"Believe" - The Newsboys

Interesting Article

About John James, the original lead singer of The Newsboys and about his struggle with addictions and faith:

http://www.crossrhythms.co.uk/articles/print.php?Article_ID=25790

Top of the Tower

I'm sitting at the window looking into the night, the dark that my eyes can't break. I'm sipping cocoa and listening to a little music of hope.

I am flabbergasted at the sheer amount of drama that can fit into one day.

Why do I make stupid decisions?

Base of self?

None of this stuff makes me genuinely happy anyways. I'm best at compromising and pretending everything is okay just so I don't have to make major decisions.

Lord, what the hell am I doing?
Where am I going?
What do You want from me?

I guess I don't know you as half as well as I thought I did.
I feel...things but so many of them have no real meaning, right?
Superficial thoughts and an overly dependent personality do not make any sort of friendship worth mentioning.

I don't like the drama in my life.
I don't like the pain.

I suck at dealing with strife in a healthy way.
I want to run, I want to hide, I just want to flee from everything I know and go somewhere to start new.

So much I hate Matthew Pike and I want him to die.
I can't stand who he is, what he stands for, what he does, what he doesn't do...he isn't a villain but he is not a hero. He is tragically human, with all the same flaws as you...except he doesn't see him as you do.

It would be so easy to just end it, right now.
I could do it and be lost to the void in a matter of minutes, if not just seconds.
But that misses the point I think.

I either have to face the fact that life isn't just this...one second, one moment...but here we are. A mix of good and bad.

I just wish I could find rest and an easy way out of this place.

I want to be a coward and take the easy way out...I don't care to hear about how God loves me enough to let me suffer...just making it through today is hard enough.

I suppose a key tip off was never being asked simple things...like how I was.
Tip offs like...

The mind, the soul and body are all stressed.
So many words, so many thoughts.
Divide and ridiculous in nature.

If I could change something...it would just being able to let go, to be able to let my mind shut down and relax.
I can't sleep, I am not able to at night because of every little thought about every possibility.
Even if I could pour myself into a life saving project...my apathy wants to rule. I want to make this all about me...so I don't have to have responsibility.



But that is just the night.

I'm alive.

I was born with purpose.

I keep running and running and still You love me.
Thank you.
Help me, pull me out of this zone of comfort and this need to be about me. I want to forget about everything except You for a good while...teach me, love me please.

If feeling alone and like I'm going crazy is Hell...then I'm a few levels above it currently.

The food is bad, the service is worse and I have this funny aftertaste in my mouth that tastes of guilt and shame.

And it's lonely out here in space.

Well I'm a terrible person.

I think...I've run out for now.

Which is sort of sad...I'm writing about writing nothing.

My mind needs to shush now.

"Comfortably Numb" - Pink Floyd

*sigh*

What is it with me and wanting to rush in and help people the second it seems they are in any trouble whatsoever?

I'm just...going to fade away on this.

I'm not wanted or needed...I'm just not sure which of those two are the more important qualifiers.

I would say in case of an emergency...you know how to get me...but that is precisely the problem I think. I am just a 'go to' guy when things get rough or go bad...not that I don't mind...seriously. Ministry is a thankless task...but I hate thinking of my friends as just being 'clientele' or something.

Like...when I move...I was thinking of having a small going away party...but it's just going to be like graduation night back in high school...or university...me sitting in my room smiling all sort of sad because I can't get ahold of anyone and no included me in any of the plans.

Sad sorta...the plus side...if there is one, is that it literally cannot get worse for me today.

I am one hundred percent sure it cannot and will not get worse.

Logistically speaking it is impossible.

Which is sort of a relief...help me to stay the course...please.

Looks like it's going to be one of those years...

Fact:

Storing loose change in a glass Sobe bottle for several years will in fact make the coins smell like the former drink, albeit with a particular metal scent worked in.

I now have coins with the smell of Liz Blizz Pina Colada.

No, they do not taste like Liz Blizz Pina Colada flavored drink.

I know it is history...but still...why does almost every Biblical story have to end in death?

For once...why can't the happy ending happen while still here on earth?

Help my weak faith grow...I've read Genesis a half dozen times and only You know how many more times I'll read it before I die...but I just need hope.

