I have been going through the archives at my old journal and am finding the things I've said that have left some sort finality in my mind; if only I can do this, or that, then I will have reached some level of desiredness.

Date: 2002-06-03 11:13
Subject: satisfy
Security: Public

am sitting here in the backseat of the van typing this, feeling an emptiness, a hole, but more so feeling a completeness. Emptiness, knowing that a new page of my life is beginning and for the first real time I'm aware and conscious of it. Usually it just passes by me and I don't realize until I've turned to the end of the chapter. Completeness - perhaps mostly because I am listening to Rich Mullins A Litergy A Legacy and A ragamuffin Band and there are few things that make me feel more complete and aware of how big Christ is and how small I am. But more so complete because I see more and more as time goes by what things I really do want and less and elss what others want for me.
I want an herb garden.
I want to live in a place where I can be totally immersed in greenness and forest and yet go buy asiago chicken pasta in the city on the weekends
I want to wear a long skirt and linen shirt on Tuesdays and jeans on Sundays.
I want to listen to chopin, Ducan Sheik, They might be Giants, and Duke Ellington all in one day.
I want to drive a volvo.
I want to love and be loved, knowing that in this I am complete.
I want to have a white railing on my front porch and three high back rockers inviting always, intimidating never.
I want to use white ceramic pottery dishes every day and not save them or my tablecloth and flowers for special occasions - because every day will be.
I want to plant a blueberry bush in my front yard and watch it grow.
I want a life uncomplicated by cell phones, television, and daytimers.
I want to have boxes of scrap paper and grow my hair long.
I want to have six kids and love them individually and tell them that frequently.

This is completeness.

I am reminded of how selfish I am and how I deserve none of this. But something tells me that I have the oppurtunity to, and this makes me desire it more.

Date: 2002-06-07 14:00
Subject:
Security: Public

yesterday while I was driving in the car I saw a tract on the dashboard. This baffles me since evangelism isn't usually approached by this method in our family [nothing wrong with it, it's just less personable than we like]. I pick it up and there are five pages double sided with a thousand little circles on them. In each circle is a smiling face, some with other people, most alone. And underneath every face is an name and an age. At the top of the the cover page are the words "what do all of these people have in common?" My immediate thought is that they must have all gone to the same school, or perhaps were killed all in a plane crash, or perhaps they're just normal people like you and me who failed in the perfect human test and needed a savior, or something. but no. As you page through you eventually come to page four and find that all of these people have this in common - they've commited sucicide.

I just looked at it and wanted to cry. And so instead of just purusing the faces I began looking at each and every one. They ranged in age from 11 to 85 faces from the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, and now the thousands. All walks, some obviously happy, some bearing some secret pain, some in the army or navy, some fathers and mothers holding children in their arms, some with a chain of daisies on their head and some mug shots. And somewhere along the way their pains and life got the best of them and they felt so defeated that they could let nothing, NOTHING, inside that pain and begin restoration and so they succomed to a false, but permanent way out. Why? And I just had a renewed love for people. I just wanted to have a second chance with everyone whom I've ever talked to to just love them and not just shove a chance at knowing who Jesus is at them, but showing them who Jesus is.

Date: 2002-05-28 22:34
Subject: tiger spice chai
Security: Public

On another note. Often when I am driving somewhere I pass a cross on the side of the road. All my life these crosses have only represented another life, one I don't identify with. But for the past two years these crosses have represented something I know all too well. loss. So I drove by Drews cross tonight. It's beautiful cross really. Not a cheap plastic one or one make of two sticks tied at the center, but one of solid wood painted white and bearing his name across the middle. It's positioned a little more than twenty feet from where the accident happened. It always annoys me that the cross is there and not right at the place on the side of the road where it happened. Mostly because dad put the cross there, and he wasn't here for the accident and so it is a constant reminder of a lack in a time of need. But perhaps it is simply a just wanting things to be right.

So tonight as I drove by it, the dusk light forming and making it almost irredescent in the headlights, I remembered that once I had a brother and had he lived he would be 16 years old. He would be driving. He would be the next brother to graduate. He would be the next to plan and do soemthing with his life. He would be different than all of us. But I don't. Because see, he's gone. And instead we're only left with an irredescent, misplaced cross. And some memories that fade.

And I missed him.

Date: 2002-06-09 21:43
Subject: somewhere between the moon and the moon
Security: Public

Today was the grandest day, I mean the grandest day. I had a meeting today after church but after that Jax, Ry, Sean, Steven, and I went boating in the Thousand Islands. This was ofcourse grand fun, since nothing is more fun than anything doing with water. So I am deliciously sunburned, windswept and tired, but grinning a heart grin because there is few things, that I can think of, that are more wonderful that a day spent with people you love doing things you love.

Someone told me today "You have an ideal life." I'd like to think that this is true, and in my heart, I do have an ideal life. I am completely content and yet always knowing there is more than what I already know. But there is the small part of me that says, no, you don't have the perfect life. In fact, you have one of those lives you read about in a BabySitters Club paperback from when you were twelve; your parents split, you live 6 hours from where you lived your entire life, your brother was killed in a freak accident, you have a sin filled past and have made more mistakes that a human ought to be allotted in one life time, you stumble constantly and mess up more, you are, in fact, a poor model of ideal life - Yet [and this 'yet' is that cool part], somehow in you've been handchosen to be some sort of model of grace.

So no, my dear friend, I am not ideal, nor do I live an ideal life, but having known grace and the fullness thereof, I am learning to overcome.

THIS is what I am finding the Christian Life is be best described as. There are those who say Christians are hypocrites, and this is true. There are those who say Christians are the worst sinners, this is also true. There are those who say that Christians are closeminded, another truth - but my friends, all those are esspecially and only true because somewhere along the way we've experienced something that others haven't. Grace. We've experienced a constant knowledge of 'I've messed up, but it's okay, I know I've been forgiven already.' No, not an excuse to continue sinning, this isn't spirit living, but a reason to go on persevering knowing that the good work which was began in us will be completed until the day of Christ.

And so I'm thankful. I'm so thankful.