The Reality Of High School Courses...

I was working on Chemistry this afternoon when I finally came to peace with all that high school is for me. And I have accepted this fact as the way it is. Somehow, school is a little less complex for me now...I hope it helps you as much as it helps me. 

The Real Definition of the Different High School Courses:
Writing: the study of verbal creativity and exertion. 
History: the study of ancient creativity and exertion. 
Math: the study of MORE ancient creativity and exertion. 
PE: the study of physical creativity and exertion. 
Science: the study of lack of creativity and exertion, where you must learn the difference between "alkanes" "alkenes" and "alkynes." Because scientists are above creative words, and only go to the exertion of changing one letter. Also, forget all you learned about "I before E except after C." Science breaks all the laws of life.

Listen to Me When I'm Saying "I Love You"

Hey there...so a lot has gone on in my life since I last posted. Most of it involves decisions that are relatively unimportant. However, there is one choice I made that has altered my life greatly in just the past couple of weeks: I have become an EMHC. That is to say, I have become an Extraordinary Minister of the Holy Eucharist. It's a fascinating thing really...and not just because any time I think of the word "extraordinary" I think of how when I was little my big brother would always say "Now, Faith, we are all made equal...I'm just more equal than you are." So naturally when I think of the word extraordinary I always wish I had responded "Oh yeah? Well I'm more ordinary than you because I EXTRAordinary!" Pathetic...yes...but this is the relationship I have with the younger of my older brothers. Anyway....

I first served at Mass as an extraordinary minister on the first Friday of this month at Saint William's 12:15 mass. It. Was. The. Most. Terrifying. Thing. I've. Ever. Done. Like...seriously. So scared. If you ask my homeschool friends some of them noticed how much I was trembling. But it was beautiful. I was able to give Christ to my friends in a way I never had before...in the truest sense of the way. And yes, that first day most of my thoughts consisted of "Lord...please do not let me drop you...please..." (it's true...). 

However, it is also a crushingly humbling experience. I have served in Mass in many different ways. When I was about eleven I began lectoring and ushering at Mass, and when we moved to Texas I dropped both but after a year picked lectoring back up with a fervor I previously lacked. But this, was different. I expected it to give me the same sort of feeling inside as lectoring does–like I have successfully allowed the Holy Spirit to work through me to deliver Christ to people through his word–but it did not. Two days after my first time ministering, I served at my first Sunday Mass, and it was beautiful (and strangely much less scary than the daily Mass was...). I went through everything flawlessly and was so proud of myself (I think that it is okay to be proud of oneself for not messing up and causing a distraction during communion....right?). But I felt horrible...and terribly responsible. For you see, I was holding between my fingers the flesh of the one person who loved me more than anyone else and I was FEEDING it to another human being. 

I never looked at communion quite the same way as I do now. I always knew it was the "Body of Christ" and that Christ died for me and that communion is celebrated in remembrance of the last supper to obey Jesus' command of "do this in memory of me." But...perhaps it is just a little different when you go into Mass after meditating deeply on the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary. Imagine someone you love. It can be anyone, really. Do you have a significant other? A close sibling or parent? A best friend? I'm sure you do. Imagine them, stripped of their clothes, lacerated to the point where their flesh can take no more. Covered in gashes to the point where...I can't even describe it. It hurts too hard to envision it much less put it to words. Close your eyes and imagine that. Parents, imagine your children that tortured. Husbands/wives, imagine your spouse like that. Now think of it this way, they have Christ inside of them. They reflect the love God has for you. Now picture yourself pulling away some of that wounded flesh and sticking it into the mouth of people you do not know except for that this person who loved you and whom you love...also loved them. And know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that that loved one, Jesus Christ, went through that agony so that you wouldn't have to and so that the person you are feeding wouldn't have to. That is what communion is for me now. 

