Changing

We go for a drive, down the hill, time for some Christmas shopping.

"Have you changed since you came to college?" she asked me.

"Yeah," I said, had to say. "Yeah." It's funny how that answer holds both pride and shame.

"Do you like all the ways you've changed?"

Ha. No. And I'm having to think again about the ways I've changed; it's hard to separate out because they are all tangled together in who I am. The things that have caused me to change are all tangled together too.

It's not as if I received a neat little check list in my mailbox at the beginning of my freshman year that said, "Check here if you'd like to learn how to deal with the messiness of real life; check here if you'd like to not be haunted by decisions you make; check here if you'd like to fit in." None of us do. Sometimes I can look back at a moment and say, "I should have done that differently." Sometimes I can say, "That caused a lot of problems."

But when I think about what caused problems, often I realize that I'd do exactly the same thing all over again. At least I hope I would. And it doesn't really matter, because I don't get a second shot at those things.

You only ever have your own perspective, and it's all tangled up in time and space, stuck in situations with factors of how tired your body is and the worries that press on your mind and so many other things.

They make it ridiculous for me to what-if.

Around the beginning of my tenth grade year, a friend emailed me. He said,

...well he's changing but that's how most teens are. changing just remember to pray read the Bible and trust in Him who gives the truth the way and the life. and you should hopefully change and grow in Him.

They're words that still echo through my head sometimes. I think we're always changing, not just when we're teenagers, although that was as far as we knew at the time.

I've had Relient K's When I Go Down stuck in my head lately too.

When I go down
I go down hard
And I take everything I've learned
And teach myself some disregard
When I go down
It hurts to hit the bottom
And of the things that got me there
I think, if only I had fought them

...

When I go down
I lift my eyes to You
I won't look very far
Cause You'll be there
With open arms
To lift me up again
To lift me up again

Or, as Derek Webb sang it, We come broken/And we come undone//We come trying hard to love everyone//We come up short/In all that we do//But through it all, we come to You.

Singing Words

I take a blue sharpie pen and ink words onto my arm.

Send me to the edge of the earth

Show me what a life is worth

Words from Jars of Clay's song Call My Name that have caught at my heart this semester. I don't know what a life is worth, don't know how to value a life, a person, as I should. It's awfully easy to become callous to the hum of life that's around me all the time, because I have other things to think about, like grades and the summer and Dagorhir and sleeping.

And am I my brother's keeper?

But he's still missing and it's been more than a month.

So I wonder who it is my responsibility to be keeping and how much a life is worth. Jesus saved me at the cost of His own life.

Sometimes I'm haunted by what the Newsboys say in Elle G

Silence all, nobody breathe

How in the world could you just leave?

You promised you would

Silence that evil with good...

Maybe this world is a barren place

For a soul prone to get lost

But heaven still hounds from the smallest sounds

To the cries of the storm-tossed...

Every old demon

Playing back a crime

If they'd needed blood, I'd've gladly given mine...

But my blood can't even save myself, much less anyone else. Sometimes it's hard to remember to run to Him instead, and to sing the last part of the song.

Silence all, now go to sleep

The water is free, the well is deep

How can we return

That which we never could earn?

...We haven't a hope

Beyond Your grace

I know that You will

Overcome evil

For good.

I like how we've been ending our singing at Titus's this semester, with words from Psalm 3.

You are my shield and glory, Lord

You are the one who lifts my head

I cried out Lord! and answer came

Yes, from His holy hill it sped.

Blogging

I'm in a class about CS Lewis (well, and his writings) this semester, which is pretty awesome.

So I was reading for Monday, an essay by Lewis called Christianity and Literature, and came across this quote. It's the kind of thing that challenges me to actually think about what I'm posting, so I thought I'd share it.

He's talking about writing, although it can apply to a lot of things, such as storytelling, as well.

The unbeliever may take his own temperament and experience, just as they happen to stand, and consider them worth communicating simply because they are facts or, worse still, because they are his.

Lewis goes on to make the point that for Christians, we should seek to communicate our experiences in a way that connects to something bigger than ourselves, because our purpose is not to be self-absorbed.

Anyway. Ouch. How often do I blog about, or talk about, something just because it happened to me? It's an uncomfortably large amount of time. Twitter and facebook do nothing to help that human bent toward self-centeredness.

Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth;

keep watch over the door of my lips!

(Psalm 141:3)

Hope

I finished the third book in Lawhead's Song of Albion cycle today. Here's my favorite line:

Neither woman cried out, but both stood gripping the bars of their prisons and watching us with the astonished yet fearful expressions of captives who have long ago abandoned hope of release, only to learn that hope has not abandoned them.

They only get to this rescue after a lot of awful time wandering around in enchanted country, fighting their ways through nightmares, and a lot of giving of lives.

But they didn't abandon the women.

I was very glad. It's a good picture of what Jesus did for His people. It's not that we were out looking for Him.

He came anyway.

Airport Living

We were talking about dying in Sunday school the other day, how it is sometimes difficult to strike a balance between living in the moment and not getting tangled up tight in clinging to the life we have now.

It's like an airport.

I'd be foolish to try to skip going through the airport if I was planning to fly somewhere, and while I'm in there, I need to be properly engaged -- going through security, presenting my ticket, getting on the proper plane.

But I'd be no less foolish to buy lumber and furniture and begin constructing a house in the middle of the waiting area. That's not what the airport is for.

It's for going through.

And then going on.