"And my only hope is for their daughters to be loved"

I was talking with my friend "Amy" today at work about all sorts of things in life. One conversation led to another which led to another and all the sudden we were talking about "daddy issues". Namely, girls with "daddy issues".

(For future reference, please know that when I say "daddy issues" it is not a sarcastic thing or disrespectful or anything like that. I simply do not know a better way to put it)

There are few things that have broken my heart more than hearing stories of men being terrible fathers. Some, to the point of calling them "a dad" would be doing a disservice to all the other good and present fathers out there. I have met way too many girls in my life, that still suffer from their parents divorce--or rather, an absent father.

My friend "Amy" said that from her experiences with her life (she also had an absent father/man), and meeting other girls that have been in situations like her own, she had come to the conclusion that having a really crappy dad can result in two main traits.

1. The girl becomes clingy. She just wants to be loved, is looking for something to fill the void that her father left--wether she acknowledges this or not. She may tend to give too many guys too many chances.

2. The girl becomes jaded. She does not trust men, and is terrified to put her whole heart into a relationship. She is very skeptical to let herself be satisfied with someone in a relationship.

This was at about 4pm that we had this conversation, it is now midnight and I have been thinking about this nonstop since then. And, to a certain degree, from the girls I have met in my life that have been affected by crap fathers...I think "Amy" is right. We are talking about girls with a mostly absent father here, not all girls that come from divorced homes or anything like that. We're talking about girls without fathers that play an active role in their life.

It breaks my heart more than words can describe to have personally seen some of the scars that have been left on girls's hearts who's father is not active in their life. It kills me that men can be so freaking selfish to leave their beautiful daughters out in the cold, and not give a seconds thought to what might happen to their mentality because of their leaving and their absence.

But I believe that there is healing that can occur, by God, if you let it.

I do not mean to speak out of turn here, but I can imagine that having a father that is not in your life, that left your mother and you and your family, that barely ever calls you, that is basically nonexistent...would be one of the most devastating things that could ever happen to a person. In this case, a girl. Personalities change, grudges are built, wounds are open, nothing is good because nothing ever changes. Nothing gets better in this state of just leaving it all alone and trying to forget it exists.

I believe that, that is where God could intervene if a person were to let Him. With years, I'm sure these once surface wounds of the heart erode into chasms of the soul. Chasms that might make a girl quick to fill the void of her heart with temporary relationships, or chasms that might render a girl so cynical and doubtful of love that she is never satisfied to be with someone. I believe that God can heal these terrible things that those men did to their beautiful daughters.

I believe that letting God's love, grace, and mercy drown the wounds that their fathers left them, they can be made well again. They can learn to fill their void with grace, and peace, instead of relationships. They can learn to forgive, and have grace on their fathers, and begin to be able to simply give love a chance...to give it a chance to put your whole heart into something, and not too be scared to be satisfied with it.

Wounds like this are not something that can just sit unmended and you just wait for it to heal. A gunshot wound to the heart does not just stop bleeding, or close up by itself. It will bleed until there is no blood left.

Find grace. Find peace. Find forgiveness.

Because this is not the way it was supposed to be.

jaded

i think it's one of the kindest things when people ask "where have you been?"

i wonder if God thinks the same thing.

i'm attempting to make this blog short and sweet:

i'm far from perfect, but i'm trying daily to fight off my demons.

the problem i have is with people that do not try to continuously better themselves, and are leaders in their church. i'm not just talking staff per-say, i'm talking all the way down to the people that lead a group of twenty people in a small Bible study, who are the spiritual mentor for one person.

i think people in the church would be truly shocked and appalled if they found out just how spiritually immature some of their leaders are.

it's not necessary "the blind leading the blind". it's more like "the stupid leading the people who refuse to open their eyes"

please do NOT mistake me for saying that our church leaders should be perfect. they will never be. none of us will ever be.

i am simply saying that i believe our leaders should be trying their best to lead a Christ filled life. i DON'T want someone who is leading my Bible study to be having the EXACT SAME struggles they had in high school. i want them to have NEW ones. i want them to be constantly bettering themselves. constantly fighting off their demons. especially if they are putting themselves in positions where they could be held responsible for someone else's spiritual growth.

"i don't believe in love anymore, not from those around me who have loved before. with their broken promises, and their failed attempts, and only when it's easy- come on, admit it."

-bradley hathaway

please click this link to be sure to read all of the text, I can't format worth crap!

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q188/underoath300/happy-couple.jpg

I could honestly go on for days about this. But I don't need to...I honestly think that picture says about all there is to say for me.

Well, all I want to say is this:

Coming to college, I only had one expectation. One thing I was almost certain would happen since at least 8th grade. It wasn't getting kicked out of college, it wasn't starting a band, it wasn't losing and gaining friends, it wasn't joining and then leaving an on campus church (etcetc); all I thought would happen is that I would find the girl that I would spend the rest of my life with.

