Ryan.

Sitting across from Ryan in Starbucks last month was a crazy, almost remarkable experience. Ryan has been my manager for the entire time I've been at Chick-fil-A. I started out there having a small respect-crush on Ryan. You know those weird crushes? They're not romantic. They're just like, "I wanna be you. Teach me your ways senpai."

But it took me two months until I basically detested working with Ryan. He just had perfect hair. Perfect smile. Perfect face. Perfect personality. He overshadowed me and I thought he wanted me to be more like him. Ryan said lots of things to me, but I always felt like I heard "git guhd." I thought I would be happy whenever the time came for Ryan to quit. And yet Ryan stuck around.

The rumor was December. Then spring. Chick-fil-A tabloids were buzzing with conjectures on the departure of our senior manager. And while the months passed, I kind of realized that the date when Ryan would leave was inevitably closer. I quite wanted to like him. I really wanted to see him as a human being, and not a rigid, smiling conglomeration of Monster, hair gel, impeccable customer service, and endless energy.

And when I started looking for reasons to appreciate Ryan, I confronted the realization that his leaving wouldn't make me happy. It didn't. He quit mid-August; we organized a small pizza and ice cream party at midnight one night. I wrote him a letter, emotionally confessing my selfishness in equating his presence with my unhappiness. Thanking him for being the uncle/big-brother figure he had been for all of us, despite our (my) obstinate personality barriers.

Sam and I had the chance to have coffee with him that week too. I loved that. Outside of work, Ryan was even more of a friend than a mentor figure. He wasn't doped up on four Monsters. He wasn't in a button-up and tie. He didn't have a clipboard and pen in front of him. He didn't have eleven employees and young women and angry customers all clamoring for his attention. He was human, in jeans and sharing his dreams, heartaches, wistful hopes.

Ryan told us all about his future plans, heard ours', and then we tossed around ideas. Ryan glowed with anticipation of the next steps in his life. Camping on the beach, living in NYC, starting a graphic design business, finding a wife, pursuing everything he loves and has been called to do. His smile was infectious. Wonder and joy flickered across his face as frequently as every blink. It was contagious.

Whenever you see something that's changing someone's life, you have to ask yourself how it could change yours'.

And today I asked myself what more I needed to be happy. I moved out; and having all that adult freedom has not made me happy. I looked at my budgeting app and saw the record of all the things I’ve bought this year that I thought would make me happier. Not consciously, but sometimes we buy things and are like "Yeah. This thing will render a new and improved me." I guess I think that whenever I depart from Trader Joe's with four or five bags of sheer joy. But I don't know. Sometimes I still sit in my room and listen to quiet music and feel meh. Sipping my Trader Joe's incredible chai, no doubt, but even things that make life better don't make it happy.

Yeah. That's it. There's never enough "better" to get you to "happy".

And I think that's the mistake we make. Thinking that there's enough stuff to make us feel better, and that if we have enough of it, we'll reach happy. How can things have so much meaning, so much happy potential, before we have them? And yet once we acquire them, they lose their glow. It's that age-old quip "you never know what you have until it's gone", but why is that?

I think people get accustomed to the luxuries they have and consider themselves entitled to them. They lose their appreciation and wonder for the beautiful things they have, and they think themselves as possessors - rather than receivers - of things. Actually, maybe people begin to value things instead of their Savior. Instead of people. Instead of life, and blessings, and hope. They start to value things, and themselves.

That's what I've done, and that's what made me lose happiness. Caring about all the things I don't have, enjoying the future I don't yet know.  It starts to hurt. And we do it to ourselves.

But from this moment forward, just enjoy the moment. Enjoy the people, the buzzing of life's glory and hope, the sweet peace of a present and sovereign savior. Love it and pour yourself into it recklessly, and don't hold back anymore. I'm tired of holding back and overthinking and being bitter. And waiting for better times to make me happier. But nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, and in that we dwell: joyful, hopeful, content.

It's the most beautiful, promising, purpose-dripping life we could ever know. It's a life drenched in passion and joy. And we won't ever live in wonder aside from that.

_

For Sam.

He's probably going to kill me for singling him out like this. Or maybe not. If someone categorized the two of us by writing styles, my worldview is from a third-person perspective and his is first-person. I am more big picture. Feeling things on behalf of humanity as a whole. Understanding the weight of something when it impacts all of us. Studying people in general, being fascinated by the traits we share in mass. Figuring out how we interact with each other as a whole. I bring things back home by analyzing my feelings as an observer of myself. I am an observer. Sam is an experiencer.