Before I went up to the alter to receive communion and to take it to give to the people in my section the past two times I ministered the Sacred Body I prayed this simple prayer "Thank you, Lord, for giving me the honor of giving your Son's body to my brothers and sisters...please forgive me for what I did to Him." and honestly...it's hard not to tremble when I say those words. But it's exciting too. Because I have the privilege to remind people that Christ loves them. I get to tell them "The Body of Christ" before I pass him over to them. I could go very deep into what they taught me, but I'm just going to stay on the surface of things and stay out of my deep ponderings on the subject. When I tell them that simple phrase "The Body of Christ" it really translates to "I love you." Because the body of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, His sacrifice to save us from eternal suffering...that is pure love. That is the truest love there is. So when I call to mind that image and say it to a person it means "you are loved" it means "Jesus loves you" and, since I am up there feeding you the flesh of the love of my life, it means "I love you."

And you know what? My primary responsibility is to protect my Lord. I constantly am on guard up there for someone who would hurt him. And yet...almost every other person up there breaks my heart every time I've ministered. And if it breaks my heart, it certainly hurts Christ. For when I am saying "the Body of Christ" when I am saying "I love you" for both me and Jesus...they interrupt. Do you know what they say while I am still saying "Body?" They cut me off and say "amen." They want it over with. They just want to get it done and go back home. I almost cried when I got home this past Sunday when I realized that they just wanted to get the best gift they'd ever been given and go without even bothering to know what it meant. It also makes me a bit angry. I just want to glare at them and say "Listen to me when I tell you I love you! Listen to me when I tell you that you are precious, that you are worth dying for, that you are worth everything to your creator...listen...and know you are loved by the most powerful being in existence...just listen...and know you are loved." But sadly, I cannot tell them that during communion...but I can, and will,  pray that they learn to understand what they are interrupting. 

Who I Am

Just now I was asked by an agnostic "Have you ever been certain you were in love with someone?"  I closed my eyes and thought for a couple of minutes before answering him.  As anyone who knows me could guess, my answer was "yes."  To expand on that, my full response was this, "Yes.  I am in love with God.  In relationships, I desire to find the spouse that will love me in a way that reflects God's love for me.  That, I have not yet found."

For you see, I am still fifteen years old (for a couple more weeks ;) ), and at this age it is impossible to "be certain" that I am "in love" with someone.  I can like people romantically.  I can love people platonically.  I can even love people romantically.  But I cannot, for certain, say that I am "in love."  For this cannot be said until marriage.  When I meet a man whom I can love truly, who has the courage to offer his life to me in the form of an engagement ring, whom I can have the courage to give my life to  through putting it on, and together we can make the marital vows, then, and only then, can I say with complete certainty that I am "in love" with someone.

This is because only when God's grace binds myself to the one whom I love, can I be in love.  Until that point,  I am outside of love.  I can partake in love, I can get my hands in it, I can mold it into whatever design I wish, I can taste it, hear it, smell it, feel it...but I cannot be in it.  Love is in me, and I am in the presence of love.  Love has created me, love defines me, love gives me life.  But I cannot be in love through my Father's eyes, until I have become love.  Whenever I give myself, body, soul, heart,  mind, and spirit to my future spouse, and I take my spouse's body, soul, heart, mind, and spirit upon myself for protection, then, together, we become love in each other.

Whenever I become love in my husband, and my husband becomes love in me, then I shall be in love.  "The two shall become one."  If he is my love, and we are one in each other, then I am in love.  For together, as we build a family, we reflect the love above all love, of the Holy Trinity.  Through my husband and myself loving each other as the Father and the Son loved each other, our children shall come forth from us as the Holy Spirit came forth from the Father and the Son.  Whenever I can reflect the Holy Trinity through my marriage, I can be in love and not just a witness of love.

Now, whenever I told my friend that I was in love with God, but none other, he asked me to take religion out of the picture.  He wanted me to answer his question without bringing in God, so that I could answer his question on the same page that he asked it.  The problem is, however, that he and I can never be on the same page unless we are in the same book, which we are not.  And so, I cannot take religion out of my answer, for my book is my religion.  My life is my religion.  In the words I said to him "There is no aspect of my life where I can put religion aside.  My religion makes me who I am."  And who I am, until after marriage, can only be "in love" with God.

