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- my friend e. hahaha. i think this was the funniest part of my day, which is really kind of sad.
okey dokes, now back to catching up on con law!
reblog of someone i follow. i usually don’t post pictures that serve no function but to please the eye, but really… beauty is beauty for beauty’s sake and for no other “practical” purpose, isn’t it? so here. i think these flowers are really something. wow. so beautifuls!
(Source: entangled-ecstasy, via floreses)
“Forget the idea that you have one big chance to get things right. To your breakup God says, “Behold, I make all things new.” To the bad grade He says, “I make firm the steps of the one who delights in me”. To the one with plans that are utterly failing, God says, “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it’s the LORD’s purpose that prevails.”
- Unka G.
it’s important to schedule things and plan when to do them, i think. today is the first day of my summer in california and to be honest, i’m a bit overwhelmed and so i find myself sitting here unsure of where to start. numb. slightly frozen, but thawing as i type.
typing is thawing.
i can get out the mash of things inside of me and as it comes oozing out, the way the pinkish processed meat does in the chicken nugget factories, i can feel myself increasingly empowered. i guess because it’s nice to hear my own voice again after many days of not journaling or blogging or prayer writing. emailing does not count because in emails one must always consider the audience to whom you speak: what will they think when they read this? what state of life are they in? what areas are they sensitive to, and how can i be accordingly sensitive? what things may perk up their ears? and the whole time there is this subconscious choice to invest yourself in such a relationship, the email that is a representation of line that connects their voice to your ears, their ears to your voice. and every word is a small but overt act that constitutes, constructs, that choice. the choice is a demanding one.
it’s worth it, for what good is life if there is no one to spill over all your goodies to?
goodies wholly from God, like love and compassion and understanding and forgiveness and humility and revelation and wisdom and pursuit and longing and wonder and faith and doubt and questioning and cry-outing and learning and breathing and resting and running. things like that, yes.
but the remarkable thing about writing just to write is that it demands nothing of you but you. the blank page does not ask you to transcribe other wiser-men’s passages or present an order of topics that balances the selfish with the sympathetic, and … you don’t even have to sign it. it’s a bark born out of nowhere, one that does not even demand its own graceless exit because it has none.
and as for the investment aspect of writing just to write—no risk. you invest, sure. you give your heart to the paper and those words are inevitably you-filled. but you don’t even have to think about whether it will give you anything back because it can’t.* all you have is what you put, and it gazes right back at you. it’s not so much a full circle as it is an inky point you never left. and in that sense, the yield is absolute. not a comma is lost.
so anyway, i started this post just to plot out my schedule for the day and feel a little better about the vast plain of unmined hours ahead of me, but look what i ended up doing instead. i wil still make my schedule but i think that deep down underneath my slight inner tension about my agenda was just a need to overcome my fear of speaking out loud. but now that i have, i feel like i’ve already started to take mini-strokes in the swimming pool as opposed to just sitting on the concrete ledge with a dry head of hair and the poolwater coming up to my chest. i am swimming like a little fishy! or a turtle.**
okay now i am going to make breakfast and plan my schedule and do my QT. great that i titled this post “relentless preparation” with a mind to do so, all intense and everything, but am now going to shuffle into the kitchen to make a nice little leek-escarole-eggwhite-pepperjack cheese omelette and change into comfy pants and come back afterwards instead.
* writing out one’s prayers is different because that is literally write-talking to the divine, living, listening, active and crazy-loving God of the universe.
** turtle is one of the cutest words in the English language.
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- Oswald C.
okay that’s all.
—Redemption has no real meaning for me until it is worked out through my conscious life. When I am born again, the Spirit of God takes me beyond myself and my experiences, and identifies me with Jesus Christ. If I am left only with my personal experiences, I am left with something not produced by redemption. But experiences produced by redemption prove themselves by leading me beyond myself, to the point of no longer paying any attention to experiences as the basis of reality. Instead, I see that only the reality itself produced the experiences. My experiences are not worth anything unless they keep me at the Source of truth— Jesus Christ.
— Mr. Oswald C.
remembering what Who is important —> best stress reliever and mind blower and heart quieter of all time.
some things are just better left unasked.
first time my finals fetched flowers from a fellow.
note’s contents will remain undisclosed.
:o)
:o)
I know, I know. It’s such a copout to keep pasting lyrics from songs and expect them to do the work in masquerading as a blog post. But these songs, they are written on my heart and when I sing them I feel like a trumpeter just proclaiming what’s inside, just casting forth this… this ode to my King, my Father, my Everything!!! And at this fresh page-turn into the beginning of career life and end of school life, I think that singing out just ode after ode after ode to Jesus is a pretty fantastic way to begin.
Come, join the song, lift your voice as heaven and earth give praise. Fall to your knees at the feet of the Son of the one true God.
Turn from all ways, lift your eyes, for the kingdom of God is here. Open your heart, offer all, for Jesus Christ is here now.
