Farewell...

Farewell, blog readers. I'm moving!

http://www.infreedomborn.blogspot.com/

Do stop by and follow this one. If you're wondering, I've been doing some thinking. I needed a better title, and stronger direction for my blog.

Change is like throwing up... you'll never enjoy it 'till it's over:)

Tina

Winter of the Soul

All my life I've waited

to grow out of sin,

divorce pain

cancel lonliness



I believed a day would really come

When it's all over.

In the winter of the soul,

I realize how much it's going to take

to make everything better.

There's a reason why we all die.

The final restoration is nothing short

of completely wiping out

and restarting over again.

We live in the not yet.

When this life is so good

I'm bursting to hold in my joy,

Sometimes I Forget what the winter was like.

But, in the winter of the soul

every moment is consumed

with memories of the summer.

What it was like to be happy

                      peaceful

                joyful

    sufficient

Life is longing for joy, peace, sufficiency.

Longing never reaches.

It is in itself a kind of pleasure.

To long for the pleasure of heavan is pleasure of itself.

As I long to get there,

      to get to heavan 

How I realize the getting there is half the journey.

Mountains look stunning from

low down here on earth.

When you're among them,

you can't see them so well.

You forget that you're in mountains.

In the winter of the soul

we are conscious only that we long

to reach heavan

In heavan,

Why should we think of anything else?

It's like being in the mountains.

A few times in this life-

    glimpses of heavan

moments of joypeacesufficiency.

And we forget, for a little while, the winter.

The Illusion of Freedom

\

So I went out with a friend and we saw Sherlock Holmes- A Game of Shadows the other day. Now, I could immediatley launch into a debate about its strengths and weaknesses (the final scene by the waterfall was not only stunning- it was profoundly stunning!) but one very insignificant scene that no one will probably remember happened in the wine cellar between Holmes and a troubled anarchist whose name I never really picked up on. 

The anarchist spoke of freedom- freedom from rule. Not freedom from tyranny, but total and absolute freedom from rule. As if there is such a thing? They wanted to rule themselves, these anarchists. They wanted to be their own kings. There is, in all of this, a myth about freedom.

There are two types of freedom in this life. I'm going to come to the point quickly, if bluntly, and state:
1) freedom from God, or
2) freedom in God.

Masks, Shel Silverstein

Hello.

I feel like saying hello. You've probably noticed some renovations around here. I'm always getting bored of the backgrounds and changing things up. It probably drives you crazy. Oh well, I like this theme. I think I'll stay with it:)

I'm not sure where this is going, so I'll do what I always do. I'll leave you with a poem:

irreplaceable
lost for words
I grasp your hand;
if I could speak
you'd understand
that what I'm here
searching for
is what I fear
you will ignor
'cause you can't know
the joy I get
to be with you
and be your friend
and plunge into
your chocolate eyes
swimming through
the butterfles
that carry all
my kindest words;
far away,
they're never heard.

"I am not absent minded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else." (attributed G.K. Chesterton)

don't be a fraid

don't be a fraid

be a bird!

take to the sky without a word

stretch your wings as you take flight

loose with all your lusty might

the secret song

that no one knows

but you and all that endless blue.

Good Guys, Bad Guys

"I seen bad men do good things and I've seen good men do bad things."

Sometimes, the good guys do really bad things. For some reason, they're still good though. I don't know why that is. A bad guy can do as many good things as he wants- had can do good things all day long!- but he will still be a bad guy.

This kind of surfaced this week while I was with my friends. Some of my friends are good kids and some of them are really bad. That's always the way it is. In every group there are "good kids" and "bad kids." It's not like the bad kids are going to bomb my school tomorrow or anything. I'm talking social preditors. I'm talking kids who are really messed up inside.

The hole not made for me.

My world is closing in on me
I'm crushed beneath its weight
I'm stuck
It's over
I can't escape
These walls which box me in
And pinch
And squeeze
Are forcing me
Already oddly shaped
Into a hole which will not fit
A hole not made for me.

