'and i had this epiphany in the shower the other day - that love is not just a feeling, it's a choice!'
and she said it, my housemate, with such a sense of satisfaction it made me glad to know that she had that feeling of pieces falling into place. there is nothing like clarity achieved in the bathroom to help you settle into being a profound philosopher.
i forget that we all realise different things at different points in time.
two years ago, when lots of my friends started to get married, i freaked out because i felt young and was young (and still am young) and marriage is kind of scary and it's hard to know how to be a good support to someone when you are afraid for them.
and i wrote things to help. and i read things that helped.
and donald miller made sense of the incongruity of falling in love.
'I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God’s own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.
I will love like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love.
I will simply love.
I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again.
God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us.'
(i am even impatient for sanctification)
the other day i told two people that i am a wretch, really.
it's hard to admit that you are horrible to someone.
their reactions were very different, but both helpful.
and i said i've been praying a lot, saying sorry for not thinking kind thoughts or feeling noble feelings or saying good words and that i don't want a heart that gets all caught up and bitter especially knowing that that's not at all what other people need if i'm going to be able to be of any help to them and love them properly but that that's what i've got. and it's that that makes me cry. i've got a rotten heart and i'm just not a very good person and holiness and godliness are so hard to fight for in myself all the time that it feels like losing out and giving up so much of the time and that some days i just want to give up because it's tiring to be so aware of your own sinfulness.
but i do hold to be true the fact that i have better and lasting possessions than people and places because of jesus.
praise Him.
it's hard to admit that you are horrible to someone.
their reactions were very different, but both helpful.
and i said i've been praying a lot, saying sorry for not thinking kind thoughts or feeling noble feelings or saying good words and that i don't want a heart that gets all caught up and bitter especially knowing that that's not at all what other people need if i'm going to be able to be of any help to them and love them properly but that that's what i've got. and it's that that makes me cry. i've got a rotten heart and i'm just not a very good person and holiness and godliness are so hard to fight for in myself all the time that it feels like losing out and giving up so much of the time and that some days i just want to give up because it's tiring to be so aware of your own sinfulness.
but i do hold to be true the fact that i have better and lasting possessions than people and places because of jesus.
praise Him.
like crazy
i am in san francisco, on the other side of the world from home.
but on the same side as my sister.
the time difference is nineteen hours and i am a wee bit jet lagged, but not overly.
it was bizarre to sit on the plane for the thirteen hours and to be doing things in close proximity to strangers that i'd usually only do around my family, my housemates or my good friends. things like brushing my teeth, sleeping deeply with my mouth gaping open and eating breakfast.
i'd never thought of aeroplanes in that way before.
it was so nice to meet my sister at the arrivals gate.
she had bought me a cinnamon scroll and bad californian coffee but i drank it anyway.
and today we saw seals and walked hills and ate an animal style burger and fries and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with peanut butter sauce and hot chocolate fudge and sushi and udon and tempura ice cream and i met all her friends here and they are all very fun and very young at heart.
we all watched a movie that i've been waiting to see for months.
it had a dissatisfying ending and i'm not sure if i found it dissatisfying because it ended like the truth or it ended like a lie.
whichever it was, it reminded me of these words from a song by yves klein blue that i find dissatisfying for one of the same reasons.
so, please don't let me go without you.
my heart never shows without you.
lately, things have been so distant,
and i don't know what i can do to fix it.
why don't you love me like you used to?
why do i worry about the future?
is it, just, that how we manage is not by love but by force of habit?
and if only i could be a man who rips down all your dreams and plans.
and smashes all of your pretty things so the only thing you could see was me.
for what we've done should be a crime.
we should be locked up so we never see the light.
for in the darkness, we could see how worthless all our lives must be.
if our love is like us, you drift apart;
must be something wrong with our hearts.
and be something wrong with all of us
to never care until things are lost.
why don't you love me like you used to?
why do i worry about the future?
i like that i feel things.
i don't like dissatisfaction but i like that i feel it sometimes to know that i never have to be dissatisfied in jesus.
but on the same side as my sister.
the time difference is nineteen hours and i am a wee bit jet lagged, but not overly.
it was bizarre to sit on the plane for the thirteen hours and to be doing things in close proximity to strangers that i'd usually only do around my family, my housemates or my good friends. things like brushing my teeth, sleeping deeply with my mouth gaping open and eating breakfast.
i'd never thought of aeroplanes in that way before.
it was so nice to meet my sister at the arrivals gate.
she had bought me a cinnamon scroll and bad californian coffee but i drank it anyway.
and today we saw seals and walked hills and ate an animal style burger and fries and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with peanut butter sauce and hot chocolate fudge and sushi and udon and tempura ice cream and i met all her friends here and they are all very fun and very young at heart.
