My Mom's Birthday

Today is a very special day.

It's the day before the 4th of July.

It's also my mom's birthday.

Joseph's Story, Genesis 47-50, the conclusion

Hey guys, I feel really bad that's it's been so long since I wrote on Joseph's story...so I'm going to try and conclude it today.

Since it's been so long, I suggest that you should perhaps go back and read the last one, to refresh your memory on what's been happening...

Okay, so, Genesis chapter 47.

Never forget

Have you ever read a history book and thought, "Well, this is just boring,"?

Most of us have, because, let's face it, history books sometimes are very boring.

One day, I was thinking about the men and women in my history books. I was reading Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking People, which is sometimes an incredibly boring take on history, especially for those of us who are not really all the interested in hearing about the politics as much as just hearing a basic story.

But the politics are part of that history, just as much as the random little stories that we hear about our ancestors.

Undying Love

 His big, childish, impressionable eyes watch the scene through the crack in the door. Yelling, fighting, throwing, hitting. It's a scene he's watched hundreds of times, and yet it still upsets him. Tears drip from his chin onto his nightshirt. He crawls back into bed and covers his head with his pillow, attempting to block out the angry sounds of his world.

He goes to school and comes home, silent. He barely says anything to anyone, although his teachers have tried to talk to him. There is so much pain and anguish in his heart, and he doesn't know how to open up and share. He spent so long in the dark, being told to be quiet that now he isn't sure that he will ever want to talk again.

Silent submission turns into violent rage as he gets older. No longer are his teachers trying to get him to open up, they are only trying to cope with his tantrums. His anger and frustration that builds at home is poured out on his fellow classmates, making him despised among them. None of them understand, none of them know what he has been through.

He finds someone who is sympathetic to him, he makes friends. For the first time in his life, he feels accepted. He only wants to be loved, although he won't tell anyone that. They offer him forbidden treats, he accepts them, at first hesitantly, but soon he is just as big and bad as any of his friends.

He finds young people who are in the same trouble as him, and he brings them into the fold, telling them that they don't need the people who hurt them, that he can take care of them. He gives them what they want, and they take it.

He doesn't stay in school, he doesn't want to be around the kids who hate him, the adults who despise him. They only see that he is a troublemaker, and maybe he is, but that is the only way he has of coping with what he has seen, what he has done. He doesn't need them anyway. Deep down, he knows that he wants the love and attention that he never got from his parents, but he refuses to admit that he needs anyone but himself.

He sits alone, leaning against the cold brick wall in a back alley in an unfamiliar town. He can't figure out how he's gotten so far away from what he wanted to be. He's becoming like his father, drunk, lonely, unfaithful. This is what he never wanted to become. But looking back on his life, he sees every mistake he made in getting himself to this dark and damp alley.

He stands over his mother's hospital bed. Her eyes are closed, she slumbers, but he knows that she will probably never open her eyes to see him. He heart aches with the memories that could have been made with her, if he had only stayed. It was never her fault, she was so wrapped up in avoiding a beating, not only for herself but for her son. She may not have been very motherly, she was angry most of the time, and she may have spent most of her time yelling at him, but she was still his mother. And now she is slipping away, and he will never be able to thank her for the tiny bits of joy that she was able to give him.

The wind tousles his hair as he looks out over the ocean. He has to begin again. He has spent his whole life in trouble, he wants something else. Something that can give him the peace that he so desperately needs. But he doesn't know what could give him that. He tried drugs, alcohol, women, none of them ever worked. He had watched the people he had once called friends descend into a pit that they would never be able to rise from. He knows he never wants to end up there, but he doesn't know what to do anymore.

Alone, as always, sitting on a park bench, he studies the cracks in the pavement and tries to make sense of his life. That's when a stranger comes to him. She says he looks like he could use a friendly word. They talk for a long time, the sun is sinking by the time she stands to leave. He asks her if he can have her number, so they can talk again, she really encouraged him. She gives it to him and they part ways.

