Hope

For freedom we are free.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I read an interesting idea from Abraham Lincoln, (I’ve been studying historical figures,) he said that God did not give Adam the tree of knowledge of good and evil so he could choose between the two, but so he could choose to not to eat of it. (I’m paraphrasing.) I’ve never heard this idea before. I’ve thought for a long time that Free Will means the ability to choose between right and wrong. Of course we know that it’s not right to choose wrong, but God won’t stop us.

But Lincoln gave me a paradigm shift. I believe whole heartedly the Good and Evil are real things. But what if freedom is not choosing between them, but simply choosing. It sounds like the same thing, I know. But let’s dive in deeper.

The thing about evil is, it depends upon the fact that the longer you allow it, the less you can resist it. The Bible says Sin makes us its slave. But I haven’t been the only one to think that it’s kind of unfair that Adam makes one choice, and screws up the rest of humanity. Yet that’s how it is. It’s called the Ripple Effect. Plus, every person re-enacts the scenario found in Genesis, we all have Good and Evil before us, we all at some point decide what we want to know.

Knowing Good and Evil is not the same as knowing it exists. Adam and Eve knew that tree was there, but they didn’t know what it was to be evil, to do evil, or to understand it. They were innocent. God made them good, but perhaps they didn’t know what that meant either. The choice they really had was God, or getting knowledge their own way. God didn’t set them up, the tree was not a bad thing, it was how it was used that was.

That’s another theory in of itself, but what I’m trying to get at is that Freedom to  Choose remains freedom only as long as you choose rightly. That’s the nature of choice, to be able to make the right decision, not just any decision.

It used to be that people would tell you what a bad decision was, none of this nonsense about it being up to you to decide what was right. People, there is a difference between choosing right, and choosing what Right is. I don’t mean that we can’t  decide what is the right course of action,  but we don’t set the standard.

If God really wants what’s best for us, then he want us to be free. Evil doesn’t make you free, it makes you evil. Stealing makes you a thief, drugs make you an addict, lying makes you a liar, etc. Once you are that, how can you ever not be that again? Your deeds stand. We do have a choice, we can choose God. That is the only choice we have, because he allows us to keep our choice. Evil doesn’t. You get in, it won’t let you get out.

But I don’t despair. Evil may trap us, but evil is not the most powerful thing in the world and we all know if you can’t free yourself, the only option is to be rescued by someone stronger than your captor. This is why the Word says Christ freed us, and “It is for freedom that Christ set us free.” You might say Christ freed us for our own benefit, or you might say he freed us so we could be reconciled to God, but the Christian knows those two things are the same. It’s true, we are described as slaves for Christ, but slavery to one thing is freedom from another.

Freedom is choosing God, that is just the fact. I know from my own experience that this is true. There are tons of reasons to back it up, but I suggest Mere Christianity as a resource if you’re curious.

(This post got preachy, but I want everyone to know that was unintentional, I was thinking as I typed. I don’t just say this stuff, I really think this way. So it’s no more preachy than anyone else sharing their thought. I’m only saying this to clarify that I wasn’t proselytizing.)

Whether you like my conclusion or not, this subject is certainly intriguing. Feel free to  comment with your thoughts. Until next post–Natasha.

When you mess up.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

The past is past. Put it all behind you. Forgive, forget. Move on. It’s a closed issue. Let it go.

These are all ways to say that you can’t spend your time in regret and resentment. I have to say, I try not to screw up. I try to be good. I have a hard admitting if I fail. Not if I’ve done a “little” thing; like said something rude, but it’ll be forgotten by tomorrow, especially if I apologize. (By the way, have you ever had someone say they don’t even know what you’re talking about, or they’d forgotten about it, when you say you’re sorry for something. I get this quite a bit. I think it’s be better to just accept the apology, but that’s not a rule, it’s a suggestion.) But if I have an ongoing problem.

To be honest, I’m one of those people who really doesn’t realize how certain expressions and words can come across. I’m inside my head so much, I tend to know more what I mean, then what other people think I mean. But sometimes I worry about it enough to go the other way, and worry too much about people reading into my words. I know I’m not alone in this problem. So let’s talk.

I’ll just cut right to the heart of the issue, if I may. It’s not about being unable to let go of stuff. It’s about whether you believe you should. When you want to be a good and kind person, it’s easy to pour on the shame when you fail, as a self imposed punishment. I think the problem is two fold: On the one hand, we can’t fix ourselves, so we feel ashamed; on the other hand, we don’t want to let God help us.

It’s like, no matter how much our life sucks, it’s our life, and we should control it. Then we can’t. And we get mad at life for taking control out of our hands. Even though, who on earth told us we could have it in the first place? I know, I’m in favor of the “It’s your life” slogan. But I hope all my readers know that what I mean by that is you’re responsible for how much you do, and don’t do, and your attitude; not that you can fix everything with a little time and effort.

