be fruitful | live free.

To  know courage is to know the need for it. 

And that is, perhaps, the reason why so few of us have come to acquire it. 

So much of our lives are spent arranging away awkwardness, 

managing risk, 

and trying to outgrow our humanity. 

But life is grief and love is heartache. 

To live is to eventually die; 

to love is to experience betrayal and rejection. 

The myth is that the latter halves can somehow be avoided, 

but the truth is that even death is tethered to God's abundant grace.

For the child of God, 

impending expiration is what lightens the weight of suffering

and abbreviates the length of affliction. 

Once suffering is rendered light and affliction momentary, 

they are no more to be feared than hard work or vaccinations. 

For Saturday is coming, and influenza is staved. 

Nevertheless, they are wholly worthy of time and tears and attention. 

So remember your rejections, your deaths, your betrayals; 

acknowledge your abandonments, abuses, and neglect. 

It is in the true adventure of traipsing through our histories 

that courage is learned and accumulated. 

And courage is what real life and Gospel warfare require. 

Without it, we will fear. 

And if we fear, we cannot love. 

But such are the greatest and second commandments: to love. 

So take heart. Get up! He is calling you.

Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! 

He who goes out weeping, 

bearing the seed for sowing, 

shall come home with shouts of joy, 

bringing his sheaves with him. 

Psalm 126

on incubation and urgency

I've got this other project that's been roaming around in my heart. After much deliberation, I've come to the conclusion that I need to live some more before I move forward with it. But I'm just so extremely passionate about it, that I've decided to put the concept out there. So all of us can be mulling it over, living it out, working it through.

Tomorrow I'll post the Invitation, if you will, to gather up courage; be fruitful and live free.

... stay tuned!

I miss you guys.

And this space. As you can see, I defaulted to my vintage theme a few days ago. Probs for Nostalgia's sake. I don't know if it's the reflection of having graduated and moved out here a year ago, Pdub's anniversary post, or the restlessness of wanting to work at and produce something, but I've got the slightest itch for blogging again - with still nothing coherent to say. And so, in the spirit of this time last year, I'll inundate you all with a list:

1. Last week I downloaded Bee Leader from itunes as the free app of the week. That ish is hot fire.
2. I never really got into Angry Birds, but I think Bee Leader is kind of like it...though infinitely bee-ter. ha.
3. I really should have worked harder to come up with a better pun that that.
4. Yesterday I got bored and inspired and gave myself an avocado hair treatment. Then I went on you-tube and rediscovered hair bloggers. It's a whole thing.
5. Here's some things you guys probably don't know:
  --> I worked as a Nanny in San Francisco, then at a Law Firm, then got a tattoo.
6. I've recently become smitten with a couple towns over and have drafted up a life plan to relocate myself.
7. God quickly reminded me that He loves me and will gladly help me accomplish things in life, but I can never cease to acknowledge that I will always need Him.
8. God is so sweet and so faithful to me. I keep trying to treat Him like a start-up investor, but He insists upon being my Father.
9. That's what inspired my awesome tattoo:

tat, tat, tatted UP.

10. You guys, my tumblr is ballin' outrageous amazing.
11. Naturally, I ended ^that^ sentence with an internal Jean Ralphio and Monalisa horribly harmonized R&B run.

It took me all of two seconds to find this on google. Winning.

12. Avocados are everything. As are kiwi.
13. Instagram is the Cat's Pajamas {insert second Jean Ralphio run}.
14. This has been bucketloads of fun.

Deuces from a throwback, overly processed, undergrad pic of myself.