What I thought you were, I can't forget.

I want you to know who i'm working with...
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Counting-On-Clover/23667500466

Listen to...What I thought You were, I can't forget.
I had no part in this song. And i think that may have been for the better. Because it is by far best.

Alone

I feel small for all the times I say goodbye.
This awkward hug- i hope it will suffice.
Because i leave today. The morning waits for my departure.
I am leaving.
I am leaving home.

The highway tells me he can find his way back here,
if ever i want to turn around and come back home.
I told him no.
Some day i have to make it on my own.

Alone.
Away from Home.
On my Own.
And there's nobody that I know.
Nobody that i know.

I wish forever that i could stay a child.
And speak to grown ups knowing i will never be one.
Watch the world grow greyer and greyer,
but I'll stay the same.

If i stay the same child,
will you stay the same, Child?

If i stay the same child,
will you stay the same, child?

But I hear rumors that Time is on his way
And we all know that He never lets us stay the same.
We have to change.
We have to leave.
We have to be alone someday...

Alone
Away from Home
On My Own.
And there's nobody here i know.
That's what i get for trusting the road.

Alone.
Away from Home.
On my own.
No one's ever been this lonely.
I bet you no one's been this lonely.

Valentine's Blues...

i find myself sad and a bit let down.
this valentines i feel lonely. more than usual. it's haunting me, the feeling that i'm missing something, or somebody. It's not a spiritual thing. It has nothing to do with my relationship with God. I just feel like there's something i'm missing, that i could have if i looked hard enough, but for some reason haven't tried.
I think it's romance. But it may not be. it could be something different. but i dont know what.
I wonder how long this'll last before i get over it.

I had band practice today. That might be another reason i feel let down...though i really dont know why it would make me feel that way. i was replaced. with a really really really amazing bass player that owns me cwazily. so i got moved to playing piano. For some reason i dont feel like it was just "being moved" but "being demoted". i feel like all of my worth in bass just wasn't enough so i was replaced and instead was moved to some other branch where hopefully i'll do better.
I dont think that's what they intended. I'm happy with whatever i get, i guess. Plus, i get to learn new things. But it just feels like a big let down.
Hmm...
Happy Valentines to all.
You have my deepest condulences if you're a victim of the times.

Jackie

It's time for a dog.
In store for me for the next...year (hopefully?) is a white german shepherd...boy dog. cwazy? i dunno. i mean he's hairy...probably poops alot...and eats... it's like a baby Hagrid that turned white.
I already know his name- Jackie. named after C.S. Lewis's dog that died by a car. I hope the name bears no ill omen.
Anyway...we leave to go see him for the first time in...20 minutes? But we're not aloud to take him home until maybe two weeks from today.
i so uh-cited!
i'll put a picture up later.

i wonder if he'll end up like the dog in A Walk Across America. So obedient...so personality-ish... able to walk with me for a couple thousand miles. Maybe? i dunno...i hope so.
i think i'll run with him. Yeah...
Jackie...i like it.

Read while listening to Comforting Sounds- Mew

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JVUvC74D8w
- listen while you read

Another sick day...
if i were french i would say "e-cough e-cough."
gaha...
oooh dear.
Anyways...those blank cd's that my dad was talking about were finally found.
only one of them was blank actually. And that was made into... Panic at the Disco- Pretty Odd. Was it a waste? i dont think so...
At the moment i am sitting in my blue-argyle robe with my glasses on (slightly smudged), with some kind of a beard growing because i've been too sick to shave...watching youtube videos of various bands (mew). Is it bad to have favorites? If not...Mew is mine.

I think Tv is becoming more of a childhood memory than an adiction. I spent the entire day (2 hours...but let's imagine 24) watching Nickelodeon and Cartoonnetwork, switching between Spongebob, Fairly Odd Parents, and Batman. It wasn't so much for entertainment that i watched it, but simply for the feeling. These were the shows i watched 5 years ago. I watched them so much that they really became, shall i say, a part of me- something "living" that dented its way into myself to be a memory five years later. (i know...quite an american thing to do... a living tv inside me. but anyway...). So today i watched it for the nostalgia- the memory of laughing, being entertained, watching the commercials to kill 3 minutes.
It's all nostalgia now... Either that's really sad...and i should have spent more of my time outside as a little kid... or maybe it's interesting. i dunno...

e-cough...

Sickness could kill me...at 30?

Today was a sick day.
I was woken up at 7:10 by my dad...for some reason he asked me if i found any blank cd's... a question quite appropriate for 7:10 in the morning, i think.
So i stayed home, unable to talk because of all the gunk parked in the back of my throat. it kinda sucks.

I've been reading Crazy Love lately. it's one of those books that you can compare with a giant jaw breaker. So impossible to swallow, or chew. You just have to keep sucking on it...and sucking and sucking and sucking. and wait either for it to somehow get smaller, or your mouth to get bigger- something's gotta change in size.
But just recently i came across a challenge...i guess you can call it that.
Francis Chann (author) wrote that it was a good idea to read the gospel without any preconceived ideas- just reading it for what it was. SOOOOO... i am.
I started in matthew this morning. This is what i've gotten.

