Me

The long car drives through the back roads,
going no place you meant to go.
The standing in the pouring rain,
feeling freedom once more.
The Autumn leaves falling,
crackling under your feet.
The memories of the past,
merging with what lies ahead.
The wrestling and the fighting,
laughing and crying.
The barefoot running,
ignoring all the pain.
The moonlight talks,
pouring out my heart to God.
The blood flowing down,
but laughing anyways.
The souvenirs,
ageless reminders of what once was.
The sunsets,
showing the beauty of the Maker.
The touches,
that have comforted.
The glances,
that gave everything away.
The late night conversations,
that have left me speechless.
The notes written,
that have meant the world to me.
The things that molded me,
who made me, me.

Purpose and Battle

"I have studied many times,

The marble which was chiseled for me.

A boat with a furled sail at rest in harbor.

In truth it pictures not my destination

but my life

For love was offered me, and I shrank from disillusionment;

Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid.

Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.

Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.

And now I know that we must lift the sail

And catch the winds of destiny

wherever they drive the boat.

To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,

but life without meaning is torture.

Of restlessness and vague desire-

It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid."

                                                                                                                    -Edgar Lee Masters

I don't think words can describe how much I love this. The part that I italicized is what hits me the most though. I've gone through a lot of this past year and semester following what I thought was meaning, to have a good, safe life. But God showed me through this book, that if my life had meaning, it wouldn't always be safe. This is not to say I'm going to go live dangerously and do stupid things, but I want to not live in such a shell anymore, because it is torture.

Life is full of hard choices, what to eat, when to sleep, and sometimes a little more life altering ones. In my mind though, the hardest ones can be where your heart and mind disagree and battle for control over the decision. I have come to one of those points, and I desperately want my heart to win because I haven't followed my heart in such a long time, it's starving for a decision in it's favor. My mind always seems in these cases though, to add little things along the lines of, "what about this? what about that?" These can be good at times, but to constantly have them going through my head during times of important decisions is somewhat undermining.

God has been teaching me a ton lately and I'm so grateful for that. I know that I need to change in a lot of ways, and it will definitely be a process. God also has been emphasizing the importance of faith.

Where would we be if Abraham weighed the 

pro's and cons of following God's invitation?

Or if Moses took his mothers advice to "never

play with matches" and lived a careful life, steering

away from the burning bush.

And also...

"Gracious uncertainty is the mark of a spiritual life"

We know that following God won't always be the easiest thing to do, or the smartest (in the worlds eyes), or the funnest thing(I am speaking from a worldly perspective), but we also know that it is the best thing, and the most adventurous and in many cases the funnest thing. I'm not saying that we should take stupid risks, but that we should follow God in our lives, no matter where it leads us, and stop trying to live lives of halfhearted devotion and careful obedience. As John Eldredge puts in Wild at Heart,

"The problem with modern Christianity's obsession with principles,

 is that it removes any real conversation with God."

I'll leave you all with this quote from the same book...

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs.

Ask yourself what makes you come alive,

and go and do that, because what the world

needs is people who come alive."

Wild At Heart

I recently started reading this book called Wild At Heart by John Eldredge. What this book says is that men are wild at heart, we as men have an adventurous side to us, and we want to fulfill. We are made in the image of God, as are women, but men received different desires, such as the desire to fight for something. In the book, the author writes that many people think that Jesus was just a nice guy. But that if you look closer, you will see that he is a warrior, who fights for his God. He once drove out vendors in the temple using a whip. Men have inside some of the spirit of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Men are supposed to be dangerous, adventurous, and ferocious. Many times, people, mainly women react to men's antics as "boys will be boys" and that they need to grow up. I don't agree with that though. I believe that men will need to mess up, prove themselves, and have to fight for something. Which brings me to another thing, men are very argumentative. Many would probably agree, but we in a lot of ways either think we are right, or in many cases such as mine, we like to argue. I'm not going to sit here and write all about how I think God made men and women different. That's not what I set out to do. I just wanted to make it clear that there is a lot of things that women need to learn of men and vice versa.

Trusting God

It's crazy to think that I have 7 days until I am a senior, and that 1 year from now, Lord willingly I will be graduating. As much as I am excited for this, I am kind of freaked out because all that I've ever known is about to change. I've lived my whole life under this shell that I call home. Once I step onto that college campus of wherever I go, I am starting something will change me and really decide the rest of my life. Now I am a very nostalgic person, and thinking back to all the memories I have of my childhood, growing up in this house, my dad dying, and all the memories of high school that I have made already and will make senior year, it really makes me sad that I am leaving all this behind. That being said, I am so excited for the future, even though I have no idea what it holds. This brings me to the purpose of writing this. I was sharing with my friend about how I want to go to Cedarville University to become a pastor. This is truly where I feel God calling me as of now. That got me thinking though, I am going to a pretty expensive college, to go into a field that does not make good money. Now the world, who does not know the extent of God's power and the crazy awesome ways He works, would think this is an absolutely absurd idea and that I should go into a career field that would get me the nicest car, the biggest house, and the wife and the kids and the whole deal. My response to that though, is that that is absurd. Why not serve the God of the universe, who by the way deserves full honor and glory, even if it may lead me into debt. Before I go on, I don't want to imply that God wants us to blow all of our money. He wants us to handle it with care and efficiency, all the while using it for the advancement of his kingdom. Back to my point, I will have to trust God for my college funding, then after that I have to trust God to support me and a possible family later down the road while trying to pay back student loans. It seems to me, that I will be on a cycle, not just financially, but my whole life, where I have to trust God completely to support me and to lead me. The more I follow God, the more I have to trust in him. I cannot help to think of Paul, where he had been persecuted, stoned, imprisoned and shipwrecked. He had given his whole life to the cause of Christ. He had no regrets of his life, even though he had followed God to the point of his own death. He had no bitterness towards God even though he could have. You see, the more Paul followed God, the more Paul had to rely on the goodness of the Lord. Paul even got to a point where he didn't care about his own suffering, as long as the name of the Lord was proclaimed. He trusted God so much that he put his life on the line so that God's name would be praised. That there is trust. Even Jesus had to trust God, trust that his death would become the way by which the world would be saved, and also that he would be resurrected. I want to have this trust in my life. And I encourage all of you reading to aim for the same level of trust that Christ had in God.