He watches her, every time they are together, trying to decipher the secret to her joy. People make cutting remarks about her sometimes, but they roll off her like it was nothing. She has hard days too, but she keeps her chin up. He can't seem to figure out what makes her that way. He asks her, she tells him her secret. A man who is God came and died on the cross for her sins, saving her from eternal punishment. She's a Christian. He's heard the story a thousand times before, people always want to preach to you when you are in a bad situation, and who better to preach to than him? He had always scoffed at the idea before, but coming from her it didn't seem so hard to believe. It so obviously changed her, believing in this man who was God, so why couldn't is change him?

He asks her more, she tells him more. She explains the Gospel to him, as best as she can. She gives him a Bible, he reads it, devours it. He doesn't understand most of it, especially the love that was shown by the man who was God. All these people hated him, and yet he still paid the ultimate price for them. When he rose again, it sealed the fact in his mind, he must be God. He prays, begging the man who is God to come into his heart, change him, get him away from the horrors that he has seen all his life. He needs love and kindness, only the man who is God can show him that. He needs to be saved.

Life has a new color now. He can still she the shadows that he slunk through all his life, but now he can also see the light that he shied away from. He no longer takes human kindness in the wrong way, assuming that everybody wants to use him. He tries to show others the miraculous love that he was given. The girl can see the difference, she in overjoyed for him. She asks him what changed, he told her that he knows that he is loved. That's all he ever wanted, was someone to love him, despite everything, and he finally found what he had been looking for for all his life. He had found somebody with perfect, undying, love.

Cheers!

To all the people who don't often get thanks...

Everybody salutes the soldiers, or at least recognizes their service.

Everybody recognizes the president on sight.

If you run into a movie star or a singer, you beg them for their autograph and a picture.

But nobody thinks of the little guys, the ones who have the hard, nasty, discouraging, thankless work, so this is to you guys.

To the person who stands on the back of the garbage truck and empties everyone's trashcan, I salute you.

To the person who cleans the toilet stalls at public places, even after a particularly nasty accident, I salute you.

To the person who cleans up the port-a-potties after they are returned, I salute you.

To the person who stands there during construction on the road and holds the sign over his head telling you when it's okay to drive, I salute you.

To the person who comes up with the random activities and stuff on the back of a cereal box, I salute you.

To the person at the grocery store, restocking the refrigerator section, I salute you.

To the person running the cash register at the gas station, I salute you.

To the person who delivers the mail, I salute you.

And to all the other people with the difficult, seemingly unappreciated jobs, I salute you all too. And I sincerely thank you for your hard work. Without you guys, our country wouldn't be able to function. 

My salute to you!

Cheers!

Have a little cheer.

Hey guys!!

I just wanted to share some happiness with you!

Today I've been really bummed out. Well, for a couple of days really.

Part of it is because I've just not felt good in a while. I think I've caught a cold (I know, who gets a cold in the summer?!?!)

Some of ya'll (ya'll is a real word, it's in the dictionary, look it up if you don't believe me), might be feeling down, so I though I would spread a little cheer.

Kid President, the cutest little guy on Youtube. I dare you not to laugh. You just can't do it while watching this video.

Cheers!

I can't really think of a title for this post...

So, in case you had not noticed, I really like to write.

And not just on my blog, although I do enjoy it, I love writing stories.

Really I have since I was very little, although I must say that some of my early stories are complete rubbish.

Writing stories is and always has been my way of art. I'm not a very good painter, my drawings are childish at best, I'm not very good a fiber arts and those sorts of things.

I've been reading since before I started kindergarten. I went to public school for a little while, and nobody believed me when I said I was really reading the Magic Schoolbus stories.

But I was reading them, and I have always loved a good story, it's a great way to not only entertain yourself, and develop a great imagination, but it's also a really good way to loose yourself. Whenever something really difficult is going on in life, getting lost in another universe is sometimes very helpful.

But then so is writing. It's different than just reading about someone else's creations.

