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Northernskier77
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Name: Nathanael
Gender: Male
Interests: Jesus, Hiking, Biking, Camping, Star Gazing, Photography, Road Trips, Christian Music, Live Concerts, Coca~Cola, SAABs, Playing bass, piano, and acoustic guitar, Flying Kites, Yankees, Mountains, Beaches, Ice Skating, Fishing, Swimming, Boating/Sailing/Kayaking, Skiing, Frisbee, Soccer, graphic design ...
Occupation: Graphic Designer / Art Directo
Industry: Art / Music
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
4/4/2004
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| I tend to put a lot of thought into posts like these, then most of the thoughts don't even come out when I try to write it down. This is probably because writing can only be one thing at a time and thoughts come and go in so many different directions all at once, colliding with each other like intangible traffic being routed through a construction zone on a busy highway. Also, I'm watching Jerry McGuire right now. Why? Because I was watching Hitch a second before that, and they had a scene from Jerry McGuire in it. So I flipped two channels down and found myself watching this silly movie. Not because I like Renée Zellweger or Tom Cruise, but because that little kid and Cuba Gooding Junior (is Junior his last name or something?) are pretty hilarious. And maybe it will help me understand or relate to girls a little more. Something like that. Also I'm writing on my xanga again. So these thoughts that are swirling around up there have to come out through my fingertips as just one thing at a time, in complete sentences for the most part, and now I've successfully written an entire paragraph having nothing to do with what I'm going to write about. See what I mean? I also like to connect unrelated things by being random or literal or serious... in a good way of course. I think I'm going to grab a piece of pizza... or two. What? It's so late at night! Pizza? Heck yes! Maybe I'll go ice skating tomorrow? It could happen.
Once upon a time... no wait... that's not how it's supposed to start..
AHEM!
So there's these stupid surveys (I take them too sometimes) circulating around on myspace and email and facebook probably too... they all seem to ask a lot of the same questions: Name? Favorite Color? Do you like someone? Would you date someone if they smoked? The answer to all of those questions is... a resolute yes. Oh... the "You complete me/you had me at hello" scene that I saw in Hitch just happened. ...
So would I date someone who smoked? Yes. I once thought no... that it made even a beautiful girl gross. Since then I've learned a lot, and I've repented from that way of thinking (repent means to change the mind...and my heart changed too). Let me put it this way: suppose I marry a girl and I'm in love with her and committed to her no matter what. That means no matter what I feel like on a given day... if I'm having feelings of love or just having a bad day or if things are going great or if they are monotonous, I love her no matter what. So for some reason, someday she decides to take up smoking (or some other degrading activity [insert your stuff here]- not even necessarily something physical..or maybe she decides to like country music)..maybe done in secret, or with me knowing about it. Either way, now she's hooked... she tastes like cigarettes, her clothes smell musty, maybe her personality even changes a little. But the fact remains that she's my wife and what she does doesn't define her. [Weird... I'm watching a movie now and this guy just came up to Sandra Bullock and surprised kissed her while she was smoking..and then a commercial for kicking the habit of smoking directly after that] So why would I stop loving my wife just because she became a smoker? That would go against my promise to love her no matter what. Why should she deserve my love less because she smokes cigarettes? Is she a smoker? Is that where she finds her true meaning as a person? No! She's my wife - and that doesn't define her either. She defines herself as a child of God, and has consented to be loved by Him. ...and as her husband, I'm called to love her that way, and be supportive and there and her husband and loving, and not condemning. (What is the difference between being a smoker and someone who smokes? Perception. If you see someone for what they do as who they are, then you'll always be looking on the bad side of things. You'll always turn up empty if you expect someone to meet your expectations. That's not love at all. Love is accepting someone for whoever they are and wherever they are at in life - even if they haven't gotten it all figured out, or if their own self perception is that they have to be perfect and it's hard for them to be loved because they don't think they deserve it.)
