Valentines?

This is something I wrote in November of 2009:

If you listen to the words of Bon Iver’s song flume - he says

“Only love is all maroon,

lapping lakes like leery loons”

and Everyone has a different opinion of what this obscure lyric means, I’m sure to a lot of people it just looks like a piece of trying to be individual emotional angst, but whatever. why does music ever deserve to be depreciated when made fair, as in, created by someone who felt it, so what if its emotional, its supposed to be. to me I see this as maroon being that color- when you visualize - so rich and passionate yet such a harsh painful color at the same time, almost like a blur of equally characterized opposites, for instance when you’re in love without conditions and are struggling to do everything you can without considering yourself at all. the weight of passion included in realizing how selfish your akin to be and how not youre trying to become for another, and at the same time the fervor you put into it, the time you spend without expecting anything in return and with no idea in mind of any distant focal point to aim for. Only love is that way, however painful it might be.

and a loon, as I’m told is the state bird of Minnesota which happens to be a very eery unexpected and mysterious kind of a creature that delves into water and comes up hundreds of feet away, just the imagery of this is amazing. those two vastly different lines i think come together to maybe tell of unexpectancies, of ourselves, of our ambition, of love itself. what we put in is what we wish to receive in return at most times, whether subconsciously or consciously, but in the end we get way more than we sought, by growth. its when people show for us nothing in return when they had the same advantage that we start feeling used, but why do we feel used.


---

I find my thoughts really similar now to the thought process I seem to have had then, only then I think I was just beginning to grasp it, almost as if I knew its what I should have been thinking but I didn't know why. Now I know why and I don't at times know how to explain it.

Today is valentines day. What does that even mean. I just know that there is this deep, shape within me forming steadily and the only description I give it is the reason for waking up every morning, I guess one might call that love. So naturally a holiday to celebrate it (even if the holiday may trivialize it with tons of sweets and material things, expectations etc) to get back to the meaning of why the day was created- to celebrate love, I can only have a fondness for it.

In his book "the five love languages" Gary Chapman talks about how people receive love in so many different ways, and he narrows those ways down to five basic concepts:

He says to really administer love, you truly have to see the way a person them self would want to be love, and love them in that way. Not in a way most convenient for you. However simple this may seem, I've been entertaining this principle in my head for the last year it seems, looking at people as if they truly want to be known, which I believe they do. It's amazing how much we expect others to peer into our own lives and see, but we will not do the same for them, and we especially won't do it if we're not receiving some sort of gratitude or reaction of love.

But really, true love is exhausting. You know why? because it's love, it's not two people holding the ends of a cloth smoothly drawing near to each other. If that were truly the case, love would look something more like tug of war, someone is always providing more for the other, someone is always hurt unintentionally, and someone seems to always feel misunderstood or passed over. This imperfect pull between two [likely to be selfish at times] individuals can only be perfected with a certain kind of mercy.

Instead of refusing to bend over backwards for someone, you do because you love them. In fact, those words are not even considered; it is not "bending over backwards" its humbling yourself.

Instead of not being honest with someone because you know it would hurt them, you alter your language so that they would hear the truth lovingly, you speak in a way that the person can hear you, you love them in a way they wish to be loved.

I don't think a lot of people see how hard this is, it really is gut-wrenching. I'm sure there have been plenty of people who've experienced really liking someone without them knowing or feeling anything in return. There's an extent where to say too much would be overbearing, but to say too little would be passive. That fine line in the middle is what is difficult. We use persuasive and coercive language, even when we don't know we are, you've heard these words in movies and I'm sure even from other's mouths

"I need you"
"I want to be with you so badly"
" I want you to love me"
"I don't want to spend my life with anyone else but you."

In some sense of the word, some of these phrases could be taken sincerely, it feels good at times to think of someone saying this to you, or really being vulnerable with how they feel even if it may come off in a plea. But if this is how our language is presented, it may be translated as

"I need you to fulfill a part of me I don't have."
"I really hope that you'll want to be with me too"
"I have found something loveable in you, so I would like you to search for the loveable things in me, willingly or not"
"I've kept my options closed to you, you'll either hurt me by saying no, or make me the happiest person i'll ever be."

Perhaps some of these translations sound a bit harsh, or too direct for what the implied meanings are.....but I wonder if we were to look beneath the surface of our love, would we see the person more clear? or would we see ourselves? Would we see someone who we have a devout appreciation for outside of who they are to us, or would we see someone who we wish to conform to the likes of a relationship just to be with them?

I don't have to make this personal to see that I myself a lot of the times resort to someone who brings out the best in me, who sees me for who i am and understands me. Who wants to help me grow and desires progress. But if thats truly who I want, I might as well carve a sculpture with my own hands and make it hold a recorder saying all of the things I know would cultivate a seemingly good relationship.