He takes in life by gulps. It's all happening to him. Not humanity. He hones in on his sphere of influence, and he experiences it. He's a protagonist and his own antagonist. He experiences conflict, emotion, love, and change very personally. But he doesn't dwell on it, seeking to understand every tiny thread. He's a protagonist. He's a hero. He moves quickly, he experiences, and he moves forward again. He's slipping around the corners of his life with an open heart and a mind ready to experience everything on a first-person basis.

He's the hero observers like to write about.

St. Paul, Minnesota: Nationals week. Sam came with us just to be moral support and a hug-buddy for his best friend and me. That was the best. I loved having him there, and I loved experiencing an awesome new part of the country with him. My soul soared.

But as the week went on, conflict started scratching at the edges of our solace. And neither of us were really sure what was going on. One of those fights that's not really a "fight", per se. You don't speak crossly. You don't make ultimatums. Nothing harsh is exchanged. There's no spoken clash. Only a growing cold indifference.

It culminated on the last day. I left TP finals early to seek some time alone. Time away to think, to gulp in silence, to ponder, to understand, to reconcile. I got some ice cream and went to sit alone by the lake at the university. I felt like an emotional rock. Stony. Grey. Indifferent. Resolved, but offering no resolution to our relationship. And that sucked. I wasn't quite sure where to go from there.

And to be quite vulnerable, I was relieved when he texted me. Asking if he could come meet me, saying we had opened the doors of conflict together and should shut them together. He told me how he felt. I listened, analyzed, and thought. I understood, but I contributed nothing. And that was driving him crazy. For an experiencer, watching an observer observe things isn't very telling. It fails to allude to what's going on in the soul. He repeatedly asked me what I had to say about all this. But I didn't really know. For me, understanding is power. The second I understand a situation, that's the moment I have a grasp on it. And I didn't really understand myself enough yet to talk about it.

I didn't understand so I said nothing. My soul wasn't satisfied, so I refused to soften his.

He wept. He prayed over us for several minutes and then cried. It startled me and broke my heart: at least a thousand emotions caught up and churning between my mind and my heart. I've never cried in front of him. I cried over the phone once. But I've never even let that outward display of emotion be his. I've always been scared of how he'd react to it. Scared that it either wouldn't be appreciated or scared that it would be, and that I would feel weak.

I learned a lot about myself just watching him cry.

And then the understanding came in torrents. I saw some fundamental differences that had been causing conflict this whole time. I saw what he didn't understand about me, and I saw what I had never noticed about him. I saw the grace and the forgiveness that we both hadn't grasped. I realized that he was an extraordinary person, and that I was too. And that we were fundamentally different, but that every experiencer needs an observer, and every observer needs an experiencer. I saw him as a protagonist for his own story, not an antagonist of mine. I understood the differences and no longer felt affronted by them.

Deep down, once he understood them, I think Sam no longer felt threatened by our differences either. That's because understanding is power. "Knowledge is power"? Knowledge is worthless if you don't understand it. That moment where we were both so emotionally handicapped - one weeping, one stone cold - became one of the most pivotal in our relationship. Suddenly, we didn't just know a lot about each other. We understood each other. And that opened our hearts.

So this is for you, Sam. Hence the title. Derp. Thank you for pursuing me, for chasing me, and chasing the understanding of me. Thank you for loving me for the person I am, fundamental flaws and differences alike. Thank you for being a hero, and for not changing that about yourself, and having a heart that is so vast and so open to understanding and loving to new depths. An open mind is only as good as an open heart, and your heart's response to knowledge is cherishable. Thank for seeking God, and for seeking God with me. Thank you for seeking truth. And wanting to embody truth. And for all the times you've been truth to me.

"You are an extraordinarily and spectacularly flawed human being, and I love ya." -Sam, 09-02-14.

^Back atcha.

_

Letter #5: Words.

Dear you,

“Every single day that passes by is making me more dishonest. There’s too much I make up as soon as I wake up; too much I make up for me. But I’ve decided to keep you out of all the lies, and see you the way you are.”       -Magic Man lyrics

I’m so good with words and yet such an amateur. I know what words are supposed to do. What they can mean to people. What any given string of words could do for someone’s soul. I’ve learned how to make words stick. I’ve learned how to create what people will remember.

But I haven’t learned how to verbalize the things I want to say the most. And it’s not because I’m unwilling. I don’t know how. And what good is it to say “I can’t put it into words” when words are all we have?

In a way, it’s always been fear. That sensation that drives me to grip my deepest emotions tightly, lest the masses grapple and trample them. Expressing myself feels like scattering pieces of my heart. It leaves me feeling worn. Devalued. Frayed.  Laying a soul bare is risky business.

