my thoughts these days seem to keep peeling away layers of something that i am not sure what it is. something that is deeply part of who i am. something that needs to drink in the fresh air. something that stinks and is nasty from being locked up inside too long without a bath. peeling from the inside out. pulling something into the open that i am not sure i am ready for people to see. but god knows it needs to be seen. cant play games anymore about who i can pretend i am. so far from perfect - but the funny thing is that i am made perfect. perfect through my father. jesus. see - it is the broken me. the part of me that keeps asking to be broken and is smashed to hell as a result. so then the hard part comes. can i deal? can i really go on with my life and learning what he wants to teach me? can i function? can i keep evolving into what i am supposed to be? honestly i havent a clue. i am at a loss for words. i get opportunities to grow - and i screw up. i fall on my ass. but then after i sit awake all night -i realize that this is his way of molding me. put me in the fire- make me bendable and then he starts the bending. or beating. i think it probably takes a beating with me. my head is really hard - just ask my family. so anyway - i just want to keep getting shaped by his fire. learning. i guess i am asking to get burned - but i cant say that it is all bad. after all scars are pretty cool souveniers.

another thing that i have realized lately is about life and how it directly correlates to my relationships with others. see - life isnt about a series of events, a series of places, or even a series of different series’. it is a series of relationships. think about this - look back on your life and think about the different times in your life. think to high school. bet you dont really remember what all the classrooms looked like - but you can remember all the times that you were an idiot with your best friends riding around after graduation in your boxers and graduation cap - (wait oh crap- nevermind that was me...) anyway - you will remember the face of that teacher or the times you got dissed on by your ‘dreamgirl’ or the people who you really invested time in. this is how we mark time in our lives. the timeline consists of relationships. places we live and go become about the relationships we had. experiences become about the people who were there with us at the time. this is because this, i believe, is how we learn. it leads to what we take with us. and that in turn leads to how we live our lives. a series of small steps that we may not know we take - but nonetheless we do. this is how god works i think. he doesnt ask us to figure it all out at once. he just lets us live and screw up - then he picks us up, dusts us off and says alright junior, (i like that junior part..) go try it again. it is ok to mess up. it is ok to mess up lots. life is a mess. our relationships may end up in huge messes - i know some of mine have - but this is how we learn. and we may not think that we learn and take with us lessons from this - but we know we really do. i look back and cant tell you whole lots about certain places or events, but man i can tell you how i talked till 6 in the morning with jenny in chicago, or how much fun i had with kirby and pj in the lou, or how my m-town boys used to kick it growing up in high school, camping out in the back of pickups. these things i take with me. they arent going anywhere. although i am 7 time zones away - they are still with me. god is relational. i am challenging myself to invest time in more relationships. new and old. hard ones. no more making excuses like no time. after all we are only as busy as we want to be. and relationships take time. i see gods face in relationships. his face in people. jesus valued time with friends and people just as much if not more than anything. his whole story is a story of relationships with people. friends. this stuff is important. this is why humans are so beautiful to me- i can see gods face in them. this is why people have to be beautiful to us. we are all his children. i just sometimes need his help to see it...