we all watched a movie that i've been waiting to see for months.
it had a dissatisfying ending and i'm not sure if i found it dissatisfying because it ended like the truth or it ended like a lie.
whichever it was, it reminded me of these words from a song by yves klein blue that i find dissatisfying for one of the same reasons.
so, please don't let me go without you.
my heart never shows without you.
lately, things have been so distant,
and i don't know what i can do to fix it.
why don't you love me like you used to?
why do i worry about the future?
is it, just, that how we manage is not by love but by force of habit?
and if only i could be a man who rips down all your dreams and plans.
and smashes all of your pretty things so the only thing you could see was me.
for what we've done should be a crime.
we should be locked up so we never see the light.
for in the darkness, we could see how worthless all our lives must be.
if our love is like us, you drift apart;
must be something wrong with our hearts.
and be something wrong with all of us
to never care until things are lost.
why don't you love me like you used to?
why do i worry about the future?
i like that i feel things.
i don't like dissatisfaction but i like that i feel it sometimes to know that i never have to be dissatisfied in jesus.
being the pack mule
my sister sent me a list today.
she's in san francisco, however many thousands of kilometres away that is.
and in seven days i get to be her very expensive courier, lugging items including her snowboard and ski jacket and snow boots and yves saint laurent parisien perfume, by special request, across the pacific ocean to her.
and i opened up her message expecting just the list, so that i can spend the next little while collecting all her items for her like a mario kart racer in a 50cc car vying for colourful balloons in wario's stadium.
but tagged on to the bottom of her list were a couple of lines about how much ghiradelli square is going to blow my mind and that she wants to cook me stir-fry for dinner and to meet all her housemates.
and they weren't very many words.
but they were enough to work up my tear ducts for a performance.
because even though four months hasn't seemed like a long time and i've moved out of home so everything's been different anyway and life's so busy that i haven't really had time to think about her being that far away,
i really miss her.
and i am so excited that i get to reply to her message and tell her that my flight touches down in the same city she is living in at 10:41am pacific standard time next monday.
she's in san francisco, however many thousands of kilometres away that is.
and in seven days i get to be her very expensive courier, lugging items including her snowboard and ski jacket and snow boots and yves saint laurent parisien perfume, by special request, across the pacific ocean to her.
and i opened up her message expecting just the list, so that i can spend the next little while collecting all her items for her like a mario kart racer in a 50cc car vying for colourful balloons in wario's stadium.
but tagged on to the bottom of her list were a couple of lines about how much ghiradelli square is going to blow my mind and that she wants to cook me stir-fry for dinner and to meet all her housemates.
and they weren't very many words.
but they were enough to work up my tear ducts for a performance.
because even though four months hasn't seemed like a long time and i've moved out of home so everything's been different anyway and life's so busy that i haven't really had time to think about her being that far away,
i really miss her.
and i am so excited that i get to reply to her message and tell her that my flight touches down in the same city she is living in at 10:41am pacific standard time next monday.
so, i will make every effort
there are days when i'm amazed that You would let any light shine into that dark and cavernous cavity in my chest.
(i'd really like that my heart not ache for all the things that it does but ought not.)
i don't know what i'd do without that always when i can approach Your throne of grace with confidence knowing that i will receive mercy and find grace to help me in my time of need.
(i'd really like that my heart not ache for all the things that it does but ought not.)
i don't know what i'd do without that always when i can approach Your throne of grace with confidence knowing that i will receive mercy and find grace to help me in my time of need.
a note to my mother: leaving a trust for the care of an animal
'the rule of duration requires that a trust for the care of the testator’s animal for the rest of its life with no life in being mentioned, will be invalid if the animal may live for more than twenty-one years and thus has produced a judicial decision that a cat cannot live for more than twenty-one years; indignant cat-lovers and biologists, who may adduce evidence to the contrary, must be patiently told that the subject of their observations is a juristic impossibility.'
my mother used to threaten my sister and i.
she'd say that if we weren't kind to her in every and any which way, that the sum of my parents' assets would get inherited by my dog. if there was any chance that our dog might have lived past twenty-one, she'd have fought against this, tooth and nail.
he died last year, and she was devastated.
the mention of him still gets her eyes leaking in all of half a second.
bless her.
- a law textbook on trusts
my mother used to threaten my sister and i.
she'd say that if we weren't kind to her in every and any which way, that the sum of my parents' assets would get inherited by my dog. if there was any chance that our dog might have lived past twenty-one, she'd have fought against this, tooth and nail.
he died last year, and she was devastated.
the mention of him still gets her eyes leaking in all of half a second.
bless her.
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