winter is coming

The days grow shorter and the nights longer. What kind of winter will it be? "Winter is Coming," but as to its nature, who can say? I've found it's best to accept broken dreams rather than to try and stitch them back together. Though dreams that have broken seem unbearable, and while the pain feels like it'll never grow old, that's hardly ever the case. Tiffany and Eric have been going to Life Spring Church, and they ran into my ex, Courtney. She's married and has a beautiful kid now. At one time the thought of that, the pain of betrayal and the loss of the one whom I wanted to be the mother of my children, was enough to drive me to tears. I dreamt about her wedding as a nightmare, and each Father's Day made me feel sick. But I don't think about her anymore. And the thought of her happy, wholesome and living out her dreams doesn't make me squirm like it used to. I'm happy for her. Jealous, to be sure, that her dreams came to fruition. But that's an entirely different thing. I feared that by losing her, I lost everything, my entire future. But that wasn't true. I've found it best to accept that people move on, going in different directions. And I've found it best to be thankful for those friends you do have, rather than to agonize over the ones you've lost. Pay attention to the ones who care for you rather than craving the love of the apathetic. 

My writing has been hit-or-miss as of late. It's not that I don't want to write, or that I've come down with a nasty case of writer's block. It's that damned guilty conscience following me around. It's that legalism that made me abandon a career of paleontology for one of ministry. (But, as it turns out, a degree in paleontology is just about as worthless as one in biblical studies; religious degrees flood the market, but no one cares about dinosaurs enough to pay a paleontologist) I've found that I determine my devotion to God in accordance with my involvement or pursuit of vocational ministry. A genuine devotion to God cannot be without making a career out of the thing, and any attempt to "do what you love" becomes nothing short of heartless rebellion, putting my own desires over God's. Of course, I can attack this legalistic thinking from several directions, and I'd never dare surmise someone's faith in God in accordance with whether or not they've made a career out of ministry. It isn't that I feel guilty for writing in and of itself; it's that I feel like by doing something I love, I'm inherently doing something that God doesn't want, and I'm thereby in fault before him. Never mind that nowhere in the bible do we find such a strict legalism, and that nowhere in the bible is the quality of one's character measured up against his or her ministry involvement (or lack thereof). Maybe that's why I'm stuck in this limbo-esque place: I can't stomach doing what I want, but I can't stomach vocational ministry, either. So I'm stuck squarely in the middle, being tugged back-and-forth, squirming in the web.