I've felt the fire and it hurts a bit, but if you live you are refined, like silver hidden beneath the tarnish exposed in a kiss.

How are you? I am good, I am learning, I am getting better at life and that is do to my inclination to give up trying to be me by myself. It sounds weird but I cannot attribute a thing that has ever been good about me to myself. I am grown up and I can see the way that God has put obsticles in my path to teach me to jump, He has put mountains in my way to teach me to climb, and in the end when you have felt the fire and you still live, you are refined, you are new, different. I cannot be the person I used to be and would never want to be, I am new. You get knocked down over and over, and will get pushed around and hurt and cheated, but if you trust in God, you will get up, because He has plans to help you, not to harm you, even if those plans hurt really bad at the time. You get up, you look the world over annd get knocked back down, but then you get up again. It is God inside that promps you to fight, to wipe away your tears, stop feeling sorry for yourself for having been in the fire, and be glad that you were burned. Because without that pain, there is no real joy, you would never learn or get to the place you need to be to be me with God and not me with myself. Left to myself and my own devices I am a blundering fool, anything that is good from me is from God. I used to think that life was like some series of hills that you must cross over to be complete before you die. The high points are the times you are doing well spiritually and God feels like He is closer that your own heartbeat, and the lows are the times that God feels forever away. I used to think that was the way it had to be, but maybe that is because I am so foolish that I must always seem to have to learn the hard way on things. Maybe I need the lows because I am not smart enough to look around and see the lows of others as a lesson for me to learn, I must experience these things myself to realize that I should have learned ages ago. Maybe, life doesn't have to have those series of lows, maybe we can go up all the time until we reach the highest point of life, then go meet our God, then you can ride that first hill forever. Maybe memories, the thing I am closest to in life, are a gift, like presents, things to take with you on the ride to show you were you have been and what you have learned. Over the past several years, I have looked really hard at myself and have been stumped with the desire to revisit my past watch it play out again, but why would I ever want to do that. I remember my past because it was filled with fire and I am here because I lived and was forever changed. Those things I have seen and experienced are gone and will never be again, and that is a good thing because I would never want to be that guy again anyway. Memories are Poloroids that are meant to be stored in a box for a time when you are lonely and lost and need to revisit what you have learned and where God has been in your life to put you back on track. I will prolly be moping about getting another year closer to death in a couple months, but for now, I'll take this over anything.


Movies:
Blade Runner
Lars And The Real Boy
The Darjeeling Limited
Sunshine
Fido

Music:
Mono
Brian Eno...Music For Airplanes
Band Of Horses
The Cranberries
Counting Crows

TV:
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia
The Ultimate Fighter
Friday Night Lights...Will someone please watch this show?
The Office
Storm Chasers

Food:
Turkey
Club Sandwich on wheat bread, toasted with Provalone cheese. Lettuce, tomato, and pickles with Southwest dressing from Subway...You will love it forever
Cheesy potatoes
Fruit On The Bottom Yogurt

Reading:
Micah
Malachai

Quotes:
"You have a bloody nose" - I invented that