Please?

Help me to trust that this is the best way...that You know what you are doing and that You can give peace and love...even in this chaotic mess. Increase my weak faith, my faith which flees at the moment of pain.

Help me surrender to what is true, what is good, what is pure...not my false concepts over what is to become of me...but the plan you wrote at the beginning of time.

Quote of the Day - Part Three:

"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."
-Douglas Adams

Playful Intent

I'm like a child
who has lost his way.
Not knowing my left
from my right.

Just longing to hear something,
to hear something good
to know what I did wrong
and baby what I did right.
If anything.

I can't cry
it's much too late
much too late to drink
and I can't miss the beat
or bear the brunt
of repeated failures
of knowing.

Knowing nothing
is knowing enough for you
but never knowing
is enough to drive me mad
because after all
I'm just a child,
picking at the sores
knowing it's hurting
and not knowing why
just knowing I see blood
and feel a little hurt
and hoping it works out.

Band...please? Anyone? Someone?

So my new band name idea:

Finding Nineveh

Progressive electronic metal with preferably a backing orchestra.

Anyone?

Someone?

Love in the Eye of the Beholder

Bright lit regards
as I see the light unfolds
and God my soul burns
lifted on this melody
as I sing,
Lord sing unto thee.

Take this song,
this cracked voice
and shaken hands
as I hold here.
Braving my humanity
as I long to be
just to be
there again.

Was this love ever real?
Was it ever pure?
Did it exist beyond this sick mind?
We have the ecstasy of the soul
and the intense passion
of being lost in and within You
time and time again.

I feel Your touch,
your smell intoxicates me
and I'm drunk off of the heat
and the fervor of Your Word.

I'm so sick for my Love,
so sick to feel love
hurting so bad to hear
just hear again
just why
just how
all this came to be.

I want to run
I want to hide
just remain in shame
ashamed I never could be
never could love You
or shower You with the same grace
You gave to me.

I hunger
I thirst
I ache
so bad for You,
so dearly for You.
My Love, my love
I can't live without You
without Your words
without the Word
of hope
of life
of regards to peace.

Oh Lover
come once again,
return me to Your side
for I left in fear
and shame of the person I've been.
I need You tonight,
I need you today
every waking hour of life
be mine
and let me be thine.

Incandescently Lit

Freedom.
It's like a song bird
flying free
just before being claimed
being brought down low
purchased by gravity
and the time.

Love.
Colors burst from gray
but even so
nothing can stop age
as all fades
bitterly cold and jaded
as not even human hope
can last beyond tonight.

The Light in Her Eyes

See it sparkle,
see the Spirit dance.
Joy beyond joy,
life beyond life.

The dancing of time
making a fool of us all
as we run to the end
not sure of ourselves
and the monochromatic
method of which we sleep.

Here the music start,
a kick of a drum
and a blast of a harmonic.
The bitter taste of loosing
mixed with the love of loving
and knowing
and most days never caring
about where we're going;
hand in hand on love
we move again.

It's time making a fool of us,
time dancing across our lives
as our beauty fades outside
and the spire splutters inside
and the colors fade
as they bleed out
making this monochromatic picture.

Night time dancing
as we sing our song
hoping for hope
as the sand slips away
out of this broken jar
and everything we dreamed just fades
and dear God we pray
just for enough grace
to make it through today.

Quote of the Day - Part Two:

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness — I hope you're getting this down."
-Woody Allen

About a three hour nap...surely that is enough.
Fortified with medication and oatmeal I shall brave the exercise bike yet again.

I just have to keep telling myself this is all physical training for 'Z'-Day and that should be enough motivation to keep me going for a while.

Breath deep, move forward, never look back and never stop moving.

Quote of the Day:

"The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me."
-Donald Miller

Excerpt from Donald Miller's "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years"

Chapter Twenty Nine - "The Reason Why God Hasn't Fixed You Yet"

I'm convinced the most fantastical moment in story, the point when all the tension is finally relived, doesn't actually happen in real life. And I mean that seriously. I've thought about it fifty different ways, but I can't figure out how a human life actually climaxes so that everything on the other side of a particular moment is made to be okay. It happens all the time in movies and books, but it won't happen to me - and I'm sorry to say, it won't happen to you either.

