Could this be love?...yes.

The things that I love include, but are not limited to the following.

• God
• Saturdays with friends ( like today.)
• Toast
• My loud, crazy family
• Quotes
• Stella
• The smell of ink
• Paintbrush holders filled with brushes, hanging from the wall
• Hollow gourds made into bird houses
• Books
• Sisters (really and otherwise)
• Constitutions
• Outside
• Walking in the rain with a purple umbrella under a light post

This is all for now.

Ari

"Who is he?... That man on the bench." She asked herself.

"Don't know. But it really doesn't matter to me."

" Well it's bound to matter to someone, So you best think of his story now."

So she did. And this was the story that she came up with.

His name is Arlington Scott. Ari for short. He's 28 years old, and was born and raised in southern California. After college he moved to England. Now he lives in London, but he has never liked big city's very much. So every one in a while, when his job gets to stressful, or the city air feels Smoggy and suffocating, he gets into his car and he drives.

The first Couple of times that he did this, he didn't go anywhere in particular. he just drove. But one day just driving wasn't enough. So he got out and walked. And he kept on walking till he got tired. And as if there had been someone following him who could read his mind, in the exact instance when his knees got weak, and the stitch in his side really started to ache, a bench appeared. It was rather plain bench that stood alone on a hill on the edge of some Down that he didn't care to find the name of.

So Ari sat. And as he watched the sun set into the west, he was reminded of his home, and of his childhood, and mostly of her. We wondered about Her. Was she still best friends with Lily McCoy? had her freckles ever gone away? And most of all, he wondered if she still loved him, and thought about him as much as he thought about her.

He didn't know, and he told himself regularly that he was not brave enough to find out.

So instead of finding her, he just came hear. He'd think of her as he watched the sun set then he would leave. He would go on with his life, and let her go on with hers. But every once in a while, if he saw a long sandy beach, or a dead tree covered in snow, or that exact same shade of teal, He would think of her, and he would smile.

Choose.

We are all dieing. every one of us. every person, every blade of grass. Each second we spend on this earth is a second closer to death. A child is born, and immediately starts to die. It's not morbid, it's just the way it is. A fact of life; We are all dieing... We are all falling. Falling away from what was. Away from what we were back then, when life was so Innocent. And as we fall, as those childish whims that we are so fond of fade, we find out new things about our selves. They are beautiful and terrible things...But they are inside of us, so the are us. And so there we are; Beautiful and terrible

And in our Beauty there is a call. It's a call to become more beautiful, and to love this beautiful uncertainty that is our future. This is not so easy, because we are still terrible, and we are reminded of that often.

But the call doesn't stop. It comes to us in the night, calls...louder, and louder still. And it Will not stop until we listen. Till our souls are so raw, so exhausted from hearing their own names called again, that we must listen. And when we do... in that silent moment when we finally give in to the call, when we find it to strong and ourselves to weak to resist any longer, then we will have peace. But our peace will not be a contented one. We shall not say, "Now I may go about my life normally and quietly, as my fathers before me." Because we will not be t peace with all the earth. Only with the part in it that we are somehow sure we must play. (though we don't know what it is, or for that matter, how we know this.) And we find that the call is still there, even in our peace.
And in this restless peace -this mystery that is before us- we see it all. The calling, the fall and even what came before it all. We see it whole and beautiful against the sky. But something utterly dark, and utterly realistic tells us that we will never see things this way again. For only when the future is fully unknown can it truly be called beautiful.
...And so time goes on...we don't often want it to. We find our selves wishing in those moment of pure joy that it would freeze as it is. And when we can see nothing but the Shadow in the corners, and feel nothing but cold wind at our backs, we wish -sometimes harder than before- that time would just end all together. But it goes on. Like a train with no breaks on a never-ending track. Imposable to stop. Imposable to get off. And although at time we convince ourselves otherwise, we all love our silly little trains, out of control headed towards only God knows what. Because he dose know, and we never can.
And that, in the end is what we must choose to take comfort in. It is one of the only thing we can choose. We did not choose to fall. We did not ask to be called. but this, we can and must seek. It will be our only comfort when our trains crash.

I can't think of a title for this one.

So I've been singing allot lately. I really like singing when I'm completely alone, and I can just sing as loud or as quiet as I want. Also, I've been waking up with songs in my head again. It use to happen all the time, but it hadn't happened in forever. the songs that would be in my head when I woke up used to be just random. Once, I woke up with the Canadian National anthem in my head, every Saturday for almost two months. that was pretty odd.

But now a'days, it's almost always a worship song that I wake up singing. That started at winter fest. I really don't know the reason, but I really don't care. i just really like waking up that way, because it reminds me that God is there, even when we're asleep. Just because we can't consciously praise Him, doesn't mean anything to Him. He just likes being with us. And that doesn't make any sense to me. (Proly because I'm human.)
And that's all I have to say for now.

Miss...

Do you know what I miss?

Well then I'll tell you. I miss long evenings of sitting in the back of the pick-up and just thinking while it grew darker and darker. And then when it was full dark, I would ride my bike around searching out and naming all of the light posts. I did that allot. but now I can't, partly because of the cold.



I miss the feeling failing asleep to good music and waking up in the middle of the night with it still playing, and being really disoriented because I had thought the music was part of the dream that I just forgot.



I miss Colleen, Helen, Daniel, Meemaw, Alicia...

...And that's what I miss.

Vincent & Christopher...

I just found something that made me pretty happy.

If you didn't know, My dad is kind of obsessed with buying DVDs, and I just found the newest addition to his collection. It's six different horror movies form the 50's, 60's, and 70's starring Vincent Price and Christopher Lee.

