Just Life

Some reasons why this life will never own me:
I see too many broad swaths of inequality.

Too much suffering owned by many, while the bills are clutched by few
Too much dying and pain and concern for "me" and not enough "you"

Too many people who go without for no good reason
Besides so we can feed our greed and amusement for a season

Too much waste on luxury while many need necessities
Too much focus on wealth and not enough on charities

Too much of my sinful nature shared by the population
Too many people waiting for God in the midst of tribulation.

Few things in life are fair, and fewer things are free
For every single smile, there are a hundred tears we never see.

The  reason why this life is often duty and rarely anything more,
Is because sin's taken so much beauty that life had long before.

2012

I'm sitting in a room that doesn't feel like my own And working on a post with a melancholy tone Having come through the year that was more hell than heaven I gladly say farewell to the fading 2011 I have fought with both my faith and sense of direction And tried so very hard to show Christlike affection I've grown in some ways, and my vices tried to shelve Now I hope for so much more come 2012 I am clueless as to why things have been such a fight I have fought with self and demons through many a night I pray that God sees fit to set me down in green Cuz the desert of this year has been far too mean Maybe the past trials have been for my refinement But I so badly desire some easier assignments Whatever comes my way in this year that is dawning I will need His strength for my resolve is yawning. The key to living every year with peace and joy intact I believe is to depend on God for everything I lack. If I can find the rest that I know God's gladly giving Through this and every year to come, I'll have joy in simply living.

Reaching for the Son

It's been a rough year. I have been stressed and ablaze with the angers and frustrations of a life unyielding to my will. It's really hard for me to remain joyful and content when I feel that my best laid plans always fall short, and my most heartfelt wishes won't be realized soon enough. I am an eager creature. What I want, I want greatly. I have had to exercise patience and a great deal of restraint and in doing so, a bit of my jovial inner child has died. I have traded sunshine for fire, and optimism for jaded determination. I don't want to become calloused and bitter even though life has been a fight as of late. I wish to remain me through adversity. With this purpose in mind, I will try to relinquish some of the fire for sunshine once more. I would like to shine a bit more in the midst of my storm. Maybe it will make life a bit brighter and the time pass just a bit quicker on the way to where God's taking me.

Life...get out of the way.

I have been striving to lay a foundation for myself for more than a year..I have been trying to blaze a trail to the west and find employment. To my dismay and frustration, many of the opportunities that seemed promising at first have ended in emptiness and disappointment. I feel like a beast rattling its cage, trying to break free of its confines. The life that is keeps hindering me from living the life I so desperately desire. Now, I feel closer than ever to the realization of a dream...and yet somethings still make me feel so far away. Life has been such a dirge. I have grown to hate what it is and wish for what isn't. I just want what I want for once and to be happy and at peace, but life keeps preventing that simple dream, and I keep fighting to attain it. In a weeks time I will either be on the road to success or fighting the frustrations and anger that come with another failure and unchanged circumstance.

Fighter

Laid straight, I'm in conflict against many different variables. I'm constantly trying to subdue my own despicable nature, fighting to procure the funds for a much needed relocation, and endlessly trying to squelch the waves of melancholy and anger that lap at the doorstep of my heart each day. I've felt like I have served my sentence of unpleasant circumstances by now, but for some reason I am still...stuck. I'm trying to learn patience, love, self-control, and contentment but I fear I am doing a poor job. I want God to help me learn whatever lesson I'm supposed to from this ordeal so that it can be over. I'm tired of fighting so much to just maintain...I just want peace and to not have to fight anymore. Maybe that's too much to ask for this side of heaven and hell. Maybe I'll just have to keep fighting so as not to loose myself to the hatred of this life I feel growing inside of me. Maybe I'll have to keep fighting just to be able to thank God for the things I do have. Maybe I'll have to just fight on to be the Godly man she needs me to be, and maybe I'll have to fight to not prove all those people right who say I'm naive, passionate, and closed minded. Maybe this life is actually more about the surrender to God than the fight...perhaps if I can figure that part out, I can finally stop fighting.

God Hears the Crying Heart

God vindicates Himself all to often when He is under no such obligation to do so. Recently, He showed me (yet again) that He is always there for me and loves me regardless of if feel it or not. It's beautiful and also makes me feel so foolish for doubting such a pure and loving being as God. I DON'T understand His methods or even how they work, but I have experienced them too many times to continue to doubt their effectiveness! By His strength ad spirit, I need to develop a holy memory of His blessings and allow these to catch my slipping foot when I am pushed back by waves of doubt.

