the new year

the new year this year is a little different than other years for me. most years i have massive goals, massive ambitions, but this year i do not have those massive wants or needs. I am not entirely sure if that is a good thing, but it is true nonetheless. I have a compulsive, obsessive, and driven personality. the issue is i use obsession with work, charities, and people to run. I have been making efforts to not work, to not become obsessed with people and things so i can try and get a grip on my head. I think i have finally come to grips with my life, with myself, with who i am, and hardest of all, who i have been.

There have been three main stages i have been in this year. The eat, drink, and be merry is one. Another is work your ass off and realize nothing came of it. the last was the learning to work, be loved, then rest. The bible has a very strange tension of working, being radical, and yet resting and existing in a state of being loved and loving. the problem with drinking your life into forgetfulness is that happiness is merely a forgetting, a false reality. Eventually reality has a nice knack for finding you and reminding you that you are living in a lie. The issue with working your ass off trying to be good, trying to earn respect, ect, is that you and i can't build relationships with just working, we can't earn love through work. the hardest thing has been learning to calm down and live in rest, love, peace. I have grown up in chaos, i have grown up in pain. When life is calm, when life is peaceful and enjoyable i panic. I force chaos into my life. Relationships cannot be built in chaos.

the whole thing of building a relationship, living in that relationship, then building a relationship with others to show the relationship you share is a slow process of existing, living, and enjoying what you do. This is so contrary to what i lived for, with what i did. I threw myself into everything until i broke and moved onto something else. i have no consistency for more than a few months. if there was consistency i eventually broke it, found a good reason to, and did. is it any wonder i never really had relationships with people? God took a lot of effort in ruining every plan i used to run away from relationship and people and made me chill. He put a lot of friends in my life that pursued me when i was running away and the result was i was horrified of being close to people, and now, i am experiencing love for the first time in the sacrificial way, i am experiencing family in a away i never did before. i tell you what, it is a beautiful thing.

For the new year, there are no obsessive goals, there are no massive plans, there is nothing horribly ambitious. i want enough to give it away, i want to be filled enough i can share the healing i have been given with others, i want to be inviting to people and show them love in spite of who they are, in spite of who i am. my goal is to live as a child who is loved by his father and to love as a person who is in the midst of the most beautiful love of all. All the sad things are becoming untrue and there isnt any reason to fear what has happened to me, there isn't any really for me to allow what has been done to me to control me. simply, what i have done, what they have done, it is all forgiven and the shame has been taken care of by another.

ecc 9:1-2
1But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. 2 It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath.

solomon experienced everything, had everything, knew more than anyone. all he saw was everything ended the same. it does. we all die, we pass all we made onto people who know less than we do, all we worked for to people who haven't worked. This life is meaningless as an end, your happiness is meaningless as an end. The only thing that gives meaning to all of it is this isn't the end, merely the transition, home for just a time. If everything is a pursuit of jesus there really is a joy in everything instead of a meaninglessness in everything. if your drinking, your work, you family, is your end and your pursuit. you're just screwed, since me and you will fail.

in the end, i hope for this year to display the shade that i rest in. To be inviting to other people who are longing for me find the shade to rest in. Since i have found it. I am now resting.

to start, it is damn cold outside. i went for a walk to think for a bit and the walk lasted all of five minutes. there is so much to think, so much to put into relationships. the strangest thing of all is where is caring too much and where is attempting to control. when you think about it, where is the line of controlling someones life and still loving them, since there are times where you are going to drag someone out of what they're doing regardless of what they say. Also, just for consistencies sake, there is a landload of people that you and i know who put themselves in awful situations constantly, but we will drag them out of those situations.

I think, people being in relationship with you is, in a way, submitting themselves to you. let me explain, people being in close relationship with you not only makes your heart go out to them, but also makes you act on their behalf, since you cannot function well in close friendships with someone who constantly tears you down by destroying themselves, and if you are in close relationship with someone you are going to care about the decisions they make and how they affect themselves by their choices. i think though, we put ourselves in control too often. i know i do. something i have been struggling with is how do i love people that are wrecking themselves. People in general take the all or nothing approach. we go all out and try to change the people or we cut them out until they change. If you control them you make them bitter, if you leave you take away their support system. Neither option is one i like.

I realized though, we can't change people. fortunately, that isn't in our control, it is God's spirit that changes people. this doesn't mean give up either, i dunno how much of the bible talks about seeking people out and being active. I think the most selfless type of love is one where you aren't controlling a person and you are there to love them and help them whenever they need help. The reason why is because you are not gaining anything. If you aren't gaining support from them emotionally or in other ways and you are still loving them, you really are loving them without gaining anything in return. The thing that is stranger is this: then why are we loving them? honestly, i have no idea other than there are people we have been a heart for that we cannot really explain in rational ways why we love them.

In the end though, all we can worry about is today, which doesn't do much of anything since being paranoid and all panic like makes us less able to actually DO anything.

"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

We have absolutely no idea what tomorrow brings. we're basically in a constant state of looking at a wall and never knowing what is on the other side until we walk through it every day. everyday we walk through one wall and see another. This a beautiful thing, since we're never sure what is on the next wall, but also so humbling, since we don't know what the hell is going to be written on the next wall. This applies to everything we worry about, but on relationships especially and how we deal with people. we can not control someone and we cannot really leave someone, but we do not really have a reason to, since we don't know what tomorrow will bring for them. in the present we know we have to love them through everything and whatever happens later, we will deal with it when that happens, but for now, i love them. if something happens where i can love them with more than just being there, i will, but until then i can't do anything else.

man, it is so nice to not be in control of the world.

I think joy is the most attractive of all attributes.

11 “Afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted,
I will rebuild you with stones of turquoise,
your foundations with lapis lazuli." Isaiah 54:11

over and over god promises to rebuilt, redeem, to move and create us again. Not just to bring us back to the way things were, but rather to rebuild and create us into something spectacular, unimaginable that sounds rather absurd. talking abuot building a cities foundation out of stones and rocks that are considered to be absurd to even have enough to build a wall out of, let alone a whole city. In the end, when you think of who you are now, of where jesus has taken you, what he has called you out of, i never could have imaged what life would be like now. My desires were so weak, so low, i never dreamed to be who i am now. My desires were for money, fame, and pleasure. all of that was taken out of my grasp, but what happened was it was shown that all those things, int he course of eternity fail and even in the scope of our existence we see that they fail us. i wasn't able to imagine what i have now. In the end, do we really know what we want, or even what we need? all the things i wanted weren't really what i wanted, rather were things i wanted to temporarily fill what me, since i didn't have what i really needed.

Love is a strange thing, since often times it means giving people exactly what they do not want. Knowing what someone needs and giving it to them is usually a pretty rough thing, but giving them what they need above their wants is probably one of the most loving things you can do for a person. I did not want jesus, but he forced himself on me for years until i broke. that is what i needed though.

you have become the dearest of brothers
as you helped carry my life
making burdens possible to bear
with all the coffee and cigarettes we shared

we climbed, jumped, and laughed
sharing the happiest of times
the best of which are not in the past
since our future holds several more minor crimes.

i haven't finished this one yet. i wrote this much and have gotten stumped.