Rambling

We only get one life. It is composed of these seconds and minutes we race through or cherish. It's really hard. It's difficult for me to work out. I don't want to waste a minute. But what counts as waste, and what counts as something you just have to get done because life isn't just about having fun, but about responsibility. I guess some people would argue that you can't make every second meaningful. And what is meaningful anyways? I love the time I spend sitting next to Patrick while he plays Oblivion and I ask him questions (because I want to figure out my own course of action in the game) and he answers so patiently while he's trying to fight off morts, which stresses me out. Are we wasting time? Maybe. But I just love being with him, and I know playing these games is a way of relaxing for him. And if I can share that relaxation time, I'm there.

I guess part of determining the meaningfulness of a moment is figuring out what your endgame is. Being close to my husband and spending time with him is important to me. Thus our meaningful computer game moments.

But what about in jobs? I sit at this desk all day wondering if what I do counts. Or if I'm working against what I believe. In that case, I should go! But, I don't know where to go next. And part of life is responsibility - and I need to work to stay busy and to help us reach our goals.

Rambling.

Dancing in the Rain on Sunny Days; Part 8

Or you could actually dance. That is fully acceptable and I think it would be awesome for someone to come in and, with some amount of joy in their heart, give you some terrible news. (You've just been laid off, downsized. Your dog was just taken by the pound. Your kid was caught at school making a pipe bomb.) And you look that mean little person in the eye, and you stand up, still looking them in the eye, and start dancing. You could feel joy in the movement and the act of defiance against all rain, and that person would be confused, but you would be dancing. (You may even start a dance revolution in your workplace.) Which really does make everything better. Literal and figurative dancing. Also, the pirate koala agrees. So do the sticky notes-- because I've decided they do have feelings. And their feelings on this subject are agreement.

Dancing in the Rain on Sunny Days; Part 7

In the end, though, what is the point? What is the point of all of this? All of the beauty and freedom and musings are all for nothing if the final conclusion doesn't affirm or change or edify anything inside of you. That doesn't mean the product isn't nice, or funny or that it should be shunned for all time. It just means it is without meaning. Or substance. Your takeaway from something meaningless should just be a good feeling or, you know, maybe even a bad feeling, but it will be something that fades because it meant nothing. But what is really important is creating something that will give someone else something worth keeping. What is my point? What is the point of all this typing and the strain I feel, strangely enough, in my forearms? It is to dance in the rain on sunny days. That doesn't mean anything, does it? But it gives you something to think about. I guess what I mean is this: You can be having a truly fantastic day. Sunny through and through- and then something terrible happens. A deal breaker. Day-ruiner. A great big crap on the lawn of your happiness. Joy-killer. It's the rain. It's come for you. What are you going to do about it? I submit- dance. Dance in this rain. It's YOUR sunny day and never let the rain ruin it. Take it. Take that bad situation and make it yours. Revel in something small- that normally would never even make you smile, but that is pretty cool. Let it overwhelm you and grace your day. Be happy because you know that it is your choice. Look at those sticky notes and make them your dance in the rain of your sunny day. Don't forget that that it is only with the combination of sunny and rain that rainbows happen- and that they are a promise.

Dancing in the Rain on Sunny Days: Part 6

I think one of the reasons I love these sticky notes so much is that I love to write and type; I really do; and these feel so non-committal- I don't have to be preparing to write a DOCUMENT to type on one of these. I just want to have to scrawl a few thoughts, the meandering kind, and then I can go on with my business. There's no spellcheck. This thing doesn't care what sort of punctuation I choose. It's never going to pop up an annoying little tap that is "kindly" "suggesting" that I have, perhaps without even knowing it, committed the gravest of errors- the making of a sentence fragment. I don't even feel like I particularly need to save these. It's a fantastic sort of freedom. I think it's the kind of freedom we have all been looking for our entire lives. The freedom to just be and move on. The freedom to think without fear of consequences, without fear of a red squiggly line, or perhaps a green one. That alone makes these sticky notes a worthwhile venture. For any poetic mind that resents the square structures of prose being imposed upon it without its consent.
Thank you, sticky notes, thank you.