Love doesn't seem to be like this, love accepts that even though we don't wish to say some of those things up there, sometimes thats just inevitably what we feel. Sometimes we are selfish, sometimes we are needy, sometimes we don't want to give love, we just want to feel it.

I'm saying this because I feel that the love between humans is incomplete, it cannot sustain us or ever make us feel warranted enough, there will always be something we require that another person will not be able to give us. This is not a reason to settle, nor to request something out of a person which they cannot provide. The only person that can provide that sort of love is the author of it, the only one that knows your whole heart is the one that made it. In light of that love, true love can be met with reasonable expectations, and not expectations that only the Lord may fulfill.

And when we know our needs our met, we will then change the word need to appreciation. Because there will be nothing else we require, there will only be gifts we receive.

Paul in Romans 9 says he would hand over his own soul to damnation and hell in order that the people he was ministering to would see the Lord. This is love. Paul wasn't trying to say he loved people over the Lord, no. Not at all. He was saying He knew the Lord's love to be truest of all, and if more people could see what he had already experienced in his lifetime, he would willfully confront the agony of Hell. Love when it is known, when it is true, when it is perfect, will do this.

In light of valentines day then, i hope you see the love the Lord provides;
you don't have to be qualified to love someone, you'll never be qualified enough, and a person who knows Christ's love will see that, and be able to love you anyway

you know your own weakness better than anyone, don't wait for someone to tell you before you change it, change it willfully. Change comes from who you are in relation to what you are.

People watch and observe you more than you know. This can be appreciated.

You may not be worthy of love at times, but the truth is, You are loved anyway.




in sincerity, in trying to display the gift of love God Himself gave me first,
Emily

On faces.

Happy:


Mysterious?


Pirate with hyperglycemia:


British man trying to cover a burp:


....What?


I don't even know


Would you look at that!


universal expansion:


Yeah, I getcha!


I've completely neglected the whole of my being:


Can't contain my excitement so much that I swallow monitors whole:


3rd grade photo smiles


after philosophy homework:


recognized someones looking at my "after philosophy homework " face in the midst of doing the "after philosophy homework face"

Everything I believed was a lie (or so I'm arriving)

proudly arriving at the enlightenment around my senior year in high school, at the eave of my boyfriend breaking up with me in the all of a sudden rupture to the 'I thought we were going to be significant' type of entitlement, in and the vacancy of misinterpreted reality where I thought life although couldn't be planned, had back allies and ways of short cutting to the good stuff..I arrived at the vision that I didn't need him, or anyone for that matter. That I was just dependent on him for a love I didn't have in myself. I was insecure, I was unsure, I was in high school. I was convinced that God had different plans for me, and I was too inept to see them and focused my plans on him instead. So, for the next two years of college I focused on the prime care-taker of all these future plans, the master of the show; me. Although I dated, I never really put my whole heart into anything or anyone for that matter, I'm sure all of them can tell you that and in reality I realize it was selfish, but the whole time it wasn't for my gratification, it was to make them happy because they seemed so sure about something I was just waiting to be sure about.

It was at this point it dawned on me, you need to love yourself before you love someone else, otherwise you will require in them a need for something you don't have. The phrase "you complete me" really did me in, I really hated it. I thought "I am whole, I don't need anyone else to complete me. I have God, I don't need anyone else."

but it wasn't until literally the past few days when I realized that there is something skewed about this whole proposition. the whole "I have to love myself before I love someone else, I have to focus on me before I can take care of someone else, I have to finish my plans before I involve anyone else." Who gave us that authority, and why do we deserve it? I realized as much time as I've spent trying to clear my head, as much time as I've spent single (4 years now, with no consistent boyfriend and only dates, my last one being a year prior to this post -) I've only concluded that I don't like myself any more or any less, I don't find myself more beautiful, more appealing, more intelligent, more confident than before, I only find that I understand myself more, and in a sense, that's not always a safe thing. The more people invest in themselves, the more they expect out of others and the more they look at themselves as worthy, the more they won't stand for anyone who treats them differently. This is the lie I've been believing.