So, if anyone is interested in watching them with me, just let me know.

love day.

OK, so love has defiantly been the theme of my life as of late.
It's been kind of everywhere. so I'm going to tell you about this love thing that I have found.
I'm reading the book Crazy Love, and it's good. I guess that's were it all started, but that doesn't seem right, because i have been reading it for a while, and am just now seeing all of this. (which makes me feel silly.)

I think we all know about the ten commandments, so I won't list them. But I think that maybe people focus to strongly on them sometimes. Yes, they are important, but they are not the most important things. The two most important thing, God say, are to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and mind, and secondly, to love others as yourself. And that is what I want.

I want people to feel loved by me, but at the same time, know that I love nothing and nobody more than God. I think all of my family and close friend know that I love them, but I want this to be the theme of my life. I want to emanate love. For God first and theme for everyone else, and defiantly not for myself.

So that what I have to say about love on love day. but I don't want to just say it, then forget about it. like I said, I want to live this. so if anyone sees me being less than loving yell at me or something, ok?....Good.

Happy

So today was a pretty good day as far as days go.
In the morning, I got my drivers license. (Finlay!) Then in the afternoon I pucked up Ian and Jessica and we went to see a movie. Now I'm home and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my evening.
Maybe watch a movie with Amie? who knows... but what I;m trying to say hear is that life is good...the end.

No words today. ( or at least verry few.)

What do you do when words don't come?
Or when they come, just about all the wrong things? I find is truly ridiculous how much we silly little humans must rely on words.

"And perhaps this is the shortest one ever." She thought to herself. But it wasn't.

The Original Creator

I've heard people say it allot. "God is so creative" But I just recently truly got what that means. Hears the thing; humans praise themselves all the time for being creative. whether it's through writing, or music, or art, or whatever. But in the end, we are just copy-cats. Not just us, but every human EVER!

Think about this for a second. Mozart may have written sonatas when he was ten, but God invented music! Rembrandt may have painted some pretty amazing things, but God created all of them first. And what about all those books we read, and think, "man, how do people think of story lines like this?" Well even those great scorelines are about people, which God made, and are expressed with words (which God also thought of). So if these people, the best of the best are just copy-cats, and we aren't even as good as them, than we should be allot more humble than we are.

Now I'm not saying that our talents are nothing, but just that we need to realize that God is the only one who was ever truly creative. And without him, we would have nothing to draw or paint or wright about or sing about. This is why we should do everything for the glory of God. In the end, they will glorify Him anyway, because they are all his. Isn't it better to glorify Him willingly, than to try and glorify your self, and end up glorifying God anyway, but look like a fool in the proses?

So that's my thought, and maybe it's one of those things that everyone will read and be like, "Duh Beth, this is kind of common knowledge." But oh well.

Hmm....

Well I don't know what I can say about the state of my life at the moment... all I can say is that thing are so spastic lately. I really don't get it. My life is not always good, but it's usually pretty even. I mean, usually, it's either good, or bad. Lately, though, I'll be supper joyful (not happy, necessarily.) and the next day it will seem like things are falling apart. And I'm pretty sure I'm not bipolar.

Oh well, maybe it's just the way life is sometimes. maybe it's just nothing. I don't know. But I kind of feel a bit whiny lately too, so I'll leave it at that.

the 3rd.

My Tuesday:

I did laundry. I accidental washed a pencil and my flask.
Then i attempted to do math.
Then I cried. I don't usually cry.
Then Marcy talked to me. That made me happy.
Then God talked to me through Marcy. that made me joyful.

The End.

Fear, Failure, and Hope

Guys, I'm serious about this! And I'm scared.
It started at winter fest this year, just after Alyson fell of of her horse, and it was bad and all. I started thinking of why all of this would happen to one person. The only thing I could think of was that it was a spiritual attack. Now I don't now for sure or anything because I'm human and all, but I've talked to people, and prayed about this and it seems to me that this is what it is.

Also at winter fest, I started to feel that 2009 was going to be big/hard some how. I may sound crazy, and in all reality, maybe it is. but it's how I feel, and things that have happened in the world have started to prove me right. Now I know that our world (obviously,) is far from perfect, and is kind of screwed up often, but as of late it seems that bad things have been happening more frequently. (it could also be that I'm just paying closer attention that I use to, but I don't know.)
I have felt pretty under attack too, lately. I have been feeling really inadequate. pretty much like a failure at life. know I'm not and that god sees me as his perfect child, but little thing like failing the drivers test twice, and not doing so great in school, and having absolutely no idea what my life is going to look like after this school year. Things I usually don't worry about more than I need to; these thing are all I have been able to focus on recently, and that is not normal for me at all.

Anyhow, as I started seeing and feeling these thing happen, I also started hearing things about how we can fight the devil. So I made a list in one of my journals of these ways.(but I only have two as of yet...) I think that pastor Dave may have said both of them but I can't remember. But I know that the source of these things are trustworthy, because wouldn't have gotten as exited as I did, if I heard it from someone I didn't trust completely, or if I had not found them to have worked for me in the past. (Which at least one of them has.)
So hear they are. I call them my spiritual arsenal.

1. Focus on what Christ did on the cross. Satan truly thought he had won by killing Jesus, and was happy...till he found out just how wrong he had been. When we think about/ pairs God for what he did, It's sort of like rubbing it in the devils face.

2. Sing. This one is so simple, but really powerful. when we sing praises to God, the devil hates it; plain and simple. I am absolutely positive that this one work because I've used it before.

So that's all. I know that it's a short list right now but hopefully it will grow. If anybody has anything that they could add to this list, I would love to talk to you about it.
...The End