THE Giant Dust Bunny

My dear friends, I have reached spiritual enlightenment. The ways of the world came upon me as I was packing up for my biology class the other day (we were studying protists, so I didn't need to focus). I opened up my binder, and I just started drawing. My hands just drew away and it all made perfect sense to me, to the point where I had to tell the world, or at least part of it, how we all came into existence.

Picture nothingness. Not hard right? It's like you are laying in bed in the darkness of night. Only...you don't have a bed. And you aren't there. And your room doesn't exist. And it's not night, because night doesn't exist. And the darkness isn't darkness, it's nothingness. Get it? Good. See the nothingness? Of course you don't. Because you don't exist, and the nothing doesn't exist...because it's nothing. But then, you, although you don't exist, see a Giant Bunny. And the Bunny evolved from a speck of...dust...because...it's a Giant DUST Bunny. So, since it is a Giant Dust Bunny, it is allergic to itself. And so, it inevitably sneezes. When it sneezes, a great phenomena occurred. It didn't sneeze like normal bunnies do, because it is a Giant Dust Bunny, so when it sneezed a number of things came into the nothingness. Two types of gasses to start with, a big block of ice, a large fire, and thousands of little blocks that seemed like they needed to be activated. And then...the Giant Dust Bunny left the things floating in the nothingness, that was now more like a void for misfit things.

Now, over the course of millions of years, the gasses slowly drifted toward each other, losing potency along the way. So it was like this: driiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiift....lose some of the gas....driiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiift....lose some of the gas...ect. For MILLIONS of years. So now, very little gas is left in the two clumps right? And then they collide. What happens next? If you said "BIG BANG" you guessed right. Only...it was more like a little bang. That wasn't exactly a bang. They collided and created a giant mass of lava. This grew and grew as it ate the nothingness. As it grew, the outer edges hardened and then softened, and then broke up into soil. Now, as it was a BIG BANG, it couldn't rightly form a perfect ball, right? SO it was all warped and had these massive holes, bumps, and canyons carved into it. When the Giant Dust Bunny saw this, he thought "my sneezes make miraculous things" and thus he went back into hibernation.

Now, over the next few trillion years the big block of ice and the large fire had been floating around. But then they saw each other. It was love at fire sight. Fire and Ice were determined to be together so they floated toward each other at an alarming speed of 1MPY (meter per year). It took them 20,000 years to collide. Do you know what this was called by the Giant Dust Bunny? If you guessed the "Major Meltdown" you we correct a second time.  The fire floated up and hugged the ice, completely enveloping it. This melted the ices heart...and...y'know...everything about the ice. As the water fell because of gravity (the Giant Dust Bunny never did figure out what part of his sneeze came up with THAT ridiculous invention), the fire swooshed down and tried to catch its love. This failed, however, as the melted ice, which legally changed its name to "water," extinguished the fire. The water then crashed down upon the land and filled it's every crevice. Here it has stayed forever more, trying to drown the sorrows of its lost love away. This made the Giant Dust Bunny sad–not to mention wet–and so he again went away.

Not too long after the Major Meltdown–about 83,000,000 years–came the deciding factor of our universe. You see, as the original two gases drifted toward each other and left so much of themselves behind, those gases evolved. Through the years, the gasses slowly started to drift together again. This is the big one. Do you know what the Giant Dust Bunny named THIS event? If you guessed "BIG BANG PART TWO" you are sort of right. He tried that, but decided to was too long, so he changed the name to the "Cosmic Collision." The Cosmic Collision was by far the most violent occurrence, as well as the most impacting. As the gasses game together, they erupted into flames (yes, the water was very excited). But the force of the Cosmic Collision was so powerful that the flames scattered all over the sky, thus creating tiny balls of fire and gas that named themselves "stars." Now, some of the stars were very close together and became lonely. So they made a pact and squished back together into one giant star, and called themselves the sun.

