Find the Beauty

This world is an incredible place. Full of darkness, yes, but also beauty. In the midst of the worst pains and the worst hell, still light bursts forth in shining color.
I see it everywhere I look. Perhaps my eyes are accustomed to looking for the beauty. When you've known pain as much and as long as I have, sometimes the only thing you can do is strain your eyes and look. Keep looking.
Because as dark as it is, there's light somewhere. Beyond the distant fog, you can just make out the shapes of mountains, of flowers and rivers.
It never looks quite like you'd expect, when the world is so dark. If you're looking for something bright and bold you won't always find it. Sometimes, when the dark is bad enough, you just keep peeling your eyes. You have to. Because the only thing that keeps you going is that streak of light so far in the distance it seems untouchable.
Everything seems too far away when you are in the dark moments.
The only thing you can do is keep walking forward, because you know there is nothing for you behind. And sometimes, you can still find beauty, even in the brokenness. When you look at a flower fading quickly and you can just make out the last bits of color that keep it barely hanging on. When you see a silhouette tree with a beauty that is haunting but it is beauty nevertheless.
Keep walking.
The pain can't last forever. It can't.
Sooner or later you'll stumble and crawl your way along and one day you'll look back to see you're standing on the top of a mountain. No longer is the sun hidden by the daunting, rocky peak, but you can see it, just starting to rise over the horizon.
Behind you there is nothing, all is death and ashes. But before you the sun is rising, and the landscape is lush, green, bubbling and alive-free.
The road is still not safe, still steep and the dirt beneath is loose and uncertain. But here there rests a choice. Either go ahead and face the risk of failure in this new landscape- or go back, where the road is just as unstable, to a place you know is dead and lifeless.
There is beauty and pain no matter where you go. Sometimes it's more obvious, sometimes it isn't. When the beauty isn't obvious, keep looking. It's out there.
When it is obvious, embrace it. Breathe in every life giving second with an unmatched eagerness. Remember it. When you find yourself trapped in the dark once more-remember the joy of light.
It will come again, just keep walking forward.

In Regards to Florida....

I wish we could have 24 hours to just collectively hurt with people, before everyone dashes to their favorite political narratives.

— Brant Hansen

Broken people do broken things that hurt people who sometimes respond in broken ways.

My heart is shattered to hear of what happened in Florida, as I'm sure is true of everyone else. Horrible acts committed against innocent people. And there will be politics to debate, legislation made, many fights to be won down the road.

But not today. Today, can we simply mourn for the tragedy? Forget your ideology and the thoughts rolling through your mind about Islam, the LGBT community, gun legislation.

That fight can be fought another day. But today.... Let your heart grieve. Mourn with those who mourn and comfort the brokenhearted. Christians were never called to somehow fix legislation or win  every argument.

We were called to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly (Micah 6:8). So comfort those who mourn (Isaiah 61). Keep a tight rein on your tongue, for if you speak hard words to those who grieve, it will be taken as poison, even if your intent was medicine. It is better to remain silent and love well than try to speak and have your words be heard caustically and cause strife among your brothers.

Tomorrow the papers will be written and the debate will commence, fed on the fire of our anger and betrayal. Lives lost today will soon be little more than weapons in the hands of politicians, and the people's sorrow wil be twisted to fight for one cause or another. 

But today.... Today we can choose not to fight. We can choose to stand as brothers in the midst of a tragedy that attacked not only a community but a nation. We can let this cause discord and tension, or we can simply come together, not in a stand against an enemy but in a deep, deep sorrow as we mourn for the at least 50 individuals whose lives were ended by a broken, angry man.

And to the families of the dead, I'm sorry. Sorry that a madman killed your sons and daughters. Sorry that we as a nation have taken advantage of murder to prove a point. Sorry that there will be those who scorn your children and brothers and I'm sorry they will say the death was deserved. Your children were people. The murderer still a person. The ones who will not support you because of who your son loved? Still people.

We are only people after all. Whatever label you put on us, whatever organization we claim allegiance to, whatever statistic we become, we are a people of souls and a people of pain, and we've all suffered and we all act out of that suffering. Broken people do broken things, but we can still choose to sit in silence for a moment, not proving a point or pointing a finger; only weeping for this tragedy and sitting with the suffering. It is from the quiet, gentle spirit that the oil of gladness is poured out, and garments of praise can be adorned. This is love, not that we raise ourselves above, but that we become so lowly in spirit that the ones we minister to can see beyond us, past our opinions and our pride, to where their weeping Father, the only True Comforter, waits for them to come.

