Fact:

Old news...

I know it is, but it represents my condition well, so I'll say it: i'm still lost... I don't know hardly who God is and I miss feeling him near me. I want to be me, and I want to live life to the fullest...I don't want to settle for less than I could...but I mean that in the way where I don't give up everything I love to strive for one thing. I want to live just knowing I'm doing this alright and I'm living it in love, ya know? It's simpler than I make it out to be...so I guess from here it's just finding my feet on the ground and making good choices and figuring this thing out on an epic adventure.

But I really do need to figure out who God is...there's a lot of curiousity in my mind when it comes to what religion is, who God is and what the difference is between them...or how connected they are rather. Religion can be terrible, sure....but is religion itself terrible, or the people behind it? Does God hate religion or the way it's used? What is religion?

I know I'm gonna be alright...I just don't know what to believe besides the basics right now... God is love. God is just, gracious, merciful and eternal. He overcomes and he is Life.

My, my...how life becomes a tangled web. You can't get it all in this life.

Where am I exactly? Where is everyone else? And where is God? What is life made of? What path will I take and who will be there with me? When I watch shows I don't realize most of the time that I could be in the same boat maybe....maybe in 8 years when I'm 25, I'll live in New York with friends and try to start a whole new life there? And where do my friends now fit into that? Ok; let's be realistic. I won't be friends with everyone I am friends with now at 25... it's ok. It's a bittersweet life. Beautiful disaster. Catch 22 almost it seems? Where will I be in 25 years? Wasting my life on an office job? Sex? Drugs? Where has that part of me that felt so special and different gone? Have I lost that? Was it even right? Or was it just a phase to go through.... Well...currently: I don't know who I am, where I'm going or what I even want...in a way that's not ok. I usually accept that about life, but I just wish I had something a little more clear to see... not that the picture is blurred...maybe it is, but maybe it's just my eyes....it just all seems so gray. I don't know whats what anymore. Everything can be given a good or bad angle most of the time. Pure evil is an exception.

So...how am I going to live my life? I want to live this thing full....I hate the idea of being less at anything than I should be because I don't try hard enough. That's a load of bull. Sure, there's grace for falling short, which I will do :(.... but I will live this thing... it's just hard to think of stuff all by myself...and it's seemed that that's how it's been at large lately...not totally, cause there are outlets...I don't know....i really just don't. And you know? I want life! I don't want religion to be my substitute, nor music, nor reading, nor TV. These are all links to God, sure, and they all can be good. I know I haven't been the most religious person lately. I think it's ok. But I really do wonder...in how many ways is the Bible different from my story? Sure, it's God's word, but does that mean God's word isn't being written in my life as well? I don't know.... I guess I'm not really here to contemplate technicalities.

here's what I want to express. I'm lost! I don't know where to take my life! It had a semi-sure coarse about a year or 2 back, now the water's are wide open....where do I want to go? Where should I go? Where is a good place to go? It's all available. To choose my dwelling, my home. Will it really be alright if I just do my best? Or where's all that grace stuff come in? I don't know... I guess I really have strayed from traditional christian thinking...probably doctrine too... so what's that mean? And who am I really? What makes me special and how do I cultivate that? And how do I connect with God? Don't get me wrong, I think figuring out the technicalities to christianity/life are very important....but it feels that if I follow the technicalities without getting the basics down, I'll have missed a lot... learn to walk before you crawl, right? So am I a heretic? i don't know. I'll just live this in love the best I can, and God, I hope that I really cultivate something you made in this life that's powerful and will affect others for the better. Teach me grace, teach me love, teach me life. And please have those for me too. :) I love you. I want to know who I am, who God is, and how those will fit together to form my life.... I guess it's time I stopped thinking about this and started looking....

Life update #.... 50?

Well, thought I'd give a little update on my life here. No one writes, but it's cool. Here it is, for those of you who read this, and myself.

Life is crazy. Goes by fast. Lots of people go...and come, but I tend to feel the going more it seems. I'm basically lost. Figuring out who God is, who I am, and how this whole life-thing works is hard, yet so simple sometimes. I've been noticing I've gotten more anger built up in me for the past 3 months or so. Lots of transition+ peoples fickleness might have something to do with it. But I need to let go....or maybe it's the being lost part that has me so frustrated. Or a combination, which it probably is, but ya. I want to stand for love and beauty and goodness, not anger or bitterness.