The Cosmic Collision is the only phenomena that had a consequince. So you remember the thousands of little unactivated blocks? Here is where they came into play. See, two of them had drifted down and landed on the earth. These two noticed the sun the first, and were immediately activated. Upon activation, they expanded into two humans, a man and a woman, fully clothed (because the Giant Dust Bunny had very modest sneezes). They were...blessed(?) with being able to watch the rest of the activations. The closest blocks to earth activated and expanded into cats and dogs and all members of those families (such as tigers, foxes, wolves, and panthers). This, dearies, is where the phrase "raining cats and dogs" came from. The animals fell and landed on the earth and immediately began frolicking in the newly activated grass (little blocks that were so tiny they were like specks that had covered the earth). Then the other various animals and critters were activated and came plummeting to the earth, creating fish, mammals, reptiles, trees, and the sorts. Also activated by the sun's rays, were the other giant blocks that expanded into planets that have ever since played a sluggish game of tag...with themselves.

The Giant Dust Bunny saw what his sneeze had done, and he saw that it was good. And thus he rested and was never seen again...but his descendants are seen all over the world today, hiding behind refrigerators and bookshelves. They all hold back their sneezes, because they know the horror that was created the last time that a Dust Bunny sneezed. For although the Giant Dust Bunny saw what was good, the Little Dust Bunnies see what is horrific.

And this, is what was shown to me while I was packing up for forensics. I believe it to be truly divine. Now I know that the Catholics have been around for over 2000 years, and the Lutherans, Anglicans, Calvinists, Presbyterians, and congregationalists for about 500 years, the Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopalian for 400 or so, the United Bretheren, Disciples of Christ, Mormons, Salvation Army, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christian Science for 213 years or less, and lastly the Four-Square Gospel, Calvary Chapel, Harvest Christian, and Saddleback Church (I don't even wanna know about that one...) have been around for less than 100 years, but I really think that I have finally found the one and only truth. There truly was a Big Bang...but it was accompanied by the Major Meltdown and the Cosmic Collision. There is no God, other than the Giant Dust Bunny that sneezed everything into existence.

See, friends, it is not hard to come up with a story on how the world came into being.  This story of mine is every bit as accurate as the Big Bang theory. More so, really. See, I accounted for much more. I gave how the Big Bang happened, just not how that tiny speck of dust came into existence. There is truly no logical explanation for how the world came into being. In all cases, there was something at the beginning. At least in Christianity, that something had the power to create other things. That is the fault with the Big Bang theory. Bit Bangs destroy things, explosions break down, they do not build up. There can be no comprehension of how some sort of gas found its way into the nothingness, collided with itself, and created a giant collection of rocks (planets), liquids (rivers, oceans, lakes), fires (stars, the sun), and sludge. Now, even if I could believe that little dose of sanity, what is the sludge for? Oh, well that is simple, that sludge over the years changed form until certain party of it became Cherry Trees and other parts became Persian cats, while still OTHER parts of it became you and me. Preposterous. There has to be a creator of it all. And I am here to tell you, today, that that creator is the Giant Dust Bunny...*cough*...sorry, I meant the Lord our God.

