Pages From My Journal

I've sat down to write this post many times. Every day for nearly a week, I've attempted to put into words what it has been like to finish my WIP and adapt to life back home all at the same time. Overall, I've been fairly productive. I knew I had to get my current WIP done before I move to camp to be counselor for the summer. I'd try to get up by nine every day, which turned out to be very difficult. College sucked more life out of me than I had thought. So, anytime my brother needed to be at school early, I volunteered to take him so I had a reason to get out of bed. I learned to create an instrumental playlist on Spotify that could help me get focused quickly on my story when I made time to write. Within two weeks, I'd rewritten and edited the last 34,000 words in my dystopian/utopian mashup novel. In addition to finishing the book, I wrote the synopsis, blurb, pitch, and query letter. I finished reading "Discipling" by Mark Dever and "Go

I am an anchor. Intentionally built to sink, To ground someone else While they float in the sky. Chained to the clouds, I fight, Against the tides, against The wind. The tugging means That I am alive. The fighting provides Me with breath. What if the chain breaks, I fear. I can't lift myself, I know. Worry is real, But fighting is life. *** My Commentary: I'm not really sure how I thought of this poem. Largely, it's about the hurt that comes when you choose to find your identity in your service to other people. Helping people shouldn't become our obsession, a source of bitterness, our identity. Without the grace of God, that's exactly what service becomes.

Frankly, I don't deserve the awesome experiences I've had over the past school year. I didn't deserve to have such an awesome group of friends and a great relationship with a handful of guys from my brother hall. So many moments made me smile, and I'm overwhelmed by God's grace to give me such an amazing first year. Looking back at pictures, I'm reminded that God blessed with me friendships and experiences when I stopped trying to "make things work." My first semester was really good, but I'll admit to trying to hold too tightly the plans for my own life. Even still, I enjoyed my first semester. But I loved my second semester, and God blessed me abundantly. The second was very different from the first. I didn't stop caring about having cool experiences or having good friends, but I chose to care first about my love for God. It sounds so simple, to fall in love with Jesus before falling in love with being a college student. But, trust

I am dead. But please, don't Try to measure, the Life, you think I must Have had.   Because I Was born this way. You see: My lungs don't know what it's like, To inflate with the air of life. My flesh and bones can only create An illusion: me bearing weight. And, my heart--my heart is stone. I cry, I hug, I ache, But know not a sliver of feeling. Jealousy, love, hate. I feel nothing—nothing real. Do you know? What it's like. To own a living life? I've heard there's a way To come alive for the first time, To rip out this rock heart, And replace depravity's hole With something … oh, something, So divinely set apart. All I know: Is that I cannot make my own heart beat. But, I do feel desperation, And I so desperately Want to be alive. *** My Commentary: My fear in writing this poem was that somehow, people would get a zombie feel about it. Our world has a good understanding of what death is. The