You Are My Superman

This world is a tough place to survive.

           

Lets just be real for a second.

Sometimes we can easily find our selves swaying from one side of the pendulum to the other side. One moment we are a person who is closed off from any opportunity to be loved. Then we find ourselves opening ourselves to all sorts of hurts and pains, in our desire to love others.

Again, This world is a tough place to survive.

However there is a hero in this tough place of surviving, and that is you my friend.

You, my friend, are the Hercules, Superman, or Hulk of this world.

Hercules, you are the man or woman who made it through this whole wide world, and conquered it, and still loved the Lord.  Throughout your whole life you probably face all sorts of crises, issues, losing loved ones, disappointing people, failures, and tough moments of faith, but somehow the darkest cloud never took out your light, blew out your candle, or left you without hope in Jesus Christ.

My hat is off to that man or woman, who can tread through this life, and still have an ounce of joy and delight at the end as he lets his last ounce of breath come out of him or herself. 

The world tests our stamina in so many ways.  I think you can try your very hardest, and even be dealt the best cards in this lifetime: be born into a loving family, with loving and supportive parents, find a phenomenal job, and be with a phenomenal spouse, but at the end of the day still something picks at you, that makes you struggle. Each person bears their own cross, and sometimes, and I would say the majority of the time, we do not get to choose that cross.

I guess, I hope or endeavor in life is that we, you, or I do become superman and superwoman at the end of this existence. No matter what our ugly monsters or skeletons are in our life. I hope we become better people from them. I hope that as we struggle in the ugly muck of life, we become triumph, and learn to put to death the horrible destructive parts of our lives.

Although this world is a tough place to survive. There is always hope. Hope will live, even in the darkest shadows of our lives. 

Donny Darko is Real

The monsters underneath our beds late at night are really not the monsters we should be scared of.

My mom once told me a very wise and honest thing, “Ephraim, after you graduate college, please know that the world is a very dark, and evil place.”

It is this comment that we find the unfathomable knowledge of this world.

We must be weary of those who set up the stage to look like the most amazing person, a person could ever want to believe. Unfortunately, the more we grow up the more easier it is to be more susceptible to becoming more jaded about life.

Lets leave this one segment of sad information for something that will be more practical and useful.

In life for us to transition from one stage to the next we will end up facing many life crises (cf. Erik Erikson). In each stage we transition, we might end up feeling stuck, or even frustrated. It in those moments that we must embrace the ultimate pillars of life- truth and grace.

Although the world can be so dark, disappointing and depressing, we have to allow balance, moderation, and variety to enter the equation.

I really believe that it is through the difficult moments of our lives that we truly realize some of the most important wisdoms we will ever find throughout our lives. Although it sucks in the moments, we learn so much more about ourselves, and what we can truly handle. It is being able to take the sucky crappy situations, and be able to turn them into positive, that allow the soft, joyous parts of our hearts live longer. Then becoming men and women who are gumpy old bags looking back on life with regrets, more disappointments, and in a storm of unhappiness.

I think it was once best said from a Christian artist I heard, “What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?”

Love is a B!tch

To not be able to love anything, is antithetical to the design of how God wanted things to work.

However to love means to be vulnerable (C.S. Lewis)

It is unfortunate that even from birth man must first face its first double-bind.

Love means Risk, and to Not Love is to not Live

The challenge of this paradox, is one that is resolved within the wounds of the savior himself, Christ. That for him he had to love his creation, but he also put risk starting from the utter point of human existence. Although God taking a chance on humans looks bad from the start, the beauty of this risk slowly arose as the predestined unfortunate death of Christ happened. This provided an avenue for love to return to its creator.

So we have the jeopardy that love brings, but we also have the blossoming of hope too.

Hope is something that one struggles to find its origin.  However, as one who isn’t a licensed scientist, but just an explorer of this earth and its interactions. One can easily gain tangible evidence of hope, when observing people struggling, and they overcome their struggle. That is where you will confidently find a droplet of pure hope. It is in our struggle we find hope. In addition, it is where the beauty arises in love. When a person is willing to give of themselves not for their own success or providence but to give that love to someone else, we find pure and true love in that unconditional act of humility.

When love is given without asking for something in return, it is when love cannot be consider a fool’s choice, but a wise person choice.

Or Maybe that’s wrong? – Could you really love someone and not become a fool?

I think it would a disappointing life, to live your whole life with your heart locked up, becoming this unbreakable, strong person, who has no emotions, because their heart is locked up in a tiny closet, far far far away from any chance of it being taken.

I think that when you love someone, there is always opportunity to get hurt.

But we also have to realize that we can hurt too (Joyce Meyer).

We have to have faith, rather then fear, that love will eb and flow in our relationships, as we eb and flow with our flaws, and faux pas.