We have found our hope. We have found our peace. We have found our rest in the one who loves. He will light the way. He will lead us home. As we offer all to the one who saves us.
Call on the name that is hope, Jesus the Son of God.
Lord over all, He is good and his mercy endures always. We have found our hope. We have found our peace. We have found our rest in the one who loves. He will light the way. He will lead us home. As we offer all to the One who saves us all.
His love endures forever his love endures forever his loves endures forever and ever.
His love endures forever his love endures forever his loves endures forever and ever.
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Psalm 18:28
yep yep. that’s what He does. eeh!
3. 09. 11
Dear God,
You tell us to pray and that if we pray and seek you that way, we’ll find you. You tell us that you give the Spirit limitlessly, that you are so generous with wisdom and insight and knowledge and understanding. Yet what am i doing wrong? Why do I pray pray pray through my tears, hoping to hear a poke or a nudge back, only to hear the hollow echo of my own pining voice, repeating platitudes and other aphorisms that are Biblically based yet have no firm adhesion to my outer behavior, my inner thoughts? I tell myself these things constantly: God hears your cry. God is nearer than you think. God is here to comfort you. God is working in mysterious and perfect ways, and just because you don’t see what He is doing, doesn’t mean He is not the perfect engineer who is knitting your life in perfect harmony with His plan. God remembers your tears, T. God promises that there are tears and weeping may come for a night but joy comes in the morning. And I’d be lying if i said it didn’t help more often than not. But I want more than just a recitation of my own self-nurturing balm, God. I want more than just to think the same thoughts, recycling them over and over again every day until I find new ways to feel the hurt and dig up old but familiar triggers to my pain. I want them to just leave me, God. Just make all these tormenting thoughts leave me. I thought I was getting stronger, and maybe I am, but why is it such a difficult battle and why does it feel like every time I try to take a step in life, even every time I try to do something in life, my hands are pressing down on sharp gravel and my face is just bearing the worst of it, exposed so nakedly to the flurry that blows at me? Why is it so unfair, God? I know that I’m being a brat, but i don’t need to tell you my disclaimers because you know what’s in my heart. Even if I came to your throne all humble and surrendered and not-my-will-but-thine, you would see right through me. You would know I was only acting that way in a back-there hope that maybe if you saw how much I had grown and matured and changed inside, you’d decide it was time to reward me and change my circumstances or inject a big syringe full of supernatural joy into my heart so that all of this would be a distant memory and i wouldn’t even be able to recall how it felt.
My heart hurts, oh God. I know I’m not supposed to make myself the victim and I don’t fully know why i’m crying so much at this point in the game, after everything people have told me, after all the words of my friends and the exhortations of my father and the promises of you and the justifications i tell myself.
I don’t feel whole, God. I feel sad. I feel like I was taken for a ride, and even if the conductor was someone who accidentally hurt me, who could not even help but gently push me off the train, and even though the more times i spin these circles of questioning in my head the more i realize that no one is truly to blame (yes, at this moment I will admit that, believing it is true, but knowing that my emotions will lead me to say otherwise at so many points throughout the day)… it still feels unfair. So many things about the long goodbye seem unfair. And maybe I’m just being … sigh. The one reason I can think of that it’s this unfair? It’s this: Nothing that hurts me this much could be considered fair. Can it?
And I know. It’s not about me me me. It’s not about my justice or my interests or my plan or my happiness. It’s about your plan and how I fit into your plan. It’s about your goodness and how that makes everything else that’s bad and awful not so bad and awful because in your goodness there is a hope eternal, a hope so beyond any bad experience we have on this earth that nothing, not even death or evil itself, could challenge that hope.
But it still hurts.
And so when i was listening to Jon Foreman’s “The Cure for Pain” I remembered how many times Henri Nouwen said that we don’t have to run away from and escape pain. How he said we should face it, remain in it, as if we could sit in the middle of a puddle and look around and go, “Hello, pleased to meet you, how do you do?” and just wait until God’s victory bus filled with laughing rescue victims and strong beaming survivors picked us up.
David always ends his psalms of lamentation with a “But you are the Lord my God, and your kingdom is eternal, and forever I will praise you, for you reign over me and I belong to you and You are my God” and stuff. He always does that. I wonder if ever his endings of praise were begrudgingly or at least not wholeheartedly offered up.
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** end of prayer **
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wow. how things change in one year. how hearts are kneaded, stretched, pulled, and smooshed, and shaped again throughout one year.
The sister in humble circumstances ought to take pride in her high position.
- James 1:9
See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.
[Sisters], as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophetswho spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseveranceandhave seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
(source: James 5 : 7-11)
take heart. He is our refuge.
<3
“Please believe me, God has big plans for your life, so you need good spiritual nourishment… don’t settle for junk food, no matter how good it tastes.”
- U. Glen