Maybe the reason we like stories so much is because they deliver wish fulfillment. Maybe we sit in the dark and shovel sugar into our mouths because in so many stories everything is made right, and we secretly long for that ourselves.

It was touching when Steve, Ben and I realized what the climax to our movie was going to be. We've been writing toward it for more than a year, and we were practically in tears when we finally wrote that part of the script. It was a scene in which two characters met in confrontation, and one asked the other for forgiveness. We were back at Jim's house in Tennessee, sitting around his table. I was saying the words my character needed to say, Ben was adding dialogue from the other character, and Steve was typing it as fast as he could. Neither Ben nor I were looking at each other, because if we did we'd have cried - we'd have over character who didn't exist resolving a tension that never really happened. There's just something in the DNA of a human that responds to the idea of an event, a moment in which the upheaval we've all been working around is finally laid to rest.

But regardless how passionate the utopianists are, I simply don't believe utopia is going to happen. I don't believe we are going to be rescued. I don't believe an act of man will make things on earth perfect, and I don't believe God will intervene before I die, or for that matter before you die. I believe, instead, we will go on longing for a resolution that will not come, not within life as we know it, anyway.

If you think about it, an enormous amount of damage is created by the myth of utopia. There is an intrinsic feeling in nearly every person that your life could be perfect if you only had such-and0such a car or such-and-such a spouse or such-and-such a job. We believe we will be made whole by our accomplishments, our possessions, or our social status. It's written in the fabric of our DNA that life used to be beautiful and now it isn't, and if only this and if only that, it would be beautiful again.

I saw a story on '60 Minutes' a few months ago about the happiest country in the world. It was Denmark. A study done by a British university ranked the happiest countries, and America was far down the list, but Denmark was on the top. Morley Safer explored why. Ruling out financial status, physical health, and even social freedom, he landed on a single characteristic of the Danes that allowed them such contentment. The reason Danes are happy was this: they had low expectations.

I'm not making that up. There is something in Denmark's culture that allows them to look at life realistically. They don't expect products to fulfill them or relationships to end all their problems. In fact, in the final interview of the segment, Safer was sitting across from a Danish man and remarked to him that when Americans find out the happiest place on earth is Denmark, they are going to want to move there. Without missing a beat, the Danish man looked at Morley and said "Well, honestly, they will probably be let down."

I don't mean to insinuate there are no minor climaxes to human stories. There are. A kid can try to make the football team and in a moment of climax see his name on the coach's list. A girl can want to get married and feel euphoric when the man of her dreams slides a ring on her finger. But these aren't the stories I'm talking about. These are substories. When the kid makes the football team, he is going to find out that playing football is hard, and he's going to find himself in the middle of yet another story. And the girl is going to wake up three months into her marriage and realize she is, in fact, still lonely, and so many of her issues haven't gone away. And if both of these people aren't careful, they're going to get depressed because they thought the climax to their substory was actually a climax to the human story, and it wasn't. The human story goes on.

Growing up in church, we were taught that Jesus was the answer to all of our problems. We were taught that there was a circle-shaped hole in our heart and that we had tried to fill it with square pegs of sex, drugs, and rock and roll; but only the circle peg of Jesus could fill our hole. I became a Christian based, in part, on this promise, but the hole never really went away. To be sure, I liked Jesus, and I still follow him, but the idea that Jesus will make everything better is a lie. It's basically biblical theology translated into the language of infomercials. The truth is, the apostles never really promise Jesis is going to make everything better here on earth. Can you imagine an infomercial with Paul, testifying to the amazing product of Jesus, saying that he once had power and authority, and since he tired Jesus he's been moved from prison to prison, beaten and routinely bitten by snakes? I don't think many people would be buying that product. Peter couldn't do any better He was crucified upside down, by some reports. Stephen was stoned outside the city gates. John, supposedly, was boiled in oil. It's hard to imagine how a religion steeped in so much pain and sacrifice turned into a promise for earthly euphoria. I think Jesus can make things better, but I don't think he is going to make things perfect. Not here, and not now.