Some people would call that introversion. But to me, it feels like lying. It feels like failure. Hiding the truth because of fear. That’s lying, right? And lying – hiding – is the most soul-shattering failure I’ve ever known. It binds you. It ties you down to who you don’t want to be.

That’s where you come in. I’ve never felt the pressure to be self-protective around you. Since day one, you’ve been a deposit box, and to life-changing degrees. Yeah. You’ve changed my life. With you, I’ve never dolled up my soul; I’ve never idealized yours’. We’ve just kind of been gruesomely honest, and without pressure to struggle less painfully. And I mean, every conversation hasn’t been like that. In fact, you’re usually pretty chill.

But I’m not saying that there haven’t been 4:30 AM mornings where I’ve just emptied out my soul to you. The parts that I can’t put into writing. The insecurities that even my own mother sneers at. The fears that I will never get over. The scars that I didn’t know were there, until too late. And you know what? I’ve been able to continue struggling through those things with you. Together shouldering burdens. I’m always eager to learn and analyze people's souls, putting others' pain into psychological terms sometimes. Oversimplifying them, too. And I don’t know, sometimes I feel like a huge jerk because of that. Meanwhile, you’ve never labeled me. You’ve never pressured me. You’ve known me, loved me, and grown me sheerly as a companion. And for that I’ve been so, so grateful.

When other people see that something is wrong with you, they feel responsible for fixing you. As if they could come up with a solution. You’ve never done that to me. You’ve listened to what I have to say, in all its incoherency and rubbish. And then you’ve gently loved who I am anyway, providing endless valuable perspective along the way. I wouldn't know what that looked like without you. I didn’t know what it felt like to love somebody so powerfully just for who they are, and nothing else. I didn’t know that I’d just accept you as you were, and find that returned 1000x.

I can’t get over how much I’ve seen from knowing you, the beauty you offer this world, and the depth you brought to my heart. Cheers to you, showing me hope, transparency, and depth. I love you a lot. That’s the best way to put it.

I would word it better, but I can’t really put it into words. Stinks, considering words are all we have.

__

Letter #4: Now

“When you’re living through someone else’s soul, you learn to love who you are with.”

-Paradise Fears lyrics

Dear you,

When I look at you, I can see it in your eyes, your expression, feel it in your words. The sensation of being trapped, stuck in a rut, a square peg in a round hole. Yearning for the promises of the future; feeling the pangs of an inadequate present. Ready to move on. Ready for anything but here.

And my heart goes out to you with cavernous empathy. It’s because I understand you. So many similarities, you and me: so much in common, so much I’ve taken for granted all this time. So much to love, and so much I could’ve been learning from you. Hindsight offers up the regret of not ever looking at life through the lens of your soul. When we fail to do that, we fail to appreciate each other for who we are. We fail to love who we are with.

That concept, of loving who you’re with. Expanding the walls of your heart for one more raw, naked, human soul. Learning to appreciate someone for their value as a human being, not simply what they offer you. That’s a concept I’ve only recently come to realize.

We tend to shift focuses towards the oncoming rather than the at hand. I do that so often. And yet there’s so much to love, so much to savor. It’s such a waste, that every memory of time spent with those I love is tainted by a focus on the future rather than the present.

Idealizing what will be; taking for granted what is.

                                                       

Walking through IKEA, him reading books to me in Swedish, finding out we have the same taste in interior design. Glowing with the anticipation of someday building a house together. Finding joy in the future; cheapening the vibrant joy of memories currently being made.

Discussing graduation with my mother, realizing that I’d be done with my credits sooner than expected. Wanting to graduate early. Her vehement refusal. The heated words, the bitter hearts, the broken relationship. Seeing so much hope in the nearing future that the present seemed devoid of blessings.

Sitting on a bench in the hallway of Anderson University, tired from a long week, soaked from the wintry rain. Recoiling from the outside world together. Needing the solitude and peace of each other’s company, needing to compensate for the meaningless social interactions of our everyday life. My head resting on the wall behind me, drifting in and out of a hazy sleep; him reading Time Magazine noiselessly by my side. And his warm hug wakes me up.

“Why the hug?”

“I was reading about this old couple that got Alzheimer’s, and they forgot about each other. And I wanted to hug you while I could.”

I am not a master of loving who I’m with; seeing the good in what I have. But I do know that there’s such a joy in it. The most beautiful word is 'now'. There will be no joy in things to come if we don't love what we have. What will make it intrinsically better by that point? It'll become the present, just like everything else before it. Inadequate, taken for granted.

"And I wanted to hug you while I could.” This is when I learned to love who I am with. This is when I learned to savor the present, and stop taking it for granted. This is when I learned the futility of placing my joy in the future, what I don't have. This is when I learned to drink the blessings of what I'm given in the present, in the here and now.

