All things glorious.

Today's just one of those days that the weather can't seem to make up it's stinkin' mind. And, well, neither can I.

Right now I'm going to do my best to describe the current view outside my window. There are trees. Big ones. On one half of the scene, there is blue sky and white, puffy, weak, easily-blown away, wispy transparent clouds. On the other half there is what seems to me one huge gray cloud. No blue skies to speak of, no white puffiness, no transparency. Just gray thickness. The trees toward the left side of this scene past my window are bright green, and due to the sun light hitting it from the East, they have taken on this sort of back-lit, staged beauty. The plants and shrubbery on the other side, however, are not lit up. They look dull. They are just green. Not bright green or brightly-lit like their relatives only feet away.

In my amazing wisdom and creative mindfulness, it took me like five minutes to relate this scene to my spiritual life. As the onlooker behind the window, I represent the world: a place full of unknowing, often uncaring non-believers who see me from the outside in. They see what I saw of my backyard: partly sunny and bright with Jesus' light making me look beautiful, and the other part just a blah gray thickness.

I don't think anyone, besides maybe my brother, really considers me a moody individual, but sometimes, I feel like I am half and half and sometimes, a little too often, I think it shows. All in the same day, I will experience God's tangible passion and desire for me to thrive and be blessed and make fishers of men and feel spiritually empty and wort... no, not worthless... purposeless.

How dare I, someone who has been blessed beyond belief, compare myself to this torn, confused image of nature?

Well... I am human after all. I know this might be awful to say, but almost everyday I find myself questioning how it could be this good. Then, two seconds later I inevitably slap myself in the face because I know the answer. Duh.

The point is, I need to make sure that I understand two things. The first, is that God made us human. Ever since Adam and the garden, we have been somewhat prone to shortcomings. And by "somewhat prone" I mean infinitely. God made me a questioning human being with free will, so it is only natural, that even after God's presence has been made so clear and abundant in my life, I will question it's validity. Second, I need to understand how to show the Joces behind the windows, the onlookers of the world, that although I am often brightly lit on one side and gray and dreary on the other, I am still loved unconditionally by my Savior. If I can learn how to convey that on a daily basis, no matter what my spiritual status or mood is, I will certainly relate to a lot more people.

Oh, hey would you look at that? I'm looking out the window right now and the sun, or Son, has just taken over. Goodbye, gray thickness. Praise God.

Just a verse I stumbled upon recently:

From the rising of the sun to the place

where it sets, the name of the Lord

is to be praised.

Psalm 113:3

Crushing Me

There's a certain feeling that was a faint part of me in high school. I don't really know how to explain it, but I'll surely try because what was a faint part of me in high school has grown to be a much more prominent part.

The only way I can really describe the feeling is like this:

It's as if my mind is being crushed.

squished.

trampled.

overwhelmed.

(quick pause so I can briefly admit my love for Ella Fitzgerald and all songs of that genre and era... I love Ella. I wish people still sang like that... maybe they do and I just don't know it.)

So my mind is going through this thing, we'll call the entire process "crush" for all intensive purposes, and it only happens when there is something that needs to get done. When crush is occurring, that thing that needs to get done, whether it be studying, taxes, my fiction story for writing class, or changing the oil in my car, is weighing down my brain as if it is a tangible object that actually takes up space. For clarity, the task is crushing my brain. I know it's not really, they never are. They're just thoughts like any other thing that takes up space in my mind... but when that thing needs to get done, I often think of nothing else.

For example, this is awful, but yesterday during church while Pastor Seth was giving his sermon in that very distinctive, eloquent style of public speaking, all I could think about were the many hours of final cut editing I had put off the whole weekend. What a freak, right? Yah, I know.

I wish I wasn't the kind of person who experienced crushing every time a big task is handed to me. Right now it's the assignment from the newspaper, a blank screen staring me straight in the face. I swear it's not even due to me thinking I can't complete it, it's due to my intimidation of the work I will inevitably put into it.

I get it's silly.

But this has always been apart of me- ever since I can remember. In 5th grade, Mrs. Johnson assigned us a book report and I remember feeling overwhelmed for the month that we had to complete it. It consumed my gosh darn thoughts! I get it's silly, believe me.

So anyway, being in college has allowed for many crushing moments, but the difference between then and now is that i have more trust. Like yesterday, when the time finally came for me to edit on Final Cut, I asked God to take that feeling away and by-golly he did. Instead of all that nonsensical consuming and crushing, all I could think of at that point was the song we sang at church:

"I hear the Savior say, 'thy strength indeed is small,

child of weakness, watch and pray, find in me thine all in all.'"

Even in times when I'm like a child, worried about the silliest things that honestly don't matter at all in the scheme of life, he reaches me. He always reaches me.