Dancing in the Rain on Sunny Days; Part 5

Maybe I should clarify my situation. These sticky notes I'm referring to are a program that allows you to put electronic sticky notes on your computer desktop. You can write anything you want on them -- as I feel that I have been aptly demonstrating all morning. They are fantastic. They are as fly as normal sticky notes, but you aren't wasting paper, and they can be right up on your computer desktop and you can minimize them or not as you prefer- if you put a normal sticky note on your computer screen, you wouldn't be able to see whatever else you were doing. Annoying. Hence the awesome.

Dancing in the Rain on Sunny Days: Part 4

These sticky notes are a big distraction. I'm already ADD enough in trainings and mettings, but these stick notes are exacerbating an existing problem. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe there's something I can do to fight this menace. The problem is... I don't really want to. I don't want to fight. My love for these sticky notes is just too strong. Isn't it morally wrong to fight love? Because if you're fighting love, you must be allied with the opposite of love, which is hatred and evil, and God knows that I don't want to be allied with those. So how can I resist these friendly and fantastic sticky notes? How can I stand aside and let them be lonely? and unused? and unloved? I can't be a part of that cycle. I'm breaking it. Today.

Dancing in the Rain on Sunny Days: Part 3

Sticky notes- omg! You can make them any sort of rectangular shape that you want! I always have to stop and think about rectangles versus squares. A square can be a rectangle, basedon the definition of the word rectangle, but a rectangle can never be a square-- even if it really wants to. Even if its parents tell it that it can be anything it wants to be when it grows up-- never. Although maybe it could be possible in its wildest dreams because offttimes dreams do not hold with any kind of logic, or principles of physics. Definitions probably don't matter to dreams either. So... dream away, rectangle. You go.

Dancing in the Rain on Sunny Days; Part 2

Here. Is another sticky note. Help me Rhonda, YEAH!, get her out of my heart! I was thinking about Surf Ninjas the other day. It's not a fantastic movie, but it is certainly entertaining, especially to us easily-entertained souls. I am so much that. I was thinking about it because I was in the Escape, listening to Big Yellow Taxi with my hand up and out of the sun roof, and that made me think of moto-surfing, which is absolutely ridiculous, but could be fun.

Dancing in the Rain on Sunny Days; Part 1

Sticky notes are way cooler than Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft Outlook can't chill anywhere you tell it to and be different colors and small and awesome. It's way more complicated than an awesome sticky note. I guess some people want a complicated program to track their emails and appointments and tasks, and, well, their life, but I'm not one of those people. I am happy with an uncomplicated sticky note whose color I can change whenever I want and it won't freak out anything else in my world. I guess if I really want uncomplicated, I should stay away from computers, but I can't stay away from computers. It's part of my job. I've tried. Believe me, I've tried. But I can't. So I guess I should just prefer complicated things. But that's not a part of my genetic makeup. If genetics is really what determines such preferences. It's an old debate. But anyways, I do not prefer complicated. Computers are complicated, but I guess sometimes they are not. Sometimes I don't have any problems with them whatsoever, but sometimes I do. Sometimes I am awed by the mighty power of the computer, but sometimes I am really irritated when it takes liberties with my data, which it often does. That is just obnoxious. Because it is MY data, not the computer's, but it doesn't seem to care. Because it is a computer and it doesn't have feelings. Thusly, it doesn't care about the feelings of others. That is unkind. I am unappreciative of that crass behavior. But, I'm crazy. This is a computer and I'm talking about behavior-- right after I've just said that a computer doesn't have feelings. Can something have behavior if it doesn't have feelings? I'm unsure. Because animals definitely have behavior but it is not entirely proven that they have feelings.
In Conclusion, sticky notes are the best. They may even have feelings.

Love Covers Sins

Growing up. Older. Growing so far away from the sights, the sounds, the feelings, the friends, the memories of childhood. How does it even happen? How can distance and time matter so much? How can friends, best friends, good friends - friends who have shared, experienced, learned together, taught each other, so much - just end a friendship? How can the best of moments dwindle so far away, and be replaced by nothing? And how can mistakes, however egregious, completely erase everything that came before them? How can life do this to friends? Why do we let it?