[it turns out her boyfriend was a smoker too. so he never thought twice about accepting her. it seems that when we have the same struggles as people perhaps we find it easier to accept them - that we don't even think twice about it. but when someone has a problem we haven't personally faced, we're like oh c'mon - why can't you just deal with that - i mean it's so clear to me that----
yeah. each person struggles with their own thing(s) and if we don't see it from their perspective we'll just see them as screw ups. and some of the things people struggle with are so hurtful to themselves and their friends.... but they are so worthy of love - not because of what they do
but because they are created in God's image.]
Guilt is a bad motivator for love.
So what if she never gives up smoking? So what. It doesn't change the fact of who she is and who I am. And it probably hurts me that she does that to herself and because we're one flesh too... and because we're one flesh we're in it together for that matter. Should I expect her to change? No. I should love her through whatever we go through. If she smokes, then I smoke... and I don't mean that I take up smoking too... I just mean that her pain is my pain, her stuff is my stuff - joy, sadness ...yes it's okay to cry with people instead of cheering them up.... everything and anything. Together. That's how love is supposed to be.
So I should approach dating the same way. Not that I am so attached to someone at such a time as dating lends itself to, but that if I am dating someone, I should be taking into consideration choosing to love that person in the way described above...and more. The point of dating should be to discover if the other person is the right person to marry - and if it's clear they will not, to stop dating that person. I know not everyone sees it this way. But that's not my point.
What if loving someone like that is impossible for me? I think that humans are equipped with only a finite ability to love another person. At some point it gets hard. Then what? We're so bad at hard love and so good at loving lovable things. At the very best, my love has always been human - somewhat muddled with a hint of selfishness. But in the times that I allow God's love to flow through me, it's hard to deny the love is so much more of what it needed to be in the first place. How does that even look? Am I a glass with holes in the sides constantly being poured into, but constantly leaking so I need more to satisfy and the more I leak, the more comes into me? Not exactly, but that's a good picture of how this all seems to work when it's working the way it's supposed to. Am I going to mess up with this? I already have, but I sure want to be one who constantly tries to do his best to love people for who they are and not who they should be. So that is my intent. That is how I want to be loved, and how other people should be loved.
I intend this to be considered with the knowledge that I'm not the authority about anything, and this conversation needs to be added to. Dispute me, agree with me, but don't take me as someone who is the end all to things of this sort.
I think that this is easy enough to write but I too haven't figured it all out. This is just something I felt needed to be written so that I am somehow accountable to what I write. Writing things here makes it public, so call me out on stuff.
I feel like there's nothing more to write tonight, thus I end here.
Goodnight friends.
Love your enemies.
N
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The following writing is a result of stuff that's been on my heart for quite a while, but of late, it's been on the top of my mind as well. It may even reflect on other things I've written in the past, perhaps more or less developed, yet I feel the need to write to make things more actual and sorted in my own head. My written thoughts may not come out the way I had them in my mind, nonetheless I think they are valid. I hope at least one person will be blessed as they read what comes after this period.
Considering life as a Christian, I have found the most difficult thing is to give up on sin. It's not that I think I need to sin in order to maintain a certain aspect of human flavor or lowliness. It's just that my soul's body, while in opposition that aforementioned eternal aspect which it houses, feels completely incomplete without some sort of worship. It's known that our souls are wired (so to speak... in electrical terminology, even) to give praise - whether to an object, a person, an idea, or to God Himself. The fact that our fragile, living bodies are home to our very beings, or souls, automatically involves both with everything we do while the two are so joined. So our body cannot operate without affecting the soul; the soul cannot thrive while the body is having an adverse effect upon it.
