Untamed.

"My heart, sweet friend, is like a ship at sea:
She wisheth port, where, riding all at ease,
She may repair what stormy times have worn,
And, leaning on the shore, may sing with joy
That pleasure follows pain, and bliss annoy.
Possession of thy love is th'only port
Wherein my heart, with fears and hopes long tossed,
Each hour doth wish and long to make resort,
There to repair the joys that it hath lost,
And, sitting safe, to sing in Cupid's quire
That sweetest bliss is crown of love's desire."

~Bel-Imperia, in The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd (Act 2, scene 2).

"Bear hug me man, take Your old school carpenter arms and throw them around my upper body leaving my arms dangling underneath Yours somewhere and I can barely move them because You're squeezing me so hard... But don't pick me up and make my back pop because I hate it when people do that.
And then hold me, hold me here in Your arms until I start to cry because I WANT TO CRY but I just can't seem to do it on my own...I've been teary eyed once recently but not even enough for a drip down my cheek.
There's just hurt in my soul which needs to be purged so hold me here in this hugging pose until the pain is flowing from my eyes and nose".

~Bradley Hathaway, The Hug Poem

I never thought I'd be putting Hathaway with anything from my course (darn hierarchies and snobbery). But I was reading Kyd, and loved this extract.

Anyway, back to reading. I'm locked in my room because I'm scared of being in the apartment alone. No one else is back from the Easter break yet.

Neon.

I love the fact that yesterday was Easter. I love the fact that my God has defeated death. I love the fact that my God has authority over everything in the world. I love the fact that He died for me. And I love the fact that He's alive today.

Other than that, I can't breathe, and I'm trying to fail quietly so that mum won't wake up and ask me why I can't breathe and expect me to answer whilst trying to breathe. Lungs eh.

Anyway, when I was little, there is no way to link this to anything so don't get excited, when I was little, I loved colour. I still do. I especially loved highlighter pens, because the colour was more vibrant than my regular felt tips. One day, my parents came upstairs to find their magnolia (always magnolia) bedroom...jaundiced somewhat. Florescent yellow higlighter pen had been used on the walls, the numbers of the phone, the stripes in the radiator... when asked about the source of this neon wonder, I did the only reasonable thing at four years old and sharply identified my brother Tristan as the culprit. I don't know if it was the guilt in my eye or the fact that I'd drawn around my reflection in their mirror, but my lies were not swallowed. I can't remember how I was punished, or how they got it all back to magnolia, but I can remember that mum didn't let me have highlighters for literally years.

The point is, that I am an English Literature and History student and sometimes I have to highlight things gosh darn it. But every time I pick up a highlighter I remember kneeling under the windowsill and improving the radiator. What's worse than highlighters is black marker pens. Sharpies! My word. There is nothing like a clean and new black marker. Now, if I am bored and a pen is to hand, I literally throw it across the room to remove the temptation. It's not that I get weird urges to draw on my legs normally, just if the temptation is there. So it gets lobbed.

What I'm stupidly skirting around is that I'm thinking about temptations and vices and where to put them. When I revise for exams, I get distracted by my guitar. So I put it in the corner. I find myself playing it five minutes later. I shut it in the bathroom. I soon find myself admiring the acoustics of the bathroom. I resort to putting it under my bed, because I fear going in my bed because I always drop the lid and nearly break my arm. Some things need to be not only put down, but thrown as far as possible. Some things need to be put places that we can't see them. I'm often amazed at how far my body will go when it wants something. I decide not to buy biscuits at uni so that I won't snack and become a circle. But you know, if I fancy a biscuit, I will apparently walk to the store at 2 am in pouring rain for a pack of cruddy digestives. I cannot be trusted. My right hand doesn't know what the left is up to, and the left is up to something that's going to get it chopped off one of these days. So there's a thought. Wouldn't it be so easy if life were that simple, if something causes trouble you just threw it away, without affecting anything else? Yes it would. But it's not.

And I think some complications are on the way. Typical really.

Hat.

For anyone who cares or with a vested interest, training for the Sheffield Half Marathon (Sunday the ?25th of April) is going surprisingly well. Thankyou very much. Fantastic, since wonderfully generous people have sponsored me to run as part of fundraising for the summer trip to Mozambique. This whole idea of improvement is amazing considering mystery illness. (By the way, I'm conscious that mystery illness might benefit from a cheerful name, seen as he seems to intend to stick around). I run when I feel okay, generally with a day or two without afterwards in which I'm ill. But my fear has been that I wouldn't be able to improve given this silly routine and circumstance. But apparently not. How good is God?! Very.

At one point tonight, I had to pass a group of 'youths' who started running ahead of me, hilariously. Two dropped off soon enough but one boy ran alongside me, laughing...we had a chat, I asked him if he'd like to run the whole ten miles with me, and he too slowed very soon. I felt like Eddie Izzard but less fit and not nearly as adept at walking in heels. Then at one point a man was cycling in the other direction to me on b*stard road, and I prepared myself for some lewd remark. He shouted "respect to you" which made me smile on many levels. The second was most fun. Anyway, the point is, it's these random nice people and moments (like the man who stared at me crossing the road then smiled in a really lovely way from his car when he realised, or the man who shouted "have some motivation dear!" from his doorway) which make my day beautiful.

