"I Do It For Love"

When God says "come back to ME", the best thing to do is to drop everything and go back to HIM. Because whatever you sacrifice will be returned tenfold. "'Test me in this', says the Lord, 'and see if I do not throw open the floodgates of Heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough to contain it.'"

I don't even understand what I'm doing. So it's unlikely anyone else will either. All I know is that God is calling me. Maybe back to where I was, or to somewhere I've never been. But I can't let things stop me. I can't let my parents, my brother, my friends, my selfish desires and dreams, material possessions, Facebook, or anything else block me off from God. This is me jumping off of the cliff. Hitting air resistance. Grabbing frantically for my parachute cord to realize that I'm merely free-falling. This is me trusting. I can't see where this leads and it's scary. It keeps me awake. It creates new obstacles. But I know that I have to do this because my life and my heart have not been right lately. I've been hurting my family, hurting my friends, and hurting myself. And all of this hurts God. 

Maybe you think I'm fake. Maybe I am. Maybe you think I'm afraid. Maybe I am. Maybe you think I'm mean, rude, childish, irresponsible, or untrustworthy. Maybe I am. 

Maybe you think I'm not working to change; maybe you're wrong. 

A very few of you ask me not to shut you out. I told you it was hard. You told me you loved me, told me fourteen things that were beautiful about me when only seven were required. For this I will forever be grateful because you wouldn't let go. Leigh and Kenna, Rodney-- I see God in you. I love you guys. Thank you from the bottomless well of my heart. 

"The way we look tonight, I know

Nobody else could get in the way this time,

Just can't stop the light, I know

Nobody's gonna get in the way of my shine."

--Shine, Krystal Meyers

Ever gone back and read through old diaries? Well, if any guys read this, you probably can't relate. But you girls know what I'm talking about. The stuff that seemed so important when you were 12 is laughable now; your next door neighbor has moved and doesn't remember half of the embarrassing moments you shared; the time your dog ran out the front door to get chased around the block by a snow plow; the time you told on your guy friend for telling you he loved you and the teacher scolded him; the time you moved across the country; the time you and your best friend memorized "Anne of Green Gables"; the time you snuck out into the park in the wee hours of the morning to look at the stars; Lake Johanna; 5th grade; Jefferson Elementary; the library that was less than a mile walking distance from your house with the cushy, colorful seats; the ice rink your dad built in your backyard; the Beanie Baby houses you made out of grass shavings beneath your favorite tree; the rocks you painted in the shed and sold to your neighbor for 5 cents.... 

I loved my childhood. I really did. I miss the thick grass we had; I remember the day my dad came home with rolls and rolls of sod to lay down. My favorite tree resembled a willow, with droopy, tiny leaves like hair. The deck we had that I would lay on and watch fireworks from the Anoka Park miles away, the moon rise in the evening, the sun beat on in the summer. Our hand prints are in the concrete of that deck. The shed that my dad built and varnished; the ice rink he made; the swing set he constructed that my childhood friend, Ashley, and I would swing on upside down so that we looked like trolls. I miss the first snow of each winter when my mom would wake us up from dreamland and we'd bundle up and go to play in its freshness. I miss my beagle, Jesse. I miss the playground at my elementary school and the nature trail they built behind it that we were privileged to walk through on rare occasions. So much is coming back to me tonight. The past is rising like the moon. It makes me a little sad. 

It makes things now seem so trivial. So, so trivial. Let me be a child again. Let me go back to the house I grew up in. Lord, accept my childlike heart. Revert me back to childlike faith. 

People will not stand in my way. 

On a side note: google "tesseract" and click on the wikipedia link. then think of time. 

Five minutes ago will pass in five minutes from now...

I've often wondered about prayer. Not how to pray or what it consists of or what it means, but it's power. Something that really blows my mind is the thought of praying for the past. Because God always answers prayer in some form, and God's time is not our time. Nothing is impossible for God, and He already knows what we're going to pray... so does the influence what happens before we pray for it? It's like changing your past by your future. How strange to think about! Like sometimes I'll pray about things and find out later that the situation I was praying for had already occurred by the time my prayer started. So I wonder if the prayer I said whole-heartedly, without the knowledge that what I was praying for had already passed, had an effect of what happened earlier. Does that make sense? Like would things have gone differently if I hadn't ended up praying that specific prayer? I don't know, but I wonder.