why does everything need a header?

You can't smell much in winter. Spring comes like a steel tornado and fills your face with all these things you forgot had scents and all of a sudden you remember last year. Or a least a feeling of last year. Or the year before that? Who knows. But your nose is no longer lonely. All of the sudden. There, like a whisper in your window, you crack it open just a touch and someone's smoke seeps in like a snake too polite to ask if he can come in, yet too curious to stay out.

GIVE GIVE GIVE

Banner Ad for Red Kettle

Workin' Stiff

Goodness, goodness. Folks, I cannot stop listening to an album that's six years old. Normally I'm against that kind of thing, I tell folks to go find something new and great, but "Greetings from Michigan" fits so well with this coming season! So I ask you, forgive my hypocrisy.

But now some truly interesting stuff (to me at least): For those of you who don't know, and for those of you who don't care, I just got a full time job. That's right lads and lasses, an honest-to-God job! I'm a Grant Writer here for The Salvation Army. Now I know what you're thinking. "Kyle? A grant writer? With that hair?" But it's true! It is not a fabrication! I am sitting, right now, procrastinating to write this blog post for you!

^This is how I dress for work.^

Man I'm already bored with this post. I can't imagine how you feel. I guess I'll just jump straight to the witty observation I've had planned and we can take it from there.

I think that this job is the perfect "girlfriend job". What's a girlfriend job, you ask? Is it a job for a girlfriend? No, don't be simple. Is is a job that helps me attain a girlfriend? Well I doubt that. Let me explain, quit pitching your ideas. I doubt you'll figure it out. This job is the kind of job you want for when you eventually have a girlfriend. Why? For this one main reason: when she talks about you to her friends, or when you meet her parents, you or she can drop the top notch bomb of: "Oh yeah, of course he has a job. He's a grant writer for The Salvation Army."

Boom. That just blew up all over your skeptical face. Girl, I could buy you a house. Well, in a couple of years. Right now I can afford rent and not worry about it. But I can put away for a house! Heck yes, and then I can buy it for you! Tell that to your mom and dad, rub it in the face of that friend of yours who has terrible taste in boys but doesn't see it for herself and then criticizes anyone you're interested in.

Oh golly

I just about cried watching an episode of NCIS.

Awesome.

Addiction

It's a cycle, a really obnoxious cycle.

It happens to me way more often than I'd like. I get excited. I think things are going well and I stay confidant, and then something happens that shakes my confidence and nothing is the same. You keep moving, trying to go forward, pretty sure that this is different than any other thing or any other time it has happened, and you know what? Maybe it is different, but it doesn't matter because something happens and you don't know what it is and all of a sudden whatever you had, whatever hope your were grasping on to get obliterated by a single comment or ignored attempt at a connection. All the sudden you're thrown off into some terrible black hole of a place and you wonder what you did wrong, and you can't think of anything, and then only in this stupid terrible place to you begin to make real mistakes. Then everything stops. It all ends and you feel blindsided. Then you throw your hands in the air and you shout out, "never again!" and you listen to angry music and you feel a little better then you realize how sad you are that things didn't work out and you cry a bit and call your mother. Then you shake it off, walk about.

And a little later, it all starts again.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm looking too far into a pessimistic future. I hope that's the case. If I'm wrong, if this isn't true today, then I'll take this down. But right now? I'm mad, and I'm hurt, and I'm very clearly in the dark and I don't even know if I want to talk any more about it.

I'm sorry that I wrote this, but there is no one around for me to talk to.

Vulnerability wrapped in Silk

My whole life has been on some sort of path, a certain track that I could always depend on. Even if my heart got broken, I lost friends, had to move, or if any other kind of major change happened in my life, I could always depend on one thing: I would have to go back to school, I would have to continue school, I would have to do well in school.

Well school is over. I've graduated. I have this wide open path in front of me, and no one is telling me what direction I have to head towards. It's a scary thought.

And it's only gotten harder. Last week was one of the hardest weeks of my life. What do you do when you feel as though the Lord provided something wonderful for you, only to have it all stripped away? I was presented with opportunities, work that I thought was the right thing for me to do, but in a long, drawn out moment, when time seemed to go stagnant, it dwindled away and I was left directionless. I had no idea what I was going to do to support myself. In fact, only now do I have a strong idea of what I'm going to do, but I'm still left with no clear goal.

My friend Jason told me to read Psalm 56. I needed to see it. Verse 4 says this:

In God, whose word I praise,

in God I trust; I am not afraid;

what can flesh do to me?

I guess what it is all coming down to is trust. I'm having trouble trusting God. I'm getting better at it, I want you to know that, but I'm still scared in so many areas of my life. I feel vulnerable and safe at the same time, as though... as though I'm wrapped in silk, but so much silk...

I have to learn that His plan is much more elegant than mine. And to be honest, it may include me stumbling, it may include hardships, so that I may grow, so that I may learn to depend on Him. I am desperate for His grace and intervention. I am craving His presence. I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going and I'm scared to death, but I will depend on God's grace.

"Oh the glory that the Lord has made, but He took my shoulders and He shook my face, and He takes, and He takes, and He takes. " (Sufjan Stevens sang that in Casimir Pulaski Day)

I am lost and cold, but I will wrap myself in that silk. I will embrace His tender grace and sleep in its strength. Pray for me. I have yet to completely smother the fear (but maybe I'm not supposed to rid myself of it entirely. That is a different story).

Better days I've surely seen

I feel like my engines have failed mid-flight, and I think some of my friends and I have been replaced.

I'm allowed the occasional moment like this.