It is well

because You are better than life.

It was the look in his eyes tonight. They were so drained, so old, so dark and large. But in that moment, so enthralled.
By beauty and passion and life and God and serenity.

Lord, I don't know what it is about you, but you make everything seem worth it in the end. I feel inexperienced, inadequate, unsure, and a little bit too comfortable.
But this is the life you have for me.
I choose to put my faith in that not because of what the world has to offer, but in spite of what the world has to offer.

i'm holding your treasure.



"Who are you gonna choose to serve today?"



i'm holding your treasure
you are the only one
you are the only one
you are the holy one

so here's the thing...

God isn't a god of convenience.
Sorry.
You lost the game.

Because I was sitting here on my new bed, doing a sudoku, planning to read a book following so, and it hit me. Here I am in my bed, just chilling out, thinking that God time can wait until later.
Wrong.
Our lives should really spin upon those moments when we allow God to speak into our hearts. Chances are, He won't do it while I am doing a sudoku, or while I am eating, or while I am on facebook.

I don't believe that we can experience God wholly where we are right now.

God took Moses, wrapped him in a rock taco, covered him, then showed him the backside of where God's glory used to be...and Moses' face radiated light. He had to cover his face while giving teachings, and only when approaching God would he remove it.

But I do believe that we can come pretty close. Only when it is truly the desire of our hearts.
If you don't give God the time of day, what kind of relationship are you expecting to build with Him?

I'll be your hope I'll be your love
be everything that you need
I'll love you more with every breath
truly, madly, deeply do
I will be strong I will be faithful
'cause I'm counting on
a new beginning
a reason for living
a deeper meaning

and when the stars are shining
brightly in the velvet sky,
I'll make a wish send it to heaven
then make you want to cry
the tears of joy for all the
pleasure in the certainty
that we're surrounded by the
comfort and protection of the highest powers
in lonely hours
the tears devour you.


oh, savage garden. thank you for the words.

i'm laughing and i'm crying and i'm not sure what my stomach feels like. it's a mix of butterflies and rosemary roasted chicken and cheesy potatoes and rolls and chocolate covered strawberries and mint chocolate chip cookies and love and white chocolate truffles and humbleness and hope and faith and life. all inside my stomach.
i'm pretty full.
i might upchuck.
you're already a voice inside my head. Lord i keep giving my heart to others and Lord you are the only one who deserves it. tears of joy? no...those weren't tears of joy. but they were good tears. they needed me and they've missed me.

dear future husband,
life's good here while i'm waiting for you. i'm learning. God is breaking and mending and breaking my heart. i hope by the time i know who you are that i'm ready for you. i want to give you nothing less than what you deserve. i want to hear the words you aren't saying and comfort you. i want to hold you in my arms and love you like you've never been loved.
all that to say this: i'm preparing my heart for you. i am giving up the things of this world to save a piece of my heart for you. you were never real to me until tonight. i heard you through the voice of a man of God. i heard you through explosions in the sky. i heard you through laughter. i heard you through tears. i saw you through the flash of a camera that will allow me to remember this night forever.
by the way, i'm not saying this while listening to some mellow Christian emo song. i'm listening to blink 182: all the small things.
our life together is going to be great.
i can live with that hope.
in the meantime, i'll be running the race...watching the sunset...laughing...catching some rays...playing music...embracing friendships so strong...did i mention laughing? i'll be doing a lot of that. i can't believe that you will be able to deal with my laughing. i can't live without it.
i'll see you soon.
-laura mae


The current is strong, my arms are weak
But you are the branch within my reach.

this morning the window was open

Small orange-like fruit :)
Originally uploaded by Hechlok

When I wake up, without having to force myself to do it, and I say, "Lord let your thoughts be my thoughts," I know this day will be even more beautiful than what the weather channel called for it to be.

The mornings when the sun shines so so bright (waking up at 11am)
The mornings when the shower is perfect heat.
The orange is so sweet it peels in one piece.
I check my facebook not for approval by my peers, but to see the love that welcomes me into my day.
Sleeping at Last is the wake up call, not the fire alarm.

I'm looking at the peeled orange on my desk knowing exactly what awaits me.
Yuuumm...

God will give you wisdom if you ask for it.
He will give you Himself if you ask for it.

"The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God's love; but if the soul cannot yet feel this longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God."


