numb

I think tonight is the night I become numb.

i miss.

I miss a lot of things. I miss nothing. I miss everything. I don't even know what I miss. I haven't even met you or it yet. I'm kind of mixed up today and I think I'm doing it to myself. I also think that it might be the devil trying to get the best of me. God's making things come together way too easily for this not be the correct path for me, but I can't help but to have days of hesitation. I think its my fear of commitment. I think a lot is my fear of commitment. I really miss my Atlanta friends today because today was our weekend and I missed it :/

Self Destruction. I'm working so hard to hit bottom, and sometimes I feel like I'm the only one trying to make progress. I guess this could be the devil as well. I won't be changing my decision. I'm way too stubborn I think. Sometimes that's a good thing?

I'm going to disappear for three months. I've decided today that my biggest fear isn't the drill sergeants or the pain that I'm going to have to go through in my body. It's not going to be the home sickness or being broken down to be built back up into a soldier. It won't be the lack of communication, electronics, cell phones, laptops, or ipods with my extensive musical librarys.

I'm almost positive that my biggest fear is going to be the fear of being forgotten. I've worked so hard to be a good friend to all of you. I pray for you all to return the favor. :(

I miss a lot of things.

desperate america part II

I just looked back and reread this and I think some people might get a little confused on the meaning of what I just wrote about the people in Africa :X

I didn't mean for that at all to sound like our problems are worse than what the people in Africa have to deal with, which is kind of what it might sound like, but I was more trying to illustrate a point of this verse...

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? Matthew 7:3

With this, I feel that we as American's look at their problems and think we have to go help them and fix them and try and teach them to be more like us, when I don't really think that us trying to "help" them out in this way is what they really need. Just wanted to clear that up. I'm not really good at rereading my stuff before I post it :X

I prolly won't do it for this one either. Nope. I'm going to publish this right now :P

Desperate America

I watched Desperate Housewives tonight with my mom. It breaks my heart to think that some people actually live like that. :/

But we're convinced that the people in Africa have it so bad?

We could learn a lot from them.

Are you sure what side of the glass you are on?

pressing on in fear of death with hopes of learning how to live

I have been here in Ohio for a full day. In this one day I've been here, I already feel like its time to leave again. This place depresses me more than what I ever can convince myself of when I'm not here. I don't have a clue as to why this? Actually. I probably do. I walk in and the house is crawling with junk my family has managed to stock up on and its ready to attack at any nudge or bump taken the wrong way. This house has a history of swallowing your stuff. I don't even know how many different things I've lost to its madness, but you can hopefully imagine my thrill when my mother told me I would be unloading my possessions into this house and not my grandma's.

Another is my mother's uncanny ability to get me frustrated with life in general. I don't understand how she lives the way she does. I don't understand how I've managed to even remotely turn out okay in any way growing up with all this. My family is so broken. You guys honestly could not even begin to understand how much I owe to God in shaping who I am today. Seriously.

I guess all this could be the closest way to feel what a broken home MIGHT feel like? At least to go back to one? To be excited to see everyone because of all the change you've made in your life and then to be disappointed when you find out that your family really is exactly how you left them. To find out your city is really exactly how you left it. To find out you've been living in the one exception to a dynamic world and that you chose to come back for a while.

I'm starting to realize that some of the bad habits that remain with me are not as much me not trying hard enough to break them, but that it might just be that these habits are all I know in my narrow view of life. I've never learned a different way of things. I'm starting to see that the Army will be even more so a detox than I can even care to imagine.

My brother Matthew asked me something interesting today. He asked me if I was scared to die because the Army isn't a very safe place to be. I started thinking of all this junk I've already experienced being back for one day when I've been trying my hardest to forget some of it out at college and then at Atlanta, and I told him there are worse things than dying, which some of you know, is my typical response for this question. Next, he ask me what? What is worse than dying? Well...living the way we've been living thus far is much worse. I want a better way of life.

like the light

2 Samuel 23:3-4

3 The God of Israel spoke,
the Rock of Israel said to me:
'When one rules over men in righteousness,
when he rules in the fear of God,

4 he is like the light of morning at sunrise
on a cloudless morning,
like the brightness after rain
that brings the grass from the earth.'

My prayer is that tommorrow you will vote for the president in which you feel is right in your heart. With so many people and so many things set up trying to convince you one way or the other, I pray you will use a discerning heart and choose the president who stands for issues that you stand for. Whose character reflects the character of a leader. One who rules over men in righteousness. We have the chance to influence this election, but remember, God is the one who gives all power to all men. Whomever is chosen in this coming month to rule our country, know that he was chosen first by God.

Lukewarm

"15I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. 18I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. 19Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. 20Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. 21To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne."
-Revelation 3:15-21

I put this scripture on here because sometimes I feel like I need to be reminded to be either hot or cold. I think that in America we have a strong tendency to only try and be NOT bad. This is SO hypocritical in my opinion. Not only when I'm trying to just not do bad things, am I not using my strengths and faith to please God with the abilities that I have been given to be "hot" but I'm also breeding self righteousness in me because the only way to judge your actions as bad or acceptable is to compare that in which you are doing to another person. And when comparing yourself to others who ARE NOT Jesus Christ, you are usually doing one of two things..

1. Find yourself someone better than what you feel you are and bring the esteem low or,

2. Find yourself someone worse of than you to make yourself feel superior

Both of these are bad and need to be dealt with.

The way I feel is that if your curious about something, as long as you're taking the proper precautions to keep others safe, then do it. Experience something. Experience everything. For its better for you to learn from a mistake than to be lukewarm from an untested experiment for the rest of your life. Know what it is you're exactly missing. My guess is that if you have a relationship with God already, whatever it is your curious about will not even come close to what you have with Jesus. I know what I experienced this weekend didn't. But I'm glad I experienced it. Now I will never have to wonder anymore. Now I will never have to wish for that in my life again.

And if you ask me, that is a win for Christ with WAY more impact on the life of the person than if that person were to just follow the rules.