We are still in Beta.

School Stole my Creativity……

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For now.

(aka: hopefully I’ll soon have a good post on here)

So I haven’t touched this site much in a while, but I have worked on some others. Here are two sites I have created in the past 6 months. The Murse site was for a marketing project at school and the zippee.info site was created for my senior project.

www.zippee.info

www.mymurse.info

As I sit here vehemently working late into the night, in a cold dark basement, I begin to think. I begin to think of a future without research papers. A future where I can write for the fun of writing, not for a grade, or for my graduation requirements. I begin to dream of a future were words will flow from my fingertips, through my keyboard, across the infrared galaxy, into the computer microprocessors, out the graphics board and up onto the monitor quickly, efficiently and with reasonable intelligence and much creativity. I hope for a day to come when this will be possible, yet I think it is farther than it appears.

Yet there is hope, the hope, and truth, that this research paper is not my life. The hope and dream and truth that there is something else out there for me. The knowledge that at any point I can point and laugh at my mocking computer screen in utter denial, then get up and walk away. I know I can do this and in fact I am on the verge of doing it. If only I was more confident in my abilities and didn’t second guess myself. Instead I doubt my courage and so I stay to write my paper….believing I must do it or I will fail high school and have to start over. But….. that’s unrealistic. We all know that this research paper isn’t that important. I mean, what did my teacher say? It only is a “requirement” for graduation and um… I think, just 40% of my grade?

So-who cares? Not me… no way… I’m leaving it. Right here. Right now. Forever. Research paper I don’t care that I have 70% of you left to finish. I. Am. Done……

(At least, until tomorrow night when the realities set in again)

we part ways now
but soon we will see
that tomorrow brings forth
another mystery
and new dragons to kill
and beasts to fight
but together we shall
both day and night
hold on to each other
till the morning light

I often find myself wondering what is worthwhile in this life. I think what is worthwhile is often decided by what we believe success is.This is where I express my opinions of difference. I think most Americans would equate success with something like money, or a nice house, or car, or having money in the bank. This means that most Americans find it worthwhile to go to their job, or go to school, or drive a fancy car, or buy a nice house.

Now, I don’t think any of these things are bad. It’s just that I don’t think that having these things is truly success. I think success is only found in doing what God has planned for my life and by doing what I enjoy. This is where I think that doing things like going to school becomes second to other things. It’s not that school isn’t worthwhile, it totally is! But when things come up of more importance, things more worth my time, I choose to do those. Often these things are connected with building or supporting relationships. Now many of you might at first disagree with this, but think about this, have you ever skipped work or school for a wedding or funeral? You’ll probably say that’s different, which it is, but still, you get my point? Relationships are of more importance than “success”. Or maybe I should put it this way, your personal “success” is nothing if you put it above your love for others. How about looking at it this way. What would Jesus think is more important, school/work, or hanging out with the starving child down the street, or the friend that’s falling apart due to all the stress in their life?

What would Jesus find worthwhile?

I recently rearranged my room. Now, when I say I rearranged it, I mean I fully rearranged and cleaned it. As in, you walk into my room now and it’s a totally different place, the bed, desks, and drawers are all in different places. It’s pretty crazy. When I started to clean though, it looked more like I was ransacking the place. I started by emptying all my lockers and boxes. Half way through I looked around the room and went “wow, this is a mess!” And it was! I had boxes all over, clothes all over, papers strewn about the room, piles of toys or electronics, and more strewn all about the place. It was so messy that I couldn’t even in there. But that’s how you start when you deep clean a room.
Once I  had organized the big items it was down for the harder part, organizing the papers. This was the point where I took all the papers I had found from the past years (all the way to elementary school!) and organized them. I had piles for everything! Homework, Notes from Friends, Drawings, Poetry, Random Notes, Bible Lessons, Verses, Journal entries, Music and I think a few others. Remember also, this was all stuff I’d written or had been written to me.Once I finished organizing all those papers I locked them all in a locker. Then I was finally done (after a good vacuum)
So what’s my point in saying all this? Well, I realized that we are sometimes like my room. As in, when God wants to clean us up, or rearrange our life we look like my room. I think the first step God has to do when cleaning us up is the ripping apart. Just like my room looked like it had been ransacked I think God pulls our life apart till you can see everything.
Once God rips our life apart I think only then can he put us back together. I think the next step in the process is God getting a giant garbage can and throwing all the uneeded stuff into, just like I did. After he’s removed everything unwanted I think he then organizes the large things in our lives. This goes here, this goes there, etc. This is the easy part, it’s all the obvious things. Then comes the hard part, organizing our past memories and thoughts. Just like I did with the papers, I can see God sitting down and making separate piles for everything. He goes through and re-reads each paper and then either throws it out, or puts it in the correct pile.