Matthew 5:3
God blesses those who realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.

I think this is salvation in its simplest form- recognizing my need for God. Realizing how small, insignificant, and powerless i am in this forceful struggle called life. And then realizing how God is the biggest, most powerful, most amazing source. The source that i NEED. Realizing that without Him, life wouldn't just be not worth living, but there would BE no life. Realizing that WITH him life doesn't just receive meaning, but life is forever- eternal, beautiful.
By realizing my need for God, He blesses me with his Kingdom- his eternal Kingdom that He lives in. Just by realizing!
What follows after realizing, i have yet to understand. But i will act on this realization.
But i think realization is more than "Gee...thanks God. That's really amazing. I guess i'll just keep on living the way i want to. Sure... you're God. You're cool. Thanks for the whole sacrifice thing. Oh, and for creating me. I like me. You know how to create good-looking people. And for food...and my girlfriend. She's nice. Thanks for all that... But i'm really not ready to make any commitment to you right now... Just...get me to heaven for now, God, and I'll be happy. Maybe someday i'll shape up and read my bible every day or pray from my heart, or heck, be a missionary. But right now i'm satisfied with being lukewarm... i'll serve you when it feels good. I'll play bass for you in church...maybe sing a couple lines for you. that's always fun. Just please dont ask too much of me."
No no no no no. i think by truly realizing my need for God, i will realize everything that God's done for me...how undeserving i am for it... and then do what God asks of me- to accept what he's done, and to LOVE Him (which involves following his commandments...or...doing what God asks of me). "If you love me, keep my commandments." It's kind of a circle.
Anyway...

If i had one goal in life, i think it would be to really understand my need for God.
If i die at age 30, with nobody around my deathbed but a few worried nurses with needles in their hands, and i had come to a complete understanding of how necessary, how obviously dire God is to sustain me, i think i will have lived a life worth living.

But i think that is just the beginning of Christianity.
Funny...just the beginning of Christianity is THAT meaningful.

Away From You- Horrific or Terrific?

So i didn't just watch
i played
a song
i'm trying to decide if i completely embarrassed myself in front of my mexican peers, or i did really amazingly...

It's called Away From You
by me

Jesus, my saviour
I need you more than ever
Because I tried to be faithful
but in the end grew farther
Away from you
That's not what i wanted to do
Grow away from you
But in the end that's what I did
to you

Father, please forgive me
I fell away so quickly
It's my fault I am guilty
But your love has set me free
Now I can walk so freely
And feel your love more deeply
Now to your precious name you'll always hear my voice sing praise
Because you love me, God, you do
Because you love me God, i can love you

I think that maybe
God you must be crazy
to love someone like me
I'm so in need of your mercy
But you love me
Without any reason you love me
And you take no heed
To everything that I will do for me

Father, please forgive me
I fell away so quickly
It's my fault I am guilty
But your love has set me free
Now I can walk so freely
And feel your love more deeply
Now to your precious name you'll always hear my voice sing praise
Because you love me, God, you do
Because you love me God, i can love you

Tada!
I dropped my pick (which i just recently found out translates as pua) once, and i forgot the words to the chorus.
They liked it...at least i was funny...
Anyway...i couldn't get a straight answer as to if i sucked or not... but i think that's a sign that i did.

The Beginning

The sky just opened up for a couple seconds and let loose a couple drops into my back yard. That was two minutes ago. Now it stopped...and everything's dry...
It was my birthday seventeen hours ago. I turned seventeen. It's a good number. Prime...i guess that's something. And it's the only number in the teens besides eleven that has three syllables. But at the age of eleven i didn't have the mind to understand how amazing the number was. So seventeen is the better of the two. Friends took me out for coffee and a movie. It meant so much more to me than planning a party for myself. I think that's the way things should be- friends take over the party and throw it for you...not the other way around. Anyway...it was nice. We watched Elizabethtown.
Ben sent me an exerpt from Through Painted Deserts...and it's really amazing. i think i'll quote some of it.

I remember the sweet sensation of leaving, years ago, some ten now, leaving Texas for who knows where. I could not have known about this beautiful place, the Oregon I have come to love, this city of great people, this smell of coffee and these evergreens reaching up into a mist of sky, these sunsets spilling over the west hills to slide a red glow down the streets of my town.

And I could not have known then that if I had been born here, I would have left here, gone someplace south to deal with horses, to get on some open land where you can see tomorrow's storm brewing over a high desert. I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God's way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.

I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.

Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn't all happening at once.

It's just an excerpt of an excerpt, but it explains alot to me. We all need to change. Staying the same is not what mankind is supposed to do, in the long run. Evolution does exist, and it exists very obviously in human hearts and lives.
I want to be the character at the end of the story that has changed for the better... that has gone through this plot called life and has come out in the end as an unrecognizeable man. I'm sure everyone wants that...right?
As of right now...i should be doing homework for Bible class. I'm doing a word study on idolatry. I'm sure you're really interested. But lo, homework and me are far from each other...and i discovered blogging.
I've been invited to a youth event at my mexican church. it's kinda nice...they're pretty persistent in letting me know that they want me there. So it's a talent show...i think i'll just watch.
Anyway...homework calls...