two giant fat people

God
and I have become
like two giant fat people living
in a tiny
boat

We
keep bumping into
each other
and laughing.

-Hafiz

looking back

nothing really significant, but i found this in my old files and i completely forgot about it. i left for Korea one month after graduation without really thinking about my decision or knowing what to expect. i've now been here for about 10 months. i can't believe it.

"i'm feeling sad.. and a little anxious. i leave for korea on friday... and have been waiting for this damn visa for almost a month now. that's a month of not working... waiting... preparing... ignoring the fact that i'm leaving again.. and having some amazing times with my family and friends.
i'm packing now. what is this? the unknown i guess is enough to make one feel anxious.. but i've done this many times. could it be that after moving and living in 6 different places the last 6 years is finally taking its toll on me? am i finally feeling the wears and tears of saying good-bye to those i love.. to re-familiarizing myself to those supposed to be familiar at "home?" i don't know... maybe i just feel this is too soon. i haven't soaked up my brother and sister enough... not enough of michelle and hannah.. the lockharts.. not enough of the mountains. and off i go again. to a culture quite unlike mine... to a language i will probably never learn... this usually excites me. maybe my unsettled emotions come from my fear of being alone. for the first time i'm not moving into another community... no ywamers to hug me at first meeting... no old familiar friends... dorm life... no. my own apartment; what a freaky thought!
perhaps i'm just feeling extra nostalgic at the moment. maybe as soon as i get on the plane my heart with leap with excitement again at the adventures ahead."

insufficient content

i feel as though my life is on pause. at this moment i want to go home. home to a home. home to a family. home to beloved nature displayed in its greatest splendor. and home to an unknown future. yes, even that i would accept.
what is contentment? maybe it will never fully be ours. i can't imagine being fully satisfied; can't imagine not wanting more. maybe that's the point.
i find myself in this state filled with joy over the simplest things. colours - like those brilliant reds in the fall. the sky at dusk - a dark but vivid blue. the brilliant pink hundred-petalled flowers generously clustered on rich greenery. the delicate cherry blossoms blooming on dark gnarly branches. and other things like potted plants. designs made from foam and espresso in a warm mug of latte. the chirping of birds on a morning walk and seeing the sun at 9, 10 and 11 free of concrete cover. these things bring me joy. i wish i could dwell with them; be encompassed by colour, songs, warmth and beauty; find comfort in being as they do. (be free from concrete, suits, schedules and money-making.) but i cannot wrap myself in colour as much as i can kill desire. i am an ever longing, ever desiring soul. wanting summer and fall to exist at once, and mourning the death of each brilliant red.

"I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil - this is God's gift to humans." -Ecclesiastes 3:12

if only it were that easy.

"What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it - the fact that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me...

There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to love me."

-J.I. Packer

...and again

Sonnet CXVI
by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh, no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests.. and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love is not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out.. even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

on love

I think it is right and just that all creatures be free. Indeed, that God Himself has ordained the world and our relationship to him in such a manner. Love therefore cannot be coerced, it cannot be conditional, it should not require preference upon another, it must exist strong and true; penetrating all frame, faculty and nature.
Love must be free, for love that is not free is not love at all. In such a state of mind I require that onto others; that they be free. And as apparent dichotomy time and again prove itself the founder of truth, in freedom will exist absolute security. Within this security evolves the greatest form of acceptance, adoration and love for the creature in it's rawest state, as God originally saw fit. It is this that I wait for, and for this that I hope.

If I was free to hold you
I would.
I would kiss you for a
thousand days
and when those were through
I'd kiss you ten thousand more
until we understood
eachother's eyes
dove into our souls
and knew Him
so much better

salt

there is a gnawing at my
heart
it is the sorrows of the world.
why is it that i see your hand
under my feet
and the next day i'm drowning?
was it not you who also
made the sea?
is it you who engulfs me?
and helps me brush the salt off?

my thoughts as described by Charlotte Bronte

"I hold to another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling, for it extends hope to all."

Is that my fate?

Do they prove anything to you, these tears?

All that I had I laid outside that door
where I was told you lived, and someone took those gifts,
was it you?

Were they that worthless that no thanks was given?
That must have been the case for I heard
not one word of gratitude.

Has it ever happened that a lover courting a lover
has not offered trinkets? Surely you did
not begrudge me for that.

In the world of amorous play amongst your forest creatures
I have tried to learn some secret about love
to bring you as near as they did; for I see how happy
you made them.

The flame called the moth but the glass pane was there.
How many have died not in the fire but in the cold,
crazed in longing.

Is that fate of any heart to not reach you?

No, no, that is not the fate of any soul.

-St. John of the Cross