If you are a child, act like a child. But if you know God is maturing you, don't act like a child anymore. There is a difference between acting childlike verses acting childish.

"Before my feet can touch the ground, Lord I give this day to you."


Take a bite.
Enter your day.

everyone needs a little banjo

"We have this treasure from God, but we are like clay jars that hold the treasure. This shows that the great power is from God, not from us. We have troubles all around us, but we are not defeated. We do not know what to do, but we do not give up the hope of living. So we do not give up. Our physical body is becoming older and weaker, but our spirit inside us is made new every day. We set our eyes not on what we see but on what we cannot see."

Lord, last night I sort of felt like a jar.
Maybe more like a lamp post, though.

It feels good and it feels strange to feel that.
I think it's because I'm losing some pride.
Is it prideful to say that?
Weird.


I'm learning to be less of a scaredy-human.

"Where can I go to get away from your Spirit?
Where can I run from you?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there.
If I lie down in the grave, you are there.
If I ride in a plane 1576 miles from home.
If I rise with the sun in the east
and settle in the west beyond the sea,
and work at a camp all summer I've never been to,
even there you would guide me.
With your right hand you would hold me."

Scripture has this way to my heart that I cannot fathom.

Lord, here I am on this mountainside. Take my heart, my soul, my all. I am Yours.

a teaspoon of wisdom makes the Holy Spirit go down.

Lord, I am giving today to You.

I know, I know. Everyday is yours.

But today I need to know that.
I need to know that the breath I breathe is you.
That the ground I walk on is you.
That the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart are yours.

Grant me wisdom.

the greatest love that needs to be loved itself

"my heart broke into a million pieces; they obviously fell down into my feet because i couldn't move."

Jesus, you are so precious to us. We see You. We love You. But we're so idiotic.

I am learning the ramifications of our faith, and I am learning how you wash my feet.
You wash my feet, Lord.
I am washed clean.
So the chapter continues just because.

that song still lingers

"On a day when the wind is perfect, the sail just needs to open and the love starts. Today is such a day."

"It's rigged - everything, in your favor. So there is nothing to worry about. I know there is a gold mine in you, when you find it the wonderment of the earth's gifts you will lay aside as naturally as does a child a doll."

"The hills, the valleys, the beasts, the vineyards, the sacred meadows on our earth and body-they shall pass and ascend as all form does, tiring of space within a cage; for all crowds the soul but the infinite. Ascenders of God we are."

.Rumi.


Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I'm about;
See for yourself whether I've done anything wrong—
then guide me on the road to eternal life.


They say that when you are being stretched the most, that's when you learn the most. I know because I've been there. And it's completely true. Lord, you know me better than myself. You numbered every hair on my head for one thing; and I haven't exactly tried that yet.


Lord, You're better than life. And Your grace rests on my heart.


On the back of a business card:

"This is beautiful. There's something about the city that attracts you.
All cities are the same, really.
Blue lights, White lights, Windows,
lots of them.

There is a Bridge that leads out of the city as if You are leaving a different world.
It has yellow lampstands and makes the river yellow.
It shows its fast Current.
The Congaree is a mighty river, really.

The Wind is mad and I am but a reflection in my window.
I wish I had more time to embrace all this.
I can see it all from here;
clear as day;
yet dark as the Night that it is.

Fear left me a long time ago.

the bipolar alarm clock.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shackcommunity/

Those are the beautiful people that I love.



Lord, I don't know what it is that makes me so nervous, but it's there. What am I doing and why in the world have I decided to do this? It's one of those things that sounds so good in theory, and as the days approach fears trickle inside me.

60 days.

Is this you testing my faith? Do you do this sort of thing?

And then I hear you whispering that something so sweet in my ear,
"trust me."

God: Here's to waking up in the morning.

i'm so bored of little gods while standing on the edge of something large

I don't know what in the world emotion this is called, but every time I hear my nephew's voice on the phone my heart breaks. I have never known I was capable of such a feeling.

It gets me every time.

I have never had an Easter quite like this one. I have never experienced an Easter sermon quite like the one I heard this morning.
Thanks, Joey.

"An Easter different than any other. 'You are awesome in this place, Mighty God.' A place where four people are wearing bunny ears, and no one is surprised. A place where chaos can transform into solitude in minutes. The coffee is emptied out with barely enough time to start the coffee machine again. Dressed up the only time of the year. for our Jesus."