When you read it's like walking through someone else's garden. You can enjoy the flowers, sit on the benches, breath in the wonderful aromas, get lost in the beauty. It's a wonderful feeling.

But writing your own stories, creating your own universe is more like being the architect of the garden. You decide what flowers to plant, where they go, what decorations you want. 

But it's different than that. Because when you write your own story, you fall in love with your creations.

When I read the Hunger Games, I absolutely fell in love with the characters. Katniss reminds me of myself, so of course I liked her (although sometimes I hated her), it was like reading myself in the adventure. But beyond that, there was Peeta, who in my opinion is the sweetest guy ever, protecting Katniss like he did. Finnick, who I hated at first, but after having spent so much time in the story, with Finnick, I grew to love him and Annie just as much as Katniss and Peeta. Gale, Madge, Prim, Cinna (who honestly was my favorite person in the whole story). I became so attached to these characters, I sometimes wonder about what their lives were like after the last book.

But then I wrote my own book. It's short, nothing hugely impressive, probably never going to be a best seller or anything like that. But it's mine. I made the entire universe. I know everything about my characters. I know their past, their present, their whole future lives. It's a weird feeling to have that much power over the lives, and even the thoughts of them. I could control every situation. And I don't have to wonder what happened after their story was over, because for me, it's never over. I don't have to wonder what happened next, because I can create what happens next, even if nobody else ever knows, it's my universe.

I tend to get lost in my made-up worlds sometimes. I make myself a character and live their lives through the words that I write. Hours can pass and still I'm sitting there, writing the lives of my creations. It's a feeling like no other.

Of course, my problem is that I have all these great ideas for what would make amazing stories, but those are never the ones that I end up finishing. The ones that I end up finishing are the ones that kind of write themselves. I don't start out with a plot in mind, I just sit down and it just happens. I still have control over what my characters do and say and think, but more often than that, my characters do whatever needs to be done. 

God made us in His image, all of us. And I believe that part of that is our love of creating things. Not everybody creates things in the same way. Some are writers, some are painters, some people like to make movies, but everyone has a way of creating things.

Sometimes it feels like we cannot find our own way of expressing what's going on inside. Most of the times the most beautiful and wonderful creations come when we are trying to find a way to deal with something. Not everyone is eloquent with spoken words, so not everyone can just say what is on their minds. 

Some people draw their troubles away, that is why some artwork seems so strange. It's what is inside the person who is drawing it, their way of taking whatever they need to say and saying it, but it comes out differently than spoken word.

I have a hard time saying what I need to say, and instead I quite often write. I don't always write exactly what is bothering me, sometimes I have no words to express that. 

Instead, sometimes I just start writing. My character may not go through exactly what I am going through, or they may go through something completely different, but somewhere in that story is a little tiny piece of me. The way somebody in that story thinks is the way I think, something that happens to them is slightly like something that happens to me. 

The biggest difficulty with words is that you can't always see through them as they were intended to be seen through. On the other side of a written word is a thought. That thought contains so much, and nobody but the thinker can ever hope to see the fullness of it.

Sometimes people have so much going on inside, a whole universe that only they have access to, and the only way for them to let anyone else have a glimpse inside that universe is to use the written word. Spoken words are sometimes not enough, or sometimes impossible to use. But through that written word, other people can catch a glimpse into the writers mind.

Everyone is different. In some cases that is more obvious than in others. 

Everyone has a way of expressing themselves. 

Let me just say that for a very long time I was very against the whole 'Express Yourself' thing. Some people use that as an excuse for sinning, which is not what I mean at all by this. 

Nobody can keep everything bottled up forever, but not everybody can just say what is on their minds. Everyone has a way of expressing how they are feeling. 

Pay attention. Learn how you express yourself, but more importantly, learn how others express themselves. We can't expect everyone to just talk about how they feel. If we want to understand others, we have to learn to understand the way they communicate.

Part of loving others is learning how others need to be loved. Don't get frustrated or angry when someone that you love seems like they won't open up to you. They probably are telling you stuff, you just need to learn how to listen to them.

Cheers!