~ On Today's Literature (those teens on the web) ~

Some of them write so beautifully. They find places like deviantart.com and tublr to post their work on. "Who needs publishers anymore?" They don't see it as "works of art" either: just as thoughts. Truth is, we don't know what this "movement" will be called in the future. Post-apocolyptic? Post-post-modern? New Age? What?!

Just because we're not published doesn't mean we're not good.

Here are some of today's young people, writing deep, meaningful things that aren't expected of them, as encouragement that we can do more than expectations allow.

Untitled

There's a certain way people use words.

We've all felt it. Perhaps we haven't accomplished it, but we've experienced it.

Something in the way it reads, something in the words and how they're meshed.

It can start your heart going, give you hope.

Sometimes it's in the way someone did the music in a movie.

Sometimes it's that youtube video that you walked away from, changed.

People use it to get money, popularity, sympathy…you name it.

But when someone, somewhere out there in our gigantic world, whom we've never met, seen, or heard of, writes or videos something we can't ignore. . .

You can Facebook it, Tweet it, Pin it, Share it, Like it, Follow it, Subscribe to it, you can do whatever you like.

There's hope for our generation.

Not in memes, games, quotes, music, pictures, sayings, people, stars, celebrities, movies, pop-culture. . .

In us.

"We are the target market.

We set the corporate target.

But, we are slaves of what we want. " – Switchfoot

What are we doing to ourselves?

Sitting here, doing nothing, learning nothing, talking about nothing, fighting and debating about nothing, voicing our opinions about nothing, buying nothing, selling nothing, convincing people that nothing is worth your time.

Nothing is worth your time.

None of it.

I can't tell you this and have you believe it. You have to choose to believe it. You know it deep inside yourself.

Wasted lives.

Whispers come every time you click the screen, with every video you watch. Another 5 minutes, another 10. One more episode. One more fandom.

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They command us.

We are slaves of what we want.

There is hope for our generation.

We could be so much more than this.

So much more than internet sensations.

We just have to want it.

~ Anonymous



Black Prisms


They're dying

The living are choosing
Dying

They have forgotten
That they are living

So they die

They don't even see
The others who are dying

For they are
Obsessed with their own deaths
That they

Don't

Even

See

So they've died then.
Blind to their own prisms.

When will they live?

~ Blaise Cornell

Drip

I hear the water dripping
And I think I can relate
My mind is floating away
Drop by drop by drop

And I think I can relate
As the ripples flow further
Drop by drop by drop
I slowly slip away

And I think I can relate
My mind is flowing away
As the ripples flow further
I hear the water dripping

~taztazhi on deviantart

Each have meanings behind them that truly only the author can understand. Others can only guess, trying to understand. Some things are easy, some are more difficult, but they are each in their own way interpretable.

They draw and write and create these beautiful things; I read them! I look at them! I see them and they are wonderfully beautiful!
Not comparing you to Shakespeare.
Not comparing you to Van Gogh.
Not comparing you to anyone else in the whole history of the world, not even your friends.
God gave you this mind that you pull apart in so many ways to invent whatever you like.
Imagination is one of the greatest of the gifts.
Why does our generation, our society imagine everything for us?

Just a thought.
~ Kendall

~ Impossibility ~

Upon starting school again, I've re-realized just how incredibly lost the world is. The words these authors write in these history books. . . are not truth. They're not the truth I know as fact in the deepest part of me.

We were formed from dust,
In perfect, unspoiled life,
and then we, in our own selfish desires,
died; we fell into the temptation of sin.

But God, rich in mercy, made us alive through the death of his Son.

Alive through death.

No news is greater than this. Nothing is better. Nothing will endure longer than the story of Jesus Christ.
Nothing is more impossible.
And that's why the whole world tries to put it out of their minds. They throw away their Bibles or leave them untouched on the shelf. They persecute the Christian. They can't fathom what, who, or why.

One day, they will understand, and we keep that day in mind as we pray for and pursue the lost in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and our Savior.

~ On Trying to Slow Down ~

Wow. When was the last time I sat down and wrote? Much less wrote a blog post? Summer has flown by, as it usually does. There's something about sitting and thinking; something you can't get any other way. There was something about sitting in the sand listening to the waves, something about sitting in that car on the way to Orlando with my headphones on, something about watching the clouds move on that farm in the middle of nowhere, something in those sick days in my bed reading. I can't place it, yet, it wasn't anything new.
We've had new friends, new memories, new music, new adventures, new discoveries, new canoes and paddle boards, new school books, new backpacks and pencils, new jobs, new shoes, new amazing British Television, new everything. But it always gets back to that aura around being quiet. That atmosphere surrounding the silence of the fan going in circles and the lightbulbs in the lamps providing white noise. The rumbling down the road at 75 miles an hour all across the South. Music takes on a whole new depth when it's all you focus on; it becomes your heartbeat, your thoughts, and you believe it with all you are until the car stops and you turn it down.
I won't forget those long days inside while everyone else was out, just watching and fighting my own demons. I know them too well: selfishness, irritability, pride, et cetra.
I had felt left behind, by everything. Nana left us for heaven, I missed Mexico, missed Poland, missed a lot of things when I got Pneumonia. It was so hard to simply watch. But God has taught me so much, and given me so many fun days this summer. So, so many good things. My faith is built through these "circumstances."

Well, life is picking up the pace again.

~ Kendall

~ On Memories ~

It's been so long. But it feels like yesterday. Everything has changed, yet nothing is different. When I think about 2012 and 2013, I can not compare the two. They have each been so full. Full of everything I suppose. New friends, old friends, new music, music that brings back memories, confusion and peril, happiness and contentment, love and hurt, days and nights of summer bliss. Busyness, business. 