I think I should start from the beginning (where all things appropriately stem), I am absolutely nothing. I have no credence, or mind or ability to create the things on this earth nor the capacity for Him who created me. Without God, without Jesus, I'm nothing. But He makes me something. That is something I can boast in, I cannot be confident in myself, but I can be confident in what He can do through me. I think I could stand to be a little more insecure, at least it would constantly put me in touch with reality. I have a lot of problems with my appearance, but at surface value, I only do because I believe I'm something better, that I don't deserve to have things wrong with me. When in actuality, I am not the author of what I do and do not deserve, for all of the sin that we as a human race have done, that I myself have done, I don't deserve to have anyone look at me at all. This isn't an unhealthy dwelling on my flaws, its realizing that I always fall short of God's glory and the humanity in that is what makes Him praiseworthy, that there is always something He can help me with. Right now, it is caring for others. Because with this lie, the past four years of my life has been devoted to seeking out my identity, wondering who I am, where I want to go, preparing myself as it were, (all the while thinking, this will humbly show the man I'm supposed to be with that I did all of this for him, and truly improved myself for him).
In some sense, this is true, if you don't consider yourself of any worth and try to look for it in another person, then obviously you will never find it and you will remain hopeless and waiting for the next distraction. But I'm not saying to remain insecure and find your worth in someone else, nor am I saying be independent and find that you have all you need by yourself. Instead, I think to really, truly love someone you don't look at yourself at all, rather you look at God, and that He can, and does fulfill every part of you that you'll ever need, so everything else is a gift.
before, everything else was still a gift to me in the mindset of being independent, I relied on God for everything I need and everything else I received as a portion of grace, in actuality I think what I was doing was relying solely on myself for everything I need and developing requirements for those portions of grace based on what I felt I deserved. God was no longer something I needed.
This is so easy what that phrase "I need to love myself" can turn into so fast. Do we realize that we expect the same out of people that we don't give ourselves? 9 times out of ten, I'll hear someone say "I just wish he/she did this more" when they themselves haven't done it once, If I was in a relationship I'm sure I would do the same.
In the bigger picture, I think we find weakness in others from that which we see as advancements in ourselves. If we think we're strong and independent, its easy to spot out those who are co-dependent and frail, if we have patient attributes, we see impatience so easily in others. In truth, we're administering those weaknesses we think we don't have by pointing them out.
What i'm trying to say I guess is, we're never going to love ourselves enough, and if we do, we love ourselves too much and need to hold off. The more we love ourselves, the less we look at God, the more we can distinguish our qualities, the less likely we wil refer to them as God's glory shining through us, being the sole provider for why those qualities even exist. And the more we focus on ourselves, simply, the less we focus on others. When this happens, we will never be satisfied with what one can give us and we'll always be looking for them to do more and more. We'll never think that someone can love us fully because we love ourselves so much that no one can ever prove to us the love we have set aside as sacred for ourselves. When you spend so much time thinking of your capacity for love, no one. No one will ever be able to meet it, and the more they try, the more you are disappointed. Nothing will be taken as an act of pure unconditional love because love is a point that gets acrossed and nothing merciful, love is treated as an exchange principle, you give me some, I'll give you some, but those two lines are conditional upon each other.
If everyone were to find their hope, their need, their ability to sin, their weakness, their hatred of being proven wrong, their reverence, their gratitude, their seething through getting over things so they can move on to the next level through God, they would find that only He is able to help and guide and nourish and offer the medicine for curing the things we simply can't do on our own but try so hard and convince ourselves its working. It's not. We don't have to love ourselves first. We have to love God first. It says In the beginning, GOD. Not in the beginning, I.
I am just ready to actually start caring for people. In spite of that I've wasted so much time thinking I'd care for them more if I cared for myself. If I have love granted to me by the giver and maker of love, I think I'll be able to care just fine inspite of the self that tries to be an in-between.

The God I believe in

The God I believe in gave the first words for truth,
making the word "faith" only arise in what was left.
He gave me history, love and confidence in trust while at the same time
humbles me in his willingness to let me act freely,
and He intervenes without provoking those who refuse to look His way.
This God I believe by prayer makes my words genuine in request, and enlightened at real pursuit.
He responds to whats needed, and lets me see what I was convinced was, was not.
He shows me I'm not Him, and I can't profess Him to others like I am.
He lets me know He's real, and for everyone spending their life trying to find the truth,
Hoping the contradictions of life will be overlooked and their ideas of it more convincing, He shows me the weight of glory.
The consequences of my ideas, the echo of what would happen if my selfish pursuits would determine all of my actions.
He lets me see his absolute character, and that everything relative, is relative to an absolute.
He shows me purpose, and for the present, he shows me meaning for that purpose.
He shows me those who have spent their lives studying theology, philosophy, history, scientific and archeological research havve all arrived at the same conclusion,
That, in the quiet of their own homes, they all whisper the same word derriving an individual reciprocity of what it means to feel: Hallelujah. The only thing I am thoroughly convinced of, is that Jesus is Lord,
and He, is so good.