I think that maybe I'm supposed to figure out this whole grace thing. It's been suggested, it's the meaning of my name more or less; it just seems like I should. I don't understand it much, I think, but it is a pretty foundational building block of life. Life just seems so confusing, and I want God to come and make it all clear. And really that is what I do with my life. Seek God. That's who I want, and it feels like tons of time I spend doing it...but still, I don't really have anything constructive to do it with....except reading I guess. Either way; I'm doing okay. I want intimacy. I love you, God.

Ugh...

Life, life, life. Always has to invade my space! ;)...but on a more serious level, life is indeed a great adventure. Even in my current frustration and ignorance, I'm enjoying the fact that I'm alive. Thank  you God.

I feel like I'm being awakened once again. I guess that tends to happen when you choose things that are of life, and things that we were made for way back before there was light...matter...energy? Whatever, I don't need to get the chemist in me going :P... but when in situations where you are forced to make decisions and think, it really helps you to realize who you are, what you live for...it makes you...at least me anyways, remember what I should live for. One reason I'm glad I've been writing on here (and journaling more in general, thanks to Christmas break) is that I'm doing life on here. Not just passing through this thing dead, or asleep.

I also realized lately that I have been living for myself much more...for me, there are two perspectives (and I think it's unhealthy to look at them as two separates) in which you can live life (in the sense i'm talking about): with the mindset of and for God, thinking of how to make Him more known, more prevalent, more present (if that's possible) and moving...or you can live for yourself, seeking good friends(hips), developing skills and talents, learning about life and people, figuring out who I am, and how to do this, appreciating the culture I live in..........now, I realize that "living for yourself" is not good, but I stand by what I said about how I doubt that looking at the two as separates is the right way to look at them, mainly because of the way I described them. Sure, living for yourself isn't going to make you happy, but there is a lot to developing skills, figuring out who I am, developing good friendships, appreciating my culture, etc., and I refuse to believe that those are wrong. Infact, I think that I am made to do those things...though when they stand by themselves....that's a different story and I don't believe they're strong enough....but nonetheless, I have in my mind developed these two as separate life perspectives. One basically where I go after all the God stuff, and the other where I seek for God in my stuff...I guess you could say it that way. So, my question is, how do those two blend together? How do I seek after God while allowing myself to realize and see that he's where I am already, nonetheless it's good to seek after things of His? Is it wrong to live for God and myself? I really don't know. I do know that loving others before you love you is good....but I also know loving you is good....there is so much of God I feel I don't know right now... I feel that being away from Him and growing in Him has allowed my vision of Him to be obscured. I feel like I've been growing in earthly life, but not spiritual. Infact, there is no life without God, but nonetheless, that may give you an idea. I need Him...I know that....I've known that all along....all the conversations in my life I've had because of the insatiable longing in my heart to find God...I still am looking, though I fail many a time in my zeal. I do not...and refuse to let myself become a complacent normal person; it is too shallow a life, too cowardly a journey, even not a journey hardly at all... I must find out who God is, who I am, how those two relate, and how to view this life. Because you can allow God to live in your life...but you can also allow yourself to live in God's life. That's something to ponder...personally, I think the latter is more exciting, though I find nothing wrong with the former, and they are both wonderful adventures in my eyes. But seriously...imagine the difference....allowing God to work in the confines of your life, and what you have, which many people have to do, I imagine...or you can allow yourself to work in the confines of God's life (or lack thereof...infact, probably false), and let Him do with it what He will......but, nonetheless, how do developing skills, figuring out who I am, developing good friendships (that have no agenda, but to just be), appreciating my culture fall into place of giving my life to seeking after things of God? Does God not even want me to focus on how I can be all in His life, and he just wants to be with me while I depart on my own adventures? Or does God want me to forget my dreams and follow and become a part of His life (which I personally do not believe)? How does God in my life and me in God's life look? I don't doubt that God wants me to go after things I like, and go on adventures of my choosing...but what would he say if I said I wanted Him to choose, and I just wanted to do whatever He wanted me to do? One thing I know, I don't just want to live my life and live it good, I want to be of more, do more (may I mention that there is nothing more important than being a child of God, so actions do not "rank" or set me higher, but I do want my life to consist of more)....I want to be messenger of life. I want to have taken part, yes, in my own personal life, full of its own adventures of my choosing, but I also want to be a part of something bigger, and when I get to heaven, I don't want to just tell my story, I want to tell the story of my family....an amazing family....of the wonderful adventures that are bigger than one soul.

I will not become complacent. I need to live...and to live beautifully at that. God be with me....me be with God. ;)