Does it hurt?

Today I got a shot in preparation for college life, and as the nurse started rubbing my arm with that wet cloth thing, I asked her automatically "does it hurt?" As I lie here on the couch with a bad cold, I thought "why did I ask her that...it's a needle going into your arm...of course its going to hurt...." And secondly, I have gotten so many shots over the years that I know from experience that it definitely hurts (ok not that badly but STILL!!).

In the same way, change necessitates pain. And not just change like "today is the day I will eat a piece of RYE toast instead of WHEAT toast for breakfast!" Change, the type of change that one does not necessarily ask for, necessitates pain. Character growth is painful--I would much rather stay how I am than actually do something about the problems in my life. My dad talks about the trap of inertia a lot. We would prefer to stay safe and comfortable instead of going through the intense self-examination and bared soul process, prerequisites for growth.

I'm reminded of the skit guys video about the chisel...God comes along and starts chipping away at that guy and gets rid of all the growths and inadequacies. In C.S. Lewis's novel "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,"  Eustace tries to tear dragon scales off of his body over and over again, without success, until Aslan comes to him and begins ripping, slicing, and tearing off the scales for the helpless boy. But first, Eustace has to let Aslan in, he has to submit, he has to realize he cannot do it on his own.

This year, my final year of high school, hit me like one of those long bread paddles they use at the bakery at Wegmans. Senior year is HARD! Those people who say "oh senior year is easy-peasy don't you worry your pretty little head you can just take nice and easy classes and sleep in and skip school...." OH no. No no no!!! It's hard. Maybe that was just me and my mom wouldn't let me skip class and maybe I'm way too hard on myself...but maybe senior year is also just stressful and hard. But please don't misunderstand me; so many wonderful people have encouraged me and told me the truth and helped me keep going when I really, really wanted to give up.

Today I finished my last class of the Potter's School, senior year, and high school! What a great feeling it is. But looking back now on this year I am beginning to  see the changes God has worked in me. Where is my security? It should and needs to be in the unfailing love of the eternal God. But I know I haven't kept that in perspective throughout this year, and it's been painful drifting from that and looking at myself without the lens of Jesus's blood and realizing what a failure I really am. Oh boy. People do lots of celebrating at graduation, and I have been wondering if I even deserve that. Yeah sad.

But I know in my heart that the truth is God has done great things for me, and we are filled with joy! He uses the most terrible, deathly, dumbandstupid senior years to change us! Oh how he loves us, that he might break us in order to show us this grace. He has used those magnificent people to bless me and remind me the world is not ending, and far from it! But you see, the trick here is to come out of that brokenness and see the light. My mother who is so lovely and good told me today "the righteous man falls seven times. But there is a second part to that verse...he rises back up again." We must fall to see how far gone we are, but we must rise up on the wings of the LORD Almighty. It does hurt to become more like Jesus, but he knows that and groans for us with unspeakable groans to the Father of all compassion. He uses the difficulties to show us the truth, and he lifts us back up again. I certainly haven't learned my lesson yet; I know I will continue to learn for the rest of time until this life is past, but for now, I will rest on him and try to see what he wants me to see.

Praise the LORD  for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men!

Happiness is Elusive

This is part of an essay I wrote recently.

Happiness is just a feeling—get high, get happy. I’ll feel happy if I sleep with him. If more people liked me, if I had more stuff, if I partied every night, I would feel happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. What an endlessly monotonous process, the pursuit of happiness. In his poem “Endymion,” John Keats asks the question, “wherein lies happiness” (ll.24.777). How does one locate it? Some live their entire lives centered on finding someone or something that makes them happy in an empty world filled with empty activities. Aristotle writes in book one of his Nichomachean Ethics: “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” The world defines happiness as a feeling, a passing emotion that comes and goes like sunshine on a cloudy day. But true happiness, contentment, the fulfillment of the human heart, is so much more than a feeling, and it has to come from somewhere else, something whole and lasting, something otherworldly. To find that elusive contentment, one must abandon the pursuit of the shallow.