God is faithful. I rest in Him. Through sunshine and rain. Through love and pain. 

He is the same. 

Some days I wonder if I could've changed the way things are: If I could've helped or if I could've avoided change. But it's all part of the plan. Not my plan. Thank God it's not my plan. 

I wonder if people miss me when I go. I wonder if friends hold on to memories or if they forget. All I know is that I hold on to every memory I can find, and keep it there. Some memories are clearer than others, but each one is important. What about the things I'd rather forget? I still hold on to those to learn from them. Even if they're embarrassing or it hurts to think back, I must hold on to it. God puts each and every feeling and experience in my life for a reason, and I can't bear forgetting. I do too often forget. 

Forget what I've learned. 

Forget how steadfast The Lord is and become fearful and doubt. 

Forget how much something meant to me. 

Get so caught up in unimportant things that I forget to spend time on the most important thing: a relationship with God. 

But, sometimes I feel like it's best to make new memories instead of dwell on the old ones. 

So let's go out and make some memories. 

Posted from my iPhone. 

~ On Being Transferred ~

Whew. What a month. Praise God.
May has been one of the craziest, packed full, insane, spirit filled months of my entire life here on earth. I can't even begin to write about it, and I'll admit it; I have been putting it off. Writing has seemed for the past month like something I don't have enough time to sit down and do. But this morning is so calm. I'm in my own house, in my own room, reading my own Bible, singing my own songs, and writing. Life hasn't felt this good in a very long time. The Lord brought peace again, like He never fails to do.



I would write about what Transfer was like and how all the messages were so great and the worship...maybe another time. But oh, summer brings great things, and I'm sure of it. At this point, staying home from everything is a very, very great thing. Being able to play outside in our backyard is a very great thing. Reading to Ryan, showing him the magic of Narnia and Harry Potter, that is a great thing. Reviewing notes and re-reading passages of scripture, jumping on the trampoline late at night, getting together volleyball and soccer games...that's what's in store for my summer. I don't know where the Lord wants me to be as far as mission trips go, but for now, before everything is worked out, I will make home my mission, along with joining the work-place for the first time. I will try to make pouring into my friends my mission: encouraging them in the gospel.

~ Short, short-story ~

I wrote this the other day, and thought I'd put it on here.

She tried and tried, but her heart just wasn't in it that day. Her sketches were as bland as the words on the page. When she wasn't drawing, she was writing, and when she couldn't write, she drew, and when she couldn't draw, she wrote. Both were particularly unhelpful tonight. Maybe it was the weather: dreary, rainy, depressing, and probably smothering her creative outlook.
"Maybe tracing would be easier," she thought. The lines weren't straight.
"Perhaps writing a song would work." The lines didn't rhyme.
Things just were not going well on that rainy night in the city. All she could hear were the raindrops on the avenues, highways, and back alleys, the knick knacks on her counter rattling with the thunder, and the round lanterns (imported straight from Japan and China) blowing back and forth under her ceiling fan.
"Reading?" she asked herself. "No, still too much to do."
Yet here she sat, blankly staring at a screen that was no more helpful than the rain outside. Papers were scattered around her chair, filled with either the first chapters of a novel (which would have been supremely popular over every other in her time), or the beginnings of a sketch of a girl or a boy, doing something or other depending on their expressions.
"I just need to step back."
The digital-green clock read "1:00AM" but that was the usual for her. The streets were still busy in the city: so was she. Or at least, she was trying to be busy. She was trying very hard to be busy. But, artist's and writer's block had finally forced her outside onto her little apartment's "back porch." The lines of the city were blurred without her glasses, but she wasn't about to put them back on. The rain felt too nice on her discouraged face. She took a deep breath, and the refreshing moment was spoiled by the inhalation of exhaust from the cars, taxis, and trucks below. They looked like little blurs too.
Suddenly, a burst on inspiration hit her. She ran back inside without drying her hair or her face and sat down on the floor. Ravenously, she grabbed a piece of drawn on paper and found a blank space. She sat for at least an hour trying to get it right, occasionally going outside and coming back in, looking out the windows, and taking her glasses on and off.
The result was amazing, with or without glasses! She didn't sleep that night, but she wrote a short paragraph for her sketch, showered, dressed, and drove down to the Agency at "6:00AM," according to the clock.
They loved it, all of it, and the next day it was up on a billboard, sponsoring some perfume they had named after it: "The Raining City."

For us. For all the girls who are doing something or other, hitting blank pages and spacing out. Sometimes we have to blur the lines to see them.

~ So Close ~

How to begin?



April has been it's own month this year. Feels like every other month was a month of nostalgia. Or at least, I made it one in my head. My thoughts have been pouring forward in stead of backward. Sometimes this is good, and sometimes not, but I guess that strongly depends on what your future and past look like. Things seem to fly past without warning, and then come back to you later.
Your siblings got taller last night.
April 2013 is 4 days from being over.
The trees have leaves for the first time since early October.
We hardly have any 30 degree days anymore.
3 weeks of school.
3 weeks until summer.
3 weeks until graduation.

Some hate it, and some are counting down the minutes. I'm in the middle.

I remember telling a friend one night, "only 142 days until Transfer!" She made this disappointed face, but I was happy. It was so far, but it was something to look forward to. Now I check my countdown calendar and see only 28 days, 15 hours, and 37 minutes. That will probably have changed by the time I post this. It's not far. (Transfer is like the start of my summer) It's so close.
Yet it won't be the same. It's not Advance in the woods where we made all those memories. But I think it will be good. Great. Awesome.
I like to think of it this way:
We're not holding on to letting go, but letting go of holding on.

Even still, I'm not really going to try to forget. I'm just going to not to only remember all of the time.
It was too good to forget.



But, the best memories are the ones that we still haven't made yet.