For what it's worth, in the present, I have you. And I dearly love that. I dearly love you for who you are. Knowing you has taught me to love who I'm with and who I have. You make it easy. I'm glad for the here and now, because it's where you are.

_

Letter #3: The Letter W

"I'm writing you guys a letter on my blog."
"Really? That's nice of you. Write 'w'. I really like the letter w."
_

Here it is. Letter #3. It's not just "w", but to keep from disappointing, I'll try to incorporate it as much as I can.

You both are tenderly dear to my heart. Never have I loved and appreciated a set of adults as if they were my own parents. Until I knew you two. You've slowly weaved yourselves into the tapestry of my heart, causing me to see evidence of your influence scattered all throughout my life.

If we're honest, it's more than just influence. You've changed just about everything.

Meeting you has brightened my skies and warmed my heart. Your love for each other isn't like anything I've ever seen. It's a friendship founded on a hope and an understanding that plainly is sourced by walking with Christ. Your intimacy with Him radiates acutely. It's sloshed over into my life and has softened my heart. Knowing you has refocused my spirit on lovelier things.

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."

When I think of you, I think of that verse. Knowing you has taught me to dwell on those things. You've taken the time to inject truth into my life, and it's shattered a lot of lies. I've seen you value the just instead of accepting the easy norms of injustice. It has inspired me. Your emphasis on a pure, unclouded, grace-filled worldview has entirely reshaped mine. And the joy you both find in valuing lovely things has opened my eyes to them. By the way you handle yourselves, I've learned to thank God for the commendable things in any circumstance. I've seen you look for the excellence, the praiseworthy facets of whatever you're facing. Even by simply experiencing the way you live, I have found that the lenses of my worldview have been wiped of any sordid remains of hopelessness.

I've learned a lot from you, but influence isn't derived from erudition. Your witness bears testimony not to a wealth of knowledge and experience, but to an intimate reliance on Christ. And I think it's safe to say that your knowledge and experience has been elicited by Christ's leading. He's drawn that out of you two, and he's implanted it into my heart. Focusing the lens further out, he placed you here, in my life. And the wisdom you have shared has been largely witnessed rather than taught. You've rarely directly instructed me. Your most potent teaching is just the way you live. Your example has evidenced Christ more than anything else. 

Nine months or so ago, I was unashamedly parsimonious with the currency of grace. Stingy to spend it, stingy to redeem it, afraid that I hadn't earned it. But then I saw you two, and the way you live. You live drenched in grace. Saved by grace, walking in grace, dispensing grace, with a mindset of grace. Seeing that has revolutionized my understanding of Christ, of love, of hope, of eternity. Thanks for being who you are, and most importantly, for being shaped by the grace of God.

I love you two dearly. I pray I get to experience God's hand alongside you both forever. It would bless my soul just as much as it already has. 

(Final "w" count of this letter: 56.)

_

Letter #2: A Twist in My Story

"This world doesn't matter to me; I'll give up all I have just to breathe the same air as you till the day that I die."    
-Secondhand Serenade lyrics

Dear you,

Eight months back. I was this wandering, restless kid in desperate need of some sort of direction. I hated commitment. I hated decisions. I was really pretty pathetic. I was unsure of my past; I was bolting from the present; I was paralyzed by the future. Guess you could say I was some skittish, hipster, seventeen-year-old who spent reality trying to get out of it.

And then there were your parents, seated in a little booth in the back corner, and I loved seeing them in the store every afternoon. The authenticity in your dad's smile, the wit in his jokes; the familiarity in your mom's manner, and the warmth they exuded. It was providence when I ran into them while eating Sunday lunch with my family. It was providence when my mother interviewed you at Chick-fil-A. It was providence when I got a phone call from my mother while I out of town, as she gushed about your family's solid theological foundation. And you. She gushed about you.

"And then they have a son, and he's seventeen, and he's so sarcastic. Like he's almost rude. You guys would get along great."

What can I say. She wasn't wrong.

Eight months forward, I'm right smack in the middle of the greatest adventure of my life. I've actually fallen in love. It's like a whole other world. And to a certain degree, of course it is. Within any person is an entire new world, with sights to see, a soul to learn, a mind to explore, a heart to love, a warm body to hold close. But with you, it's something else. You're a new world, and you're colliding with my world, and you're a twist in my story that I will never get over.

I know I don't say it much. But I really am utterly enamored with every part of you.