And now there are brothers around, 1020 calories to regain, a bit of Del Toro's finest work to date on TV...it is a good night.

Salt.

Oh Mara.
You're missing the beauty,
It's passing you by.

Good Friday.

"The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair" ~ Relient K, 'Be my Escape'.

“From childhood we are taught how to succeed in the world of ungrace. “You get what you pay for.” “The early bird gets the worm. “No pain, no gain.” I know these rules well because I live by them. I work for what I earn; I like to win; I insist on my rights. I want people to get what they deserve.

The more I reflect on Jesus’ parables proclaiming grace, the more tempted I am to apply the word atrocious to describe the mathematics of the gospel. I believe Jesus gave us these stories to call us to step completely outside our tit-for-tat world of ungrace and enter into God’s realm of infinite grace.

If I care to listen, I hear a loud whisper from the gospel that I did not get what I deserved. I deserved punishment and got forgiveness. I deserved wrath and got love. I deserved debtor’s prison and got instead a clean credit history. I deserved stern lectures and crawl-on-your knees repentance. Instead, I got a banquet spread for me.” ~ Philip Yancey,"What's so Amazing about Grace?"

It's completely ridiculous. It's prodigal to the point of hilarity. It's extravagant and unreasonable. The maths of grace is all wrong. What an impossible, nonsensical and beautiful God.

It's true that it's done. It's finished. Love hung on a tree to pay the price for my sins, your sins, all sin in all of time, so that we could come before God perfect and blameless, not to beg for undeserved mercy but to thank Him that He already gave it. Not as slaves but as beloved sons. I could sing of this forever. I don't deserve it.

Thank You.

(Interestingly, I was born on Good Friday 1991).

Doors.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

~ C.S.Lewis

Patrick.

Last night I joined about a hundred other people in the Rescue Rooms of Nottingham (my first time) to see Emery live. They were phenomenal. Amazing! I've liked them for about 5 years, and haven't seen them before. So good, so worth the wait. I was stood with a friend at the very front, so I could see everything (which is a new experience for my short self at a gig). No quality lost from studio to stage. Still beautiful layering of incredible, most incredible voices. I loved the passion, because there was just so much of it. Emery lyrics are some that have spoken to me often over the past 5 years...they're one of the bands that I retreat to when something big happens. Some of the songs last night brought so much up and I was just really grateful to be allowed to share the music with those who had written it. Beautiful. And absolutely joyful was Josh Head's dancing, twirling the microphone...he really had some surprisingly funky moves, there's no other way to describe it- he moonwalked. Joy! And they were all lovely guys. They connected with the crowd, cracked some jokes, and stuck around to chat to people afterwards. I asked for Toby and Josh's autographs, although I don't really like the concept of autographs- I just felt I should say something more than all I wanted to, which was merely 'thankyou' in mass quantities. So that was nice. Favourite songs, Ponytail Parades (yes!-the song that caught me 5 years ago and still makes me cry sometimes), Fractions "I wanted to mean everything to you, but this isn't right. You keep coming back disassembled and I keep losing this fight", The Smile, the Face...Listening to Freddie Mercury "We are all the same people. With sinning hearts which make us equal"...I honestly loved them all- great gig. So beautiful.

The support were two-fold. First was Deaf Havana, a post-hardcore band from Norfolk of all places. They weren't bad, definitely...I liked their voices together. But the second support, Moneen, were lovely. Absolutely bouncing, so full of energy and obviously just happy and excited to be playing music. I loved it. Especially after the lead singer (and guitarist) and another guitarist entered the crowd, singer drumming with sticks on everything in sight, walking along the bar, the guitarist bringing a drum and placing it at random points in the crowd and playing there for a while. It was just beautifully friendly and inclusive, joyful and quirky. I expected nothing less when they said they were from Canada. Happy days.

So that was all very beautiful. I love music.

This morning I visited T-street and saw my good friend. There were twins being dedicated and the boy was hilariously beautiful because he just looked terrified at the world and everything around him. He made me smile. What else made me smile was a woman who was asked to share a testimony. She got up there, in front of 300 odd people, and began to sing, "all glory to God, not to me, all glory to God"...slowly, passionately, brokenly. Musically, she was completely out of tune. But if you ask me she was unbelievably in tune and perfect harmony. It was incredible, and I wish I and a generation around me could sing like that every day. She then shared that she had had a scan at the hospital (the same scan I am to have in a few weeks) and had been given bad news. She had gone home. She and her family had prayed and fasted. A word was given to the congregation last week that something troubling somebody had been lifted clean away. She went back for a follow up scan, prayed that it would not only be harmless but gone completely in the name of Jesus. The doctors were amazed. No sign anything had ever been wrong. This is our God. My favorite phrase, "I accept your diagnosis...but I refuse to accept your prognosis". Yes.

Yes.

All in all, it's a really sunny day. I got off the bus early and walked through the park singing, because I like it. I ran to the lake because it was windy and the waves made me happy. I sat on a tree to watch the ducks and got my foot stuck in a root, panicked, dropped my phone inside the tree trunk and was scared that a rabid weasel might eat my hand when I tried to fish it out. It didn't.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I have [nearly] reached 19 years. Who would've thunk it.

Smiles all round.