People Are Often Unreasonable

"People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may just never be enough;
Give the world the best you have anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it's all between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway."

From Do It Anyway: The Handbook for Finding Personal Meaning and Deep Happiness in a Crazy World.

Letters to a Poet

"I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

Patrick Overton - When We Walk to the Edge

When we walk to the edge

of all the light we have

and take the step into the

darkness of the unknown,

we must believe that

one of two things will happen....

There will be something

solid for us to stand on

or we will be taught to fly.

Half Our Lives

Oh I want every second of the minutes in the hours of these days

Cause there's too many trees to climb
And secret spots to find down by the lake
Oh the fireflies are out and momma's calling now
We can't go to sleep cause we'll wake up older
We can't let these nights steal away half our lives

And we will spend our days finding helpless competition to defeat
Yeah we'll chase away the girls and pretend that we don't want 'em on our street
Yeah the sun is running too
Being chased off by the moon

And we should go to bed but we'll catch fireflies instead
We can't go to sleep cause we'll wake up older
We can't let these nights steal away

And I don't want these days to ever be over
We can't let these nights just steal away

Oh just stay awake with me
Won't you stay awake with me
Oh stay awake with me

We can't go to sleep cause we'll wake up older
We can't let these nights steal away
And I don't want these days to ever be over
We can't let these nights steal away half our lives

To the Man in the Arena

"It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Nightlights at night

Life has been interesting lately. Of course, when isn't it? Yet this has been a different interesting...more of a slowly settling of revelation instead of a wave of knowledge. There is a difference. I wake and feel as if I'm no longer whole. Is it due to the burning of my flesh on the altar of God? Perhaps it is the natural state of things. Like a little kid who lost their favorite blanket. It's not that the changes are over taking me. I just wish I knew. Knew where I was going and how God aims to get me there. I've realized that the next year and a half is going to be a huge testing period for my character, for my faith, for my ability to let go of my reasoning mind and allow God's senseless love to lead me in all truth. The "what if's" plague my heart like needles trying to find a vein. Piercing the most tender areas. Silence has become the order for the day, my mouth too taut to allow much of anything to come out. Stress slowly mounting as bad dreams haunt my nights and fears seem to become my shadow following my every move. I feel as if God is staring at me trying to get me to understand something but I'm missing it. I feel as if I have no ability to discern for myself. As if I need my mom or dad to hold my hand and tell me exactly where I should go, what I should be. As if I can't trust my own spirit to guide me. Sigh. I just feel as if I'm in this waiting room wondering if there was something I could have done to keep me from this place and wondering why I'm not being told anything. Blegh.
So enough about what I feel about the situation. Now onto what I need to do about it in no particular order-1. Remain where I am (figuratively) until I have a sure knowing that I should go forward. I need to refrain from wandering aimlessly around the fields and roads trying to figure out the best path. The key when lost is remaining where you are until help comes or you're positive of the direction you should go. 2. Pray. My knees should ache from prayer, both literally and figuratively. How else can God communicate with me unless I'm tuned in. 3. Act. Do things. I can't just sit around waiting for God to yell His will at me. Perhaps the best way to figure out where I'm going is to act. Not just live with a beating heart and breath and enjoying life but of giving time, energy, love and honor to those around me. 4. The Word. Ahhh possibly the crux of my problem. The one thing I have struggled with my entire life. Not a lack of belief but a lack of discipline. I won't even go into it other than saying I'm going to change that. My personal faith should be of most importance to me. Since I seem to be only capable of trusting everyone's faith but my own.

Only the prologue...

“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.” -C.S. Lewis

I was reading quotes by Mr. Lewis this morning and came across this one. It struck me because it is actually what I've been reading about in a book. I've always heard the saying that some people are so heavenly minded they are of no earthly use. I think I might have gone to the other extreme in my pusuits to be of earthly use. I find it hard to imagine myself a heaven. To realize there is more after this life. To remember that this life is only a prologue to the true book of life. I get so caught up in the here and now that I forget that my here and now effects my ever after. So many times in the Bible, more often than not in the New Testament, there is a drive to not focus on the consequences here but in Heaven. Yet, in this day, in this hour, I find it so hard to focus. To focus on my reward in Heaven. It seems so far away but then I realize, in this flash of brilliance that it really isn't that far away. When you stop to count up how many days you have left...they are not many. Perhaps that seems like a slightly gory and depressing thought for many but I have realized that it is actually a reality check for a Christian such as myself. So in my quest to discover myself and to live my life according to God's reality and not my own I am striving to remember that everything I do will effect my Heaven. This life is only the prologue and Heaven is the real story. Yet, I want my prologue to be a wonderful leading story!

