Just a house on sand.

It happens again and again. I run mental sprints all day long, occupying my mind with thoughts that seem to make entrance too early. I start to worry yet again, oh that vice that I have. May it be damned with the rest of my sins. I start seeking reassurance and in the process spread the disruption of peace. I set off a chain reaction of thoughts that I never intended too. And even worse, it begins in minds other than my own. What can it all mean? Why do I waste energy on such non sense. Why do I bother trying to make non sense into normalcy? Then I remember the most valuable feedback I have ever received ' You talk too much '.

Then I walk into my apt and feel the weight of my thoughts on my chest. The sighs become more frequent and you wonder why you are thinking and worrying so much. Nothing is even necessarily wrong, but the thoughts keep running circles in your head and your convince yourself you are just jaded and hope may not apply to you in this situation, or any for that matter. Then you start kicking yourself for letting yourself get back to this frame of thought where you seem to ignore everything good that has ever happened to you and focus on only what if's and could-of-beens.

And then you see a friend, his look of distress ten times darker and discouraged. You immediately realize that your problem isn't even enough to be considered a problem. A concern, but not a problem. You ask if he wants to talk. He says he can't. Later on that night as we lay in our beds in that little room he opens up about the despair he is feeling. He asks why God doesn't care? Why this? Why him?

You just sit and you wonder how you can give him the answers he wants. You know that God is real and that whatever my friend is experiencing God is aware of. But I have been in the same spot, where no answer can satisfy. I was in the exact place he is just eight months earlier, where I was sure God had forgotten and didn't care about an insignificant sinner such as myself.

I made it through though. I worked and worked and pleaded and prayed. I know things get better. I have seen it through to the other side and know I will many times over. And then when you think back on this you realize that I have had just as many experiences that things work out to the experiences where things didn't turn out in good favor with my expectations. The choice is up to me? What am I to believe in? Hope or tragedy? It is entirely my choice, nothing about it is left up to chance. It all rests in me.

So you just have to turn to your friend and tell him 'Look, I can't tell why. All I know is things will get better. I know they do. I am living proof they do.'

And then I think of how I have let my foundation turn into sand. And I have been building a house on fickel ground which can only betray me in the end. Maybe I need to stop before I get so far ahead and think of where I really want to claim my spot of earth. My life depends on it.

And then I realize I need to understand that just as much as he does. So I just remind myself 'Aaron, you talk too much.'

Listening, hearing, understanding,

Little Lion Man