Change

Change is a beautiful thing.  I've not deleted a one of the facebook messages I received since I opened my facebook account.  Today, I felt this sudden urge to look back on very specific moments, very important messages that I remember as defining crossroads for myself: Here's what I discovered.

I've changed.  I've tried in many ways to change, and I've also tried to stay the same.  But change is inevitable.  I'm sometimes - no, always - an emotional person, and when the bucket is full of my heart's feelings, it just kind of pours out without looking twice to see if there's anything to catch the spilt water.  I've told lots of people that I love them in my messages.  In some cases, I've confessed attraction...sometimes, I've been on the edge of it... sometimes, a very deep connection has been intimated to me through some message.  Ah...

What do I feel right now?  Regret.  No.  Not regret.  Truth be told, so many of those people that I felt such a strong connection to don't feel so close to me anymore.  It's a sad...realistic truth.  Does that invalidate my emotions?  Does that mean that I should discredit the intensity of how much my heart goes out to someone simply because in a year or two I may not feel the intensity of that love?  Not at all.  I've discovered that there is a beauty in a moment.

Changes can happen in a moment.  And changes can happen over time.  But change is inevitable.  And so, with the knowledge that change will come, we can do one of two things: We can simply accept that the train will leave this station and board without a look back at those on the platform we're departing from... Or we can take photographs, we can hug just a little bit longer, we can afford to smile and not be afraid to be so vulnerable.

I choose vulnerability.  It is in my most vulnerable moments that I have discovered the greatest truths about myself.  It is in my most vulnerable moments that I suddenly respect myself as a human being.  In vulnerability, we confront change, we confront the force we are most afraid of.  Change is not a monster.  It is an inevitability.  Not good.  Not evil.  Simply existant.  And the beauty of life is recognize the tick-tock of change and to run into it with all the faith that it will not destroy what we were...it will only make us more what we are becoming.

I don't know how to think about fate anymore.  I'm not sure.  There were moments in the past when I was so sure of how everything would turn out.  But change had a different course to set me on.

I'm on a different course.  I run a new race.  But I'm not sure that there's a prize to be won.  I'm not so sure that the prize isn't the finish line... it's the scenery, perhaps.

If you are reading this, and I have ever told you that I loved you, know that it is true.  I loved you, and I still do.  I probably miss you.  I don't know if you miss me.  But the moment in which I felt that love, in which I made myself vulnerable to you, was a moment of great challenge and personal struggle for me.  Know that when I say I love you...I would not put myself through that nakedness unless I absolutely meant it.

Change will come.  But I will linger in this moment.  There is beauty in this moment.  And there will be beauty in the next.  But really... ah...there's no hurry.

Hold someone a little longer.  Look someone in the eyes longer than you're comfortable with.  Tell someone that you love them.  Dare to listen...to actually listen...to what someone has been waiting to say.  You'll find a strength in you that you didn't know was there.  You'll find a power in vulnerability.  A glorious paradox.

K R A W Z F I A R
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hope

I know that it has been almost a year since the last entry.

I've found hope.  Albeit, the way I will describe it is as physical hope, but it is something that reaches into every part of my life.

At the end of Summer 2007 I weighed in at 260lbs.  I saw what I was, and even though people loved me anyway, I was tired.  So very very tired of this lifestyle.  So very tired of feeling unattractive.  So very tired of looking at myself in the mirror and not being able to reconcile my inner confidence with the outer portrayal.  So tired of making myself believe that I would always look this way, or worse, or better for only a little while.  Simply...tired of it.  I'd spent too many days crying over it, too much time delving into strange diets, too much of my mental capacity over both justifying and hating it.

So I made a change.

Someday I will truly write about this in great detail...I believe it merits the attention.  But, the bare facts are these: I very heavily cut down on the amount of sugar I took in.  I simply made it a routine to get at least 30 minutes of exercise two to three times a week (cardiovascular, for the most part).  I ate, for the most part, salad and fruit for lunch as often as was possible and convenient.  And, I made it worth my while.  I made it enjoyable.  Instead of seeing what I was and hating it, I simply envisioned where I wanted to be and made it an incredible journey.

I am still on this journey...but I am so far along that it is time to look back at the steps I've made and simply sigh...perhaps even shed a tear at the distance I've traveled.

I now weigh 208lbs (as of yesterday).  I've lost...that's right, mathematicians...a total of 52lbs in the course of about 8 months.  And though it seems like a lot now, the truth is, I took it in much the manner of this quote my mother inspired me with and which I have carried into all parts of my life:

"How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time."

And so, one bite at a time, this elephant is being devoured.  And with each bite each week comes a bit of joy, a thrill at the journey, an energy to take the next bite for the next week.

I am not done with my elephant.  No, I like to leave the dinner table with a clean plate (a paradox considering the topic, I realize).  However, the differences are significant.  I feel so much more confident in myself, not only physically, but emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and relationally.  I look at myself in the mirror, and although I see, as sculptors must, the prized image hidden neath the marble to be chiseled away, I can only admire what work has already been accomplished.  I feel, quite simply, far lighter than I have in years.  I daresay I haven't been as healthy as I am in at least six or seven years.  The sense of accomplishment is by far more gratifying than I can possibly describe.

To all those who wish to accomplish something long term, allow me to encourage you: patience pays off... and elephants aren't such heavy meals after all.

Peace and Godlove,
K R A W Z F I A R
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I am in a limbo of sorts.  I am surrounded by reality, certainly the case, but I am also surrounded by interpretations of reality.  So...where do I draw my lines?  Where do I leave my marks?  When is too much not enough and not enough just right?

