Month: January 2017

Moon

I’ve looked to the moon and I’ve tried to fully understand how it works.At times it hides it’s loom, but it has the power to bring light to the dark.

When it’s setting the mood, or accompanying the stars, it’s simply not trying at all.
Now imagine with me for a moment that the moon started to try

That it was no longer mindless, that the man there of would wake and strive. 

He would shine for goodness and hide his face from evil. 

That he would bring peace and rest to parents and children equal.

That each morning, he would bow there to the sun. 
Let us not forget that the moon is just a reflection of the sun.

The sun is the center of the solar system, 

But the moon serves earth and the sun all at once. 

When earth is filled with darkness, the moon gives a hint of what the sun has to show

Giving credit each morning to the one who gave the glow. 

Because this he knows, without light he is nothing. 

Without love, we are nothing. 

What will it take for us to serve like the moon. 
10/15

Dear Artist 

Dear artist, your expression is far more beautiful then any word, or even a thousand could express. As you create, wether it be with words, pottery, instrument or paint, you move into a place that others can enjoy and find a way to relate. Even though their minds are practical, they can escape into the art your mind and body join together to make.

Oh writers, your mind is filled with wonderful stories or essays or poetry or plays. Creations of literary art, that express how humanity was, should be or never could portray.Your diligence to detail and language is amazing, enjoying each word, and letting every one of them impact your life’s framing.

And to you, photographer, the artist of the century. The one who captures beauty in the moments many others leave unseen or strictly in their memory. Your eyes are tuned to a focus not even your camera can always capture, but if you can help it, it will not go un-captured.
And fashion enthusiasts and creators, as you mix and match, as you rip apart and reattach, as you discover or uncover, you put yourself into each inch that covers the canvas also known as your body. 
But artists of every form! Weather you enjoy the creation or stand in awe as your eyes and ears follow them, do not loose your humanity! Do not let your personality be so impacted that your heart can’t feel normalcy. I’ve seen it and felt it, and it changes your perspective if you step back and look at the path you’ve entered. 

Let your art be your expression, not your identity. If your art form was detached from you, would you be more then a corps? You see, Sometimes our art becomes our drugs that hide our insecurities, but the ironic part is, sometimes it just heightens them until all we seek is the perfect song that people will sing, the perfect picture that will get the most likes on the phone screen, read the right book that will make you forget your own pain, or wear the right thing to make people turn their heads to see. 

Let your identity be found in your laughter, your smile, your compassion and your love. Let it be found in your friendships you invest in, your joy and your hugs. 
Connect with reality, people, nature and the creator of it all and let your art be a pure expression of your life. Not the other way around. 
Artist, if we put a price tag on our art and our soul, to be sold to a buyer, which price tag would be higher? 
11/27/15

Mountain Biking: Restoration


Mountain biking has become a new passion of mine since the early fall of 2016. I haven’t gotten all the way into it quite yet so far, although this coming spring, I plan on getting more gear and spending a lot more time on the trails.

With the snow, cold weather and a popped tube, I was set off my game for about a month or so. I didn’t want that to go on any longer so this past Saturday, I decided that whatever the weather looked like, I was going out. 

Well, what Saturday brought me was a little bit of this:

It doesn’t look too bad from this vantage point, but after some close calls, spinning tires on the up hill climes and my chest nearly burning in peridox to the blisteringly cold weather, this was the moment I turned around. 

It more then one way, I hated the ride; the worst so far I’ve ever experienced, but I don’t regret taking the trip. I don’t regret it because I did it. I told myself I would and I did. Also, because I felt like I was dosing my touch on the bike and I was. I got back into grips with the whole thing, but I also learned some practicals.

  1. Like riding a bike, life flies passed so much faster then you’d like, the more thrilling and fun it is, the faster it goes by. The warning to this is if we loose track of our terrain, we can wind up in terrible pain, but if we don’t enjoy the little things along the way, we can find ourselves at the end wondering what even really happened and how we got to this place.
  2. Pain is temporary. The easy way is always available, but it’s not always rewarding. Risk the pain and you’ll get it, but enough tries and you will succeed. Risk nothing and you will possibly never find joy and always come out with a sense of meaninglessness.
  3. When you’re doing something positive and uplifting, you get positive and uplifting results, but when life around gets busy and we push aside the those important things aside, we find ourselves longing for something meaningful, but when we remember those things, if it’s mountain biking, or serving others, or getting in devotions, or eating well, and when we get back into them, we find restoration to our bodies and also restoration to our spirits! 

My encouragement is to push through the things you know you need to do that are hard. They might not always be enjoyable, but you will be rewarded! 

    Withdrawal 

    My mind can not stop thinking of it. 

    My heart longs for it.

    My body craves it.

    My mind doesn’t want it.

    My heart longs to not long for it.

    My body craves to not crave it. 
    The cycle continues. 

    It builds up, it wears down.

    Each time it builds up, it builds up higher. 

    Each time it wears down, it never returns to the low it once was.