Existence

Life has been much toil and little joy in the past months. Many times, after feeling as though I had a grasp on the difficulty which assailed me, I was blindsided by a new dilemma or problem to be solved and simplified yet again. My words have oft been curses and my voice a yell because of the pain and exasperation I feel at the hands of fate and a silent God. I’m trying to do what I know to be the “right” thing, but like David, I see the path of the wicked or even morally neutral every day, and it is not fraught with the difficulties, rather it seems to be filled with blessings and carefree existence. I trouble myself to try and serve a “kind”, “loving”, and “attentive” God and I feel nothing but fatigue, longing, stress and intense palpable anger at my own powerlessness to change the circumstances of my life!
WHY?!
Why is it that in my times of greatest need can hear the voice of my God least? What do I do that I am not presently, to tap into this store of Christian energy and strength that enables people to charge into battle and immerge victorious time and time again? I know that I WANT to be holy and blameless and joyfully resilient, but I can’t do it! And as if the pressures of life weren’t enough already, they are compounded by the affects of my inability to cope with them.
I can see the person I wish I were…I can see that happy character, regardless of circumstance, always lending an uplifting word and never showing the slightest sign of doubt or fatigue. He loves completely and selflessly. He serves God without question…He seems to be everything I am not, and from the disconnect between who I am and who I wish I were spawns an intense hatred of myself and my existence. If I am destined to fall short of the expectations of all I love than why was I brought into this hellish and broken life? I didn’t ask to be some standard bearer on a rebel planet ruled by the demonic originator of evil. I did not request to be flung into battle against the hosts of hell with every waking moment, and every time I try to do right. Why is this fight mine?!!!
There is no passive stance. Even surrender to God is a fight. The peace spoken of in the Bible is a theory and a concept foreign to me. I have none. All I know is discord, stress, warring nature, and defeat. I don’t feel holy and I don’t feel loved.

ALL I want is for God to show me what this is about, what I can do to get through it, and to please just give me the strength, faith, and love that I need to come through a righteous man and husband….

Bleed earth to my unyielding grasp

Digging in. Enough ground has been lost...progress will come. I can not promise that I will proceed with grace but, I won't loose anymore to this hell I'm in. As the saying goes "death before dishonor" and I can truly see how the former could be preferred. God does not abandon those striving to serve and escape the vacuum of iniquity that is this life so I am entrusting my soul and happiness to Him. If He does not bring me through than I will die here, for my spirit can't survive the loss of this, its truest dream.

Breaking up the soil

Some say there is a powerful benefit to be reaped of propagated positivity in the fields of ones mind. That though your surroundings may be less than ideal, if you focus on the good, it will produce a blessed harvest. But what is to be done when, in the midst of disappointment, circumstances have hardened the soil to such a degree that no pick, shovel, or mattock you posses, can break through. When all our efforts and attempts at coping seem to only further beset your path with difficulty and obstacles. When no matter how much you pray, work, yell, or weep nothing changes and progress is negligible and at times retroactive. I've watered the grounds with my sweat, blood, and at times tears and it drinks it up and still remains unyielding. Part of me wants to lay down the spade and shovel, and the other would continue to dig. Whether I love it or hate it, things don't change, and perhaps now, I have to push through..regardless of my perceived progress. A new year is on the horizon...maybe with it will come some Rain.

Directive

I have this vague idea of what I want in life. My aspirations are high, but I can't find a suitable vehicle to get me to them. I find enjoyment in a variety of activities none of which have proven career worthy or apt for supporting a wife and children. The course I know take is just not what I want, and honestly I don't even know if it will bring me success and peace in the end. It might just be what I have settled on for lack of a better option. I am unsatisfied, but the things of this world offer no real relief or sense of accomplishment. Why are all of my fondest dreams those which are apparently impossible? My goals are those that I do not know if I can attain, and if I am meant to, I haven't the slightest on how to go about doing so. I need God to do something astoundingly lucid! I need Him to just tell me in the most clear and distinct fashion what His plans for my life are. And then, if His direction is contrary to my desires I need the strength to stay the course...I hate milling about in uncertainty. I thrive when given a clear-cut unambiguous directive.