A Study of The Dark And The Light

I feel like that should be the title to my life: A Study of The Dark And The Light.

That's what my heart keeps circling back toward.  I am continually amazed by the pains and sorrows, joys and glories of this world.  At one moment I am basking in the thought and care God took to create the growing bud of a tree, that it only exists because God lets it, that it only exists for our use. In the next I'm despairing because of what this world has robbed my beloved mother of- so many memories gone, so many concepts beyond her grasp, so much she deserves, so many experiences she will never have.

And yet I am filled with the knowledge that this is all by His design.  That just as no twig or bird has slipped his notice, neither has each individual moment of our lives not passed without His great, gentle, merciful attention.  

I know that all of this is for our benefit.  Every moment of boredom, pain, and joy.

How wonderful is it that all of this is to add to your soul?  To make you bigger, stronger, better.  More pure.  That's what this is all for- Purity.  Isn't that fascinating?  God doesn't really want to change your soul, He wants to bring the surface to harmony and balance with the eternal soul within you.  He wants to prove you His.  Deep, heart change is required for the world alters us from the moment we are born and sometimes we choose to change our depths.  It does not change the fact that He knows who you used to be in your soul, and He strives to remind you.  What joy we must have felt in the premortal life when He told us of the wonderful Plan.  I think a lot of this life is God trying to remind us of the joy we felt at the opportunity to suffer.

Angsty Angst (Deal With It)

Sometimes I wonder about this life and really, I can't put into words on the computer what I form so easily in my head without sounding stupid. 

But I can try.

Echoes and crashes, darkness and shadows.  We're all blind, helpless things struggling along dank, abandoned hospital floors.  A building for the damned, that's what this life feels like sometimes.  With rusted tools and useless medicines lining derelict, dust-choked cabinets and empty rooms.  All of the healing machines of any value long ago carted off to some other place where the patients seemed worth fighting for.  There was never any hope for us anyway.  Even when personages of knowledge walked these halls we were the abandoned, the inoperable, the terminal.  They would close their eyes, shake their heads, maybe give a comforting weight to the bony shoulder, and turn away.  Now here we are, shifting wraiths of pain, sorrow, and anguish.  Our limbs heavy, our gait shuffling we barely glance at each other as we wander. We're still searching for something, all of us for different things- hope, love, faith, escape.  Yet we're trapped in this hallow building.  Trapped in our lies and fears.  Chained to our pride, our weak wills.  So sure that someday something will change.  A friend from long past will come looking to take us home, a dearly departed mother will beckon us into the beyond.  No one comes.  No solid footfall rebounds.  We are as empty as the hospital.  As empty as our fate.  We are damned and deserve to be damned.

This is what we cannot see: sometimes darkness reigns.   Sometimes we choose a path darker than we acknowledged at first.  We choose our fate.  We look into the mirror and realize we've become everything we hated, we choose to love the person best suited to hurt us, we hurt irreparably the ones we love the most, we look into the black and all we see is darkness and ruin and rot.

At some point though, something shifts.  We notice the lack of a lock on the door we always passed by in our haunted life.  We notice the corner of a window hidden by old filing cabinets.  And we find our way, dizzy and confused, slowly and painfully into the night.  The walls, once so achingly familiar in their emptiness, fall away.  Our silent, skeletal companions stand beside us and for once we notice them.  We stare out into the night, notice its silken comfort and look up since time immemorial.  "There!" hushed whispers, the first words spoken.  Muscles remember their use, heavy arms and eyebrows raise, lips curve into semblances of smiles.  "Stars," the mind mutters.  "Yes, stars!" we slowly remember.  It isn't known how long we stand in the night, in the streets of this empty world.  Not so empty as we thought before, nor so cold.  Stars burn in the black and we remember what it's like to forgive ourselves and to forgive each other.  Memory trickles through.  We remember.  We remember to be human and to never condemn ourselves.  Who needs hospitals when you have redemption?


Boom.  Forgive yourself, forgive your foes.

"But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
And unto him who smiteth thee on the cheek, offer also the other; or, in other words, it is better to offer the other, than to revile again.  And him who taketh away thy cloak, forbid him not to take thy coat also.
For it is better that thou suffer thine enemy to take these things, than to contend with him.  Verily I say unto you, Your heavenly Father who seeth in secret, shall bring that wicked one into judgment.
...
Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom.  For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again."

Luke 6: 27-30, 35-38

Awesome talk on mercy.

oh and also,


"Face down with the LA curbside endings
With the ones and zeros.
Downtown was the perfect place to hide.
The first star that I saw last night was a headlight
Of a man-made sky, but man- made never made our dreams collide,
Collide.

Here we are now with the falling sky and the rain,
We're awakening
Here we are now with our desperate youth and the pain,
We're awakening
Maybe it's called ambition, you've been talking in your sleep
About a dream, we're awakening

Last week found me living for nothing but deadlines,
With my dead beat sky but, this town doesn't look the same tonight
These dreams started singing to me out of nowhere
And in all my life I don't know that I ever felt so alive,
Alive

I want to wake up kicking and screaming
I want to wake up kicking and screaming
I want to know that my heart's still beating
It's beating,
I'm bleeding
I want to wake up kicking and screaming
I want to live like I know what I'm leaving
I want to know that my heart's still beating
It's beating... it's beating...
I'm bleeding"

"Awakening" sung by Switchfoot

And a happy picture to remind you of the awesome of the universe:

Temples and Truth

So many changes to my heart in such a short amount of time!

I really, truly don't know why it's all meant for right now.  Something wonderful is happening... or will soon.

Whatever, anyway.

Things I've learned recently:

• Love is a Choice.
• Most of what you feel in the beginning of a relationship is held in, never fully experienced for various reasons.
• We exist to experience all this world has to offer, to become strong enough to bear our pains or have the faith to be freed from them.
• Love is... silly and stupid and risky.
• Dating someone is a risk. ALWAYS.
• The risk is always worth it... somehow.
• Life, Love, and Joy are worth everything.
• God is Love. His Son is the Living Water.  They are the source of all Joy.
• This life is... incredibly, insanely, beautiful

That's pretty much it.  Amazing, isn't it?  Those who read this (if any do) have probably already realized these things... but I don't mind.  It's the truth in my heart and if this post helps, inspires, bores anyone that's good enough for me.

I don't know... These things are so powerful to me.  I know that reading them will not have nearly the same effect as feeling them.  But it's a start.  Hello, bright, shiny, new place inside of me.  The place where my writing lies(lays?), the place my soul pours into existence in this silly world.  Oh, How I Love Thee.

"We pray for blessings

We pray for peace

Comfort for family, protection while we sleep

We pray for healing, for prosperity

We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering

All the while, You hear each spoken need

Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You're near

What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom

Your voice to hear

And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near

We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love

As if every promise from Your Word is not enough

All the while, You hear each desperate plea

And long that we have faith to believe

'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

What if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You're near

And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us

When darkness seems to win

We know that pain reminds this heart

That this is not, this is not our home

It's not our home

'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

And what if a thousand sleepless nights

Are what it takes to know You're near

What if my greatest disappointments

Or the aching of this life

Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy

And what if trials of this life

The rain, the storms, the hardest nights

Are Your mercies in disguise"

"Blessings" sung by Laura Story