So am I saying sin is a form of worship? Absolutely, but sin is not a form of worship to God. While we worship God, we even entertain angels (sometimes without even knowing it)...but that means that when we decide to sin (yes it's a decision), demons are entertained. That's hard to swallow considering how easy it is to fall into the grips of temptation and fall into an addictive and repetitive lifestyle of sin. In much the same way love is conceived in the heart of a person, sin too is conceived within. Love gives birth to all kinds of good things where life finds its roots, but sin gives birth to all kinds of evil and ultimately: death. So instead of trying to give up on sin and focusing so much energy on trying not to do something bad, wouldn't it make sense to instead focus on being productive and doing things in love? It's not that temptation will ever cease, but I have found that if I spend a day trying on my own to resist, the day is wasted and chances are I even give in to it. Reacting to the temptation to sin is not the same thing as actively fighting against it. The battle is never won if we insist on fighting alone. Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee! Hide God's word in your heart so that you may not sin against Him! Always be on watch and guard your heart which you have hidden God's word within, especially when you consider yourself to be strong and least susceptible to attacks. All it takes is a moment of letting the guard down for the whole works to come crashing down.
So we live in these bodies filled with incredible desire and tremendous capability of doing good and evil, yet the two cannot coexist. How is the same heart able to convey such love and commit such hatred? If you think about it, any time we sin we are turning our backs on God and basically saying we hate Him. So I've wondered - if God knows the very depths of my heart that even I don't- what if the depths of my heart is not to love God? But then I think...such thoughts can't be of God, because if I have spent any time with God, I know that He does not bring condemnation to those who love Him.... conviction yes - thank you God for it!
When we are asked to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, it's not just the parts we choose. We sacrifice the use of the parts as a whole for God's use instead of our own selfish desires. So it's nice to say God, here's my hands and my feet and my whole self for your purpose... and I believe that we can even mean that. But it's easy to say that and to go on living like we do, taking the parts of ourselves we want to use and God ends up with a pinky finger, and a slice of a heart so small it's unrecognizable as such. I think that we need to deliberately pledge each individual part of our body to God as His for whatever He desires... that means that my hands, and arms, my feet, my skin, my sexual parts, my eyes, my ears, my mind, my mouth, etc... all need to be in God's service. So that means that what I do with my parts should be glorifying to God; my hands for healing, my arms for holding, my legs for going, my ears for listening, my mouth for singing, and speaking good words, my skin displayed modestly, my eyes to see good things and turn from things I may want to look at but damage my soul, my sexual parts not for my pleasure but for my future spouse to enjoy as I convey my love for her in that way (and for procreation of course!). All of our parts which add up to a whole being, body as a home to our soul, belong to God by virtue of the fact the He created them. So it makes sense to give it all back to Him in service to His desire for our lives.
So making it a habit of rejecting temptation in Jesus' name and doing the opposite of what we were tempted to do, in fact becomes a form of worship, as we live lives of love for our Creator. Replace sin with love as you experience fullness of life once again. Will it be easy? No. Will it be worth it? Absolutely! Will there still be hard times and suffering? Yes. Will we mess up? Yes. But maintain your heart after God's own heart and you will know freedom.
N
......I had in mind to write some other things that seemed related to this but now with what I have written don't seem as pertinent to this writ. Thus another writing will take place about such issues relating in some way or fashion to that which you have just read (at least in my head they do...and might come out quite strangely when I commence the typing of it). Thanks for reading! Let me know of any feedback, questions (I may or may not know the answer), refutes, or concurrences. i think my cheesecake is thoroughly cooled and the laundry satisfactorily dried. Why do I insist on staying up late typing? I think the words flow better at the late and now early yestertoday type hours. Woot!
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A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation
means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation
know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five
minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour
later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about
badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
C. S. Lewis
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| Yestertoday on the way to jam in Willimantic, my heart sank when I saw an ominous cloud of smoke hovering in the sky. I thought it was the high school at first, but it was further away than that. They had re-routed traffic around the scene so I never saw the actual building burning but later on the news I found out it was a 3 story building that had burnt down and now 15 people are homeless.
I can't imagine being in that position.
This situation recently happened to so many people in California, and it happens to so many people every day. This time just happened to be a bit close to home. It's strange how things don't move us the same unless we see them with our own eyes or are touched somehow by the situation. It's easy to live and worry about only ourselves.
It's challenging to do something for others with nothing else in mind for self gain. We should regard the best interests of others as more than those of our own. I am so flawed at this...