So maybe when I get frustrated that I screwed up, a part of me is just upset that I can’t see it coming every time. And maybe a part of me wants to be perfect, because it seems like I should be. And to be honest, a part of me is also scared that I won’t bounce back if I make the wrong move. How far is too far? How far before I can’t go back? You all know what I’m talking about.

But in the end, the only real way to live is to know you’re flawed, but to believe you can change. And to know that change comes through love, not through shame, effort, or any other medium. Don’t be afraid to say you’re sorry, don’t get down if someone doesn’t accept your apology, just live it out. And get excited when you win a battle. Record your wins and your losses.

If I may end with the lyrics from a song I like, it goes like this:

You know you can’t stay right where you fell. The hardest part is forgiving yourself. So let’s take a walk into today, and don’t let the past get in your way!

Yesterday is history, and history is miles and miles away. So leave it all behind you, let it always remind you of the day, the day that love made history.

Would you believe that you are history in the making? Every choice that you are making; every step that you are taking, every chain that you are breaking; history is in the making. Every word that you are saying; every prayer that you are praying; every chain that  you are making; history is in the making. ( History–Mathew West.)

–Natasha

Keep calm–it’s almost election time!!

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

First, ahhhhhh!

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s talk.

I know putting anything political in a post is seen as begging for attention by a lot of people. But believe me, I’m more scared of people reading it than ignoring it. However I’ve been fortunate to receive no hate comments so far and that may continue if I’m lucky.

I have my pick of candidates but I won’t be voting, (I can’t,) so I basically am joining every other underage concerned teen in rolling my eyes half the time, and praying for the adults to make the right choice the other half. I think we ought to get some credit for keeping our sanity this time of year. Okay, that was kind of a joke.

Actually it’s alarming how few of us seem really invested in our country. How many voters vote based off their own research and study of the way this country is meant to run? Don’t most of them just watch the news and figure it out based on that? (Imagine me banging my head on the wall.) But I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, I think most voters do want the best for the country, but half of us are clearly confused about what that is, I won’t say which half.

Of course the pressure is on, the rest of the world is watching us closely. Even though it’s a popular theme in song lyrics to welcome the attention of the whole world, has anyone ever seriously thought about how terrifying that is? Then we have the fatalists telling us it’s all over, and we (the younger generation) are doomed to pick up the pieces. And the slightly too cheerful folks who think that times have never been better. (Really?) And then there are those who fall in the middle. I think honestly we’re all tired of hearing about change and never seeing it, and hearing about problems but never about them getting any better. I doubt that statistics are a reliable source anyway, problems get better one person at a time, one day at a time, one choice at a time.

The election is a formality, the problems are already there, and until the nation changes, the politics won’t. The real issue you won’t hear about on the news is that people are out of touch with America’s roots. We don’t know what we don’t know. We might all know something about the rights we were given. (Given by who? The government? Or God?) But do we know how those rights are preserved? Or how we decided who deserved them?

I don’t fear the election as much as I fear overall ignorance of the truth. I’ve always thought that a powerful leader is only powerful as long as other people follow them, when people stop following them there’s nothing much they can do anymore.

We need strong-hearted, large-souled, men and women of courage and character. That’s our fix.

So no, I won’t be endorsing a particular candidate, because it’s more important that we stop being selfish, and start thinking about what is best for everyone. That’s how we survive and overcome a crisis, every time. ( And faith is a huge part of that for many.)

This post was suggested by one of my siblings, and I’d been intending to write it anyway, so I hope it was enjoyed. Until next time–Natasha.

We all need it

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

Hey viewers, I was planning another more positive post, but today I heard someone say something that shook me up. I heard someone say they should just kill themselves.

I don’t have much to say about it. But I have felt that way too.

Reach higher.

People like me, we get our hopes up, set ourselves these high reaching goals; and imagine what a fulfilling existence would be like…and then we find ourselves stuck in the day to day living.

“Any idiot can survive a crisis, it’s the day to day living that wears you out.” Unknown source

I was never more depressed in my life than in the two years I spent prior to finding God. I don’t mean I never enjoyed myself in that time, or that I didn’t eat, or anything like that; but I lived everyday with the underlying question why I was so miserable.

I am so different now it’s hard to believe it, that part of my life seems so small and shell-like. But I still get reminded of it from time to time. I used to feel sick to my stomach nearly everyday, because I felt that way whenever I was scared or nervous or just plain worrying. I used to be a hypochondriac and feel sick whenever I heard or read about illness. I used to have irrational fears of monsters and other stuff I won’t go into. And those were the small problems. My overall problem was fear. Like Charlie Brown, I was afraid of everything.

Fear has torment. That’s why it makes you depressed. Fear makes you hopeless if it stays too long.