Can you imagine your life without God in it? It's pretty ugly. We ask God. We ask, beg, pray, complain about our lives. What does that leave us with at the end of the day? Unfulfilled desires?

What if we asked God, "Lord, what can I give to You?"
What if the desires of my heart matched the desires of His heart. After all, His desire is just to have my whole heart. There is a hole in our hearts that we fill with something.

You see, it doesn't matter what you do. It doesn't matter what your past is, or even who you've made youself out to be. God is after your heart. You didn't choose Him, He chose you. Specifically. Because He loves you. Ever wondered why we keep coming back to Him? Trying to fill this void in our hearts so desperately that we will fill it with things that don't matter? Because He created us that way. He wants you. He loves you. He holds you. The void in your heart is God-sized.

He loves you? Yeah. You want to know how I know? Because God wanted us more than he wanted his own life.

I'm laughing at myself because I see the ugliness and how uncomparable it is to a life fulfilling the desires of God's heart.

The Shack Easter service was unlike any other I have experienced. A combination of worship, communion, teaching, eating, frolicking, finding Easter eggs (Christmas ornaments), dying eggs, and did I mention eating?
This is a community that I have a feeling will be in my heart forever.


Wow. I can't believe this.



To quote from Joey, "I pay attention to pop culture because pop culture helps me relate to people."

sweet conversation

[i don't know where, i don't know how, i don't know why. but Your love can make these things better.]

Lord, sometimes the only thing keeping me alive is Your hand.

The sunset is beautiful this time of year. The conversations have been beautiful. Conversations I knew were so possible, so reachable, but didn't know we had the capacity for. You have the capacity for us, I suppose.

I've been thinking a lot about our pasts here recently. I never thought that I struggled with this idea of not giving up the past. I never thought I had ghosts chasing me. That is for people who have been through tragedy, not church people like me. I've encouraged people who struggle with their pasts, saying that God has closed the door behind you, and you don't have to worry about those things anymore. Your past makes you who you are, but it isn't worthy of being in focus.

See, the funny thing is that my past doesn't matter either. Just because I don't have many regrets doesn't mean that my past still exists in God's eyes. Who we are now, gathered around the table, is who we are at the moment. It's what we're talking about. It's the people we surround ourselves with. It's who we relate with. It's about your personal confidence. It's about what God has taught you and the way that you can stand up for yourself, for your faith, when needed.


There is no shame in what's behind that door. Just as long as the window's open and the air is moving.


I don't think it's ever been as quiet as it is right now.
Can I tell you something?
To be completely honest and vulnerable I'm struggling with a lot right now. One of which is the fact that I am so good at covering my vulnerabilities with a soft, flannel blanket. Well, maybe it's more like a brightly multicolored quilt. If there's anything I can say I'm best at, it's that.

I also have not completely recovered. I suppose I am constantly in a state of recovery. I haven't had the epiphany yet. That moment when I decide to completely trust in Your intentions for my life. This is hard. I believe wholeheartedly that this may be the hardest thing that I've had to go through in the past 10 years of my life. And it hurts. And I'm supposed to grow but I'm being stubborn. i'm seeing it come out. I'm seeing how my energy is being channelled and it's ugly. God, it's ugly.

I'm learning. And that is nothing to be ashamed of. I'm not sorry.

"God's mercy holds us, we are His own. This road that we travel, may it be the straight and narrow. God give us peace and grace from You. All the day through."


A car alarm is going off outside. Reminds me that life goes on.
Thank you for your peace. Reminds me that time really can stop.



"Come just as you are, come recieve, come and live forever."

can't stop

i can't believe you're here, close to me,
it's getting hard to breathe, but i don't want to leave.

i can't escape your love for me,
so you take control.
your Spirit surrounds me,
close enough to catch me when i fall.



life isn't a fairy tale. something i'm learning lately.
"Mystical experiences of God are real, but fragmentary...I have learned not to strive to reproduce them, rather to put myself in a place where they can visit me, "grace" me." -Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God

that's why i'm going to be happy when i wake up to my iPod every day. i'm going to enjoy my first cup of coffee with a good book, and eat my smart start cereal with joy. i'll be thankful every time i am with my friends because they are one of the best things that has ever happened to me. i'm going to leave the past behind me, whatever ghosts i think are chasing me, and focus on what my life is taking the shape of. i will laugh at anything, and i will rejoice in new music.

your ways i do not understand...but i do know that they are AWESOME!

