for us to blindly follow. he allows us to choose and decide, and when we choose and decide wrong, he gently reminds us that we knew it was wrong all along. and so, we ask him to make it right. and usually, at least in my case, he does so by presenting opportunities for me to say no to the things i used to say yes to. to choose a different life, walk a different path, and nine times out of ten, i fail him.

and so i'm left with this feeling of stuck-ness, of never getting it right-ness, and wonder how in the world i could ever make all this work. but i know it won't always be one step forward, two steps back. eventually i'm going to take three or four or five forward and get ahead of all this, even if those two steps backward come again.

and i have no clue what else to do but that. i don't know how else to go about all this.

Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo; the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end... because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was, when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going... because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

i just love that dialouge. it's the best.

nine.

so, new year.
what a strange holiday. i don't know, something about it just kind of weirds me out. we put all this stock on the simple changing of days. i learned this year that the catholic church's liturgical calander actually begins at the beginning of lent. so our "new year" as catholics is rung in with the preparation for christ's birth. i know a man who talks about, as christians, changing the entire way we view the world - what holidays are about, which ones we actively celebrate and which ones we don't. like how our new year should be christmas, and our independence day should be easter. learning more about the feast days of the saints and other important events in our church history, why they are so significant and celebrating them for what they are. i guess it wouldn't give you as many excuses to get together with friends and family...or maybe it would. but fireworks on easter would be pretty wild.

my one and only new year's resolution is to learn more about the character of god. i'm excited about that.

i really need a job. i'm trusting in god about what the heck he wants to do with my life, because i basically have literally, absolutely no direction whatsoever. everything's pretty much dissolved and i'm as open as ever and just waiting on him to show me the way. he's good like that and he'll lead me. he always does.

until then, i'm broke as a joke.