June 25

I realized tonight a very thought provoking thing. There is no one on this earth who knows me, truly knows me. My mom knows probably the most, and thats a very small portion of what I choose to tell her. But when I think of how much information they know about me, they could probably tell you what i look like and where i go to school and what my major is, what my interests usually are, what i've previously thought and what they've heard about me from time to time. But I know in my mind there are things they just simply do not know, either because they haven't asked or I havent told. Its such a weird feeling to realize the closest people in your life haven't the slightest clue what you may be on to next. This isn't to say I feel distant in a way, it just feels very lonely to realize, that I may have done this all to myself. I feel very loved by my mom, and my dad and my family most of the time, I feel loved by a few of my friends as well, enough that they've either let me be or didn't press any further when there was an issue I didn't want to share with them. I went to a conference this past week for one of the most amazing influential persons in my whole life, and only one person has asked how it went, and I wouldn't consider that person as close as those who im referring to when i write this. I just feel like I've done this to myself, and I can't get out of it soon enough. Everyone I know, I know so much about, I could probably tell you what they are feeling or doing on any given day, but I've refused to share anything that might hold them accountable to knowing a diary version of me. I feel as though theres somethign sacred in that, that when I die it won't all be clear what happened in my life, just that I was alive. Everyone will have a piece to share that aligns in an honest way, but there will be so many gaps where people just have to trust I carried on doing what I was meant to. It's such a weird way of even writing this, to suggest that I want someone to know this aspect about me, I don't. Right now I'm just addressing it as a weakness. I really would like for this aspect of myself to be gone. The saying goes, if you gain the whole world but lose your soul, what is your worth, but can you just lose your soul? Can you just not gain anything inspite of yourself and distract yourself involving yourself in other peoples lives so you care so much about them that your soul seems unexistent? I'm getting to the point in my own mind where I can't even cry anymore, and thats just begun to worry me, the last time I cried was a near-cry, and it was over having so many things to do during the school year that I couldn't even process normally, I couldn't even create normal thoughts, I was worried I was going mad, and I was dreading what would happen next if it continued. That was the last time, before that I can't remember, and I certainly can't imagine it happening now. I rationalize everything, to the point where I don't get sad anymore, I just get angry, i just have torment that Its so easy for me to put others in front of me, and I expect them to act exactly the same way. I can't believe how much in my lifetime I've heard people say "Well I'm sorry, I'm not you." I've never really let that register. its almost as if I can't give an excuse for other people acting so selfishly, but really they are just looking out for themselves in a healthy way. I'm the one that's not. I can't fathom telling someone about who I am, it just makes me frustrated that I have to tell someone, I'm afriad I'll be dishonest even when I don't intend to. I'm just afriad that slowly, steadily, how my life has been so far, I will continue to slowly push everyone away. I have been doing that since I was in elementary school. I'll transition so easily that people will blame it on time's changing, on people moving in different directions,..but that's not it, its my heart distancing itself before I have time to physically react. It's almost like I have faith in people, and then realize that was a loss because we're all inherently weak, and then I have even more faith in them, and then they don't have faith in themselves, and then I give up and go. All the while, they know nothing about this care, or this thought process moving over their situation and discerning the depths of their heart. They just know that I was there once, and I'm not anymore. When it comes to believeing in God, it seems hard for everyone else, but for me, it's almost a sin how easy it is. Whatever it is that takes the focus off of me, whatever can not illuminate my attributes and His only, that's but a blessing. If the only focus is humility and giving up the parts of me that don't belong, I consider it joy to be replaced with God. He made me to be noticed, though. And I feel as though I'm almost taking away from Him, by replacing myself, as in, I'm His creation for HIm to work through, not for me to expect Him to work through me, without me.

I don't want to be found by anyone but you,
if I want you to find me, I'll search for you
but even then, I'll run

We believe everything is okay, as long as you don’t hurt anyone to the best of your definition of hurt and to your best definition of knowledge. We believe in the therapy of sin. We believe that adultery is fun. We believe that taboos are taboo. We believe that everything is getting better despite evidence to the contrary. The evidence must be investigated and you can prove anything with evidence. Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammad and ourselves. He was a good moral teacher, although we think basically his good morals were really bad. We believe that all religions are the basically the same, at least the ones we read were. They all believe in love and goodness. They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God and salvation. We believe that after death comes nothing because when you ask the dead what happens they say nothing. If death is not the end, and if the dead have lied, then it’s compulsively heaven for all except perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Chingis Khan. What is selected is average, what’s average is normal, and what’s normal is good. We believe in total disarmament. We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed. Americans should beat their guns into tractors and the Russians would be sure to follow. We believe that man is essentially good-it’s only his behavior that lets him down. This is the fault of society; society’s the fault of condition; and conditions are the fault of society. We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him and reality will adapt accordingly; the universe will readjust and history will alter. We believe that there is no absolute truth, except the truth that there is no absolute truth. We believe in the rejection of creeds and the flowering of individual thought.

If Chance be the Father of all flesh, disaster is His rainbow in the sky. And when you hear: “State of Emergency,” “Sniper Kills Ten,” “Troops on Rampage,” “Youths go Looting,” “Bomb Blasts School,” it is but the sound man worshipping his maker.
Modern Thinkers Creed –Steve Turner (edited