prayer

I just got back from the hospital; my roommate jamie tried to slit her wrists tonight. Thankfully she wasn't very successful and that I found her in time. The hospital is keeping her overnight for observation, but this is going to be a long, hard, and painful journey - for everyone involved, but Jamie especially. If you could please pray for her healing physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually that would be appreciated. If you could also pray for me, that I'll know what to do, that I'll be able sleep in my room again without seeing the spots where the blood won't come out of the carpet no matter how hard I scrub. Gruesom, I know, but every time I walk into our room, that's what I see. Any and all prayer is greatly appreciated. At this point I don't quite know what to do or where to go from here, prayer for that would be helpful as well. My hear-felt thanks.

I look beyond the empty cross, forgetting what my life has cost

I hate the feeling of not knowing what to do. The feeling that you know what someone is doing is wrong and you don't know how to address it. Or the feeling that something is wrong and you don't know how to fix it. How do you show your disappointment in people about their actions and behaviors without coming off as pretentious or uncaring? Where do you draw the line between loving a person despite their faults and sins and allowing them to continue in their sin and their destructive actions? Do you show your displeasure at the stories of drunken revelries or do you stay silent? If you say nothing that they assume that you are okay with their behaviors, but if you get upset then they simply don't tell you and distrust your opinion. This is my dilemma. They know I don't like or approve of them getting drunk or having sex, but my problem lies with should I leave it at that or find some other way to show how their actions are hurting that in more ways that one. It's so hard to reconcile Sarah's tales of getting drunk, her violent behavior while drunk, and sex with her boyfriend with her stories of the amazing things she feels that God is calling her to do. Does she not realize that the spiritual gifts she prays and longs for won't come or won't be bestowed because of her actions that she doesn't feel she needs to change? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Yes, God can still use her for his glory (he can and will use whomever he pleases) but willfully sinning is never, never a good thing. Sarah is a good person, but that's not good enough, it's never good enough, it will never be good enough. I'm a good person, but I still sin. Sin is what separates us from God, and good actions can never come close to repaying the price that was paid for our lives. Is that so hard to understand?




I look beyond the empty cross
forgetting what my life has cost
wipe away the crimson stains
and dull the nails that still remain
more and more I need you now
I owe you more each passing hour
the battle between grace and pride
I gave up not so long ago
so steal my heart and take the pain
wash my feet and cleanse my pride
take the selfish, take the weak
and all the things I cannot hide
take the beauty, take my tears
the sin-soaked heart, make it yours
take my world all apart
take it now, take it now

God is Good!

Today is a glorious day! The sun is shinning, the sky is blue, I am playing good music, and finally God is good! This morning I had coffee with my uncle Del who lives just outside of Seattle (he had coffee, I had hot chocolate) and we talked for about an hour about random stuff - it was good to sit down with him and just talk. I haven't seen a lot of him - he's my mother's older brother - especially since he left my aunt Trish and the rest of the family sort of refused to talk to him. I'm glad my mom didn't refuse to take his calls. Don't get me wrong, she gave him an earful, but she always told him that no matter what he did she would always love him because he was her brother. But that's sort of getting off the topic of how beautiful it is outside and how good God is.

I love Spring, I love the flowers, the smell of fresh cut grass and growing things. I love walking around in flip-flops and t-shirts; strappy sandals, tank-tops and shorts. Playing ultimate frisbee, even though I'm not very good at it. I love how the sun doesn't set until at least 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening - and then rises at 5:00 in the morning. I love the feeling of sun on my skin as I just lay there and read until I feel like my eyes are going to fall out or my skin gets burnt to a crisp (whichever comes first.) I love seeing the apple and cherry trees bloom and then produce fruit. I love eating all the spring and summer foods; apples, peaches, corn on the cob, fresh picked vegetables, bbq and the smell of charcoal. It is always so beautiful, even when it rains in the spring; instead of being dreary it brings hope - hope of new life, new growth, and all those over-stated hallmark type things. mmm... sunshine... Hurray for Spring!

Game Show Time

Time for Quiz Your Friend!

So all you out there need to take this so I can see how much you actually know and how much you've been faking these past few years ;)

http://www.quizyourfriends.com/linkquiz02.php?quizname=060417145924-511940&

Enjoy, enjoy!