My only fear is that I will never have the capability to express the depths of it. I'm not used to loving something so much that I can't express it. And yet sometimes I pause and see something of inexpressible value standing before me. And it's you. And I never fail to be overwhelmed. I don't know how to communicate that, really. All I know is that I have the found the one that I was made to love. I am most conscious of that fact every time I'm with you.

You know what, I'm sorry to be this overflowing mess of a cheese fondue session here. I know it's pretty cheesy. But it's only cheesy if it's meaningless or ill-timed. And in this case, the brevity of life is enough to convince me that if I love you, I shouldn't wait to let you know.

It's sobering to realize that one day we'll be old. Our memories will fade. Our bodies will wither and our minds will disintegrate. Hopefully by that time, we'll be swept up with the nearness of eternity with our Maker and won't feel the pain of not remembering each other. But until then, I plan to soak up every moment with my best friend. Taking nothing for granted. Not taking you for granted, ever. Reminding you that even when I snap, even when I'm quiet: I don't want to go back to how it was without you, and I have not forgotten the infinite collection of things I love about you.

I love your cinematic memory. I love how you think, and the things you think about. I love your enormous capacity to love. I love how laid-back you are. I need that. I love how different you are from me, and yet how similar. I love how introspective you are, and how tolerant you are of my endless introspection. I love that you have the courage (or extroversion) to say what I'm only thinking. I love brainstorming with you. I love travelling with you. I love all the experiences we've known together, from our 18th birthdays to decorating downtown for Christmas to IKEA to seeing your face at the end of a 14-hour shift to- honestly, everything. I love just sitting beside you in silence, me working on my novel and you working on your wikipages and everything else under the sun.

With your twenty-seven tabs open.

I just love your companionship, in every way. I love knowing you, and that you have somehow chosen me as the one to know you, love you, and be your companion. I'll never get over the gravity of that, being chosen by you, everyday. I know it isn't a simple thing, to love a human being. But you're doing it, everyday, and I still haven't gotten over that.

I hope I never will.

_

Letter #1: Here We Are

"We'll hold up a light; burn a hole in the night: when we are here, in moments like this." 
-The Afters lyrics


Dear you,

Letter salutations are always funny. "Dear x", "My dear x", "Dearest x", etc. The funny thing is that each of those greeters are adjectives for you. You are dear to me. Actually, you are the dearest to me, and are the dearest thing I have: you're my dearest blessing.

Each blessing is equal in that they are all undeserved and measures of  God's grace. But if I had to relinquish everything I had, every other blessing I've been given, you would be the one thing I kept.

I've had you from the beginning. I've never gone through anything without having you by my side. In less generic terms, I've never gone through anything without sitting on the edge of your bunk-bed at 3 AM telling you about it. I've never had a fight with mom that you didn't hear about. I've never cared about something without pouring out my soul to you. We've braved a lot of storms: a lot of family fights, a lot of angry tears, a lot of hurt, a lot of shame, a lot of loss, a lot of confusion. A lot of things that detracted from what we thought we wanted.

But you and I have also been given so much. And I love you for never allowing me to stop realizing that. In the eye of each hurricane, you look out around us and figure out how we're going to get out. In the fog of every dark trial, you brave the nothingness and insist upon hope. There's a side to you that no one else has seen. It's the side that goes unnoticed when one hasn't lived with you for sixteen years, or shared the same bathtub toys, or lived each other's backstories. It's a side that is unappreciated when everyone else only knows you for your funky hair or jokes or punkish music. It's a side that I always forget to tell you I cherish.

In the worst of things, I've still always had you. And that sense of a bond and understanding has been enough to keep our hearts centered on the hope of possibilities, the fire of what's right, and the comfort of an authentic companion.

And the recipient of this letter is painfully obvious; I know. There's no other way for me to tell the world how meaningful you are to me without telling them the depth of our history. History means a lot to me; just having spanned a lot time with another human being creates an iron bond. And the sense of that bond has led to beautiful things in your case. Even the simple, "Hey Em, it won't always be like this" that you occasionally drop speak intensely to my heart. You can make me laugh; you can frustrate me beyond belief; you can move my heart to a depth of gratitude that I didn't know existed. You have never stopped giving of your heart to minister to me.

I don't know if its selflessness or immaturity. Either way, your elastic heart springs back and forth with empathy and ministry for the world around you. You're a leader, a missionary, a fighter, a protector.

And in the tenderest of ways, you have protected me. You have protected me from dismally discarding hope in darkness. So keep on blasting your Green Day and watching your Psych episodes. Keep on wearing your neon shirts and cheap aviators. Keep on styling your hair like Jimmy Neutron. Keep on with your innovative thought-processes. I'll love you for it and pick on you for it, but it never comes down to just that. It comes down to the instrument in God's hands that you are, and the mighty power with which he uses you. You're an inexpressibly amazing human being. I'll never get over what a thrill it's been to grow up next to you.