It's good to journal. For several reasons, but one is that you can open them up years later to reflect on your growth, and to laugh a little. I found my journal from when I was 14, and I was laughing my head off.

But it can change your perspective on living an every day life, when you see what your days used to look like. I sometimes look down on my 'testimony' because it didn't involve a divorce, an abortion, abusive parents, or a broken family. When I hear stories from people about turning their lives around and following Jesus after extremely difficult times, I think that my story isn't good enough. My faith is only mine because I grew up going to church.

I can see more and more that my life is significant. I may not have had disaster in my life, but that should make me even the more gracious in my blessings.


On another note:
It being Easter season, I am reading through the death and resurrection story of Jesus. It's hard for me to read for some reason. I found myself reading through the stories in Matthew, and partially doubting what was happening. It was horrible. I found I was convincing myself that it was okay to doubt, but then I was hating myself for that. As I continued to read though, I remained open to God (the only one, obviously who knows my thoughts) with my doubts, because I'm not willing to just push them aside anymore, but at the same time I was very scared. Then I got to this part:

"Then the curtain in the Temple was torn into two pieces, from the top to the bottom. Also, the earth shook and rocks broke apart. The graves opened, and many of God's people who had died were raised from the dead. They came out of the graves after Jesus was raised from the dead and went into the holy city, where they appeared to many people." Matthew 27

Because here's the thing: I believe that everything in the Bible did happen, without a doubt. It's history. The thing I found myself doubting was whether Jesus was just a blasphemer or if He truly was the Son of the Living God. So when I got to this part, I felt pretty dumb. And I'm pretty excited now, actually. Because I'm learning that you can't just push doubts aside. They are there, and denying them is just pushing them deeper and deeper into your heart. When you lay something like this in God's hands,

no doubt,

He is faithful. If you ask for wisdom He will give it to you.

I keep saying to myself, "I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready. I'm scared so obviously it can't be right. I'm so scared."

But I don't think that's the way God works.

For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you. [isaiah 41:13]
So do I find the strength within myself? I sure don't feel like I have any.

So now I'm left with this image of God holding my hand.
It's beautiful, really.

goodbye, sweet .mac subscription;

you will be missed. but not enough to pay for you every year.

so this is the start to a new blog. same me, same God, different url.

what better way to start off a new blog than to explain the title. the words that are supposed to define the entire outlook of this new webpage of mine.

"wandering through the Heart of the unseen"

well, i believe simply that there is more than meets the eye in this life. odd, considering what i love to do is create things visually, two dimensional, quite the opposite of invisible. but to focus on things unseen is to have hope in times of despair. to be filled in times of emptiness. to be dried of tears that have fallen because of the crap this life sometimes gives us.

i am wandering through this life. running, jumping, walking, traveling, riding in a car, dancing, crawling, sleeping through all of this life with joy because of the God who runs all this. because of a Saviour whose grace and mercy i am thankful for every day of my life. because of a Holy Spirit who i believe is inside of me, guiding me, teaching me, holding me upright when i am downright wrong.

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
2 Corinthians 4:16-18

that, my friends, is something worth living for.
that, my friends, is Truth that cannot be found through anything else this world can give. and that is what i chose to live for. after all, it is a choice we all have. Jesus didn't die for the perfect. He died for the ungodly, the sinners, the screwed up, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, etc. He died for you and me. So that we can be free from the cares of the world.


i'm not quite sure what shape this blog will take on. my .mac site was more deep and spiritual than anything else. it was more of a journal, including many of the prayers that take me on throughout my wanderings. i guess we'll just have to see.


i am working on finding a new site for my designs. hopefully a site where i can actually get feedback.


please read my blog with an open mind. please comment if you want to tell me something. the reason i blog is so you know what i am thinking. so that you can know how i think and hopefully be encouraged, or challenged, or educated, or at least entertained for a while instead of wasting your time on facebook, playing world of warcraft, or watching tv.

there you have it, my friends. a wandering through the Heart of the unseen. for what is seen is temporary, frail, unimportant, insignificant, and what is unseen is eternal. [which is a long time, by the way.]