Blue Skies & Words to Say

("Mutual" from xkcd.com)

Favorite Things of This Very Moment (4:01 pm EST):

• Unsweetened ice tea from Moe's
• Amber's handy-dandy iPod
• Knowing someone who cuts hair
• Having so many excellent weekend plans
• Being almost completely done with my homework for the week
• Zicam
• Sounding like a hysterical Muppet or Disney movie villain when I laugh
• Head phones

My voice is currently crazy, and Amber just a few minutes ago got to deal with my hysterical giggling for a good 10 straight minutes. I was just trying to comprehend some of the things that my life has recently run into, and it just wasn't working out. This is not a bad thing, not at all.

Life recently took some turns that were totally and undeniably unexpected. Wonderful, but completely unexpected. I'm still trying to reconcile myself to the realization that life can change so dramatically in such a short period of time.

I keep asking if life is really supposed to be like this. Are people supposed to walk into your life and throw you this far off balance? I'm not sure if this is rational or normal, but I guess I'm fairly okay with it all. Sure it makes me nervous because some day soon I will fall off this crazy balance beam I'm walking on, and the real question will be whether or not there's anything there to catch me. I sincerely hope so.

And so I leave you with a mix.

Love, Me

Blue Skies & Words to Say:

1. For Blue Skies - Strays Don't Sleep
2. Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.) - Monsters of Folk
3. Wordless Chorus - My Morning Jacket
4. Borderline/Open Your Heart - Glee Cast
5. Going to California - Led Zeppelin
6. My Winding Wheel - Ryan Adams
7. Dream On - Matthew Morrison & Neil Patrick Harris
8. Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime - Beck
9. Don't Move - Butch Walker
10. Hideaway - Karen O and the Kids
11. Twenty-Seven Strangers - Villagers
12. Million Faces - Paolo Nutini
13. Heavy In Your Arms - Florence & The Machine
14. I Believe In You [Acoustic Version] - Tyler Hilton
15. Alone - Heart
16. Holy Roller Novocaine - My Terrible Friend
17. Lie In The Sound - Trespassers William
18. Hard to Love You - The Wreckers

Hawk

(Ironically, picture by J.A. Goodrich. From the beautiful St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter)

Favorite Things of this Very moment (9:32 pm EST):

• Random capitalization
• Knowing Amber is still on my side
• That Mitch is done with his crazy faux-counseling session with me for today
• The Black Keys singing "Give Your Heart Away"
• Remembering the insanity of this week's episode of "Glee"
• Amber's iPod
• Tea
• Having my sermon done, even if I'm not sure how it's going to go tomorrow...
• Jake dancing badly while Amber hums along to whatever is playing on my iTunes

Considering how high-flying I've been for about a week, I'm feeling a bit low at the moment. I think it will get back to normal fairly quickly, but it's like I'm a plane that's circling low waiting to refuel, or better yet, I'm a hawk. A hawk that's flying low because I am trying desperately to find something to eat. I need something to fill me up so that I can get back to flying.

How do I do this? I really think the best thing is praying, but I'm still feeling low. I don't think this is unusual or unhealthy. It's part of life, right?

And so is reevaluating your goals. Is this really worth it? And when you think about it, you know that it is. You have no idea what is driving you on at this point, but you know you think you're crazy. Let's face it, I am crazy. I want something that is nearly impossible to have, and I'm just going to have to wait it out.

Can I do this? Do I have the strength and patience to wait?

I think I do.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to give up. Maybe that sounds crazy, but I really am going to try to let go of a bit more of my life. Try to pull my fingers off all the things that I grasp so that God really can work in all aspects of my life and not just some of it.

Lord give me strength.

Fight With Honor You Will Win

(Sam and Jake playing some sweet, sweet music together this past weekend)

Favorite things of this very moment (3:34 pm EST):

• Knowing that at some point this afternoon/this evening I will work out
• Having some kind of crazy plan
• Nola being beyond kind and generous with her time, consideration, and love
• Texting capabilities based in Amber's beautiful iPod which spends most of its time with me these days
• Sunshine and perfect weather
• Having a functional camera with which to take pictures of Mitch when he comes in and randomly collapses on our living room floor and then takes the next 10 minutes or so to eat green beans and a brownie while laying on the floor...
• Having Amber on my side
• Prayer, so, so, so much prayer
• And Hebrews 6:19 which starts with these words, "This hope we have as an anchor of the soul..."

