well....

People have told me that I should blog more often, and honestly I agree. I've been putting it off for a while, and I'm not really sure why. I've been working on a few projects, and pouring myself into them. Yet, I feel like I am too self-critical with all of it, and I don't think that helps your writing either. So here it is I suppose. Instead of publish-ready works I am going to continue more with my thoughts. Loose, raw, and hopefully genuine.

"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief (Ecclesiastes 1:18)."

My friends' grandmother passed away a few hours ago. She had breast and lung cancer, only 61. My friends are brothers, worked with one of them, chilled with both. Their dad died a few years back from brain cancer. All of them, live in faith, and believe in a God with a plan and their best interests in mind. Their mother has worked as hard as she can, and they have as well to carve out a life in a tough world. Yet with as tough as it is to survive in the absence of death, she now has to live with the fact that the same thing that took her husband, just took her mother as well.

Bad things happen to good people.

Death...especially if it is unexpected doesn't really heal to those around it. One of my best friends died last summer slipping off of a goofy little skateboard thing. That's it, fell back, and hit his head. The thing is though, that even in his early twenties, he was one of the best men I have not only known, but even heard of. He wasn't perfect, no one is. Yet he was one of the few people that I could say honestly lived for pretty much anything and anyone but himself, and it was apparent to anyone who met him.

"Why?" is a pretty predominant question in all of this, but I'd have to say it is the specifics of why that make understanding pretty much impossible. Looking back, Matt was the closest person to resemble myself and my own situation that I knew. He and his girlfriend had been dating about as long as I and my current wife had. They were at the similar stage in their life, he loved her, he was thinking about asking her to marry him when the time was right. So I sometimes think why him and not me? I see such a similar scenario happening afterwards if it had been...

If we believe what we believe, if we honestly believe that those who pass are indeed in a "better place." It is the life of the living that truly is the test. For those who pass on move into their metaphysical retirement, but it is the good that is sucked away in their absence that makes our world just a little bit darker. Knowing this brings no comfort either. The more we really know what’s going on, the more we are aware of just how bad it really is. The wiser we are to the ways of this life, the more prone to the suffering of reality, and the elimination of a disillusioned hope.

The life of a believer, of one who "knows" now where before they never did, that life only gets harder. It is the plight of one who believes, one who seeks maturity, one who wishes to unravel the very things of God to bestow upon them more and more hurt and more and more suffering. For the world is dark. However what is more worth following than a light in the dark? What is more inspiring? What is more powerful than a light that continues to shine no matter how much garbage you throw on it? What can you say that will move you more than a light that refuses to quit despite how much filth, and dirt, and darkness you cover it with?

We need lights. Lights to guide those who see nothing but darkness. Lights to lead others to a place where the darkness can never go. God needs these lights to be shrouded more and more in the darkness around them, so that when they shine...it changes things.

Talking with my friend whose grandmother just passed away...he asked me after a while, so how are things going with you, you said you had been dealing with some stuff. A very generous question I thought with what he was dealing with. I told him a lot of things, but maybe the main part being...life is tough right now. I told him, that honestly, I don't know what to do. I'm in a tough financial spot, it is effecting my everyday life, I feel like I am supposed to be a writer, but I haven’t met anyone willing to pay me to do it. I'm taking risks that could hurt myself, and now others very, very deeply. And maybe most importantly, I feel like I am losing faith in something that has kept me going for so long. I don't want to shine anymore I said, I want to put my light out, it hurts too much.

But I can't...

I'm so angry I told him. I don't know why I am here, I don't know why Matt died, I don't know why your dad died, I don't know why your grandmother died. I don't understand, and I've come to the realization that I may not ever in this life. I don't know why I had to move, leave my old job, hate my current graduate program, end up in this mess, pretty much unemployed right at a time when all of a sudden the bottom fell out in the financial world. I told him I am angry...I'm so angry; I have so many questions...that don't seem to be getting answered. I am so angry that sometimes I wish that I could...just stop, just stop believing in it all, I am so angry that I wish that I didn't trust God in this. But the reality is...I can't stop.

I told him that he had a choice, I had to do it when Matt died, and he has to do it too, and we all have to at points. The choice to really, and honestly, and blindly trust God, or to not. And I say blindly because most everything you think about the situation won't make sense at all, and maybe it never will. It is that leap of faith though, the greatest one you took before, the others that you take every day, and the big ones that happen only a few times in your life. It's that point where you have seen faith turn into knowledge. With the knowledge comes sight, comes revelation, comes wisdom and understanding, hope, and one day peace; but with it also brings pain. It's the fact that those who really have turned the light on, just can't turn it off now, even when we want to. It's the simple reality that those who have seen, must show others that have no sight. It's the truth that God needs lights, because it is dark out there.