FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!

I'm all about good competition between companies to ensure better product production and fair pricing as well as something a bit new and different. So my compadre, NO THEFT and I just discovered these amazing new journals that are moleskine-esque via design blogs and decided to share them with you as well. SO check it! plus you get a free pen and pencil, decal and calendar with your purchase! beat that moleskine!

disclosure: (to be fair, i must name the advantages of moleskin: stitched v. stapled, perforated last pages, pocket..) :D but field notes are pretty kickin in other ways, so you should still check them out!

fieldnotesbrand.com

JOB V.2.0

if hope and i are to be buried together
then a double funeral it will be
where all will mourn its loss
and great a loss will it be

i feel worn out for JOB and his attacks already...and we're not even through being half done! the trials keep building with almost no relief. sin would have found me already in these conversations and worn out frustrations. i feel for him. i root for him. the longer the endurance the greater the victory. the more accomplished its
purpose. keep on friend. i fight with you. silent i may be but ever do i feel your woes and carry them by your side. keep on friend. i keep you. for i have been there too. the JOB that once was me i now see in you. so keep on friend. i keep you.

MMM MMM GOOD!

i'm a big fan of fruit.
maybe even a number one fan.

but why is it that it seems
to taste so much better
when it is cut and peeled?

and with animal crackers :D

IN THE MORNING WHEN I RISE

i love to wake up like this
when it is you that awakens me

oh let me trust my wisdom
in Your hands to guide me

for my situation is delicate
and you are its sureity

you have given me faith
to see with your eyes
what i cannot with my own

30:19-26 (ISAIAH)

OH yes, people of ZION,
citizens of Jerusalem,
your time of tears is over...

...the Day God heals his people
of the wounds and bruises
from the time of punishment...

2ND ADVENT

it's culminating now
the tension is in the air
you can feel the urgency
more each day
the need is severe
the harvest is abundant
just begging to be gathered
God's hand is more obvious now
He is working
He is calling
it's almost time...

waiting is not forever

there will be resolve

Things I Contain

I have been tagged to reveal the contents of my bag YOAW!

so here goes:



DESCRIPTION:

CRAYON BOX: always a necessity
COLORING BOOK: for when there's nothing to do
CAMERA (AE1): best thing in the world
WALLET: San Diego's Best and my favorite
TWO MOLESKIN JOURNALS: one for writing, one for doodling
MICRON PEN: don't leave home without it
HARMONICA: most recent target purchase...amazing
UNO: best game ever, i'm a master at it
REGULAR CARDS: golf anyone?
IPOD: countless hours of inspiration
EXTRA FILM: currently b/w
WHITE SUNGLASSES: my second love
BURTS BEES: michigan is dry in winter
BIBLE: gaffer taped for preservation

all this contained in my MATES OF STATE bag. How fun.

**I now tag....Ammiel, Eri, Karli, KEY J, and Jambi...GO!**

THIS IS A LONG ONE...

We have been raised in a culture saturated with love stories and fairy tales that leave us blind to the truth of what love and relationships really are. We grow up thinking that happiness will be found in this one other person that will complete you, and know you, and be closer to you than any other. And although this may be partially true, we never allow ourselves to see that this consistently falls short. And it always will because it was never meant to fulfill us in all the ways we need, and in our deepest needs.

I used to think it was lame when people would say that Jesus is the ultimate love. But that was before I had experienced it for myself. Before I found it to be true. There is a place for romance, as there is for friendships, and family. But all of it is a gift, and we musn't miss the Giver for the gifts. There must be balance and it is only in God that we find true fulfillment, and are in turn able to truly love others.

So in honor of February the Fourteenth, I stumbled upon this piece on love that I deem to be one of the most beautiful I have ever read, and I now share with you. It is taken from the book, 'Blue Like Jazz' the 13th chapter. The rest of the book is quite excellent, and not really related to this particular excerpt much, but I also highly recommend it.

"I turned out the light and lay in my bed and thought about the girls I had dated, the fear I have of getting married, and the incredible selfishness from which I navigate my existence...

I had been working on a play called 'Polaroids' that year. It was the story of one man's life from birth to death, each scene delivered through a monologue with other actors silently acting out parts behind the narrator as he walks the audience through his life journey. In the scene I had written a few nights before, I had the man fighting with his wife. They were experiencing unbearable tension after losing a son in a car accident the year before. I knew in my heart they were not going to make it, that 'Polaroids' would include a painful divorce that showed the ugliness of separation. But I changed my mind. After talking with Paul I couldn't do it. I wondered what it would look like to have the couple stick it out. I got up and turned on my computer. I had the lead character in my play walk into the bedroom where his wife was sleeping. I had him kneel down by her and whisper some lines:


What great gravity is this that drew my soul toward yours? What great force, that though I went falsely, went kicking, went disguising myself to earn your love, also disguised, to earn your keeping, your resting, your staying, your will fleshed into mine, grasped by a slowly revealed truth, the barter of my soul, the soul that I fear, the soul that I loathe, the soul that: if you will love, I will love. I will redeem you, if you will redeem me? Is this our purpose, you and I together to pacify each other, to lead each other toward the lie that we are good, that we are noble, that we need not redemption, save the one that you and I invented of our own clay?

I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.

I went looking, I wrote out a list, I drew an image, I bled a poem of you. Your were pretty, and my friends believed I was worthy of you. You were clever, but I was smarter, the only one able to lead you. You see, love, I did not love you, I loved me. And you were only a tool that I used to fix myself, to fool myself, to redeem myself. And though I have taught you to lay your lily hand in mine, I walk alone, for I cannot talk to you, lest you talk it back to me, lest I believe that I am not worthy, not deserving, not redeemed.

I want desperately for you to be my friend. But you are not my friend; you have slid up warmly to the man I wanted to be, the man I pretended to be, and I was your Jesus and, you were mine. Should I show you who I am, we may crumble. I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.

I want to be known and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely, like me. My love, do I know you? What is this great gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other? Why do we not connect? Will we be forever in fleshing this out? And how will we with words, narrow words, come into the knowing of each other? Is this God's way of meriting grace, of teaching us of the labyrinth of His love for us, teaching us, in degrees, that which He is sacrificing to join ourselves to Him? Or better yet, has He formed our being fractional so that we might conclude one great hope, plodding and sighing and breathing into one another in such a great push that we might break through into the known and being loved, only to cave into a greater perdition and fall down at His throne still begging for our acceptance? Begging for our completion?

We were fools to believe that we would redeem each other.

Were I some sleeping Adam, to wake and find you resting at my rib, to share these things that God has done, to walk you through the garden, to counsel your timid steps, your bewildered eye, your heart so slow to love, so careful to love, so sheepish that I stepped up my aim and became a man. Is this what God intended? That though He made you from my rib, it is you who is making me, humbling me, destroying me, and in so doing revealing Him.

Will we be in ashes before we are one?

What great gravity is this that drew my heart toward yours? What great force collapsed my orbit, my lonesome state? What is this that wants in me the want in you? Don't we go at each other with yielded eyes, with cumbered hands and feet, with clunky tongues? This deed is unattainable! We cannot know each other!

I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away.

I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God's own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.

I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again.

God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps, then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us."

YOU ANSWER ME

healing came swiftly
one dark night

it krept in slowly
unnoticed in the days

healing came swiftly
just in time


Psalm 31

You have set my feet in a wide place.
My times are in your hands.
Oh, how great is Your goodness.

Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart,
All you who hope in the Lord.

COURAGE AND STRENGTH!