I feel like my heart is raw, and I'm- I don't even know what word I'm looking for. It's not tired. It's not that I'm tired of this strange power this hurt has over me. How the bare memory of it can have me in tears from a happy mood in seconds. How I have to almost physically push the memory of friendship - friendship! - out of my mind in order to keep a reign over my emotions. I guess I've felt this before. But it felt so much more like a betrayal last time, and my decision only had to be whether or not I would let someone else's actions destroy me. This time, this time, it was my decisions that spurred on others' and I don't know that I can blame them for how they chose to react to my betrayal.

Thoughtlessness! How terrible and destructive you are. Or rather, perhaps, not thoughtlessness, but overestimation of oneself, of one's willpower. It causes so much strife-- and somehow to me this feels like Pangaea breaking again- but it's not a landmass becoming smaller landmasses in one world. It is that bundle of feelings, observations, loyalties, and loves that we refer to as our "heart." The seat of our consciousness used thought of as the stomach- probably because that's where the butterflies congregate when we're happy, and that's what sinks when we realize something that we might consider the worst has happened. My heart is downcast within me. David knew this feeling. His own betrayal of his Lord caused it within him. And I'm sure that was more than enough to be getting on with.

Love covers over a multitude of sins. I never fully understood that verse. Love and forgiveness and the ability to apply them to another person. I think that may be one of the Christian's most important and most difficult battles. To apply the commandments given to us by our Father. To make the pages of the Bible come alive in our own time- so no one can tell us that the words printed there have some sort of time limit, that they don't apply to our here and now. To prove that the Holy Spirit lives and breathes within us-- evidenced by our spirits of love and compassion and desperation in this world of pain and sin.

Sin. The ultimate divider. Broken down into so many different components, but still, above all, one thing. It's what keeps us from God. It can keep us from each other. Pride. Lust. Unforgiveness. Anger. Lack of self-control. Unbelief.

Let our actions match our words. Let us see with the eyes of God. Let us have a heart like His. Let us see the problems within ourselves and fight them, before we try to fix the ones we see in others.

Let my pain have nothing to do with bitterness. Fix my heart, Father. Let me at least say goodbye to a friendship I don't know how to heal as if nothing bad had happened, knowing that you have forgiven me, and knowing that I have sought your forgiveness. Let my pain be for sins I have not brought before you- and let me fix that problem daily. It's enough to dwell on today's problems, without bringing into them tomorrow's, or yesterday's.

Always

I took this blogs header picture during a Greece trip. I think off of the island of Patmos, where John is said to have written Revelations. I was walking around the ship, listening to my ipod when I walked out a door and was hit by this view, just as this song came through my ear buds:

"Did you rise the sun for me?
Paint a million stars that I might know your majesty?
Is your voice upon the wind?
Is everything I've known marked with my Maker's fingerprints?

Breathe on me.
Let me see Your Face.
Ever I will seek you.

Because all you are is all I want, always.
Draw me close in your arms.
Oh God, I wanna be with you.

Can I feel you in the rain?
Abandon all I am to have you capture me again.
Let the earth resound with praise.
Can you hear as all creation lives to glorify one name?"
-Hillsong, Always.

It was a stunning moment. Beautiful in essence and meaning and feeling. It was everything I could do just to keep standing, leaning against the railing, basking in the splendor of God's glorifying creation.

I hope and I pray that our Creator God will continue to create in me a new heart. One that doesn't need such astonishing and blatant displays to feel His presence and revel in it. One that more and more every day appreciates the sacrifice of Christ, and the blessing of everyday life- lived for Him.

Dinner Anyways

It's one of those days.
We say this phrase for a large variance of reasons. But it always is. Unless of course we are just whiners. Unless I'm a whiner.
I guess it's not really one of those days.

Work was decent. I'm just feeling a lot of things unrelated to any of my current circumstances.