I've learned recently that I despise conflict, that I am almost too accepting of an opposition simply so that I will not have to be in conflict with it.  This means that I am passive-agressive, apparently.  Well...I suppose that must be the case.  However, my mind in itself is very aggressive.  So many thoughts.  So much to think on.

I love many people.  If there is anything I do fiercely...it is love.  Of that I am certain.

I've pondered the nature of God and the nature of life for some time now in great detail and put the deity under my scrutiny.  Rather, put my interpretation of the deity under scrutiny.  By nature, I am unable to scrutinize God...but how do I know what to call God if I can't put him through a laboratory of my doubt?

So many interpretations...what is truth?  And do the people I respect simply subscribe to their preferred version of the truth, but not to ultimate truth?  For example, what is hell?  Really, what is it?  What is afterlife?  What is God and how does God connect to creation?  What is the nature of evil?  What is the nature of me?  Am I truly inherently evil, as I've been raised to consider myself?  Or does a creation of God hold infinite worth, since God's image is beauty and perfection, and we are in his image?  When do I draw the line between creation and creator?  Or is there simply no line to be drawn?  Does the creator live in me?  Am I the creator?  Is there a creator?

There are a few things of which I am certain: one is love, I've said that already.  If there is any unifying factor in the world, anything that gives our lives on earth a speck of worth, it is that we have the ability to love.  For me, to think and invent is far less as marvelous as our ability to love.  Love is all that I am certain of.  At this point.

And perhaps that's enough for now.  Since God is love, I am willing to accept that.

I have a responsibility that I am considering.  Do I truly want to do this all of my life?  Do I believe in it really?  In having these conflicting emotions, am I not doing the job well?  Am I failing what I've already begun?

Desire is making a headway.  It is true.  I desire things.  I desire truth most of all.  Truth from myself and truth from God and truth from reality.  I want to reach my hand into the cavern of all that is and was and will be and pull from it the one gem that will answer all...perhaps it isn't meant to be reached.

Maddening.  Frustrating.  Exhilarating.  Rapturous.  Inconceivable.  Entirely within my grasp.  All these are reality.

My upbringing was beautiful.  Will I, in the end, revert to my upbringing by default, regardless of how reality presents itself?  I hope I will be wise enough to choose reality over instinct.

It felt good to write a few things down.  Now I can look at them with perspective.  Unless perspective is an excuse for being unable to swim in these murky seas.

Peace and Godlove,
K R A W Z F I A R
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It's been so long since I've written anything...doesn't mean I've forgotten how to write, I hope.

I love school; it's more than I could've ever hoped for, ever asked God for.  I have wonderful friends in Waco and I feel like I'm not stranded like I've felt before.  There is love here for me, love that fills up all those empty spots that had been made vacant by the lack of those I'd become a part of in Odessa.

Isn't it funny that wherever I'm not I call home?  When I'm in Odessa, I talk about going home to Waco, and when I'm in Waco, I talk about going home to Odessa.  I suppose that wherever I'm not, and wherever I feel like I'm missing something becomes home for that moment.

I've rediscovered my love for writing.  I'd forgotten it in the hodge podge of music here at school.  I love school, still, and haven't forgotten at all how magnificently God orchestrated it all so I'd get the privilege of coming here.  I've begun writing some poetry (I never thought that would be an outlet, for some reason, but it has definitely become one of my methods of catharsis, and I'm glad for it) as well as short stories.  My novels will take a while, but I can take on small scale works in the meanwhile.

Someone asked recently, what has God done in your life?  Well...here's the answer.  All of my being is filled with gratitude because he has given me life.  He has given me cold weather, warm weather, apples, friends, embraces, tears, music, silence, sleep, acne, the ability to speak (in languages I didn't think I'd ever speak), the words to say when people need them, a room, feet on which to walk to campus, a church family, more pianos than I can count on both hands, comic relief (squirrels), dreams, nightmares, smells (good ones and bad ones), homework, vacations, a ride on an airplane, a ride on a boat, a dip in the ocean, a kiss on the cheek, eye contact, CD-player, pizza, Rosa's cafe, a ride in a convertible, rain, sleet, a toilet, towels, enough money, words words and words, the Bible, leaking irises, fingernails that need to be cut, blood, garbage disposal, teachers that care, teachers that don't care, parents that never stop caring, a brother, a brother, my magnificent brother, foreign exchange students, the Canary Islands, Canada, Spain, eight hours in a London airport, numbers, laughter, forgiveness, mercy, beauty, love love love love love...

This is what he has done for me. :) And I could ask for nothing more.

Peace and Godlove,
K R A W Z F I A R
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It's as if...I've dived into something from which I can't leave...and from which I have no desire to leave.

On Sunday, God broke me again.  It's exhilarating...breathtaking, really...when he surprises you with a "I still love you, don't you remember?" and you have no choice but to fall to your knees, bury your face in shame and remorse, but at the same time lift your hands in adoration and utter gratitude.

Ah...

I haven't cried like that in a while, and certainly not for God...but Sunday...he allowed me to bleed tears of freedom.  And with the sorrowblood pouring from me, I could let him fill with his lifeblood, his cleansing blood...

Such sweet carnage that redeems the rusty soul...

And then tonight, with the youth group....Oh my goodness...He did it again, but not for me...for the youth this time, who were willing to listen to testimony and respond to the call of God... The altar must have indentions in it after the prayer tonight.

I am glad to be back in Waco, most definitely.  I feel like this is exactly where I should be.  My friends are here, my church family is here, my calling has developed here...home was the springboard, and family I will never not appreciate and love...but this is where I need to be...for now.  And that's okay.

Being vomited from my fish,

K R A W Z F I A R
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