It's so easy...

Sometimes when I sit down at the end of the week, as I'm doing now, I don't even know what to do with myself. Honestly, I wonder if it is going to be like this forever. It's not that it's bad, it's just not extraordinary. I wrote last of feeling melancholy; it's a feeling which has apparently decided to take root in my soul this weekend. Although ultimately reflective of a large portion of my character (half sanguine, half melancholy... go figure that one out...) I don't hold disdain towards these feelings when they come upon me, the portion I find disconcerting is when I don't have the time to revel in them. I enjoy quality alone time, or even quality one on one time with my friends just as much as I love being in a group environment. Only, I am thankful for the ability to sit here in the quite of my apartment and simply write. I underestimate the enjoyment I find in touching my fingers to the worn, black squares of this keyboard. I underestimate the importance of taking time to myself, for renewal in my Savior...

Opening my eyes at 5 this morning, it was yet dark outside, and the first words on my lips were in prayer. I felt this overwhelming need to pray. I woke up praying about everything I could even imagine that may be in need of prayer. My mind keeps flitting to the song by Leeland called "Tears of the Saints." I'm going to post it here. I have talked to so many lately, my own family, my friends, strangers and children of our Father in Heaven, all who are hurting and crying out to God. This is not a joyous time of year for everyone. There are the most basic needs that are seeming to be neglected and unheard by God. Yet we stretch out our hands, we reach them out: All of us. Whether for more, whether for lack of, whether for need or want. We, all of us need. Yet, in my human nature I have yet to learn to let go, to accept lack of understanding as an answer: don't know if I'm supposed to? It is this paradoxical paradigm of push and pull wrapped around the deepest parts of human nature, until we become desperately turned around from contemplation, drowning ourselves in circles.

One could sit and wonder about the endless tragedies that gouge the face of this earth, that leave our minds, pock-marked and sallow in bewilderment that certain things even occur. In fact, perhaps this is why you can even find me sitting here in my living room writing this. My week has left me numb. I will not pretend to hold answers or to offer some deep philosophical enlightenment to the questions I've referred to. All I can do is encourage you, my friend, and to encourage myself to look from where we have come. We are here, in this very predicament, whether favorable or not, for a reason. I would not go back to where I was any more than I would forsake the growth I have obtained from coming from it. I only wish to move forward. It does me no good to wallow in the strikes pooled against me.

This world is not my home. Though the tears of the saints flow as a dark ebony ribbon, we have an intercessor of whom we may thank for the ability to find hope in even crying out at all. All I know is that were it not for Christ's death on the cross I would not have hope: for the crushing of his connection with the Father, all for the sake of that moment when his breath was renewed again in his broken body... so that we might draw OUR breath from him... All I know is that I cling to this. I offer no answers save the ones that find light in the fact that our Savior is risen, and this is not our home.



I beseech thee, my friends, let us not give up.