The American Pyramid

So I was making my bed earlier (something I try to make a habit of), when I had a sort of....vision thing.  Now, I am not going to tell you the vision itself, just part of it.  I was being interviewed for something, and as I was leaving the reporter asked me "What would you like to tell America?"  I thought for a moment and then slowly turned around and began to tell the reporter what I am about to tell you.
Think about the "Ancient" Pyramids.  Why are they ancient?  Because their time is over; they are of the past.  Their time ended when they were finished being built.  Now, this may be different than what some people believe, but think of it in terms of people.  A person "dies" when they are finished aging, and growing spiritually, and the life leaves their body.  Pyramids are the same way.  They grow and grow, getting taller and taller, then, they die.  They stop growing.  Their life starts big, at the base, and gets thinner until it disappears, the tip.  Every pyramid has a beginning, and all pyramids have an end. So...just how is America a pyramid?
America had a strong foundation.  That foundation was on God-given rights, like freedom and equality. Over the years, America has strayed farther and farther from those rights and, more importantly,  from God.  We began with freedom of religion, of speech, of petition, and of press.  Currently, I am exercising freedom of speech.  That freedom is one of the few that is still used and accepted.  The least accepted nowadays is freedom of religion.
Thanks to the president of America, a man who is supposed to be the voice of the people, the health care system (which is supposed to help the people) is forcing people to go against their religion.  I won't go into details, but I will say that they are being forced to endorse sin.  And that clearly goes against every shred of religious freedom America was founded on.  They said that they didn't want to have a state religion system like England did; what they didn't tell us, however, was that they would have a state anti-religion system.  
Every country is founded on something.  Every country falls; generally they fall when they stray from their original foundation.  America is straying more and more from the freedoms it was founded on.  I ask you this, what freedom IS there in America?  Freedom of speech and freedom of press, are the only things that are really still free.  Freedom of petition is there, but it is useless; rarely does anything come from it, so what is the point?  And the only freedom of religion is behind closed doors...tell me how that is freedom.  Soon, we will lose our freedom of press and speech.  Then what?
When we have no freedoms, when we no longer go by what our country was founded on, we will fade away.  We already are fading.  We are falling apart at the seams.  People from every single state have filed for secession, over 700,000 people nation-wide.  What does that tell you?  The people are not happy with what is happening.  And I have a question for you, why should they be happy?  
Let's me address the past election.  Supposedly half of America voted for President Obama, right?  Wrong.  About one quarter did.  Sure, half of the people that voted voted for him.  Only around half of the nation voted, though.  The other half of the nation?  They just sat back.  They gave up.  They didn't even bother to try.  My guess, is that they thought there was no point in trying.  Half the nation...
If half the nation has given up or thinks they have no say, then how long until all of America thinks that?  How long until America reaches its "apex?"  This apex isn't joyous.  It isn't the pride of the nation.  This apex is the tip of the pyramid.  It is the end of the life of the nation.  It is the nation’s death.
I have one last question for you: how long do you think it will take before our nation’s glory begins to be history instead of actuality?

All Countries Are Formed Of Recycled Zombies

     So....I just watched the Vice Presidential Debate.  I know what you're thinking "Why is a 15 year old interested in Politics?"  Don't think to highly of me, it was extra credit in Government....that I decided to pursue...because I kinda...sorta...maybe..might have failed the first test....but everyone makes mistakes! Right?  So anyway, I ended up watching the Debate with my brother Alex, Nana, and dad.  Alex and I were the main ones who needed to watch because we are both taking government ^_^ me on a high school level, he on a college level.  So anyway.  There we were, in the living room, eyes transfixed in horror on the TV screen O.O
     What stood out to me the most, was probably how completely rude Joe Biden was.  Now...I am not going to go into politics on my blog...how do I plan to write about a presidential debate without going into politics? Well....I do not know.  We'll just have to wait this out and see.  So yes, I can say he was rude without going into politics.  As we ALL (hopefully...) learned as small children, it is disrespectful to interrupt.  Darling Biden, if you are going to call Ryan your friend do please let him finish his thought process before going into yours.  They give you papers to take notes for a reason.
     Dear democrats, don't worry, I'm going to slam Ryan too!  He had this amazing way of just staring at Biden, and then glancing at America *coughthecameracough* and visually screaming "This man is a moron!" (note: moron is NOT to be confused with Mormon....although I misheard it as that once >.> it was humiliating).  And, again, as we all learned in boy scouts, girl scouts, 4-H, or the like, it is not nice to call people names (even if it's just with a look?  Yes!  Even if it is just with a look.)  Sweet Ryan, if you want Bidden to let you finish your sentences on your own without him talking over you, you shouldn't make fun of him....I don't care how funny Mia's expressions were in Princess Diaries when she was poking fun at her grandmother behind her fan, it's still not nice.
     As to any Moderates/Libertarians that may be reading this, I bet you thought you were gonna get it easy on this article.  Right?  Wrong!  All politicians are the same, and they are all mean!  That's right....politicians are bullies.  As Teresa Lisbon from The Mentalist once said "Don't mess with super rich people, Jane! They're like children with machine guns!"  The same goes for politicians....only THEY have the power of the press.  Now what might that mean?  If they have machine guns...and the power of the press....hm...oh I know!  It means that they can implant viruses in your TVs, phones, tablets (that have Internet), iPads, radios, billboards, and your dreams (yes, it's true!) with their bits of advertisement that seep into your brain and then....when you least expect it....BOOM! The shards go all the way through your brain and infect every fiber of your being. And then....you become...a politician's zombie O.o and you will follow that politician around and eat the brains of anyone who opposes him.  All politicians do this...and it's just mean.  They go out and turn poor -insert country's name here- citizens into zombies!  And then what do they do?  They go out of office!  The whole process happens again....and again...and again without end.
     ~*~The moral of that tangent?  All countries are formed of recycled, political zombies. ~*~