I'm sure some of you read that and you're thinking "WHAT A SAP" or something along those lines. Trust me, I'm thinking the SAME THING. But regardless, that's what I always thought. That was the one expectation I had coming into college, and that's probably one of the only things both good and bad that hasn't actually even come close to happening.

Next Spring I will be getting ready to graduate, and Lord willing be getting ready to move on to a full time career. And I have this awful feeling like the one thing I thought for SURE would happen in college won't actually happen. Unless God performs some sort of miracle and literally points her out to me, and me to her?

My friend Libby told me something to the affect of "You have to be in love with a persons flaws just as much as you love the person". At the time I really didn't understand, or agree with her. But the more I thought about it, the more I understood what she was saying. It's that I need to be okay with a persons flaws, I need to NOT want to change someone, and love them EXACTLY how they are. To be honest, I never really knew that before. So maybe that will be sort of a flagship for me (is that the right use of that term even haha)?

All I know for sure is I don't want to settle. That's what my friend Jeff told me once he said "Never settle for a girl who you honestly, deep down in your heart, is exactly what you want. Flaws and all." (again, there's that loving someone who their flaws thing again! he told me this 2 years ago and it took all 2 years AND someone saying something very similar for me to finally get this)

Who knows?

It never ceases to blow my mind about just how wrong I am about everything, and how little I truly understand life.

Songs that might better explain how I feel. and are a lot greater and more entertaining and beautiful than me making this blog at an attempted focused subject of my ideas of love. well. idea is the wrong word, but i'm sure you know what I mean:

copeland- love is a fast song

iglu and hartly- out there

bradley hathaway- i don't believe in love

matthew good- empty's theme park

eye alaska- miles don't mean anything

humbleness, and keep your feet in the cement

(humbleness)

Last night my band played a show for a few hundred kids. When we got off stage, it was safe to say we all knew that this was not our best show. Careless mistakes were made that could've been easily avoid, on everyone's parts. Some of this was band error, other was technical error. Either way you spin it, I was pretty bummed out.

We started packing our gear off stage as quick as possible, debating who should stay, should we go, how are we going to get stuff from point A to point B, blahblahblah. As a band we all decided to chill out and hang out by our merch booth.

It started as a trickling effect, then became a pretty constant flow, of kids coming up to us and asking for autographs and pictures, for merch, and just to talk. I made it a point to ask every kids name, shake their hand, make sure that they knew that I cared so much that they were supporting us this way. It was fantastic.

--------cut to this morning, 1pm, i'm still chilling in bed----------

(and keep your feet in the cement)

I was just sitting in bed, thinking about last night. And what a humbling experience. It was now easy for me to see how bands could get big heads with stuff like that, if they don't take a step back and realize what just happened.

Most of the kids that talked to us were middle schoolers and high schoolers. And what is one big theme for that time in your life? Searching! Searching for who you are, and looking for people and things that you can latch unto that help define you. And for that short time, we got to be part of that "thing". We got to help define that kid for .0002 seconds. But it was amazing none the less. It was awesome to know that God put us there on that night, to be able to touch those kids lives for just a moment. To show them that to us, they mattered, and that we were just as stoked to talk to them, as they were stoked to talk to us.

I just hope all of these kids that were searching that night, and every night, can one day stop searching. Because I know that what they are searching for can never be found on this earth. Because some days I am searching for the same thing they are. But God will find us, if we just let Him. If we just embrace surrender.

the bride of christ is starving to death because no one is feeding her

I was talking with my old youth pastor several weeks ago, and discussing how it's a struggle to be spiritually fed at the church I am working at.

"Dude, let me stop you there" he said

Long story short, he explained to me some church history, the reason church was started. So I ask you, why was the church started?

"To worship God" answers the average Christian.

To what?

"To worship God"

So what is church for?

"To be spiritually fed"

Wrong.

Church is not about getting "spiritually fed". Rather, it is the contrary. We need to go to church with a full plate. We need to go to church to worship God. Worship God in the hearing of His word, in communion, in offering, in singing. All of this is worship to God.

None of this has anything to do with being "spiritually fed". My generation is obsessed with that term. We have failed to see that, that is about as selfish as we can get in regards to church, the Bride of Christ. We want to make the wedding totally focused around our needs and wants.

We are called to come with a full plate of what the Spirit has done in our life that week, in order to communion with other members of the church. So many wonder why the church is so spiritually empty. The answer is obvious now. Because so many of its members come there in hopes of being fed, as opposed feeding the church, in worship to God.

So to my generation: stop church hopping.

Stop looking for a church where the messages are totally relevant to your life.

It is not about us.

It is about worshiping our creator.

It is not about getting spiritually fed.

Let us turn our focus from on ourselves, and back to God.

god my god my god, where have you been?

over 50,000 of your children dead.

God. My God. My God. Where have you been?