What I love about the true gospel of Jesus, though, is that it offers hope. Paul has hope our souls will be made complete. It will happen in heaven, where there will be a wedding and a feast. I wonder if that's why so many happy stories end in weddings and feasts. Paul says Jesus is the hope that will not disappoint. I find that comforting. That helps me get through the day to be honest. It even makes me content somehow. Maybe that's what Paul meant when he said he'd learned the secret of contentment.

After the girl I dated had been in Switzerland for a while, and I continued to see a counselor, I realized that for years I'd though of love as something that would complete me, make all my troubles go away. I worshiped at the altar of romantic completion. And it had cost me, plenty of times. And it had cost most of the girls I'd dated too, because I wanted them to be something they couldn't be. It's too much pressure to put on a person. I think that's why so many couples fight, because they want their partners to validate them and affirm them, and if they don't get that, they feel as though they're going to die. And so they lash out. But it's a terrible thing to wake up and realize the person you just finished crucifying didn't turn out to be Jesus.

I was interviewing my friend Susan Isaacs after her book 'Angry Conversations with God' came out. We were in front of a live audience, and I was reading questions to her off o index cards submitted by the audience. Because so much of her book talks about relational needs, relational fulfillment and unfulfillment, one of the questions asked was whether she believed there was one true love for every person.

Susan essentially said no. And she said that with her husband sitting right there in the audience. She said her and her husband believed they were a cherished prize for each other, and they would probably drive any other people mad. But then she said something I thought was wise. She said she had married a guy, and he was just a guy. He wasn't going to make all her problems go away, because he was just a guy. And that freed her to really love him as a guy, not as an ultimate problem solver. And because her husband believed she was just a girl, he was free to really love her too. Neither needed the other to make everything okay. They were simply content to have good company through life's conflicts. I thought that was beautiful.

There is a lot of money and power to be had in convincing people we can create an Eden here on earth. Cults are formed when leaders make such absurd promises. Products are sold convincing people that they are missing out on the perfect life. And political groups tend to scare people by convincing them we are losing Eden, or inspire people by telling them we can rebuild what God had destroyed. We all get worked into a frenzy over things will not happen until Jesus returns. The truth is, we can make things a little better or a little worse, but utopia doesn't hang in the balance of our vote or of what products we buy.

All of this may sound depressing to you, but I don't mean it to be. I've lived some good stories now, and those stories have improved the quality of my life. But I've also let go of the idea things will ever be made perfect, at least while I am walking around on this planet. I've let go of the idea that this life has a climax. I'm trying to be more Danish, I guess. And the thing is, it works. When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are. And when you stop expecting material possessions to complete you, you'd be surprised at how much pleasure you get in material possessions. And when you stop expecting God to end all your troubles, you'd be surprised how much you like spending time with God.

Do I still think there will be a day when all wrongs are made right, when our souls find the completion they are looking for? I do. But when all things are made right, it won't be because of some preacher or snake-oil salesman or politician or writer making promises in his book. I think, instead, this will be done by Jesus. And it will be at a wedding. And there will be a feast.

"Not Ready to Die" - Demon Hunter

Ah...a live version of my theme song from college.
Memories.

"The Tide Begins to Rise" - Demon Hunter

A Rose of Light and of Love

I need something beautiful just so I can save it,
save it and return myself
some of the dignity I sold
when I gave up and gave in
to the lie that I was nothing more
than just a puppet to my sin
and a slave to my every whim.

I'm ready to believe,
to feel something real
and to know
to simply know
that I can have a reprieve
and You died that I might live
and return this pain
with a white rose of peace
and a red rose of love.

Goodnight,
goodbye
take care my love
and know
you never walked alone.

"I Never Wanted" - As I Lay Dying

I never wanted
And I never cared before
Now take it all back
This is a new day

How I long to regress
To the days before I took upon myself
The obsessions of this world
A day of innocence equating beauty
For tomorrow may fall
And today is already gone

Now take it back
This is a new day

I've grown tired of chasing
Convinced I was in need
And now the years I've spent
Only a slave to this
Tomorrow may fall
And today is already gone
I will no longer adore
These things that will never satisfy me

Now take it back
This is a new day

I have seen my world change
And then go back to where it came
In this vicious circle
We are all brought back to life
Only to die again
But without these barren obsessions
I am simply free