Why I Hate Smart Technology

Imagine being in a relationship with someone *in my case a man* well liked, impressive, and hip.

He knows all the right answers and had the funniest jokes. You go everywhere with him, even to hang out with your other friends. He's incredibly smart, handsome, and almost addictive. It gets to a point that even when you're with other people you only want to talk to him. He knows the city like the back of his hand, so every time you go somewhere he directs you without a second thought, and he knows the restaurants and hiking spots, the coffee shops that all the critics rave about.

You ask him about your diet, what you should or shouldn't be eating, and he'll tell you with certainty that something is good or bad, until he changes his mind or tells you his friend said otherwise.

When you find yourself in a moment of beauty and serenity, you immediately tell him all about it, pull him in to show it to him, and he immediately pulls all his friends in to show them until the beauty of the moment seems almost distant. But he starts to be like a drug, enchanting you with how much he loves hearing about your life. Would you tell him more? Don't just leave him out of your minutia life; after all that's where the important things happen. And of course you would share them with him, wouldn't you?

But sometimes he can be intrusive, and invasive. He insists that you bring him with you places because what if you need him for something? Like a crutch, you lean on him for more and more and he's more than happy to oblige.

You soon find yourself going to him for no reason at all, but it doesn't feel like love and it doesn't bring you joy. And sometimes the jokes are crass and he yells, about things that don't seem to matter if you really think about them but he insists you are informed. It's for your well being after all. He'll try to convince you the things you think you believe should be questioned based on what his opinion is at the moment, and you find yourself almost as if by script telling your friends that those things are absolute truth, and you keep on listening to him talk and talk and he never stops talking. He doesn't really listen- he's needy.

It didn't seem that way at first-it never does. But when you try to share your opinion he shuts you out. When you try to go places without him he has so conditioned your thinking that you feel he's a necessary part of your life. What if you need him? He convinces you that you need him but the reality is he needs you- he feeds off your addiction to him and it just makes him have more power over you.

He's like a drug. Dangerous.


People ask me why I decided to switch back from an iphone to a flip phone.

It seems like a lot of unnecessary work.

"Well, but what if you need a map to get somewhere?" I'll print one out and learn to know my city better.

"Don't you want to know the best places to eat?" I'll look for where the locals flock, and if I must, I'll try out places until I find something to my own taste. Not to the tastes of who happens to have the most internet popularity and voice.

"What about the memorable moments you want to capture?" Taking 10 pictures and putting a filter for the sake of likes doesn't merit memorable. Sometimes the best moments are the ones when I'm sitting alone in a coffee shop silently reading a book and I look up and notice the teeming life all around, and the neon open sign flickering in the reflection. Sometimes, maybe most times, the best moments were never meant to be hastily viewed in a screen, but rather timelessly treasured in a single gaze. After all, isn't it timeless moments like those that birth timeless art? Instagram and facebook almost always don't produce art, they produce attention seeking and a need for affirmation.

"What if you get bored and you're stuck waiting for an hour with no phone?" I guess I'd better learn how to talk to people. Or perhaps take a walk around the city block or watch how people interact with each other. It's a beautiful thing... except when I look around and I see mothers entertaining children with an ipad and husbands and wives hunched over on their phones at their date night.

Speaking of hunched over phones, I have a growing and very real fear that we are missing our children's lives by letting phones take over. Instagramming their first steps doesn't count as enjoying them. Somehow over thousands of years we've been able to treasure and adore our children without videoing and facebooking about it. Somehow, we've been able to entertain them and keep them from screaming without having the perfect "MyFirstApp" installed to whip out at a tearstain's notice. Do we realize how unhealthy that is for their development? It's giving them a surreal dosage of instant gratification, and I can't imagine how often these little innocent kids feel the need to do something worthy of the affection (read: pictures/videos/phone pointed at them) their parents dote on them because they want all their friends to know that their little #cutestever is just too adorable.


I'll admit, there are some things I miss about having a smart phone. Sometimes I want to look something up and I don't have a way to. But a lot of the time, when that happens, I find the things I wanted to research aren't really relevant to know anyway (Who really needs to know the most recent movie Shia Lebouf has been in? I mean honestly...). And I've gotten lost more in the last few months than I ever did with my iPhone. As a direct result though, I know my city better. Not expecting the chirp of a map, I have to keep my eyes peeled, learn patterns, which roads go where and if I do get lost, who knows? I might find some new adventure all-together.