Without pursuing the permanent God, the permanent longing of the human heart can never be adequately filled. Qoheleth, the writer of Ecclesiastes, realized that God has “set eternity in the heart of man” (Ecc. 3:11, NIV). He tried everything under the sun yet finally turned to the eternal God for solace. Because humans have that longing for eternality imprinted on their hearts, fulfillment of those longings can only come from an eternal source. This world is full of futile pursuits that lead nowhere but to more futility. Humanity can only solve meaninglessness through the joy and contentment found in the everlasting God.

To find contentment, one must pursue God, the only real satisfaction. Happiness is a fickle lover, but the inner peace that comes from knowing God lasts as long as he does. People always try to find happiness in the wrong sectors of life. Looking deeper means looking for the one who fulfills every longing, because he is completely whole. Pursuing wealth, sex, or alcohol backfired a long time ago—they don’t fulfill the human heart’s deepest longings for contentment. Other people will come and go; material possessions will come and go; youth and beauty will come and go. When people stop chasing the feeling of happiness and begin to seek the satisfaction of the eternal, they truly will find abundant life. As fleeting happiness shows its face, true contentment lies along the path to that God who longs to give complete joy.

 

[photo credit: Ryan McGinty]

"The activity of happiness must occupy an entire lifetime; for one swallow does not a summer make."

Aristotle

Life is to be lived

look for me just behind that bend, that's where i'll be, behind all the memories of yesterday
it doesn't appear to be fading that fog that's inside of me
if you turn on your brights in fog you get blinded.
so how do i see my way out of this mess? (can you help me?)
i'm wiping my eyes but windshield wipers don't usually come with the package deal

forget love i'd rather fall in chocolate. hidden significance apparently.
obviouslyy.
but why won't anyone show me?

Find out who you are and then they'll find you, unless you die first.
ha.. ha.. ha. morbid jokes don't mean much until you're dead and then you realize how dead you really are
if he's dead then we're all dead
but that tomb is empty and i looked inside
he lives so show me, how it is, how it is to love and live

don't regret it just love it
live it well live it long live it good
but don't forget to love it

"no love is true save that which loves forever."
~Aristotle, Rhetoric

[photo credit: Ben Heine]

Love... is a thing with feathers, that perches in the soul

"It is pleasant to be loved, for this too makes a man see himself as the possessor of goodness, a thing that every being that has a feeling for it desires to possess: to be loved means to be valued for one's own personal qualities."

Aristotle, Rhetoric

"Keep a guard over your eyes and ears as the inlets of your heart, and over your lips as the outlet, lest they betray you in a moment of unwariness. Receive, coldly and dispassionately, every attention, till you have ascertained and duly considered the worth of the aspirant; and let your affections be consequent upon approbation alone. First study; then approve; then love. Let your eyes be blind to all external attractions, your ears deaf to all the fascinations of flattery and light discourse. --These are nothing-- and worse than nothing -- snares and wiles of the tempter, to lure the thoughtless to their own destruction. Principle is the first thing, after all; and next to that, good sense, respectability, and moderate wealth. If you should marry the most agreeable man in the world, you little know the misery that would overwhelm you, if, after all, you little know the misery that would overwhelm you, if, after all, you should find him to be a worthless reprobate, or even an impracticable fool."

Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

"Indeed, it is always the first sign of love, that besides enjoying some one's presence, we remember him when he is gone, and feel pain as well as pleasure, because he is there no longer."

Aristotle, Rhetoric

(Who knew Aristotle had such good things to say?)

Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face,
I in my mind had waited for this long,
Seeing the false and searching for the true,
Then found you as a traveller finds a place
Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong
Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you,
What shall I call you? A fountain in a waste,
A well of water in a country dry,
Or anything that’s honest and good, an eye
That makes the whole world bright. Your open heart,
Simple with giving, gives the primal deed,
The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,
The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea.
Not beautiful or rare in every part.
But like yourself, as they were meant to be.

