the greatest of these is love

What else? ;)

so i'm here at uis...it's saturday before thanksgiving...and there's pretty much no one around. the house is empty (mel and sara are both at work, leslie's at a football game at uiuc), and i told myself that i'd write the paper that is due the monday we get back

instead i was playing my guitar. and i broke a string. so i went to buy new ones. and i don't have pliers to change them. :( so now i'm blogging.

a song that's been striking me lately is Matthew West's "The Last Ones."

i was gonna paraphrase, but here're the lyrics


The Last Ones
by Matthew West
album: History (2005)

My friend Taylor she's an angel
Ten years old and beautiful
She's a living, breathing miracle
And she proves it everyday
'Cause the odds were stacked against her
From the day that she arrived here
And the doctors told her mom and dad
She'd always be that way

And I confess when I first met her
I was thinking life's not fair
But then she wrapped her arms around my neck
And it all became so clear

God bless the last ones (x2)

One day Taylor sent me a picture
from her Special Olympics race
And I could tell just by the looks of it
she was coming in last place
But she crossed that finish line
with a smile upon her face
as if to say

God bless the last ones (x2)

Maybe the last ones are the lucky ones
The ones who got this whole thing figured out
'Cause when they go looking for something beautiful
They start looking from the inside out

On our way into the restaurant
we passed a homeless man
He was half drunk and half asleep
with a paper cup in his hand
And I confess when I first saw him
I was thinking life's not fair
But then Taylor reached out
and wrapped her arms around his neck
And it all became so clear

God bless the last ones (x4)

Well I wish we could all be the lucky ones
The ones who've got this whole thing figured out
Maybe the next time we go looking for beautiful
we'll try looking from the inside out

God bless the last ones (x4)

i'm gonna try to look from the inside out. to be as an innocent child, who doesn't see differences, "abnormalities," "weirdness," "problems," and other things that i so often see when i look at people. but look for the similarities. the fact that every person on this earth was created in the perfect image of God. and that's beautiful.

my friend Misty, who's in Russia, where i was this summer, is starting to work in an orphanage. i don't know details of her experiences, but she talks about living beyond the despair, and focusing on what God is doing to heal the hurts. and it makes me think of my own orphanage experiences in Russia.

those kids were definitely some of the last ones. pretty hopeless in one situation, and pretty hopeful in another. but the last ones all the same. i focused a lot on the despair in the first experience, and i didn't understand why kids...KIDS...had to live in such an environment. and why these children had to go through the experiences they did to even get into an orphanage.

but i need to focus on the hope that God promises. that He can work good through any situation, no matter how bleak it looks to us. He can take memories that were created the day we went for three hours into that orphanage and use them throughout those kids' lives to remind them of the love of Christ. to bring them to Him.

i've been homesick lately. Hamiltonsick. familysick. i miss them. i knew i missed them when i was so tired on Thursday, called my mom, and ended up bawling. i know she hates it when i'm sad and she's not close enough to hug me. so i try to cover it up as best i can. but i just couldn't. i was too tired. i was exhausted because i hadn't been sleeping. mom's are supposed to make everything better, but the weird thing with my mom (or the cool, amazing thing) is that before making it all better, she has this amazing ability to let me be not ok. to cry. to be angry, frustrated.

i'm usually frustrated with them. because they're desperately trying to hold onto me. and it hurts to be squeezed so hard. but i need them, still. they've always been an amazing support system, always 100% behind me, even if they weren't in 100% agreement.

none of my dad's side of the family has moved farther than 15 miles away from where they grew up. on my mom's side, my uncle did, because he's in the air force, and my aunt did, but she's back now. i know it has to be hard for them to understand me. it's weird for someone to be so far away (and right now, it's only 120 miles). it's weird for them to think about the fact that someday, that 120 miles may be a lot more.

it's weird for me to think about too.

but i'm trying not to. i'm trying to be here and now. growing with and building amazing relationships with the community God has placed me in here at UIS.

like watching a movie with the girls, all four of us on the UIS-given waiting-room type couch. just being with them. and having real conversations with them.

anyway, i think i should probably be done now. this post is uber long, and i had no idea it would get like this. i'm not sure how other people do it, but when i sit down, i never really know what's going to come out.

peace