    I don’t get it.

    After a while one of two thigs happen:

    It gets easier <—–> I give in.

    If it gets easier, there is freedom. There is peace.

    If I give in, there is shame. There is relief.

    Withdrawal sucks.

    The pain I can’t explain, but I know there’s escape. 

    It is only found through strength, but sometimes, I’m weak in faith.

    Freedom has nothing to do with fate.

    It doesn’t just happen and there’s no easy way. 

    So as I crave, I will pray.

     I will try my hardest to hold onto faith, 

    Ask God for more strength so I can stay,

    Not to turn to betray. 


    May the cycle not have the last words. 

    May freedom and redemption win.

    May my heart stay steadfast.

    May Christ Jesus have the last words. 

    Hopeful Romantic

    I’m a hopeful romantic. I watch movies on love and I’ve watched pornography. Pornography has nothing on the love stories. I don’t want anything shy of true love, because when I was young, I dreamed of it too. Sex was not what I longed for. I longed to lay arm in arm with my lover and spend time with my lover. I dreamed to fight for my lover and sacrifice for my lover. 
    When I was young, snuggling was my favorite thing and I never wanted anyone to feel sad or alone or anything like that. Not even my stuffed animals were safe from my comforting arms and neither was my mom. 

    My tiny arms would grab ahold of anyone if they wanted or not. I felt lonelier then ever, so I did all I could to keep myself on everyone to see we wouldn’t fall apart. But words pierced like knives and as I spread my arms wide, I found myself lunging into them heart first. 

    I’ve loved so many girls that I could loose track if I didn’t connect myself to them so deeply. I don’t know how I stretched my heart so wide through texts. Although my phone was taken away from me, it couldn’t stop me from trying to create love in places love would never be. 

    From girl to girl and picture to picture, love started distorting down to every pixel. I’ve never lost my heart for love, but years of distortion and restoring and destroying and relearning, my heart is a jumbled mess. 

    I want true love and nothing short of that. My heart knows that! My body doesn’t mind settling for a picture or video on the screen, but my heart beats louder and stronger and I don’t want any more sight of that distortion, but my heart is still soft, yet is shaped like a stone. It wants to shake off every lie it has been told but it looks like a rock and believes it’s hard and cold, even though it can feel the blood flow. It can hear the cry of love that’s untainted. 

    I want to love people. I want to love Jesus. I want to have a lover. I want to be a lover. 

    I’m far more fragile then I would like to admit, but I pray to God he will strengthen and renew me each and every day. I’m pushing through the grit and I’m pushing through the stones. I want so badly to be free. This time, there is freedom. I can feel it in my bones.

    I’m a hopeful romantic and this is just how it goes. Healing is a process, and I’ll sing every wrong note until I sing it right or the trumpet blows. That’s just how it goes.

    Words don’t Impress God, Neither do Actions. 


    It’s interesting how as a Christian, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be reading my Bible, helping people, volenteering, praying and singing. The sad part about this is God doesn’t need any of it from me. 

    I feel like sometimes, I can even see it as almost “paying my dues” or “doing God a favor” as if he needs me to tell him he’s awesome and all powerful and I love him. Or as though me reading the Bible is something I have to do so that God knows I mean business. Or as if me helping someone is so that God can get to someone and that should impress him.

    I realized this one time while sitting down a few times this past week with my Bible. I felt so dissconected from anything going on in the passages and was thinking to myself, “what is the point of this? Is God really just wanting me to read this thing so I can know what it says and maybe get a few good points from it I can share throughout my week?”

    I found myself wondering why we do any of this stuff, and I realized all of it is just worthless. Now I know the passage in the Bible that talks about anything without love is just a loud gong and means nothing, but it’s sinking in again, and sometimes I need a reminder. 

    This stuff means nothing to him because he doesn’t need our affirmation, our helps or for us to read his words from 2,000+ years ago.. it’s meaningless. 

    The reason it’s important is this:

    He wants our moments! These are just a few of my favorite pictures with some of my favorite people I have on my phone over the past year or so. 

    God wants our hears and he wants us to be focused on him throughout our moments. When we pray, it is so God can remind us of his faithfulness and graciousness. When we sing to him, it’s so that we can be reminded of his holieness, love and goodness. When we help others, we are able to experience the joy in giving and we receive more of the Father’s heart for his children. When we read his word and live by it, we receive joy and peace and freedom from a lot of hurtful stuff that is found through right living and we also here understand more of the Father’s heart. 

    The ironic thing about this friendship and relationship and serventhood with our creator is that when we give everything to him, we’re really giving him something he already has given to us in the first place. On top of that, when we give him everything, he gives it back to us in purity and fullness. 

    This relationship is rigged. We will never be able to pay him back and he’s ok with that. All he wants is us to stop trying to be worthy and to just do as his word say. 

    “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

    ‭‭Romans‬ ‭12:1-2‬ ‭ESV

    For more awesome words from Jesus read the rest of the Bible, haha, but check out John 14. Jesus’ words are always on point. 

