I'm starting to realize more and more about what's going on.
I'm seeing that more than anything else God is really like an artist.
The reality is that God is less worried about everything going right...
but more so about building layers, textures, and depth with all colors.
The process isn't always beautiful... sometimes even ugly as unfinished,
confused expressions haunt the work as it grasps to put meaning in
colors that do not seem to fit.... why would He do that to me?

It's the passion of the process that brings about something so beautiful.
The motive was always beauty... The end is beautiful...
Nobody could call it otherwise.
So it's really less about having everything go right and more about pulling the beauty out of the process.

It is beautiful.
Every fingerprint left in compassion with the capacity to change...
To learn to love, forgive, and to heal.

The Subprime Mortgage Crisis

Because I did not qualify, and you chose me still.
The risk premium was costly.
The investment shaky.

His grace towards me says so much about him... but maybe just as much about me.

To fear the Lord is to really care about His opinion more than others... and my own.
And there lies my struggle... As hard as I might want to try to give up on myself, He refuses to give up on me... As soon as I try to settle for a life that is below what I am called to, that is when He speaks to me most clearly... This is where we disagree... He tells me I'm worth so much more.

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet lose his soul...
This has never been so clear.
What do you do when you don't want the world you've gained?
You try to get your soul back...

Another default... one more foreclosure... bankrupt again...
The policy never changes
His grace is sufficient.
His provision endless.

Leverage

Sometime I wonder...
If I took everything I have
All my love
All my intellect
All my strength
All my resources...
If I strategically leveraged all that is me... and left my soul hanging in the difference...
I wonder how far I could go.

The thing with latent potential is that it's latent. Some days I Don't think I'll get anywhere. That all I have to offer won't be enough to even move forwards another few steps. It's not like I'm ready to give up on myself... but all my efforts to wake what is latent seem to fall short... and my soul hangs still.

On the plus side. All these efforts and things are merely efforts and things. They're dispensable... I feel dispensable... It doesn't sound like I have much to lose if I put it that way... it's nice to think of it that way... But I sure would like to keep my soul.
Why did I put that on the line anyways?
Why does it always come down to that?

Maybe that's what Maslow was getting at. breathing and safety are important, relationships come and go... affirmation is sweet if you can get to it... but self-actualization (waking what is latent) is at the top of the pyramid for a reason. I think this is more important to me than I lead on... maybe this is what beckons my soul.

Or maybe Herzberg hits it dead on with his Motivator-Hygiene theory. Maybe satisfaction and dissatisfaction are separate. Maybe all I need to do is capitalize on motivators and minimize hygiene factors that bread dissatisfaction.

Or maybe I should stop looking at social scientists to help me describe my needs and look to the real source.

My life

I see myself as a center, actually more like a circle.
Coming out of me is a vast number of lines, actually more like arrows.
The arrows lead to a box which represents a person.
The arrows are my relationships to these boxes (people),
and some boxes are attached to other boxes.
The dynamic is that these arrows keep shifting.
Always attached, yet always moving.
Some boxes break off from other boxes,
and move quite some distance to the other side of the circle.
The constant shifting of arrows and boxes makes it hard for me...
to keep up.
I don't want to lose anyone.
But I pray that those that hurt the most...
Those we will be able to hold up.

I stare at my mountain... with nothing to say.

Why We Write

People write for many reasons, but truth is my motivator.

I believe we live in a society where we highly value truth. Our desire to be diverse battles with our desire to be united. In that we should not be looking for "our truth," but rather "the truth." We must not subjectively value all people's views the same, although all people should be equally valued, not all ideas are equal. Here I write about my ideas, your ideas might be better or worse, because there is only one truth of which we all gain value.

Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance : "is a psychological term describing the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs, or from experiencing apparently conflicting phenomena."

What motivates me is the gap between my expectations and our reality. The gap in what I believe to be true and the reality of my lack of truth. I write to close the gap.

Blessed yet lacking
Called to peace yet restless
Confident yet aimless
Loved yet lonely

I write to close the gap.

'Lord, I want to truly know you.
I want to truly know me.
You set the world in to motion,
Your grace keeps it moving.
Your truth sets me free.'