Some people are waiting for their houses to burn down so they can fully rely on God for everything they need. Their stuff gets in the way. They live too comfortably. TV is more important than feeding the homeless. Then they wake up and one day they are homeless. Sometimes it takes a tragedy for something good to happen. Pray that we would move without tragedy moving us.
May you see love and not me. Somehow. I'm so imperfect.
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| This one time I was sitting here, reminiscing about the previous couple of weeks.
I want to be in a relationship, but not for the sake of being in a relationship. I don't want to date a girl because I have a crush on her. I want there to be true commitment involved... which of course doesn't come right away. I just want to be there for someone 24/7 or 25/8 or however many weeks and months are in a day and however many hours are in a year.
I want it to be a case of ...
...beauty having been portrayed a certain way in my mind from my birth up to this point... and for whoever she is to throw that definition out. Then I can say to her, "I saw beauty portrayed in my mind a different way, until I met you. Thank you for being you and redefining the word."
AWWW I'm so sappy (but not too much) but who cares... some girl's gonna like it... and if she doesn't, she's definitely not the one for me. So someday I'll meet this elusive girl of my dreams... and I suppose it will end up being the exact and perfect time for us to meet... and I suppose it will be equally unexpected. ... Or maybe I already missed out.
I have a hard time believing that, but sometimes the thought crosses my mind.
In other news:
I'm going to Maine next weekend. I haven't been there since I was a little dude. That should be way fun!
I've been substituting at NFA for the last few weeks and that's cool... I need something more regular though. They pay well enough - my first paycheck came yesterday and it was more than I expected - always a good thing eh?
Also - I get to be a chaperone for ski club starting in January... skiing for free? Heck yes!
This post brought to you by Axiomwear and your mom's son's or daughter's friend,
N
be well and take heart. never abandon hope.
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| A lot has happened in the last month or so...
I went to Creation and got to talk to some cool folks in the bands. Switchfoot wants me to be their onstage chef....
I went to Ohio for the first time ever to see my best friend Natalie who I hadn't seen in 3 years...and to meet her then fiancé and see her nifty family peoples who I also haven't seen in 2 or 3 years. Sheetz is fun at 4 in the morning. Speeding tickets at 2am, 500 ft from your destination, after 250 miles and 4 hours of driving...is not (fun). Oh well... seeing all of them and meeting new friends was the highlight of my summer for sure.
My sister got married a week later on 7/7/7 to her now husband Bassem from Egypt. I was in the wedding as a groomsman. I'm so glad that it's all over... it was a lovely time, but leading up to the wedding was such a stressful time for us...
Natalie and Bo got married on the same day! I missed this wedding only because my sister was getting married on the same day - I so wish I could have been there. I'm glad I got to see Natalie and meet her Bo before the wedding. We all had such a great time together  I have a good feeling about these two!
I went to Starbucks in Windsor Locks on Wednesday and they had signs up that they are hiring there. They had some applications out so I grabbed a couple and took them with me. I applied to Starbucks at Mohegan Sun on Thursday, after trying to put it in at the new Stop & Shop Starbucks.... apparently those people are Stop & Shop employees and do not work for Starbuckaneers. I put in my two weeks at RadioShack on Friday (which I had been planning on doing since May or earlier...just hadn't picked a day til last week). I got a voicemail from Starbucks yesterday asking me to call back to schedule an interview. I called back today and my interview is tomorrow at 5:00pm. heck yes! I didn't expect them to call or anything... I just thought I would have to call them - and I was planning on doing that tomorrow to give them some time. So this is a good sign
YPI is less than two weeks away! I'm pretty excited for this year. Pastor Brad won't be doing music or the messages, which stinks because he's doing it for over a decade or more... but I'm helping do music again this year, and Luke who also helped in the past years is heading it up. Heck yes! I'm doing the whole ...picture taking - slideshow - technical - extra help thing again this year too. Should be good times for sure.
peaceout.
This was originally going to be a shopping list of a xanga entry but then paragraphs happened.
N
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