Edwin Muir, "The Confirmation"


'Survive Love"

 by myself

hey love, welcome back, i missed you.
hey love, you don't need to stay that's really okay.
(but yes you're reading me correctly love, i already made dinner)
hey love, you think i'll end up all right?
look i found the dawn! over in the west...or does it rise in the east? i can never remember.
but he's here.
welcome back dawn, welcome back fireflies, welcome back agony.
sparklers sunshine dresses heart you fluff and nonsense go away.
it's fabulous in the springtime, isn't it my dear? 
find you find me find everything we're looking for but it's not true
oh you hush devil on my shoulder.
i choose to welcome it no matter which way it goes
welcome back my love

[Photo credit to Robert Norbury]

Life keeps changing

"And life: since even if no other good were the result of life, it is desirable in itself."

Aristotle, Rhetoric

Life is beautiful. There's just something about it! I'm alive, and I'm glad of it! You only get this one chance at living, and soon it will be gone.  Soon I'll be leaving for college just like my sister. Soon I'll be buying my first house. Soon I'll be in a rocking chair holding my first grandchild. (Well, maybe not that soon.) But life keeps coming at you. I'm going to miss her so much, but LIFE is here. It keeps knocking on the door, letting you know that things are changing. Goodbye, everything I was used to. One of my good friends gave me some wisdom once. Old friends are going, but you will have new friends, and you don't have to lose the old friends. It will be different -- but sometimes different is even better than before. It doesn't have to be miserable :) Change isn't always bad. (But when everything is changing for the worse, remember the one who never changes. The one whose love is unchanging, unfailing, unrelenting. That one who keeps pursuing and never will stop.)


I once heard the prayer "Lord, thank you for waking me up this morning." You know, we don't deserve this kind of treatment. When did I ever deserve another minute of this life? I really appreciate being here this morning, God. He chose to wake me up this morning, and I will use that gift with everything else he's given me.

Because life is hard, but it's worth it.

John Mayer - Heart of Life [i know that the heart of life is good]


(photo by Giselle Morgan)

What for?

"The awful question: What for? which had shattered all his intellectual edifices in the past, no longer existed for him. To that question: What for? a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair of a man's head falls."

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Yeah, we've all thought it. probably more than once. WHAT FOR? Why am I even alive? what's the point? do I matter at all? and more than once, you've probably come to the conclusion... pointless. pointless. like the constant barrage of rain on a rooftop. it's pointless.

Qoheleth, the writer of Ecclesiastes, agrees: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” (Ecc. 1:2) See? There's just pointlessness. Day after day, it's all the same. We go on, going on, living this painful life. I see people every day, living this pointless life, pointlessly. They don't know why they live so they just do anything to try to get some sort of meaning. If this is all there is, I'd better live it up while I can...right? 


One of the main characters in War and Peace, Pierre, has the world: A beautiful and glamorous wife, so much money he can't spend it fast enough, and the ability to do whatever he wants. So he does do whatever he wants, and every day is tormented by "Why am I living?" because it didn't fulfill. Only at the end of the book, when his life has been stripped of everything and he lives as an army prisoner, does he find what he's looking for. In that simplicity, suffering exists, yet God exists as well -- and God is bigger. Because there is certainty in who God has revealed himself to be, we can have purpose, even if we don't know what's going to happen in this life.

"Two things I know: that he is good, and he is strong."
~(Author unknown)

thankfulness. it's hard.

my self control goes tttbhhhhh (i.e. down the tubes) when humidity rises. it probably translates into some kind of graph but i'm not smart enough to figure it out. and i think all my brains have been cooked out. i wonder what's up there in my head right now? probably a little pancake. made of my brain. good bye brain.

it's hard when you know that complaining definitely isn't the right thing to do but all you want to do is complain... such a predicament. i wonder if it counts as complaining if it's all inside your head?

but as i pondered this with what little amount of brains i had left, i think that it just has to be an attitude shift...focus on what's good. i have a job! i get paid money! i wanted summer the whole winter! thank you for my life!

yeah way easier said than done.

but i guess it has to be done.

thankfulness. it's hard. especially when it's 100 degrees.

Photo credit: Kylie Lanae