The second time in my life I was depressed was when I’d been a Christian for a year or two, and God just went into hiding. Every believer deals with this sooner or later. And knowing that helped, but for awhile I felt like my faith was pointless.

That experience taught me so much. I learned that faith is not a feeling. Because when you feel bad, even if you believe your religion is based on facts and knowledge, then it looks false. I learned that praising God when you don’t feel like it is sometimes the only thing that brings Him closer, and that’s not for Him, it’s for us, to remember what kind of God we serve. But I also learned that God doesn’t leave, He simply becomes less visible so you have to search deeper and deeper to find him. And that can either make you angry, if you let it; or it can make you stronger.

Maybe I’m alone in this, but I think when God says His ways are higher than our ways, He means that the way he chooses to do things is what it best, even though it makes no sense to us at all. But until we can admit that our ways are the lesser because we are the lesser, we can’t be raised up to see His point of view. That’s why Christians are always talking about going higher than before, and being lifted up. But non-Christians get this concept too when they realize that maturity is a thing, and what it looks like. (And no one is born knowing that.) Maturity is the simplest example of what I’m talking about. It’s the difference between pretending to bake a cake a s a kid, and actually baking one as a young cook (and messing it up probably) and then finally learning how to do it right. At first there is no real difficulty, and no real reward either; then there’s a lot of difficulty and still no reward; then you get to be good at it and the reward is two-fold, the cake and the accomplishment.

But first of all you have to want to. And to want to you have to be hungry. I’ve heard this over and over again. Hunger never gets any easier does it? In fact, it gets harder. But if you learn to understand it, then you can do something about it. Maybe we all wish there were easier ways to achieve the Great things in life. But that is because we are down here, and we need to be higher. (I guess I had plenty to say after all. It’s gotten easier to talk about the rough patches of my life.)

As you all can see, I have no picture perfect existence. I’ve talked a lot about my faith in this post, because I had to, there is just no other way to understand things like this. I got shaken up, and it’s happened before, and it hurts every time. But nothing has taken me out yet, and nothing has to take you out either. My advice if you’re feeling bad is to hold on; play good music; read a good book; chat with a good friend about it; and keep holding on.

Until next time–Natasha

Life as Riley Matthews

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

It’s no secret that I, Natasha, like the show Girl Meets World. For various reasons. But today I wanted to write about something I thought of after watching the episode “Girl Meets Pluto.”

One of the main characters, Riley, is often described as a goofball who only sees the good in everything. And she wants to believe Pluto is still a planet. Whatever your thoughts might be on that, I can relate to her; I never wanted Pluto to stop being a planet. When I originally learned the Solar System,( via the Magic School bus,) I taught it to my younger sister. It was one of my first teaching experiences; I loved it. And Pluto was still a planet.

Do you see why I still want to think of it as such? Perhaps the fact of the matter is, as I’ve heard pointed out, that it’s ridiculous for us human beings to think we can decide what anything as huge as a planet is. But really, its not about how much we know, or how we can measure stuff, we names thing so we can learn about them and so they mean something to us.

If Pluto is a planet it has more dignity than what it’s called now, an “Ice dwarf.” Ugh. It’s one thing to decide something is grander than you knew at first, like the sun being more central than the earth; but it’s another to decide something is lesser than you thought. The earth is actually more central than we used to think. And I can understand why Riley still wants to believe Pluto is a planet.

I have a lot of Riley in me. I want to see things in a good light. Even if/when I hear hard facts, I wonder if there’s a brighter side that no one knows about. Is there a hidden good? Perhaps that sounds like nonsense to other people. Sometimes I think it is and that I just look for what’s not there. But here’s the thing: I like being this way. From all I’ve observed, in my short life, being pessimistic only makes you miserable, and it means you are always living in fear of bad things happening. I know too many people who tend to think the worst. They aren’t happy. Though “There’s more to life than that–Don’t ask me what.” (Fiddler on the Roof.)

I have to say I’ve been disappointed a lot, and I have my moments of wanting to give up on hoping for the best. But in the end, I can’t, because the day I lose hope, I lose everything. If you have no hope, you won’t see the good that is there, and you won’t expect the good that might happen. (Ever wonder why people who are pessimists are also the most critical?)

I have to have hope even to think anyone might read this post, and more hope to think it might help them out.

One final thought: Hope is not always a feeling. It is a choice. It is choosing not to say that the worst will happen; hope is waking up in the morning and being glad to start the day; hope is doing your work because you know it’ll benefit you in the long run; hope is risking standing up for something because you think it can get better; hope is seeing the political mess around us and believing good things can still happen; hope is turning off the electronics and doing something in the real world; hope is encouraging someone else because it could brighten their day. What fuels all this is love. Hope is the action of love. One of them anyway. Or perhaps it’d be better to say hope is the action of faith. Whatever works for you.

