Hope

So I'm getting married in a little more than a month. It's odd the way these bench marks in life come along. They never quite work out the way I always thought but when they come to pass I couldn't imagine them more perfect. This last month has been an experience. Last week I spent my time in Houston watching two of my relatives suffer from life threatening ailments. Death is something that changes things and as I watched them both struggle against the prospect I gained a new appreciation for humanity. For the way we were made, for the way we need each other and how even more so we need an explanation to this whole big thing. We need something bigger to believe in and to believe that this something is in fact, good and loving. I'm thankful that this is shown even more in the dark times; an unexplainable light that helps us to know it will be ok.

I'm thankful for these times of learning how to care. In marriage or sickness I realize that life never looks how we thought it would, relativity seems to last for only the present but makes our lives that much richer that we can't predict it all.

Hell

A few church on the street bible studies ago I ran into an old aquaintance. I'll call him Jami and he had no legs. He was quite intoxicated and foul mouthed so naturally he fit right in. Just short of a year ago Jami had witnessed a murder and was now being summoned by the courts to testify. He told us there was no way in hell he would actually testify because on the streets that would make him a snitch. And you just don't do that.



I watched Jami talk and I watched the others try and comfort this stumpy, cursing human. Silently, I tried to to picture what he had actually gone through. He held a dying a man, propped up against a dresser, he listened as this man fought for breath until oxygen was no longer enough. He watched him grow still. Jami talked about how this man was a good man, wrong house, wrong time. The man was simply looking for a rock and a prostitute, not his vastly unnoticed death.

Jami swore up and down that this man was good, just fallen on hard times. He also mentioned that his friend, at the present time, was probably burning in hell.

Oh the tales of a drunk man, but that night I believed Jami. I believed him because it made him cry, because somewhere lost inside of this man was a child who wished that people didn't have to die. There was a sober man that recognized the value to life; and a darkness inside of him that led him to believe that he had outgrown love.

I don't want to believe in hell. I think of things in the world, atrocities, genocides, war. I think of women who feel they have to sell themselves and all the men that are killed on the streets. I think of justice and the voidance of justice in the dark places and I wonder,
how life like this could be so different than hell.

words of wisdom...

Flax seed is amazing.

Rainy Day

I did not want to run the yellow light
I would have rather sat at the green;
if only for a change.
Prosperity befalls me and I'm suffocated by my own indifference.
Your creativity annoyed me
and yesterday was the first day I was not scared to die.


So many days have passed since I've updated this, I'm not real sure anyone really reads this anymore, I admit they were probably much more exciting while I was in Africa.

Life is good though; everyday is a struggle to find a place, a purpose to cause everything to make sense. But what I'm learning is that really, it never will. It's hard learning how to be happy. Realizing that good things can happen without strings attached. That there will always be a mystery to contentment, and that is letting go of knowing everything.
I have to admit, international development work appeals to me still, but I think it's because it is somewhere else than here. It's somewhere I can run that seems nobler, a greater, just cause to work towards. It's simpler to feed a child than to cure domestic abuse. It is easier to build a well than to hold an angry child.


What's hard is taking the yoke I've been given.

What's hard is opening my eyes to the world that's been placed around me.

The lost, the hurting, the hungry, the angry.

What's hard is accepting that I can have joy, that I really can be happy serving this world, instead of trying to create my own in a place that allows me to escape everything I need to heal from on the inside.

It has been trying,
no doubt.
But undeniably freeing.

Let there be craw fish.

until next time

"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true."

-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Houses of snow.

Far along this island of sand
lies a muddy house of snow;
covered with angels and fireflies
and burgundy slippers meant for anyone passing through.
Here lies hope of a home void of normality
and perpetually glittered with the
presence of change.
It's never cold here, although usually it's expected.
Sometimes, though, from the perspective angle,
the angels resemble barrels of turpentine,
the fireflies submarine missiles
and a dying rose bush is what's left of the burgundy.
But again,
it's perspective.
It all sounds familiar, like a story so discrepantly trusted in youth.
As I get older I realize I can learn to see the beauty in such extremes
but this time I'd rather not.
I'd rather take this shitty situation and cry about it.
It's all wrong
and there's nothing I can do.
And in this nonsense
I find myself.
Next to you.
Seeing things not how they are,
but wishing only they were how I want them to be.
I never wanted a house of snow.
Just you.
Please don't go.

My new friend

I bought a cactus a few days ago.

I haven't had much luck keeping flowers alive.

I named her Tinkerbell.