I've spent a lot of time this week thinking about honor. Anyone that's been near me for the past month or two has probably heard me yell, "Fight with honor! You will win!" at least once. It's become something that is a running quote in my head. I find this both hilarious and encouraging. It's hilarious because it comes from Jackie Chan yelling those words at Owen Wilson in "Shanghai Noon," it it's encouraging because I'm realizing those are the words I need to be remembering.

Recently I've started finding myself in a series of strange situations. Situations that require me to decide how I want to proceed. I can go the easy way or I can choose to fight. Maybe you're an advocate of peace regardless of the situation, and if you are, I'm sorry that I cannot say I agree. I'm not fighting anyone physically, but I am fighting.

In my family honor, truth and love were the things we were taught to seek above all other virtues. Maybe you don't agree with that either, but I am glad my parents taught us to do these things. And no, I can't say that I always do the honorable thing, but I do try.

Especially right now. Since coming to ABC this semester I have encountered a series of situations in which I've had to decide whether I was going to allow myself to be pushed around, lied to, talked down to, and more recently, forgotten. You'd think that some of these things I should be able to just avoid, but I've realized that it would do little, if any, good to do that. I've come to a place of testing.

Right now I'm watching my boundaries be tested. I'm working on maintaining proper boundaries between myself and other people so that I neither shut them out, but I also don't let just anyone into my life.

Right now I'm watching my heart be tested. I'm trying maintain purity of heart and strength. I'm working hard to hold God first in my heart and let all other things fall into place after Him.

And I'm trying so hard to trust. To trust that God will protect my heart as long as I let Him hold onto it. That He'll provide for me. I think that's the hardest part. The trusting. It's not my strong point, and I know I need to be better about this. Plus, God hasn't failed me ever. And lately, I've been seeing Him work in my life more and more. It's not that He hasn't been before, it's just that I know I haven't been listening or watching for it.

And now I'm fighting so hard to stay on the radar. To not be forgotten. Ever. In fact, I'd like to be a priority eventually.

Hope though...that's what I'm really working with. I'm stepping up and fighting with honor. I'm holding onto the hope that recently showed up in my life for dreams I've been fighting and/or ignoring for awhile now.

Hope is the anchor of my soul.

Fight with honor, my friends. You will win. With hope, I will too.

Drums

In taking a page yet again from the brilliance of Andre Jordan's "Ordinary Love Stories," I feel it is time for me to tell you a new one.

I have fallen-head-over-heels in love with a boy named Drums. He smells of old card decks, coffee, and late nights.

I never expected to talk to him because he was so beautiful, and he seemed unapproachable. Things changed when I helped run interference between him and a girl. Suddenly I found myself discussing Whitman, God, college, relationships, and drums with him into all hours of the night. Watching him play cards and listening to his musical laugh could keep me entertained forever. It took only a week and a half for me to realize that I had never wanted anyone more and could be more than happy spending every moment with him forever.

I never thought this could happen, but it seems to be. He gives me something to hope for.

(Beautiful picture of trees that Cynthia took while we were in Ohio)

I'm looking at my life, Lord

and my clouded heart

and I think to myself,

they're just children

and I've known this from the start

And I think to myself,

am I better?

And I think to myself,

or I'm worse?

And is this ease a blessing?

Or is this ease a curse?

I won't deny the love I have

for discussing all these things,

for feeling like a grown-up,

and all these other things

But I worry about my motives

as I'm discussing your beautiful hair

Where am I going with this?

Why should you even care?

And I ask God lots of questions

and have more sleepless nights

And I wonder to myself

are you worth the fight?

Black Heart

My fickle heart consumes

and takes up all the room in me

faces in my head

ideas that should be dead

and I question where it leads

Why should I allow

my heart to follow a broken path?

Happy Harvest-Candy-Ween

(This is a picture of Amber enjoying a marshmallow, and I feel this is a good example of what Harvest-Candy-Ween should be)

My roommate, Amber and I decided to create our own holiday. Neither of us are real big on Halloween because neither of us like creepy/scary-esque type things, but we both love fall and candy. We decided to create a holiday called Harvest-Candy-Ween. This holiday is going to be celebrated until we can figure out when we really should celebrate it. Meaning, we're currently celebrating Harvest-Candy-Ween even though this evening we're not really doing much of anything.

We do plan to have a party sometime soon that will include tasty things. Cookies, breads, candies, etc. We'll see what happens. We plan to have a variety of tasty things and hopefully people will bring junk over. It will be lovely.

If you guys come up with some ways you feel we should celebrate, you let me know. I think we're going to watch "A Very Potter Musical" and just dance badly and eat a lot of tasty food. Thoughts? Ideas?

Go, be free. Celebrate.

You have my love,

J