God's faithfulness never ceases to amaze me. i have been separated from my siblings for awhile now. Too long. I do not function terribly well without them, partially since there are so few people that are capable of relating in the way they can, since everything i have experienced, so have they, and also because i have no friends that i have know for more than a few years at best. Part of never being able to form relationships with people until recently means you have no long term friends. This gets me down, since i am closest to my siblings and they are extremely dear to me, the most dear you can hold someone is how i hold them. I have lived my whole life until two years ago with my brother, jay, and i have seen him a handful of times in those two years for hours and a day at best. After this way too long separation that wrenches my heart, he and i are living in the same city again in a few short months.

More and more i understand why God established families, why we are created to be in and thrive in families. I do not have a family, i have the remnants of family, my siblings, but no functioning family unit. I spent thanksgiving with an incredibly loving family of ten and i got the chance to watch and participate in their family life. watching how loving their family is, how accepting they were to me, and seeing how their kids thrive and know they are loved brought me to tears several nights. It was possibly the most refreshing thing i have seen since i moved here. Then seeing how i need my siblings, how i need the relationship i have with them and how quickly i can pick it up again after not seeing my brother in years and just how close we are so quickly once again, i see the reason why God commands families to be families. Why parents are meant to love their kids, why families are supposed to continue to grow by being fathers to the fatherless. We are designed, we crave, we long to find that loving relationship. in the end, that relationship and that love is found in our heavenly father, but the family system points us directly to that is a more tangible way for us to experience that love.

family makes sense to me. It is what i crave. it is what God has given to us.

" see, i have engraved you on the palms of my hands." - isaiah 49:16

all the things we have disreguarded
this is why we come undone
since a piece of us has parted
and left our lives unwon

the missing piece left a gaping hole
that is filled, but only for a moment
nothing can satisfies our soul
because it is always growing
and the the hole was too large to fill
until the infinite was sent

until we are filled
everything falls into us
and our souls we can no longer trust
we live for what our soul desires
and there is no control for what is inside
since there is a hole.

i started to write. i think i may write a story. this is the intro i've written.

There came a time when i wondered if there was any hope, if there was any real light that stays longer than the sun. I still wonder if there is anything more than the light that fades in and out. The light seems like more of a tease than actual hope. As soon as the day becomes warm, as soon as there is any hope that grips your soul, it fades away, and we are cursed to face the dark and cold again. This is the sad state of reality and the sad world i was born into. We wake to live for a moment of light and warmth, then exist in the darkness waiting for a moment again. Most people resolve to live in the light and exist in the darkness, just flirting with both, but never truly living in either. The trouble is they are torn every time they exist in one and then transition into dark from light or light to dark. the struggle between light and dark, between loving oneself and loving others is what forms us all.

This struggle is what i want to tell you about and what it did to me. This struggle made me rise and fall and ultimately exist inside the tension and in the end die to try and end it. The easiest place to begin is the end, but only for a minute, i will send you to the beginning after a few details are explained. I am not in the world of light and dark anymore and i do not have to fight any longer. also this is not a story of how i left the fight and found out how to find peace, rather this is a story of how i existed in the turmoil. Now, to go to the beginning: i was born. no seriously. i was. that is how most beginnings begin.

So, ultimately living for yourself is a dead end and cannot satisfy your craving. it all spirals down and the only way to keep the craving down is to put it into chaos and just shift highs constantly. nothing fulfills us except jesus, but serving other people is the only way to not live for yourself and in a strange way i have always served people and always been selfish. Serving people was the closest illusion to following christ i had and i thrived as much as i could on it, which wasn't that much, but it was something. I was a selfish server of people, since i was serving to gain love and to build myself up. it is the closest thing to following something other than myself i had figured out and was the closest thing to fulfillment i had ever found. Serving people burnt me out though, it eventually drove me into the ground and made me break down.

Jesus is a strange thing, since he makes us more like ourselves. Sin cannot create, it can only distort us more than we already are. Growing towards and pursuing jesus makes us more like ourselves since the closer we are to jesus the more we are like our original selves, the more like we were created to be we are. In a sense, the only way to actually know your limits, how to feed yourself and how to feed other people is to pursue jesus, since we never truly know ourselves until we live inside jesus. Jesus is how we are truly fed and not burnt out, since it is only through jesus we have any satisfaction. there isn't any other way. nothing else can fill or satisfy the desires we have. However, we typically see the pursuit of jesus as in we pursue jesus first, then everything else. i don't think that is entirely right, though. if we're pursuing jesus first, then when do we stop pursuing jesus to pursue what we are pursuing second?

