stuff christians like:

Apparently, in my heart, God is still up in heaven keeping a massive list of things that count and things that don’t count. He’s Santa Claus and I’m a kid trying to hide the pieces of a broken vase under my bed in the hope that they don’t count. Christ’s death must not have been enough, because in my mind, there are still two lists going.

Let’s lose the lists. It all counts. If we could have been saved by a list, God wouldn’t have sent His son, He would have just given us more paper and pens so we could keep better lists. It has to count or Christ’s life doesn’t count. The grace, the mercy, the deep, beating heartbeat of hope from Christ beats loudly because it does count. The gap between me and God was wide and dark. But it was crossed.

i love the portrait of christ i can see.

it's been some time, writing wise. partially because the d and e keys fell off of my keyboard, or were rampantly pulled off of my keyboard in attempts to remove the debris that had been hindering e key's performance. long story short, d was in the wrong place at the wrong time, thus getting lifted as well. and since apparently laptop keys aren't like real keyboard keys, and since apparently i didn't know this, i can't get them back on for the life of me. and so i type away, having to perfect my typing aim with farewelled friends d and e, or what's left of them - little nipply nubs. it's a rough world.

in other news, my time has been consumed with lost - and my addiction not for fictional sci-fi mystery shows, but for being able to watch a program consecutively from the very beginning whenever i please. someone at hulu is out to steal my productivity. i mostly wrestle with "i shouldn't be doing this, it's such a remarkable waste of my time". yet still watching. faults.

and oh, hi clarity. i'm really grateful you decided to join me here, because things were getting a little hairy without you. i know i should be humble. but seriously? i saw that coming from a mile away. so i'm still moving, but now farther and faster, because i'm realizing the things i saw in my head and the things that actually exist weren't really ever aligned. i guess i'm just an optomist like that. or delusional. but the one who calls is faithful, so these realizations are coming at the time they're supposed to come. and i'm just meant to bask in the season i'm in. i'm getting someplace, i hope.

asking, always asking what's next. praying for more direction. lots of time on my hands. needing to be more creative, learn how to make more stuff. we'll see how that goes.

progression.

seriously! hawks! what the heck?!

so many sides to consider.

strange thoughts on the long drive home tonight, wondering always what the future holds. trying to let go of my own selfish ambitions, yet struggling with this desire to be satisfied. i don't really know what's what.

i'm happy with where things are now. i think about the past year of my life, a whirlwind of change and chaos, a time that can only accurately be described as messy, and i'm so grateful for right now. for beautiful realizations and for once, i am actually celebrating the change. because it's brought me into so many wonderful places within myself. and, i feel, for such a long time, my prayer had been, let me be this. let me be that. my prayers were so focused on this great change i wanted inside of myself, to be better at things, to be less and more of things, to be this girl in my head who's actually getting someplace. i've realized that this whole time, that's what's been happening. and boy, i sure know i've slowed down the process, some life lessons i wish i would never have to learn the hard way. but wisdom's funny like that for some people, and likes to take its time getting acquired. and i am not wise, i am far from it. but i am now on a conscious journey to seek it out, to gain maturity and understanding, to foster these things within my self and continue to grow and grow and grow and bloom.

i really wish to grasp my identity in christ. to solidify it. that is my goal. i have big dreams. they can only come into fruition through patience and selflessness. after all, it isn't about me.

slavery

she possesses various names, but one reality. she has many appearances, but is made of one element. in truth, she is an everlasting ailment bequeathed by each generation unto its successor.

i found the blind slavery which ties the people's present with their parents' past, and urges them to yield to their traditions and customs, placing ancient spirits in the new bodies.

i found the mute slavery, which bind the life of a man to a wife whom he abhors, and places the woman's body in the bed of a hated husband, deadening both lives spiritually.

i found the deaf slavery, which stifles the soul and the heart, rendering man but an empty echo of a voice, and a pitiful shadow of a body.

i found the lame slavery, which places man's neck under the domination of the tyrant and submits strong bodies and weak minds to the sons of greed for use as instruments to their power.

i found the ugly slavery, which descends with the infants' spirits from the spacious firmament into the home of misery, where need lives by ignorance, and humiliation resides beside despair. and the children grow as miserables, live as criminals, and die as despised and rejected non-existents.

i found the subtle slavery, which entitles things with other than their names - calling slyness intelligence, and emptiness a knowledge, and weakness a tenderness, and cowardice a strong refusal.

i found the twisted slavery, which causes the tongues of the weak to move with fear, and speak outside of their feelings, and they feign to be meditating their plight, but they become as empty sacks, which even a child can fold or hang.

