either way, we'll probably live

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
when there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying [to ourselves] that we are born to eternal life.

multiplexor:

Okay, so we did another Taylor Swift song. This track “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” debuted one week ago. I started recording it like an hour after it premiered. It turned out really awesome, so I got some of my best friends to help sing. Enjoy.

Download for free at http://multiplexor.bandcamp.com/track/we-are-never-ever-getting-back-together-taylor-swift.

Unhealthy obsessions aside, this is pretty great.

multiplexor:

After months of work and many good times, we finally finished the video for our cover of Taylor Swift’s Back to December. My friends are the absolute best for volunteering their time, gas, equipment, homes, and places of business. This goes out to fans of pop-punk covers as well as true T-Swift fans; I made it for you. REBLOGS GET INFINITE HUGS.

the words “i can’t  do anything on my own” have been bouncing around in my head for the last fourteen hours. it’s funny how you can hear something for your entire life, but all of a sudden, driving down the road after work, those very same words that you are so used to can knock you on your back. 

for perhaps the first time ever, i’m realizing that i can’t do anything. not even a little bit. i can’t be a good husband, i can’t be a good friend, i can’t clean myself up, and i can’t be in control of my life. it’s a crushing and liberating feeling. i pray that the Lord will do what i can’t. 

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where to start?

life is ever-changing. when i started this blog, i had no idea what i was doing with my life. i still don’t really know much of anything. i still struggle with faith most days, i still struggle with insecurity most days, and i am still tempted in many of the same ways i was. the difference is, i win those fights more days than i lose them now.

i am in the middle of a very hopeful, but challenging season in my life. opportunities with work have come to me out of nowhere. i think that i have always felt like if i stayed with my current job, then i was selling out somehow. i feel like serving coffee to people is not as noble as nursing, or teaching, or working for some non-profit organization, or selling everything and moving to africa. to hell with that, though. i am twenty seven years old, i am good at what i do, and i am about to marry the woman of my dreams. anyway, back to job stuff. it is funny how you can wait forever for something, and then you get an opportunity to go for it, but then two or three more opportunities turn up, so now you have a huge decision to make. story of my life…

i will be married this year. no matter how many times i say it or think about it, i still feel like it can not be real. i am such a mess most of the time. the Lord has blessed me beyond measure with a woman who sees through that mess, and loves me in a way that i did not even realize was possible. my fiancee rules. end of story. 

adulthood is within reach. i need faith. i need confidence. i need wisdom. if you happen to be one of the few who make it this far down in this post, i would ask that you pray for me. it is time for me to be a man. i’ve been a lost boy for too long. 

word

blowing my mind today.

technical college

so, i have been attending technical college for about two months now. it has certainly been an experience, but it is serving as a means to an end. i try not to think of myself as above it, and i really do not see it that way. my classes have however given me some insight into the general state of humanity, as i interact with people from all different walks of life. some of the things i am seeing are good, but others are less hopeful. 

now, i am by no means a literary scholar, so my opinion is not any sort of standard or anything, but my english composition teacher gave my class an assignment to research any three authors of our choosing, and give a brief synopsis of any interesting facts that we may have learned. i chose kurt vonnegut, ernest hemmingway, and george orwell. my ENGLISH teacher then informs me that she has never heard of kurt vonnegut. i could write pages about this, but suffice it to say that i am shocked that a person with an english degree has never in their career came across the name kurt vonnegut. slaughterhouse five was voted one of the one hundred most important american novels. this just baffles me. 

now aside from the fact that my teacher and most of my class had never heard of vonnegut (okay, so let me preface this by saying that i do not want to debate or question the value of the authors i am about to mention. i see their value. i will leave it at that.), about ninety percent of my class chose j.k. rowling and/or stephanie meyer. i just wonder what the state of literature really is right now. while i  do see the value of these authors’ works, i just do not feel like they are even authors the way that vonnegut, hemmingway, orwell, and many others were. i feel like classic literature is always going to be classic literature, and i am not even sure what the popular novels of today are going to be referred to as in fifty or one hundred years. i feel like writers just tell stories and build franchises now. they are not writing about anything. there is no message or craft to it. i feel like books are just to entertain us just like everything else in our society. they do not teach us or force us to think about anything. somehow these authors of the past managed to do all of this, and i feel like it is a lost art. 

this is one story, and i do not want to seem overly negative about my school and the people that go there. this has just been on my mind for the last day, and i needed to get it out. 

word

it will set you free

my soul is crying out to my maker today. i am praying for the Lord of heaven and earth to take me and fashion me into what he intended me to be.

loving others is something that i have been passionate about for a lot of my life now. somewhere along the way though, i’ve gotten lost. years of working in the service industry, some broken friendships, and the loss of some things that i once had a lot of faith in have made it difficult to believe in humanity at all.

about eight months ago now, the most beautiful, sincere, and just extraordinary woman came into my life. the Lord has used her in so many ways to show me how to love, not only in dating, but in general. i finally feel like I truly understand love, and that it is about time i dropped this negative outlook i’ve developed.

Lord, help me to see that people are your creations that you love and i am called to love them as well. help me to be what you created me for.

word

Cutest flight attendant ever. (Taken with picplz.)

My bluegrass fix.