trends and the like

i should be writing a paper right now. ive never been much for trends. i follow them mostly, just so im not weird... nice try. really though, i do like to fit in. i see the trends, as im sure we all do, right before we subscribe to them. it kind of makes it better, i guess, if we choose to follow them because we like them.

i suppose that doesn't have any relevence besides that it makes me feel silly sometimes, subscribing to the trends. sometimes i resent them eventually, but sometimes i find myself in them. i say all of it to say, ive had a really hard time accepting the cliches in church lately. not even the bad ones, you know, the ones that it's cool to make fun of right now. the tradition. im having a hard time accepting the new stuff. i loved it at first. i guess im finding myself in it now... which isnt much in it at all.

so, its cool to be broken before God and people, to pour yourself out for them. that's great. i do really like that idea. the more i think about it though, im not broken. in fact, i do a good job holding myself together. i dont mean the songs i sing, and i hardley believe what im doing means anything at all. so one of those songs got me tonight, the ones i dont mean, while i sat in the dim cobalt light. i dont know its name. the lyrics go: "you are the hope to the hopeless and broken". thats it really. the rest of the song is beautiful, but that part spoke tonight.

im quite broken, actually. lots of things have contributed. i dont like the idea of being broken because its cool right now. i dont want to choose this one. its too overused at the moment. ive done everything in my power to look put together. ive made my plans, and i know every possible outcome... nice try. my whole future is to avoid the apperence of not really having any idea whats going on. you can put a broken vase back together. a stained glass window is nothing more than borken glass in lead. mosaics, well, i wont even start. they all make something quite nice in the end.

it boils down to this. i sat there tonight, completely overwhelmed. i thought about myself and how my life is a mess. then i felt like my soul wasnt a mosaic or stained glass at all. i felt like my soul was something more like ash, blown everywhere by the wind. how can you possibly make something beautiful from dust? my soul is dust, everywhere. great. i cant glue the mess back together. theres no morter for my mosaic or lead for my stained glass. the ash of my very being has been blown to the ends of the earth by the changing season. in the dim cobalt i think God spoke into my wind blown soul. an infinate God sat right beside me and whispered that i didnt have to find, and couldnt possibly collect, the pieces of my broken soul... but he would do it for me. it was one of the moments i wrote about a few weeks ago. the ones that happen when im not trying to make them.

i have it together, kind of. i feel sort of peaceful about the plans ive made. they're pretty large in the scop of my story, but the other mess isn't as big a deal. not after tonight, at least. im going to do the best i can. im pretty confident that God is going to put the rest of me together. i think in the end ill make something quite nice. i think, in the end, God is making something quite nice out of all our mess.