uhhhhhg

I'm tired of being taken advantage of. I'm tired of not being appreciated. I'm tired of being disrespected and trampled...where is the honor? And yet I hear myself whining and complaining about this when there are people in CHAINS all around the world, sold into slavery like animals. Their bodies being beaten within an inch of life. There are unborn children who will never have a chance to breathe air, who have no right to life only because they were a "mistake" or are unwanted. What do I have to complain about, right?

Sometimes I am so incredibly sad and I don't know why, kind of like I have lived so much of my life in this state that it has become normal. So much so that sometimes it feels weird to smile. I've been noticing a lot though that when I see the kids I can't help but smile. They bring me such complete joy and happiness. All they have to do is walk out of a building and converse with their friends, just the sound of their voice, their laughter...I love them. I love them when they play video games. I love them when they are late for work in the PX and make up excuses like "I was helping my grandmother cross the street" I love them when they mess up. I love them when they're difficult, when they make the same mistakes over and over again. I love them when they ask for me to pray for them. All of them have a different walk, a different manner of holding themselves. Sometimes I feel like a creeper because all I want to do is be around them, to talk to them, to know their hearts. Most of them don't even know Jesus but its amazing to me how is fingerprints are all over them and they don't even know it. They are beautiful. They are perfect. They are so gifted and have so much potential. And when I look at them I just smile and take in God's glory because they were created in his image. How amazing is that? That we, men, nothing but dust from the ground, so fragile, so imperfect, so utterly messed up and incompetent, we carry the image of the living God -the one who created us? And we don't even know it. We curse our bodies. We curse our brothers. How sad it all is, that we don't get who we are. Hah, I don't get who I am. It's so much easier to love someone else.

I'm going to try and be better at updating this. (I always say that, but I really am this time, its going to be a part of my attempt at discipline and focus) Life since I arrived in Oregon has been mostly like a whirlwind its so different from my life in kentucky and so many things have happened in the last 6 or so months that sometimes I feel like a completely different person. I don't think I realized what I had in KY until I left it. If I ever cried out in loneliness for instance someone should have smacked me in the face and told me it could be a whole lot worse, because it certainly can. Out here it is so vast with more trees and land than there are people and its easy to be isolated. Having all your family and friends in a 3 hr time zone difference and thousands of miles from you ....and living with a car that is not reliable enough to get you out of Oregon nor enough money in your pocket to buy a plane ticket doesn't help the situation. Sometimes I don't think I thought this one through enough, I don't know how I'll ever afford to move back east. Working weird hours and being unable to join a church or home group apart from the school doesn't help with the loneliness either. The only church family and support offered to me are the 5 other people with a similar schedule to myself...and half of them have families which can offer support and encouragement. I have found myself listening to as many sermons online as I can, and it has helped, but its still been hard.

The other day I snow-shoed up a 1000ft mountain at crater lake. And as I was coming back I stopped long enough to listen to the silence. The snow had let up, and there were no signs of life for miles...I looked around and I was completely surrounded by snow and massive pine trees and not a sound could be heard. It was so quiet I could hear my own heart beat. I have not heard that kind of silence for a long long time. And yet I think in a way that I have been living in that kind of silence since I got here. As I stood in that forrest atop 40 some feet of snow I feasted myself on the beauty and desolation around me. Even though there was silence I could see it was clearly marked with Gods beauty. It was incredible, even in the silence even though I felt so incredibly isolated from every one else, all I had to do was look at the mountains surrounding me, the trees, the snow, the blue sky and it was perfectly evident that the Lords hand was upon it. It's been so much like that here...I feel mostly like I was just dropped out of the sky onto another planet with new people that I don't know and that don't know me...and yet the Lords hand it so perfectly upon it. One of the last words I heard from him so clearly before I left KY was that this was his best for me. I have clung to that word like a mountaineer clinging to a rope as his only life-source while hanging over a ravine.

The Lord is steadfast. He is ALL I need. He is my source. He is my friend, sometimes my only friend. He is my Father. He is my brother. He is my peace. He is my food and my drink. He will never leave me and he stands surrounding me, even if he doesn't say a word.