    This is it. 


    For some reason, us humans are so controlled by a clock. so controlled by a callender. For some reason, we connect to beginings and ends. These connections are not harmful in any way I can tell, but I do think it’s interesting enough to be noted. 

    For me, years have much significance in the past few years for me in how the seem to distinctly represent themselves as mile markers in different ways.

    This year, this is it.

    I have seen myself falling into a real delemma throughout my life. Sometimes it is stronger then others, but I find myself being very self centered. This focus on myself has led me to selfishness, poor self worth and self esteem, lazieness, and in different moments in my life, real struggles with porn and such sins that go along with that. It has caused me a lot of pain and lot of time spent on social media and such looking for exceptance in any way possible. The times where my self worth was the lowest, I struggled the hardest and the moments I found my true identity given to me by Christ, I struggled very little.

     Unfortunately, I’ve spent a lot more time not believing the identity God has spoken over me so many times through the Bible, through experiences I’ve had,  and through others testifying what they heard from God (and usually it was right on time and right in the moment I needed to hear it that lined up with the word and what he had spoken to me in my heart.)

    What I’m deciding to do in 2017 is far beyond my comfort zone and far beyond what I can handle on my own but I KNOW will prove itself useful and worth while: staying of social media for a year and staying of the internet for social reasoning or mindless activity. I’ve known for probably a year or two that I needed to get off of social media, and I’ve gone weeks and sometimes months off of it, but always gotten back on at critical moments when I should have stayed off. I will keep up my blog, and if possible, post them to Facebook without going on, but if that is impossible, I will just have to pray that people who need to hear what is said on here will find it.

    I know that God has told me 

    “Don’t stop writing”

    And I’ve seen me abilities flourish as well as how the words I’ve written have inspired people. I know that I’ve experienced freedom through writing as well and know I’m supposed to continue this blog. I will have to entrust the rest to God on how it is to be used. 

    I encourage you, reader, to take a challenge like this on if you’re finding yourself distracted, hurt, self destructive or anything else. Even just for a short time. It always proves useful, but either way, if you ever have prayer requests, questions or thoughts, message, email, text, call me. 

    I want to use this next year to 

    • love the people around me
    • Spend more time in the Word of God
    • Clame freedom over my addiction, FOR GOOD
    • Invest in family
    • Learn more about who God says I am
    • Focus less on me and more on others
    • BE FREE

    2017: just another journey around the sun, but this time around, come hell or high water, I will not be stopped, because the Lord my God is with me! 

    “Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion. But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.”

    ‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭40:28-31‬ ‭NLT‬‬

    http://bible.com/116/isa.40.28-31.nlt

    My Moment is Now

    (This photo was taken on September 5, 2016, around the time this poem was written.)

    My purpose is not a climax, it’s fulfilled moment by moment.

    I great an old couple with tears in their eyes. 

    Not tears of sadness, but terror I surmise.

    Not from death or fright. 

    Not from anything other than a broken pipe. 

    An easy fix for a plumber,

    But to them, my partner and I, this day, are saviors.  
    My purpose is not a climax, it’s fulfilled moment by moment.
    I pull up to my church. 

    My mission is to run the soundboard, but first,

    I’ll turn down my music.

    I’ll collect my composure,

    Because it is Tuesday, and it came as a surprise.

    Funerals are never planned and no eye is dry.

    Though I’d rather help with a wedding celebration,

    I’ll help to celebrate an older woman passing into greater life.
    My purpose is not a climax, it’s fulfilled moment by moment.
    It’s Monday night, so I rush home from work.

    I join friends in the gym,

    But not for sports, but intercession.

    From 16 to 80 and beyond, 

    We join in prayer, worship and communion.

    Sometimes creating heavenly melodies,

    Yet often, just a joyful noise. 
    My purpose is not a climax, it’s fulfilled moment by moment.
    I’m lying in bed, struggling with thoughts pulling me toward sin

    I resist, and cry out to my Lord Jesus,

    The author and finisher working from within. 

    It’s suffering that leads to endurance, 

    That leads to character and hope.

    So in this season, 

    My faith will be my reason

    And my God will be my portion. 
    My purpose is not a climax, it’s fulfilled moment by moment.
    And I’m writing a poem,

    Starting to understand,

    Trying not to boast in anything I am,

    Sifting through truth, lies, feelings and emotions, 

    Because I thought when I was young, 

    I would get there.
    Wherever there is, I don’t know,

    But what I do know is that my creator

    Didn’t create me to achieve something big,

    But in the meantime, just exist,

    Or once I’m done, 

    Dry up and make room for the next one.
    My purpose and yours are found in moments. 

    The dull and the amazing,

    The filling and the emptying.

    I wish to never again glorify the exciting

    And demonize the testing. 
    Today, I grab onto my moment. 

    It is the only thing I can actually grasp. 

    My purpose is now.
    August 27, 2016