It hailed. But Patrick warned me so I got the cover on my car-- and they were only about the size of a pea. I know. I watched the entire time... wondering what in the world I could possibly do about it anyways if they turned larger. Like ... baseballs. Or, God forbid, footballs. I hope that's not possible.

I still whine to myself that I wanted wedding pictures that were more fun. Still. Over five months later. I whine to myself. I guess the only maturity I can claim there is that I'm not really whining to other people. Although... this probably counts as whining to other people. Unless no one is reading this thing anymore. But, I do really wish I had at least had a just for fun photo session with my man and our bridal party. Because, really, the pictures are what I'm going to look back on and, while we did get a few fun ones, for the most part they were just posed and sort of fake. I got really spoiled at Hannah's wedding, I think, with all of the fun we had taking the pictures-- and it's really my one great regret from that day. So, in future, I shall counsel all engaged couples to make sure they get what they want out of their photographer. It's too important to just settle. And it's not like we didn't have a talented photographer- we just didn't have a creative one.

It sort of feels good to get that out there.

I really like summertime in Wyoming, despite the mosquitos. I spent several months here thinking that it would never get warm and now it is, mostly, except for the hail and semi-occasional thunderstorms, and it is lovely.

I feel suddenly incapable of stringing together worthwhile thoughts. Arguably, this is reflected in this entire post. That's fine. I have to go work on dinner anyways.

Good Friday

It's an interesting series of emotions; although I'm not sure they can truly be called a series when they come all at once. A blend maybe?

Good Friday. Over two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ, God incarnate, died to make right the world and relationship mankind ruined. He died to bring all of creation back to a right place before our triune God. Even though this act, this greatest act of passion, love, and infinite mercy, was planned from the very moment of our Fall, it was not easy. It was not quick. Our all-powerful Creator and Savior suffered and died for us. A perfect lamb, offering Himself up, a sacrifice to cover the stains of our soul, to soothe the desolation of the earth, and to prove to Death itself that it would not hold sway over anything God claimed.

The most beautiful act in all the history of the world. Jesus the Messiah died for His creation. Agony and bliss together.

I was not alive for the garden of Eden. God already knew me, as He always has and always will, but I was not present. I did not control the hands that grasped the tree branch and pulled, nor the lips that opened or the teeth that bit. But had I been there, I would have committed Eve's betrayal. I too would have shared with my husband. Anyone who claims anything to the contrary is naive. None of us would have stood up to Satan, that master deceiver. All of us would have given in to curiosity, to humanity, and caused the fall. In full knowledge, disobeying the God who had only ever loved us and provided for us. And more than that. Even with the knowledge of our heritage, the infamy of our past in full view, we continue to sin. Sin is inherent in us at birth, and our aching bones, weak muscles, and minds full of deceptions as our life progresses do nothing to disprove this contention. Throughout our lives we sin more than we even can begin to consider. I sin. And for those sins Christ died. He died for what I have done, and what I will do, just as much as he died for what Adam and Eve did in the garden so long ago. I burn that I am part of the reason for His pain. Jesus will stand forever with the scars on His hands, feet, and side because of me. Not me alone, but certainly me.

But oh the bliss! Jesus died for me! I am free because He loved me. He has redeemed my soul from going down to the pit and I WILL LIVE TO ENJOY THE LIGHT. He has restored my relationship with Himself, with God the Father, with the Holy Spirit. Because of what Jesus died on Good Friday, His horrendous death on the wooden cross, and because He rose again three days later, Easter, I can be in communication with the God of the universe, the Creator of all things! I can bask in His Love and be sure of His grace.

This is the day of days. Our God died this day for the sins of all mankind. And I am saddened for its necessity, yet immeasurably thankful for it. It's beautiful It's amazing. It's the purest and most fantastic demonstration of the truth of God and His Love that can be imagined. The all -powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, wonderous God of all things came to Earth, lived, was perfect, and died in perfection, and rose again. There is nothing more than this.

I pray that this knowledge would be made real for us every day of our lives. And I pray that we would live accordingly-- thankful, aware of our inability to be worthy of that sacrifice, but still striving to love and obey our Lord and Savior all of our lives.

Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!
Let all of creation praise His name!