     Now I will actually take this seriously.  Which is hard to do....as the candidates of the debate didn't take it seriously.  From what I could tell, they were fighting...but they weren't portraying their sides very well.  What it all sounded like to me was "We want this!  But you are in our way because you won't look at that!" and then the other would counter saying "We want that!  But you are in our way because you won't look at this!"  Over all...it was very jumbled up and not at all as it should've been.  I love debates, but that was hardly a debate.  I do not remember every question....but I will talk about a few.
     First question was about the nations economy.  So, naturally, they "debated" the unemployment issue.  They stated their so called "facts" with percentages.  But I saw a problem with all of their facts and percentages...none of them lined up with each other.  Biden was convinced things had gotten better and that the percentage of unemployment had gone DOWN while Ryan gave percentages that said it had gone UP.  So I suppose the real question they should have been asked was "who provided you with you erroneous percentages?"
     Another question asked was about the war in Libya.  Now....I am not very good with names.  But they talked about a bombing that happened recently (this is my article and my topic is not the bombing so I won't go into that) and about how there is a terrorist in the Libyan area that is gathering supplies to make a nuclear weapon.  Biden didn't really give any information on the matter except saying that no one would let him build a bomb.  Likewise, Ryan didn't give much information except in saying that he had a certain percentage more supplies than he did when Obama interred the presidency.  So basically all the listeners could get from that, unless they had done previous research on the matter, was that he had all the supplies he needed, but nobody would let him use the supplies for a bomb.  Honestly, I do not see how anyone could stop him, and I do not see how anyone can calculate how many supplies a terrorist has.
     They also talked a lot about Obama-care and Medicare.  Now....the problem with this one....is that Ryan failed to point out how it went against his beliefs, and Biden failed to realize that it went against his.  Ryan did not point out that it forces Catholic hospitals to provide insurance that covers abortion.  He states that that was against his beliefs, unless under certain circumstances.  Then there is Biden, who at the end of the debate said that he did not believe that he should force his Church's beliefs on abortion onto other people.  But what does Obama-care do, pray tell?  It forces Catholic hospitals to provide insurance that covers abortion (forgive me if I sound like a broken record).  Now....he doesn't support the Church in "forcing" it's beliefs on other people, but he does support the government forcing it's beliefs on an entire religion?  Something about that sounds a little bit askew if you ask me.
     I'm sure that I missed a lot of what was going on.  Perhaps I missed so much because the candidates were talking over each other and the reporter?  I think that is what happened.  Another possibility to my lack of catching every question is that they did not answer every question but would spin it back on the previous question if they didn't believe their point to be made.  They would also go off on random tangents that didn't seem related at all...
     I do not think that America's Founding Fathers would be happy with what has become of America's government.  They formed this country for freedom...but there is no freedom in this country.  They believe there is "illegal" immigration nowadays form Mexico and Canada....look, people, we ALL came into America as illegal immigrants!  Can you just open your eyes and see that?  Now here is something both candidates support...which is completely and totally against their Catholic belief: abortion.
     I started to go into that....but realized that after being three paragraphs into that issue...I still wasn't done talking -.- so I suppose that will have to wait for another time.  My main point was just that the candidates know nothing of what they are for...nothing.

"nah"

Okay, so I was talking with a good friend earlier tonight. A very good friend...do you know how I know he is a good friend? He doesn't say I am right, he makes me prove it. It's an amazing educational method. There're other reasons why he is a good friend too of course...but that is beside the point, right now at least. BUT, you know who you are, and I thank you for making me come out of my moving slump to think about this! I owe you one!
Now, what I mean by we were talking, is that we were debating. It's never "just a talk" with this friend, not even a stimulating talk. We hop from debate, to therapy, and then quickly back to debate because therapy get's too boring and it let's brain cells go to waste just sitting there. And...I do not quite know how, but I dove full force into a debate about why man fell and sent him this super long message (well...long for a G+ chatbox anyway...) that I will now elaborate on for you.