The Ashes of my Ex-Life.

I was digging through some old posts and I found this one that never got posted for some reason: 

I'm an obsessive journalist. I write down e v e r y t h i n g that happens to me- as it happens. You can find almost all my important thoughts stuffed into binders and boxes in my room. It's really important for me to build life perspective. I do this by writing down what I feel and then digging it back up again six months later and reading about it.

There are parts of my life that aren't important anymore.

Those parts get edited out.

Every life is a story and every story has parts to it- good parts, bad parts, happy parts, sad parts.
Every person has to live through good times and bad times.
Every person has to cry... every person wants something and is brutally crushed in the process...
Everyone faces disappointments. 

Who Outsmarted Who?

Hahahaha! Watching "The Rescuers Down Under" again.... that movie never gets old. Neither does this scene:D 

"My mental facilities are twice what yours are, ya pea brain!"

"I didn't make it all the way through third grade for nothin'!"

Joy to the World

There is always a place for joyful,

if sometimes solemn,

carols for me in this season.

I find myself exhausted from 

Coldplay, Lopez, and Sliversun. 

Carols are rest for me-

 rest from my boombox, rock and roll,

addicted lifestyle;

because, honestly, hip-hop takes

so much emotional energy!

 

I had a dream the other night that I was standing 

in a beautiful avenue between 

a row of buildings late

one night just before Christmas.

Snow was falling deep around me.

The trees along the avenue were decorated

with lights and an unseen choir was

singing this song:

It was so beautiful I wished I would never 

wake up. But, of course, that couldn't

be helped. Long after the beautiful lights and voices

had faded away, I still held onto the feeling

that buried deep in this season 

there is a gift, made especially for me 

before I could walk or talk, before I knew 

my own name, and long before 

I even existed. 

When I sing Christmas Carols I am most

conscious of that gift. They always

have the amazing ability to transport me 

all the way back to my very first Christmases

before I had yet opened that gift

and it lay there, wrapped in festive paper. 

I'm still opening that gift- the gift of a friendship

that will last me this whole life and beyond. 

This is my friendship with Christ Jesus.

The House

She’s old now, her crippled hands

Rest easy in her lap;

Now shut the eyes which twinkled bright

At every merry laugh.

As barren as the dusty walls

As old as chair and crib

The house where she was given birth

The house in which she lives.

The rocking chair she sits in now

Is where she used to nurse.

The tiny crib where she did lay

Her children, she used first.

Luke 2

In the same region there were Shepherds 

out in the field, 

keeping watch over their flock by night.

and an angel of the LORD appeared to them,

and the glory of the Lord shone around them, 

and they were filled with great fear.

And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, 

I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all 

the people.

For unto you is born this day in the City of David 

a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby

wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger."

And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude 

of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased!" -Luke 2:8-14

Merry Christmas

Life is an Equation.

I've had my dreams... my aspirations, my disappointments. I expected so much out of life. The funny thing is that the one thing life turned out to be was the very thing I never expected:

My life is just another boring math problem.

It's a problem I have to get to solve every day. I take all the pieces of this equation, line them up on two sides of an equal sign and try desperately to make them match. I work the problem out, first one side and then the other, until it finally occurs to me that I don't even have all the pieces there to begin with.

So, I go out in life gathering experiences to complete my equation but somehow they never seem to be enough to say all that there is about myself. I know I'm going to sound totally arrogant when I say this, but this equation I'm trying so desperately to solve is ME! Not in a lifetime will I be able to solve this equation totally.

Cutie Patootie

Who am I?

I am the tiniest bomb, ticking 1200 beats 

before dropping the weight of a penny 

on some unsuspecting intruder

to my territory.

If you know the answer already, don't tell! Everyone else... I'm interested to see what you come up with. 

The thing about magic is that it works every time. 

Einstein

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." -Albert Einstein

It's Cold Here.

It's cold here:)