The pursuit of jesus is not something that comes in and out and you just pursue jesus more than other things, since in the end, if you're not pursuing jesus in something, you're not pursuing jesus. It is through the pursuit of jesus that you pursue anything else. Everything becomes a pursuit of jesus and in that everything is the constant feeding of yourself. Serving people truly becomes selfless since it isn't about either of you, rather jesus.

I have a love hate relationship with holidays. It is a stab in heart in the sense that it is a constant reminder of what holidays were as a kid and a reminder still that i don't have a home, rather remnants of family. Don't get me wrong, what family i do have i love dearly and they take care of me, but as far as a home, i have none. I guess for what christmas is originally about, baby jesus and the redemption of humanity beginning, it reminds me of how much of a savior jesus is and just how much i need him. No lie, i struggle, i struggle like hell with holiday seasons. People return to their families and go back to their homes, i work to pay rent and if things where my parents live are pleasant enough i will make an appearance for a day. There is something so fundamental that God put in us about family. It is so strange that i grew up in a home that should have driven me away from jesus, but all it did was push my closer, that i should hate family, my father and mother, but i pray and beg for God to forgive them and pull them into his spirit so they don't have to live under the law any longer. family is one of the most intense desires in my heart that i pray for almost non-stop. there is little i hold higher, maybe sense i never had one or maybe because i just know what God intended for family to be. I don't really know why, but Jesus has made me all the more crazy about building a family someday.

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak- isaiah 40:29

i am going to start writing rap

" our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."- C.S. Lewis, the screwtape letters

All the unhappy endings
as thousands walk in dimly lit streets
all look for a way to start our mending
and we all wander searching for weeks

in this dim light
we can barely see the ground
to be honest, i have no sight
and secretly am hoping to be found

buildings, posts, streets, and people
but i am unable to see or know anything
i can only live my looking down so i'm
not consumed by this vast darkness

If i look up and peer into the darkness
panic and fear over take me
and to be honest i must confess
whatever is inside the darkness i don't want to see

while i was wandering
a person surrounded by light passed by
my heart jumped and began to sing
i wanted to follow him and i was unsure as to why

when i walked in this man's light
i see the world's mess and my hearts sin
after seeing light, darkness never satisfies again
and without a choice you resolve to fight

i was never able to again just exist
when i hide
my mind persists
there is more to life than just this

although i now more clearly see
all the pain and death because of light
i live in it because i see a future
because someone satisfied darkness's plea

heaven is breaking into darkness
giving us a hint, a clue
of what is to come
since all the sad things are becoming untrue

So, i think our definition of addiction is a little off. Not in the sense of cravings and having a stimulus that we have to meet, rather in the sense that we thing if we simply aren't around some things we will not become addicted. A rather guy like struggle, lust, porn, masturbation, i don't think will power can defeat and people in pulpits say go to jesus, but over and over again guys i know can't defeat this addiction and they have hardened wills to defeat it, but can't. Notice, with drug addicts, we replace stimulants. things like sugar and caffeine are used to lessen cravings, replace them with easier to manage addictions. With lust, we simply try to force our ways out. Addictions don't work that way. the only way to end an addiction is to replace it. it is all about finding the greater addiction and that is the only true way to kill an old addiction.

we're kind of like a metal surface with a hole in the middle and the entire surface slants towards the hole. By keeping everything out of the hole, all that happens is more and more falls in and we are constantly popping everything in and out and you are just shifting cravings all the time. I kind of feel like guys that are struggling with masturbation that is the last ball in the arena and everything else is out, but the only way to keep everything out of the hole, that is ourselves, is to fill the hole. the issue is the hole is always getting deeper and is never satisfied. There isn't anything to fill that hole, so, everything falls in and it isn't enough.

The issue is that we try to willfully force out addictions, lust and masturbation primarily, with sheer will force. I think the struggle with lust and masturbation is more an issue with us not being filled and not being satisfied. the only way to defeat lust is to find the higher satisfaction and a joy that is greater than any amount of numbness you can achieve. It isn't just an issue of forcing the sin out of your person, rather filling it so you can keep it out.

until he returns to me
we will strive and fight
until the day he calls us home
for him to see
how we fought creations groan

to fight means to live in heights
of joy and depths of peace
to bathe in light
and be released

sins grip has lost its strength
jesus came
to break sins link
and states god's claim over all creation
saying, " this is mine"

Then god's spirit came to make
us live in depths of light
so we may see with eyes awake
and truly see we live to fight.