When I spend time with friends now, I notice how chained they seem by their smart phone. Everything is urgent because it's right there in front of them. I'm sure there are messages, emails, engagement announcements of my best friends that I'm missing by being right there with my friend. But life goes on. I'll learn those things in due time, and if my boss shoots me an urgent email I'll reply just as soon as I get home from talking with my friend.

I have no obligation to force urgency on myself when the only thing I have is a dumb phone that can call and text and take 10 pixel pictures. No obligation to read my boss's email about policy changes as soon as he sends it out. No obligation to let the world know that I've been having lattes with my bff at the cafe, because the world never really needed to know anyway.

And at the end of the day I'm so tired of being constantly barraged with what the majority of the internet believes and feels I need to believe.

 I'm so tired of having to hear what stupid scandal this actor or politician got involved in.

Sometimes those things are important. Mostly they just fill our head space with trivial things, distracting things.

But at the end of the day, the end of my life, the only thing that will ever matter is did I love God well and did I love people well? Because frankly I don't know that smart technology is beneficial to either of those things. I can't love people well if I'm constantly on my phone. I can't love God well if I'm harassed by an endless sense of urgency and noise.

Our God is a God who calls us to stillness. Jesus fled from crowds to pursue Desolate Places, just so He could hear and discern the will of God.

If Jesus needed desolate places to hear God best, how much more do we, in our culture of noise and movement and constant busyness?

There's this idea in scripture of being set apart, made holy. Leviticus is all about that concept but I'm not comparing smart phones to mixing fabrics or eating shellfish.

1 Peter talks about holiness like this:

"Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work. So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels." 1 Peter 2:20-23

When we set our mind and fix our energy on commonplace things, can we really then expect an uncommon calling? It isn't those who idle in the dishonorable things, things like quarrels and ignorant controversies (sound just a bit like the internet we know today?) or partake in youthful passions and desires that see revival; rather it is those who set their mind and life on righteousness, faith, love and peace. Your value or ability to change the world won't be diminished by having less access to an internet full of darkness and noise and the common things. When you set yourself apart as holy, when you make yourself as useful as possible to the master of the house, he will prepare you and use you for the valuable works, the honorable things.

I want so desperately to live a life where people are healed from stepping in my shadow, not because of my own glory, but because I emptied myself to be used by Him in every moment, to spend my energy and focus on the Kingdom of God because then will I be partaking in the good and holy work and He will choose to use me for the honorable things.

So the real question isn't "Why would anyone want a dumb phone?"; the question is, "How can I, in my daily life, be set apart and holy before God and man?" At the end of the day, smart phones immerse us in worldiness and noise when God calls us to holiness and a quiet heart. How well can your iPhone encourage that?


****I do want to note, I still have my iPhone. I can only use it in wifi and it still has all my music on it. It's helpful, absolutely. It isn't evil to spend time on the internet or share moments of your life on facebook. But not having smart devices as a need all of the time sets up some pretty healthy boundaries for me. My iphone basically serves as a mini iPad, because since I work in youth ministry I do need to stay connected at least somewhat, unfortunately. A lot of the time I don't bring it with me places though; it's kind of amazing how freeing it is to live and not feel rushed by it or have it notifying me every 5 minutes. If it's that important, it can wait until you get home. Really.****

For the Extrovert In Me

For those of you who've read my other blog(s), you've probably gathered that I'm an introvert. And that I like to hide behind the internet to post angst and/or poetry and/or artwork.

While that might be true in some cases, there's another side of me bursting at the seams with opinions, ideas, and stories. Also more artwork. But I tend to hide my personality in poetry and pretending my blog is never read. So while I'll still post on both, this is the side where I share stories of my actual life, and things that relate to me on a personal level. I might even have a comical side; who knows?

I'm the sort of person who likes to have things that no one in my personal life is aware exists. Like, I don't go by Jessie in the real world. Spoiler.

Anyway... I'm no good at topics though. If we're being honest I'll likely just vent and ramble for the rest of my life on here.

But likely I'll mostly post, in logical and non poetic terms, what God has taught me recently. Whether visions or stories, maybe some testimonies. And paintings/drawings too, because I like pretty things, and sharing them :)

So feel free to comment, ask questions, request art, and all that. I actually love communication and stuff, it's super cool.

That's all for now, but hopefully you'll see something 'real' soon. :)

-Jessie

P.S. For the few that do know me in real life, this is only half helpful for the external processor in me. I need to process things face to face, so feel free to sit me down and make me vent sometime, it'll probably help keep my head screwed on straight.