When I go down

The pounding in my head won't stop, and it hurts to breathe. I feel like I'm gasping for air, yet all I can do is sit quietly and try to ignore how much my chest hurts and how much I want to cry. I feel like I'm missing something, like something is just outside of my understanding, just outside of my field of vision. I want to see it; I want to understand. For some reason I can't convince myself to turn around to see what's standing behind me for fear that is something that will eat me alive. I want this life to die. Not physically die, this is not suicidal depression, but a metaphorical death of the self; the rebirth of a creation that was destined for something so much better, so much higher. I am prideful of my brilliance, yet I have distain for those who try harder than I do and still do not measure up to my standards of perfection. I do not even meet my standards, yet it does not matter. Why am I so prone to suffer from apathy, melancholy? I don't even know what I'm trying to say. I hate being apathetic, so apathetic that I can't bring myself to take the necessary steps to do what needs to be done in order for it all to work out in the end. I wish rebirth was so much easier than it is, even though I know that if it was easy it would hold little meaning and then what would be the point?

"I'll tell you flat out it hurts so much to think of this so from my thoughts I will exclude this very thing that I hate more than everything is the way I'm powerless to dictate my own moods. I've thrown away so many things that could've been much more and I just pray my problems go away if they're ignored, but that's not the way it works no that's not the way it works. When I go down, I go down hard and I take everything I've learned and teach myself some disregard. When I go down, it hurts to hit the bottom and of the things that got me there I think, if only I had fought them. If and when I can clear myself of this clouded mind I'll watch myself settle down into a place where peace can search me out and find that I'm so ready to be found. I've thrown away the hope I had in friendships. I've thrown away so many things that could have been much more. I've thrown away the secret to find an end to this and I just pray my problems go away if they're ignored, but that's not the way it works. No, that's not the way it works" When I go Down, Relient K

Batter my heart, three-person'd God

Pause. Breathe in, exhale. Pause. Breathe in, exhale. Pause. Hang your head down, down upon my shoulder. Quiet now, search for the words to explain the inexplicable feelings that turn, turn through your insides. The words that won't come, the feelings that grow, change, twist with every word that you try to use to paint the emotions in bright and dark colors. The pain, the anguish that doesn't make sense that won't go away, that hides underneath your skin, between the ribs of your chest. There is a hunger that grows in your belly that is not for any human nourishment, but rather for some thing; that one thing that is unattainable. The divine myth that holds all your hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, desires, lusts. The need to drop the weight that holds you down to the floor of the ocean. You struggle to breathe water even though your lungs were made for air; you struggle slice through the anchor with clumsy fingers that were made to untie not cut.

We were not made for this world, and this is not my home. In all my longing to find that place, the one place that I can call my own, my home I have realized that it does not exist. My sanctuary, my haven, gone - with a blink of an eyes, the flashing of a neuron or synapse in my brain I bear the weight of the truth. I suffocate under the crushing weight; I can hear my bones snapping one by one as they can no longer sustain the heaviness. Does God want to hear our last thoughts, our last dying wish that we were alive rather than dead? Does he weep as we struggle to keep our diseased bodies and withered souls alive for one more day, one more hour? Or does he rejoice with the angels for the ones who are imputed with Christ's righteousness and finally admitted into that one place that they have been searching for their entire lives?

I can see my reflection in the window, my face distorted by the rain sluicing down the pane. The quiet of my thoughts leaves an empty place inside of me and it hurts to look too deeply inside of myself. Perhaps I am afraid of being alone, or perhaps it is not the fear of being alone, it is the fear of knowing that I will always walk in solitude. Why is it that when people need arms to carry them it is me they come to? But more importantly, why is it that when I am in need of a pair of comforting arms there is no one to carry me. I know that my cries heard, I cry out to you and you do not answer. The rapture of life is alluring to me; it calls to me softly on the wind. It weeps out my name in the howling of the wind, it cries out to me in the rain. If I traded it all away, if I traded it all for love, if I traded it all for life would I be happy, would I dance in the rain instead of cry hoping that the tears of the sky will mask the tears of my unhappiness?

ACK!

This weekend has been rather strange for me. Usually the weekend is where I sleep in and then madly do homework until my eyeballs want to fall out of my head and my fingers cramp from all the typing. Instead, this weekend all my homework was finished by friday evening; I finsihed reading 1 Henry IV, wrote a short little blurb on the essay "Why I'm not a Christian", and read the allotted assignment from "Age of Iron". I have been at a complete loss of what to do with my weekend; do I sit around and watch tv (I did a fair amount of that), do I read a new book (did that too) or something else? So... this weekend I read "Shadow Puppets" by Orson Scott Card, watched 2 or three movies on TV. Oh yeah... and I made a pie. Yes, I made a pie. It was horrible. In all honesty it wasn't that bad, it was sort of good actually. The reason I said it was horrible was because the crust was bad. For me the crust is the best part, and to make a pie where the crust isn't flakey and crisp and good is a horrible sin to commit. Not only this I completely missed the fact that it was daylight savings. Can I beat my head against the door now? *sighs* O woe is me... :)