100_4836Okay, that’s all I’m going to say for this post, hope you enjoyed it–Natasha.

Experiences.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I am updating this post because it’s been several months.

I want to get more into why we have experiences in this reboot.

Brushing your teeth is an experience, but it is not really memorable; versus going to another country, which you will probably remember as long as you have a sharp mind.

Though experiences themselves are easily defined by the facts, what they do to us inside, that is not so easy.

It’s funny how a seemingly terrible experience can later in life prove to be a good thing. one you are even grateful for. Like having a bad tooth pulled. Or getting disciplined by your parents. Or it can be a far worse experience, traumatic even, yet later, it makes you stronger.

I want to share with you guys something I got into this week, it’s an old comic book story, by Jack Kirby, about Scott Free and Big Barda.

AS yo may know, I don’t read a lot of comic books, but here and there I have one I like. This actually was all a tory I read online and saw pieces of on Justice League Unlimited, I only rada little of it in an actual comic book. I am not endorsing the show, but id o recommend reading the comic book saga if you get the chance, it’s an amazing story.

Not just because it may be the most romantic one in the DC universe, and it has a functioning couple to boot, but because even individually the stories of these two characters are poignant and surprisingly real.

Raised on the hellish planted of Apocalips, Scott and Barda are very different. Scott is the adopted son of the ruler of the planet, Darkseid, while Barda is a selected child who is being groomed to be the head of the furies, horrible female warriors who have no mercy, no pity, no remorse. It’s not really their fault, they are all brainwashed, hypnotized, and severely punished for doing anything remotely good or beautiful that Darkseid doesn’t like.

To make a longs tory short, Scott and Barda both witness one injustice too many, and Scott decides to flee to Earth, Barda, for reasons she does not fully understand, decides to help him, but does not follow till later. When she does they are happily reunited, and after a lot of adventures together come to realize they have fallen in love, they get married, and continue to have adventures. Though the most memorable may be the one where they go back to their “home” and face their nightmares (almost literally.)

Now I bring this up because the amount of experiences both these characters have is huge, and most of the experiences, at least early on, were bad.

So, it’s just a comic book, right?

Never!

Something about this story rung true with me. I have not had such a horrible life thank goodness, but I recognized something about it.

see, though we don’t live on a world that has no hope, many of us live in a kind of personal misery where we feel no hope. And we are brainwashed by many sources, hypnotized by entertainment, and severely punished by circumstances or possibly other people if we dare go against the norm.

I’ll bet most of us would look at Scott and Barda and say “that would never happen in real life, two people raised like they were would never be able to live a healthy lifestyle.”

Come on, is our modern phycology so very different from the kind of messages I’m sure Scott and Barda both heard? “You are meant for this, you can never be anything else, hope is pointless.” And I do not mean the lack of self esteem, but the lack of awareness just of what life is really about.

You might say, and honestly I would have agreed with you, that Scott and Barda would both be really messed up. Haunted by their past. and for awhile, they were. It literally cam after them. But they protected each other.

Until the fateful moment when Scott decided he was through running. He would go back and face it. And Barda, though she believed they would die, went with him. And they didn’t die, though they came close.

And this is how I feel like I relate to this story. Facing your past, and the fears that go with it, can be terrifying. You can feel like you’re going to die. Pain hurts. That’s what pain does.

But here’s why I don’t find their story unbelievable and I do find it real: I have been on the same journey. I continue on it. I do not feel as fearless as Barda, or as clever and optimistic as Scott; but I have had to learn to be brave, wise, and hopeful. I love Barda because she tells Scott right before they go into a dangerous situation, which she compares to a shark. “We’re jumping down that shark’s mouth together–and then I’ll beat it to death from the inside.” Who doesn’t want to marry someone with that kind of devotion?

Having a rough life may suck while it is rough, but one thing is certain, you cannot become so tenacious as to beat a shark to death, unless you’ve had a rough time of it.

And it takes tenacity to love, take it from someone who once had the backbone of a jellyfish, at least when it came to facing my own demons.

Scott understands, as he tells Barda, that they are proof Apokalips can fall. Not because they have defeated Darkseid himself, but because they defeated the darkness that he tried to instill in them. They overcame it with love and justice.

Usually we think of love, but you need justice too. Justice is what tells you when it is time to face your fears, justice tell s you when it is not fair to other people to act the way you do. Justice tells you that you should have a better fate than what you’ve been assigned by your enemies. (Whatever form they take.)

I think we are apt to get tired of hearing about the inner battle, but it is the one we have the most active part in, and it affects more than you know. More than I know.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to fight, ladies and gentlemen, and if you find a person who will jump down that shark with you, keep them around.

Note to self: Marry somebody who has no problem beating a shark to death if  it should ever be necessary.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this unabridged post from DryBonesTruth. Until next time

–Natasha