Picture yourself in a "garden", where NOTHING is wrong. Would you be able to appreciate the beauty of the rose, of the iris, of the cherry blossom, without ever having seen the ugly of murder, of pain, of death?  Smell the grace and love and utter joy that fill the air, practically lifting you off of your feat with their aromas; could you comprehend this majesty if you had never had the experience of choking, having your lungs clogged shut with smoke, or of suffocating from the heat of the day?  No. I do not believe that you, I, or any human being could.
"you don't know what you've got till it's gone" (note: lyric credit goes to the guy who wrote that song about paradise and a parking lot...or something like that). This is so very true. I did not know how beautiful my relationship with my oldest brother was until it was torn apart by distance. I didn't understand the majesty of the mountains until I saw the grandeur of the desert. I didn't understand the life and bustle of the city, until I observed the death and peace of a cemetery. One simply can NOT understand something until they can comprehend it's opposite! Man fell so he could know the opposite of perfection!
When you have a goodnight's sleep, you wake in the morning feeling well and rested. How do you know that you feel this "well" and "rested"? Because you have before experienced feeing ill and exhausted! When in the arms of someone you care about, you feel their love wash over you. How do you know how special that brief moment is? Because you have felt the cold hard gaze of someone you have been rejected by! When you come home hungry form a long days work, and you are filled with a wondrous meal that seems to satisfy your every need, how do you know you are satisfied? How? Because you came unsatisfied!
Now I want you to picture a life with no pain that stabs you when you least expect it. Picture a life where you never see your parents/children fighting. Picture a life where you and your siblings never argue. Picture a life where you are never too cold or too hot, never too hungry or too thirsty. Picture a life where no one is ever sick, no one is ever dying, no one is ever fighting. Picture a life, that has never once known sorrow.
PICTURE IT!
Now, hold that image! And now, tell me that at each of those "never"s and "ever"s you didn't think of a memory. Tell me true!
You wouldn't understand if you hadn't felt the pain!
Tell me I am wrong.

I do not think I will ever be able to forget his response. All the effort I put into that, all the thought, all the emotion, all the belief, and his answer came in one, small, unexpected word. I had dived into that debate prepared for SOME sort of round about argument wherein at the end we would finally decide we actually agreed in some confusing way or another. But no...through the text I saw the word, read it over and over again, and heard it in my head: "nah".
That was it...no debate...and then I realized...how messed up we are as humans. Of course, I already knew this. Honestly? We are actually insanely stupid, irrational, illogical, blind, and ignorant. That my dear friends, is humanity as a whole. Not each and everyone, but the vast majority. Do we see what is happening? No; we simply see whatever it is we want to see.
I wanted that to be a debate. I knew I could win, no matter what he threw at me...not that he really would...as we are on the same side of the debate...but STILL! No matter what anyone threw at me, so long as they would listen to what I had to say, I could win. I love debates, especially ones where you have to imagine yourself in the scenario.
So I dove in, headlong. Then, when I got to the water, I realized that he was there to catch me. We weren't in any sort of disagreement at all, not even for the heck of it. We were in complete agreement, just with different ways of saying what we had to say.

Sometimes we will dive in and the water will be to shallow, as such we will get badly injured; but there will be times when we dive in, and the water is just right, and we can swim to shore and be victorious. There will be times, when we dive in and almost drown, and have to call upon a friend to drag us out of the mess we are in; but there will be times when we see people sail away on a rescue boat, knowing we won.
What makes me who I am, and what makes my fellow Christians who they are, is that we will KEEP diving in, no mater what kind of terrible land we might experience. Why? Because we have seen the imperfections in our own gardens, and we know that there is one without blemishes. One who's beauty, love, and joy is so great that you can taste the very noise that flows forth from the tender colors of the lilies. In knowing this, could we possibly give up because we are in danger of getting a few scars along the way? In my friend's words (*coughwordcough*) "nah".