REAL.

To be honest, this season has been extremely strange and lonely and hard and yet the glimpses of good in between the long and heavy sighs have been a source of incredible luminosity that expose the heresies of the dark thoughts that threaten my foothold in the heavens every waking moment.
Yet the nights continue long into the mornings.
The past year I have understood in a way never before the power that fear has on a person, emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Do not let its foot in the door of your heart, even for a moment.
It is a ruthless shadow whose substance is thicker than spirit.
Most days when I wake up it’s hard to get out of bed. It’s hard to find enough motivation to not sleep the rest of the morning and skip work and skip life and escape into my dreams.
But even in my dreams I don’t find rest.
Lately I’ve felt as if the whole world is annoyed at my existence and I’m here to prove to them all that i can at least be tolerated.
Being celebrated never made me feel better. It always made me lonely, strange, like I shouldn’t be doing the things i’m being celebrated for.
I guess we’re all just searching for a home, a place of rest, a place we can go to and not have to celebrate or be celebrated. A place we can just be and that’s enough.
I think, deep down, that’s what every religion tries to create and that’s what every person wants, more than success, more than fame, more than notoriety.
Harmony is the great conclusion of love.
Whether you’re the marrying kind or not, everyone seeks marriage.
A coming together, oneness, harmony, wholeness.
We marry our jobs, we marry our passions, our addictions, our self-image; whatever pulls us, whatever it is that even carries a hint of fulfillment.
Fulfillment is just another word for oneness.
Purpose is just another word for harmony.
Desire for success is simply desire to be loved misappropriated.

And I’ve been thinking about God, who he is, who he’s not, and who I wish he would be.
There’s been times in my life where God was so close that every waking moment I was thinking of him and his presence infiltrated my very being. There were moments of affection exchanged between my finite mind and his infinite love that were so sweet I knew in my heart that nothing else could ever satisfy that way.
I have dreamt with God, walked with God, and been loved by him and nothing could take away those memories, and nothing could take away the validity of our relationship.
But so much lately I’ve felt different, and not in the way that I am over God or past him or seek a new and refined way.
Jesus will only ever be my peace, my perfect savior. No one else will take that place.
But I need something more than an intellectual exercise, I need more than the idea of God or the thought of him or an emotion inspired by Him.
I need HIM.
I need the tangible God, the God-man, flesh and spirit coming together to create holiness, the sanctifying fire of a living and loving God, I AM.
I need more than Sunday service, Tuesday night and cute little bible times I spare him in the evening hours.
I don’t want to say there’s something more.
There’s someone more.
He’s a person, a being, not some imaginary friend I can stiff-arm and move the strings up and down for to make him dance and sing for me when the chord progression feels right but wait now it’s 10:00 pm and people have lives so let’s do this again next week.
If I only find my maker in C-major then I’m not really finding him, I’m finding a good thought.
Good thoughts are great but they don’t compose a person.
I want more than a set of morals and an attractive culture that I can fit into.
What’s the actual goal of life?
Why would I give my life to this man, Jesus?
It has to be more than being good, praying for people, and raising the dead.
And I will wait for him.
I will wait until he comes to me.
I’ll wait forever if it takes forever but he said he’d come now, on earth, so maybe I only have to wait a few months.

I’m going to be turning 26 in a few weeks.
There’s a man in the cafe I’m sitting in and he’s wearing a suit jacket, dress shirt and tie up top but down below he’s wearing shorts.
I think I get that.
Maybe that’s why we take headshots.
We’re all a bit incomplete, seeking affirmation for the things we are yet feeling a bit cold and wanting in the areas we’re lacking in.
We’re all haunted by the person we know we were meant to be, and until we reach some level of who we think that might be we wander continuously throughout heaven and earth to find a love that both loves us as we are right now yet pushes us to who we should be.
And I know that love is only found in my Heavenly Father.
Sometimes it just sucks that I can’t find him with flesh and bones and vocal chords here on earth.
Sometimes I don’t want the chase, I want the catch, and the sitting on the ground catching the breath afterwards smiling and playing, resting.
Resting.
It’s not a state of not doing, but of not doing just to do.
It’s more than Sabbaths and Sundays and picking heads of grain.
It’s home.
And that’s what I want, more than anything.
And I think that home might be found, maybe easier than I think.
Maybe home is just knowing that I have a perfect Father who loves me as I am yet loves who I’m going to be.
And that’s not poetry, allegory, or history.
That’s right now.
That’s real.
That’s real.
That’s real.
I’ll say it a thousand times more.
That’s real.
He is real.
Real.
Real.

Real.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”