_

April Letter Project

Here we are again. A year ago, I used this blog to embark on a tangent dubbed the "April Letter Project". I found myself reflecting on the people I knew, and the extraordinary creatures they were. Actually, it was more than that. I found myself awed by the depth and intricacy of each human being. I had slipped into a nonchalant cynicism, and I used the April Letter Project to take a step back, wipe the canvas, and reevaluate God's masterpiece. Us.

I found that the people I knew - including all the scars, flaws, and fissures therein - were incredible, and I wanted to let them know.

As I wrote letters to anonymous recipients, my perspective did more than freshen. It changed. It blossomed into an immense appreciation, understanding, and gratefulness for the humans that were mine. I found that the April Letter Project made me realize how fleeting and precious life was. How it flew by; how meaningful it was, and how grossly we devalue it.

A year later, my life is radically different and I still know some radically beautiful people. I still find that I don't appreciate life or the people in it as much as I should. And again, I want to take a step back and take the time to appreciate the wholeness of what God has created and shown me. And thus the April Letter Project is once again a thing. The recipients will still be anonymous, and this blog will once again transform into a series of letters.

If this project accomplishes anything other than warming my own heart, I hope it gives you a glimpse into the splendor and depth of the human soul. I hope it enhances the overall, general appreciation of how vividly and meaningfully beautiful we truly are.

Because, ultimately, appreciating that all traces back to understanding the glory of God, and the hope that he plants in our souls. That's what I hope this project accomplishes. I hope it plants seeds of hope by showing the seeds of hope that He has already planted.

And so let it begin.

_

How Dare I.

A lot of retrospection ends in that simple phrase. "How dare I."

Today, the retrospection began with the phrase, "You're an introvert; you're predisposed to hating people." And, as scheduled, ended with the conclusion that I've been wrong enough to warrant a "how dare I".

I've been accused of selfishly hating humans in general quite a bit. Human and yet at odds with humanity, yep, that's me. Even this past week, it seems like everyone has noted how much I hate people and avoid them. And I think that accusation has happened partly due to a self-proclamation. In a lot of ways, I've freely admitted my distaste for humanity. The selfishness, the complexities, the intrusions, the complications, the things I can't change: sometimes people are just too much.

But what about the heightened sense of arrogance that is woven through that mindset? How dare I casually deem some of God's creation as undeserving of my time? How dare I only have understanding for myself? How dare I view people as worth God's time, yet not mine? To ignore treasured children of God because they frustrate me, to devalue the meaning that comes through the sanctity of life: that is the pinnacle of arrogance, and that has been me.

How dare I?

Especially when only a few things can be deemed as having sanctity. And "sanctity" itself is not a word like any other in the English language; its meaning is unique. It has no comparable synonyms. It means a pure, holy, and sacred recognition which would be wrong to dismantle. But I believe the ultimate definition of "sanctity" is "something explicitly blessed and willed by God." That is why a marriage of two believers is one of sanctity. Marriage is a union of two of God's creations, his children, breathed in his own image and likeness. And the love in it is one birthed by God and exemplified through Christ. In that is the sanctity of marriage. But the sanctity of human life is above that, even.

Human life is so indisputably sanctified because each one sees existence due to the will and purposes of God. And sure, so is everything else. But not everything willed by God is created in his image, created with capabilities of knowing and glorifying his character. That capability is specific to human life. Each human life is born with purpose, with a capacity for emotion, ministry, knowing and experiencing God, expanding their soul. Lives are not accidents. Humans are purposefully breathed into existence in the image of God. 

He creates, designs, and whispers exquisite purpose into each life.

That is why human life has sanctity, and that is why it is absurd, fleshly arrogance to devalue even a molecule of that.

_

Why I Write.

One-sentence summary of my blog: I write, I write a lot, and the reasons for which concern none. Yet why people do what they do is often an extraordinary study. It involves entirely unrelated variables in most cases.  

I never thought there was anything specific about my love of writing. But I guess there is. I like writing because it’s safe. It’s tangible; it’s here; it’s my creation; it’s a tiny piece of me in a safe spot. I can make that spot beautiful or gloomy, quiet or abuzz, easy or difficult. Whatever I want, I can create. Expressing tiny flecks is hard, because it’s the tiny flecks that get washed away the quickest. But writing about the tiny flecks is a different story. I cherish what I write. I hold it, I reread it, I perfect it, I analyze it. I observe intensely the tiny piece of me that I just unearthed. Writing makes the untouched parts of my soul tangible. I can see it and grasp it. The emotions flow through my fingers as I write them. I can define what I feel. I can give it a safe spot. Kinda like words are my best friends.

