Beauty of the Inverted

So this is an old post from Jan. 21 this year that I wrote that I guess got lost in the mail, but I really like it so I'm going to rewrite it for you guys...

I've been thinking about things lately...I'm assuming because we haven't done anything for the past four days? Basic training seems to have taken a standstill lately. But I've been thinking about life and living it fully. And with living life fully comes higher risk. Risk of death, risk of injury, risk of any nature really. When I was talking to my battle buddy, Tracey, I found out that the easiest way to explain was to compare it to love. With love, if you choose to let someone into your heart, you have a wide spectrum of things that can happen with two extremes. The positive being your goal, love. You can feel love. The opposite is heartbrokeness and pain. One fills your heart and one feels as though it takes away. Life, I feel is the same way. We can try to live the "American Dreams" of working, buying things, building a house and family, filling that house with stuff, and retiring so we can go on vacations every day. This to me, is just like choosing not to love at all. There is no risk involved really. You can't get hurt and you can't feel love eiter. Just like you can't die from your life choice (At least it's not as likely), but you don't know how all these wonderful experiences feel. Learn the quality of risk that makes you feel fully alive. I need to take the steps neccesary to "hit bottom" because if my thoughts are correct, I think that in learning that, that would be the only way for us to know the opposite. We need a standard measurement and the only one we can really experience to measure is the latter one, the painful one. The one that opens our eyes to the beauty of the inverted. It wasn't until I had my heart broken that I was able to see the beauty of my relationship with Christ. It wasn't until Christ's death that his Disciples were able to recognize Christ's glory.