It's all new

So today I was walking back to my room thinking about my previous posts when it hit me that I need to change how I view the next year of my life. I have been feeling this intense pressure to figure it all out. To be able to look at people and tell them exactly what I want in my life. And I can...to an extent. Yet, I've realized I need to change what I say. I tell people I don't know what I want to do with my life. I kinda whine about it honestly. Yet, I'm done with that business. From now on it's claiming that God is directing me into the place He has for me. Because He is! I'm sure this thing is going to evolve into something more eloquent but for now I'm done with speaking a lack of knowledge. Proverb 23: 7 says, "for as he thinks in his heart, so is he." I'm not quite sure how to explain this. I just am discovering more and more of what I want out of life and through this revelation there is developing a strength to stand for myself through God's plan. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. One step at a time, building my faith. In the building of confidence in one thing builds confidence in another. So here's the gist- God is directing into the place He has for me. It's going to be wonderful!

Free falling

So I've decided- trying to figure this thing called life out is like man learning to fly. For so many years they would put on wings and run off building trying to get some kind of lift. Obviously they would come crashing down as they realized the law of gravity is much stronger than their will. Slowly they started to realize that they can't do it on their own. They needed something other than their own efforts to make it. So they start looking at engines and wings and triangles and cloth. They begin to look outside their own physical power in order to overcome the law of gravity.
It's kinda how things are in the spiritual. We're born into a sinful world and many of us spend our time putting on wings and running off building trying to overcome the law of sin. Yet, no matter how many times we try, we go crashing down and for many of us, in our own human persistance, we get back up determined to figure this thing out. Like small children we shove anyone trying to help away. Then in a moment of brilliance we realize there is a better way. We stop strapping on those wings, running off buildings, and shoving people away. We start looking towards engines and wings and gasoline and aerodynamics. It's a little rocky at first. It takes a lot of patience and misunderstandings and frustration but then we get it. We discover the airplane. We discover God. We reach the point where we find the ability to fly above the sin but it is not within our own selves. It is within the airplane of God. It sounds rather silly probably but I know how true this is. It's easy to tell people that they should just turn straight to God and not bother with running off buildings but I'm not sure if that will ever work. We all have to come to the end of ourselves before we look toward a better way. And more often than not it is by free falling we discover just how unable we are.

Emptied Space

It's been a while since I've written anything on here. It's hard to focus on feelings, personal thoughts and things when all you do is sit in front of a computer. So I'm forcing myself to do this. Things here have been quite active. I'm not sure where the past couple of months have gone. Sometimes I feel like it has just disappeared and was never here. Then I think of memories. . I'm finished with my year as a junior. 2 more semesters and I graduate. The thought blows me away. I look around and see how everyone around me knows what he or she is doing when they leave here. Then I look at myself. Little ol' me. Do I know what I'm doing? Nope. Not one iota. I'm as a wave on the shore being tossed around or a leaf in the wind being blown every which way. I don't know God's will for my life. Ha. I don't know what I want to do with my life! Yet, the thought has been going around and around in my mind for the past couple of days. What if I do know? What if deep down in the most hidden parts of my heart, I know? What if I know but I'm too scared to live it out? Too scared to trust God to listen? You know I can say and, even, write all kinds of things about trusting God with His plan for your life but do I believe it? Do I believe my own words? I just...I don't even know. There's something in my heart that I want to write down. I want to express it but I just don't know if there are words for this kind of thing. A job, a dream, a place to go, a husband, a child, a life well lived, a future, a past, the present. I want things. I want them as a child wants her dream back after waking. You know you'll never have it but you still wish. Why? Because without hope we would all be dead. What if I miss God's best? What then? Because it is possible to mess it all up. No matter what anyone tells me. I mean, sure, you can hope that God turns it all around. Yet, what if He doesn't? I just don't understand. I just...I'm standing on shifting sand and I'm scared to death that I'm going to screw this all up. I want so badly to cover my ears to the answers to my questions because it's all hollow to me. It's as if I'm grasping onto straws to keep from going under the waves of it all. Sometimes it feels as if people tell me things not because they believe but because they know that's what they are supposed to say. I know there are times I do that. It's strange to think that my last summer of childish freedom is almost over. After this school year I will be a bonafide, hardcore, true blue grownup. I'll have a job and insurance and bills. Part of me wants to grab hold of time and stop it from ticking away. Another part wants to let it go, to allow it to disappear, to slowly tick it all away till things have gotten easier, even push it forward. Isn't that how we are? Torn between the now and the what if? How it must be for God, sitting up in His heaven, having to hear these prayers. I know it's silly yet, I also know it is human. Things haven't exactly shaped up like I thought they would and I'm surprised by my strength. My dad once told me that I'm stronger than I think and in this time I'm seeing just how right he is. I'm thankful for that. It's my dad's 60th birthday. He was 39 when they had me. It blows me away to think that life is here. Now. You can't tell it to wait till you've got it all figured out. You're figuring this beautiful mess out right now. And you've only got one shot. I don't really have a point. Just that time...time is my closest enemy. It gives and it takes. It moves and stops. It steals and lends. Just as that moment before fully waking and it's as if time stands still. Or that instant when walking in the rain and you can see the individual raindrops falling. Or when you look at the stars and realize the immensity of it and you feel as if time never ends. It just goes on and on and on into eternity.