i found the bent slavery, which prevails upon one nation to comply with the laws and rules of another nation, and the bending is greater each day.

i found the perpetual slavery, which crowns the sons of monarchs as kings, and offers no regard to merit.

i found the black slavery, which brands with shame and disgrace forever the innocent sons of the criminals.

contemplating slavery, it is found to possess the vicious powers of continuation and contagion.

slavery will remain slavery in all her horrible form, even if she calls herself liberty.

khalil gibran

tonight upon getting home from work and subsequently getting directly into my bed to be lazy for the rest of the evening, i heard a rumbling of chairs coming from downstairs. my thoughts went directly to, 'someone's throwing a tantrum.'

that's because everyday at my job, someone gets upset, and this getting upset usually works itself into the throwing of chairs. thus, apparently, now, i hear loud noises of furniture and think children are throwing chairs.

some days have been better than other days - like, for example, my first day, one girl tried to attack another and yet another girl broke her one of her cds and wanted to cut herself with it. my second day, i watched love and basketball, bend it like beckam, tyler perry's i can do bad all by myself, and the soloist. first day = bad day. second day = normal day. and i have never watched so many movies in a row.

it was interesting, my first day - all the crazy things were happening and my adrenaline shot through the roof, my immediate instinctual reaction was to run and hide, to get away from the situation. this is obviously not my job. my job is to stop the bad things. so while all this was going down, and i'm panicking and fearful and all that, i'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh. there's no way i can do this job. i'm in way over my head. etc etc. but after the fact, i realized, my first response to a lot of things is fear. i think, by and large, i'm a very fearful person, and it's something that i really dislike about myself. so i'm hoping this job will help to change that about me, to begin to make my first reaction to scary situations a strong one, instead of one that freezes up and gets paralyzed by the fear.

i'm trying to spend a lot more time in prayer, especially now, working with these girls - i feel like i have to walk so closely with god. because if i'm not trusting him to have my back, things will go wrong. all in all, i think it's going to be good for me. i'm hoping.

geez! one more thing.

don't doubt jesus' love just because we doubt our own.

and as much as i've grown and changed and become, i can't help but feel that little tiny feeling inside of me that reaches out for this day one year ago.



Jesus said to her, "Mary."

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).

Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."

positively too many things going on all at once. new job = tough times. background: working with adolescents that have been incredibly abused and neglected. we're talking about as intense as you could get, so so so incredibly broken and fragile and just trying to survive. there's so much to it. i guess ultimately, i feel like it's in a lot of ways doing the dirty work, really getting in there and offers the great potential for me to draw closer to the heart of christ, working and wrestling with these kids who have issues i can scarcely begin to understand, loving on them and hopefully teaching them something that can change their future, even if it's the smallest way. but then there's the scared part of me, that thinks heeeeeck no, i can't do this job, i'm going to get smacked around, exhausted, emotionally drained, stretched and stretched - and do i really have the energy for this? is it really where i am called? i feel yes, it is, but that fear in me is present.

and then there's all the other stuff going through my head, who i am, who i want to become, the goals i've set for myself and all the ways i've been lazy about accomplishing those. just really being challenged to be strong in my beliefs, the things that i commit to. surrounding myself with people wh encourage me to do that, but not really having all that many people.

wrestling to solidify my identity, perpetually feeling in the middle, always in the middle. which is so frustrating sometimes, honestly. but in most ways feels like the story of my life.

i saw 500 days of summer last night, and i liked it. the overall message of the movie really made me think about relationships and reality. the movie portrayed a very realistic display of these lofty ideas we call love and fate, and really challenged my views of having a 'story' - this great fairytale-esque journey of how i found my one. that sometimes we experience these out of this world romances with whirlwind rushing feelings and indescribable moments, and we think surely, surely this must be it! if it weren't, it wouldn't feel like this! when in actuality, those intense things aren't always THE things, and real love can sometimes take a back-door approach, a love that is slow and subtle and takes its time to reach the depths, which therefore causes it to be stronger, more grounded in reality, and forever lasting. i think that realization comes out of a maturation, a gaining of wisdom, a release of childhood notions. i guess that's probably not true for everyone. but i think it's probably true for me. a letting go of my expectations, my imaginary ways of thinking, because that's always what it is for me.

i suppose i'm just constantly searching. constantly trying to discover the answers and finish the puzzle and see the entire picture, when it doesn't work like that. it'll never work like that. i'm better off quitting the never-ending guessing game. i'm usually wrong. and it's a whole heck of a lot of energy.

such a draining day.