Pick Up and Live

An experiment:
http://tollevive.blogspot.com/

Thanks

I thank God for pain.  I know that seems really odd, or maybe downright crazy.  I thank Him for it none the less.    We have the capacity to create worlds.  Worlds so deceptively perfect that we forget what's real.  Pain wakes us up.  It calls us back to God.  It faces us - kicks us in face - with the question of how a good God could be sovereign over a world so evil.  In the face of pain, one cannot ignore God.

I thank God for a rainy day.  You think I jest or lie to myself, but I do...thank him, that is.  Gloomy, Eeyore days are days "that the Lord has made" no different than the sunny ones.  Rain, thunder, clouds, and snow all work to make the flowers grow.  Hardship is the wildfire that prepares our hearts for growth.

I thank God for silence.  I find myself trying to fill it whenever I meet it.  I try to silence silence.  You know, God speaks in silence.  I spend my time crying to God for wisdom and clarity, and I don't even listen to his whispers. After witnessing the strength and faithfulness of God in dispelling the prophets of baal with fire from heaven, Elijah ran to the mountains in fear of his life from Queen Jezebel. He was hiding in a cave.  God told Elijah that he would pass by the cave and talk to him.  There was an earthquake, a fire, and a tornado, but the presence and word of God was not in those.  After all these things, there "came a gentle whisper."  God spoke to Elijah in the silence.  After deafening, devastating noise,  the voice of the Lord came in a whisper.  Listen to it, will you?

I thank God for everything.  I thank Him for good, bad, A, and D.  I thank Him for euphoria and dysphoria alike. Height and depth are His.  The vast expanse of human emotion is in his hands, and it is Good.

 I thank God that He is faithful.  He is faithful no matter what.  Believe it or not, God is greater than my ability to screw things up.  There is nowhere I can go, nothing I can do that is beyond the reach of His grace.  He promises never to leave or forsake me.  He keeps His promises. 


Now thank we all our God!
Rock, star, and atom
Sing praises when we do not.
His faithfulness no one can fathom.


Earth, fire, and wind obey
My prayer is that we too may
So thank our God above
For His unfailing Love.

College

This is how college feels sometimes...

And Round Me Rings...

Late or early, take your pick
Disheartening any way defined
Clouds of grey then overwhelmed
My soul, my heart, my mind

All which could go wrong just did
Long lost to stress was 'la fin'
Blindness of the heart o'er comes
The weather without reflects within

Suddenly like a flash of grace
I remembered all the stars in place
Hidden behind perpetual grey
Always shining, there they stay

Spinning in their orbits odd
The stars obey the word of God
Not gravity as we all are fed
But that a word from God was said.

Our God above is always with you
Wondrous love he's always bringing
Such love, His Holy Word says He
Will rejoice o'er you with singing

The stars they sing in harmony
With God's rejoicing tune
And with the music of the spheres
The stars, they sing for you.

All that weighs upon your soul
Is tiny in the whole cosmos
When the love of God in song
Sweetly through the universe echoes.

Song

Haven't been writing in a while. I took Physics over the summer which hoarded focus time. Here's a song that my brother sent me. It's called: Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise. It's by the Avett Brothers.

Fear of the (Previously) Known

When you remember things, your brain interprets the memories and then re-stores those memories, only it stores the re-interpreted versions. Over a (not so) long period of time, a memory can undergo the psychological equivalent of a game of telephone and by the end hardly resemble the original occurrence.

When a memory is stored in the first place, it is first filtered by your brain's interpretation. Not one memory is raw perception. Every thing you remember and know is shaped by how you perceive, both at the time of perception as well as when you remember.

What is possible, then, is for the capacity for an emotion at the time of perception and storage of a memory to be different than at the time of remembrance. In other words, there are memories that you can't comprehend at certain valleys of emotional fortitude.

This poses a fascinating problem: Does the recall of a memory with a strong emotional content at a weak emotional state result in the destruction of the emotion present in the memory? In other words, can you forget by remembering?


Writing is an invention that allows humanity to pass information throughout the ages. It is by this invention that we know the works of Homer, Shakespeare, and have the Bible to this day. The correlation of literacy to the elevation of civilization is constant and parallel. Writing's main purpose, though, is not to aid in remembering. It was created so we could forget. We write things down so we don't have to retain it. The words don't change or alter throughout time. They are the same today and will be in a thousand years.

I wish there was a language for the soul. I wish I could remember by forgetting into a medium that could contain my emotion. Then I could safely remember without the fear of losing dear memories. There isn't. I can't.

I've been trying not to remember so I don't forget.

There once was a boy who tried to juggle
Forty five things was hardly a struggle
'Till sticks of fiery flame he turned
He never once got burned.

There once was a boy who wasn't me
Tried hard to climb, but fell out of the tree
"Why on the earth did I fall," he asked
Until he looked at his past.

There once was a boy I never knew
Who nobody liked because of his shoes
He wore his love on the souls of his feet
For everyone he'd meet.

There once was a boy who was only twenty
Tried to just survive but had only plenty
Didn't understand when his friends went broke
So he never spoke.

I once knew a boy in an underground cave
No light in the room showed him how to behave
The sun came up through the window one day
And he just drew the shades.

I once knew a boy who had messed up your life
Loved too much, had a tongue like a knife
Wished that he had never been born
To save you from the storm.

There once was a boy who was only a man
Who didn't understand God's plan
Until he started to fiercely worry
He wasn't even sorry.

I once knew a boy who was almost me
So close to death for eternity
But Love killed death upon a tree
And saved the wretch like me.

Once upon a cold spring shower

Once upon a cold spring shower
I ran across a beautiful flower

I couldn't believe what I had done
Crushed to death it would never grow
But I remembered without the sun,
And as it began to snow,
The flower was doomed before I killed it
Almost as if God had willed it.

I am as the spring time flower
Here today, but gone tomorrow.

So why can't I be beautiful,
Gracing the souls of passers by?
My failure causes others pain
If someone cared, I'd know not why.

Speak and act with only love
Build up others in their need
Or you might find before the frost
That you are just a weed.

So in the spring, when you grow
Be beautiful before it snows.