When I think about this it makes me think about what stage my life could be in right now. I almost would think I’m in the process of organizing the papers, but I’m not sure. I think that God might actually be continually doing all these processes in my life. At times I feel like he’s still ripping out things that are uneeded and undoing all my previous organizing. Other times it feels he’s putting something very obvious in it’s right spot. Whatever he’s doing I just want to make sure I trust him. He knows the final plan for my life and where he wants it, so I will choose to trust him.

So remember, when you feel your life is in the midst of chaos, in the middle of being ripped apart and you feel you don’t know where anything belongs anymore……maybe God is cleaning your room.

When I’m down, I know that God will pull me through, but sometimes I don’t want God to pull me through; I just want him to pull some strings.

We are all roses, full of beauty, but beneath the surface we have hundreds of thorns. God knows this about us. God is the ultimate gardener and he knows how to reach out to each of us and care for us perfectly. He sees our thorns and loves us just the same. In fact, God sees our thorns and wants to fix them, if we will only let him. Often we try and hide our thorns from him. We try to keep them beneath the surface and put on our best face. When we do this God still loves us, but when we give him our thorns he will remove them. If we accept the fact that we have thorns and ask God to remove them he gladly accepts. So often though we try and hide them from him and from others. Or we do the opposite. Sometimes all we seem to see about ourselves is the thorns, we can’t get past the fact that we have scars in our lives. We begin to think the thorns are all we are made of, that the thorns are what define us. With either viewpoint we are not releasing our pain to Jesus. Yet even if we don’t let God remove our thorns, he still loves us, he still loves our beauty and fragrance, and our thorns. God loves all of us no matter what. No matter how many thorns we have God can still care for us and love us, without getting caught on the thorns.

Sometimes, going for it, even when you know you might get hurt, is the best action ever to be taken.

Say you’re rock climbing, you see a possible option to scale the seemingly impossible. You look and see that to the left is an easy path, but to the right is an overhang, a challenge. Which do you go for? Well, it’s your choice.

What are your chances of making it up that overhang, of grabbing hold and pulling yourself over it? Slim to none, but you understand that if you do make it, it will be the best feeling ever. So you go for it.

At first the going is tough, and the farther you get the harder it seems. You start getting depressed thinking you won’t make it. But then, once again, you catch a glimpse of that end goal. You wait, and plan and think and then… you leap. You throw yourself out there knowing it’s hit or miss. It’s inevitable, you go for it, or give up.
As you reach out you miss the handhold, but it’s not as bad as you thought, your foot catches and then your hand. You struggle to find a second foothold, a second handhold, but you made it, mostly. Your heart is racing, your adrenaline pumping, that goal is so much closer now. You can taste the victory of reaching the end. Yes, you have to pull yourself up the rest of the way. It’s still hard going, if not harder than the start, but you made the leap, you made it past the hardest part and so you are going for it. You don’t look back. It looks good and unless you make a huge mistake, you’re pretty sure you’ll make it.

But, what if you’d missed? What if you had not caught on at the last second, not reached the second handhold? Well, yes, you’d get hurt. You’d probably be quite upset at first. But, does it matter? You might get lowered to the ground and rest for a minute, recuperating, but soon enough you’ll be either tackling that same wall again, or another. This time, you can taste the victory and it’s that much easier to make the leap.

So why wait? Why hold bak? Go for it!

God is a creative being, right? That’s what my youth pastor was telling us tonight.

Creativity comes from habit. Meaning, you can streamline creativity. This is what our current school theme is all about.

If God is creative, and creativity comes from habit… what does that mean about him?

Another thought…… If God is a creative God and he created the world creatively, was it hard for him to do it? As in, I find it hard to be creative sometimes, I have to work at a good idea, so, does God have this problem.

Last, if God created us out of creativity doesn’t that mean there should be mess ups, since creativity can be messy?

Ponder…..