Writing is art. It's a particular construction of language, but it stems from individual perspective. Like other forms of art, you use the tools you have to piece together your masterpiece. There are so many words, and they are my paint, and my mind is the brush that applies them. It's an art form that is a definitive expression of me. It's self-serving to put it that way, sure, but self-expression is definitionally art. And vice versa. Writing is plaintively another art form, and the words we choose add color, breadth, and individuality to our work. Art is incredible because we choose the specific methodology of most accurately expressing ourselves. In shorter words, art is a form of catharsis.

I partly enjoy writing because of the art, the creative expression that it stems. It's the form of art that I am most adept at commanding. 

Yet further, I write because it's a deposit box. I have a purple notebook that has contained all of my thoughts, emotions, and rants over the past few years. The conglomeration of the now-filled pages represents a painting over time of who I am and have been. Art is self-expression, sure, but it is more so a haven for what you express. I could say this is the case simply because art is predictable. Unlike humans, art is safe. Depositing your thoughts into an art form means that they will be preserved purely as you intended them, rather than misconstrued by humanness. Depositing emotions into a human counterpart is more of a variable. It is worth it, but not nearly as risk-free. 

Art as a host of emotions is lovely, but the safety is still not its most beautiful trait. The perfect preservation of your emotions is what I love the most. When you deposit emotions into words, the preservation is flawless. The flecks of you remain unchanged. The wiggle-room for the misconstruction of your thoughts is minuscule. It stays there, preserved in all the lingual beauty that you have created. It is not morphed by time or weather; it remains as the words on the page, the words you breathed. It exists as exclusively the deposit box, and nothing less: built for the emotions that were poured into it. 

Writing is self-expression; it is art; it is safe; it's a preservative. But most specifically, it's an excavation. You start writing, and it unearths every part of you. It takes the thoughts, vast emotions, and undefined feelings and puts them into a tangible form. It's a definable expression of the human soul. That is the purpose of art; that is the purpose of writing; and it is why I write as furiously as I do.

And finally I suppose this culminates in a deserved tip of the hat to the one art-form I haven't yet mentioned. Loving another human being is also an art. And now my two most beloved art-forms have collided. I now pour my writings into the person that I love, depositing my emotions, thoughts, and feelings directly into him instead of my purple notebook. 

I've actually found that now I write less and less. Because I've taken the risk of pouring myself into a human, and this time, the deposits have been reciprocated. They have been cherished, and their reciprocations have been cherished by me. Writing is beautiful; it's a safe, preserving, expressive art. But so is loving. 

It's even more beautiful, challenging, and wholly sanctifying when a human becomes your deposit box.

_

Sometimes I Really Hate the Internet.

People hate it when bloggers use their blog to rant. But what makes a rant popular is when everybody can relate! So today I'm going to rant about how I love the internet, but hate when idiots misuse the internet. Relatable. Here we go.

Relevant: this is me lording over the internet.  >>>>>

The internet is basically synonymous with "the extent of Emily's social interaction" nowadays. I like to think of the internet as a large crowd, but one that I only am subjected to selectively. And for an introvert, that basically means that the internet is the bomb dot com. (get it)

But much like a large crowd, the internet is full of poopooheads. I hate it most when white girls take Bible verses and summarize them with some The Message concoction, and then act like they're directly quoting the Bible. 

THE BIBLE

NOT THE BIBLE

Forrealzies. Call me a highbrow, orthodox, Bible-enthusiast, but...actually don't. Because it's not true. I just like it when people quote the Word of God, y'know, accurately. I like it when people don't use the internet to propagate self-help ideologies and then slap a Bible reference on it. It's wrong. It's stupid. It's the antithesis of intelligence, logic, wisdom, truth, and happy uses of the internet. I <3 the internet. I anti-<3 white-girl-self-help-Bible-refs on the internet.

Summation of my thoughts on the matter: >>>

Stop People 2k15.

    Goodbye.

_

The Sappy Post Pt. 2

The closest marriage to me, my own parents’, crumbled just a little over a year ago. I spent the rest of the year dissolving the ideologies that I saw evidenced in that disintegration of a holy bond. Like any 17-year-old female, I wanted to love; but like any child of God, I felt the weight of that responsibility. I knew that love was an emotion and that love was also a choice. Yet I also recognized that, realistically, that knowledge doesn’t prevent selfishness or the fact that we’re all…well, human. I was keenly aware that my eagerness to love wasn’t a guarantee that it would happen.

