Times.

I know I need You
I need to love You
I'd love to see You but it's been so long

I long to feel You
I feel this need for You
I need to hear You
Is that so wrong?

Now You pull me near You
When we're close I fear You
Still I'm afraid to tell you all that I've done

Are you done forgiving?
Can you look past my pretending?
I'm so tired of defending what I've become
What have I become?

But I hear You say
My love is over
It's underneath
It's inside
It's in between

The times you doubt me
And when you can't feel
The times that you question
Is this for real?

The times that you're broken
The times that you mend
The times you hate me
The times that you bend

My love is over
It's underneath
It's inside
It's in between

The times that you're healing
And when your heart breaks
the times that you feel like you've fallen from grace

The times that you're hurting
the times that you heal
the times you go hungry and are tempted to steal

In times of confusion
In chaos and pain
I'm there in your sorrow under the weight of your shame

I'm there in your heartache
I'm there through the storm
My love I will keep you by My power alone

I don't care where you've fallen or where you have been
I'll never forsake you
My love never ends
It never ends.

- Tenth Avenue North

Another Chapter Closes.

Just FYI, Nesquik powder and water doesn't make very good hot chocolate. But i couldn't find the Swiss Miss.

I'm sitting here with a CUSG mug of mediocre hot chocolate, a moleskin, Pastoral Ministry According to Paul, and Mat Kearney Radio playing on Pandora.

My room is bare. Scattered things lie here and there, but the couches are gone, the posters are down, and a feeling of goodbye lingers in the air. The last few pages of this chapter of my life are light between my fingers as I slowly, hesitantly flip them over one by one, bracing myself for the back cover of the book.

Things are going to change fast, and suddenly. My college career will be half over, and while i'm learning a lot of myself, I find for every answer i get, three more questions present themselves. I feel like i still have so many loose ends to tie up. Mostly because i do.

I've learned a lot about myself, about investing in each moment, about priorities, about why i'm at college in the first place. Sometimes i wish i could get things right the first time, but i suppose i will have to be satisfied with learning from my mistakes. Like making hot chocolate with Nesquik powder and water, and putting off long term projects until finals week, and ignoring the nudges of the Holy Spirit that don't make sense in the moment, and trying to stop sinning by monastic attempts at righteousness.

I feel like this next chapter is going to be amazing though. Even though I can't deny the bittersweet goodbyes of this chapter.

Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Jellyfish.

I've been feeling kind of aimless as of late. I guess i never really noticed it until i started to get sick of it. Kind of just washed around like waves. but i never really noticed, because i wasn't fighting it. Now that i'm trying to fight it though, i'm realizing how much i suck at fighting. I'm noticing how much the waves are affecting me, how little power i have to find them. I've always been a self-proclaimed "go-with-the-flow" kind of guy, but this is getting ridiculous. My greatest strengths are also my greatest weaknesses. So i guess i'm just trying to figure out how to get some direction. I want to do some soul-searching. But i also want to keep all the deadlines and readings and responsibilities that i've been missing in check.

and through all this, attempt to remember what life is all about. the verse i keep going back to is John 15:5

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."

so i guess i'm not really a jellyfish on my own, more like a stick. sticks don't even have arms.

i'd better do that reading now.