May 12, 2014

:: I don’t know who you are yet. You’re someone I haven’t met yet and that’s okay.

I miss you and I’ve never met you.

I adore you and I don’t know you.

I love how your hands feel and I’ve never held them.

I can’t get you out of my head and I don’t even know who you are.

I love being yours’ and I belong to nobody.

I have so much for you and I can’t find you.

But I’m looking. I won’t stop looking. ::

Nevertheless, I dwelt on what it would mean, to pour myself into the life and soul of another creature. To sacrifice, to know, to love. You may recall having been subjected to such thoughts around last July, via my blog. And I don’t think those thoughts were wrong. I think they were startlingly correct. But they stemmed from an idealistic view of what I had never really experienced, and thus weren’t complete.

So this is The Sappy Post Pt. 2.

Now, I have loved. I have begun this journey of learning the thoroughfares of another human’s heart, the cracks and fissures in their soul, the vast expanses of their mind, the gentle, human throbs of their emotions. And this is what I’ve learned about the definition of love since then. This is The Sappy Post, but from the other side.

Love is a less concrete definition than I originally realized. One of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis has always been, “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” And that’s beautifully true. It sums up the self-sacrifice part of love, which is constantly necessary and is something I’ve explored acutely. But I’m finding that love is too vast to be condensed into that. It used to fit neatly into that quote. It doesn’t really fit as effortlessly into those confines anymore.

My lovely friend Anne said this the other evening, and it’s deeply true: “I always think I know what love is, but every time I do, I learn something else that adds to it.”

This isn’t what I thought love would feel like. This isn’t what I thought intimacy would feel like. It exceeds, and also simply isn’t, what I anticipated. Love isn’t anything like what people portray. It’s not able to be portrayed. It’s too intricate, deeply specific, personal, and vividly felt to be casualized. It’s kind of a deep mess. I mean, it’s two souls colliding. Sometimes the collision feels more like a hushed intertwining, the quiet slip of one person’s heart into another’s. Sometimes it feels more like a messy-bubbly-laughably-clumsy entangling of everything that could possibly be contained within the hearts of two humans. A collision like that is breathtaking, unexpected, exceeding words and even exceeding definition. I can’t define it. I can tell you what love is like, but I can’t tell you what it is. No word is exhaustive enough to comprehensively represent every facet of what love is.

I’ve compared love to a watercolor painting, and it is quite like that. The colors bleed together; they blend gradually and quietly. They unexpectedly interlock the watery flecks, and it forms a masterpiece. A masterpiece is formed by each color losing its striking definition and being gracefully intermingled with another shade. The water droplets force them to unify.

It’s (sometimes painful) familiarity counterbalanced with selfless understanding. Some days, that understanding is as simple as, “He’s not always like this; I’ll give him some space.” Other days, understanding looks more like forgiveness. It’s also cheerful acceptance counterbalanced with rumbling change. Paradoxically, love will enable the other person to accept you as you are, but it can also shape you both into entirely different people. It has this way of chipping at your scratchy edges to make you more like Christ, and more compatible for each other. Love is a sanctification process. It’s purifying. 

Honestly, love is God. That’s the one word that is comprehensive enough to define every aspect of love. God embodies every component of love, and to earnestly love is only attainable by first loving him. Untainted love is the very essence of God, in all its sanctification, vastly encompassing understanding, unconditional nature, grace, and forbearance. God is holy; God is faithful; God is the source and sustainer of the love which we pour out. To love is not to exclusively seek intimacy, sacrifice, or the best for/of another person. To love is not to seek affection, familiarity, or commitment. To love is to seek God, his glorification, and to seek experiencing more of his character.

And it requires little effort to lose sight of that profound purpose of love. It’s easy to begin to define love by the coffee-runs downtown, the hand to hold, the steady companion at the end of a long day and at the beginning of uncharted territory. It’s easy to know the person you love by the level of familiarity you share with them, and the difficulties and joys expressed therein. Or even by the inside jokes you develop, or the fact that when you can’t finish your food, you have someone there to help you. (I’m looking at you, Sam.) And praise God that affection, familiarity, and deep companionship are parts of love. It’s literally the best. But it’s cheap, if not stacked onto the foundation of becoming more like Christ.

Love is God’s gift to man. He has loved us; we pour out that love into each other’s souls. And the more we love as he has loved us, the deeper we understand our creator, his character, and his glory. Love faithfully not because your person is faithful, but because God is faithful. Love wholly because God loves wholly. Love deeply because God’s love is deeper than even our comprehension. Love fiercely, because that is the nature of the love God exhibits for you.

“To love is to have glimpsed the face of God.” –Victor Hugo.

 _