I'm so in love. This feeling is taking over. And it's not just the warm and squishy love you see at the end of Disney movies. This is a deep, true, unending love: romantic love, friend love, familial love, spiritual love, intellectual love, every kind of love, I give to him and he gives it back. Thank you God. I'm in awe that God would create such an amazing thing as the love between two people. God created us for this and I glory in Him because of it.

"I want a crap detector!" she said in the exact same voice her younger sister used when asking for Christmas the latest girly gizmo that's supposed to be the best thing ever. She wanted to be a great writer just as much as her sister wanted the acceptance and peer equality that gadget subconsciously promised.

"But, wait," she thought to herself as she dreamed of being a great writer, "what if my writing is crap?"

"Every experience god gives us, every person He puts in our lives, is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see."
.......... Corrie TenBoom

"Against criticism, a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it and then it will gradually yield to him."
.......... Johann Wolfgang vonGoethe

"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."
.......... Herm Albright

"Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself."
.......... James Stephen

"To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation."
.......... Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

"A secret may be sometimes best kept by keeping the secret of its being a secret."
.......... Sir Henry Taylor

"Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought."
.......... Sir William Osler

"The investigation of the meaning of words is the beginning of education."
.......... Antisthenes

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."
.......... Mark Twain

"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, crap detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it."
.......... Ernest Hemingway

The San Marcos river has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. Through all the seasons, through all the years, it’s been right there the whole time. So many of my memories are set around the banks of the San Marcos river.

During the Summer, when I was little, it was so much fun to jump into that icyness giving you an instant cool that would take the edge off the rest of the day’s heat. When we went, all the other kids were still traped in school, so we had the river to ourselves. I would stand in the flow, up to my waist, and bend over to look under the surface with my leaky Wal-Mart snorkle. The fuzzy world underneath the film of ripples intrigued me. I could stand for what seemed like forever just looking at the mysterious scenes. I would get so excited when a little fish swam by. But you have to stand really still when that happens so that, just maybe, he’ll come back bringing some of this glittery, fishy friends. I loved the feel of the algae covered gravel underfoot. I would wiggle my toes, deftly juggling the slimy stones around and around my, by now very numb, digits. Diving down, my legs would slip out from under me as I reached for a pretty, little, empty snail shell. Taking it out of the water ruined it’s sparkle though. So, I would hold it under the surface, examinging the detailed pattern, determining if it would make a nice addition to my growing pile of river treasures that I never took home. During the winter, driving over that bridge by Pepper’s resuraunt, I asked Dad why the river was smoking. He explained that it was steam because the water was warmer than the air. It made me happy to think of my fishy friends, slimy stones, and sparkling shells kept all nice and warm.

When I got older, the appriciation of the river took other forms. Instead of solitary exploration of the dark river bed, I congragated with my friends on the sunny, Summer banks. My girlfriends and I would lay out on the warm ground after class. Tomabamos el sol, baking ourselves to a crisp and then jumping in the water periodically to cool off. My guy friends loved to show off how crazy insane they were. Long, high dives into the deeps evidently were supposed to be the most exciting things in the world. And they were. Who had the coolest style? Who had the tallest splash? Who could throw the most “unwilling” girls into the water? We would sit with our feet in the water, talking about the latest movies, the test on Monday, heartbreak, God, and, of course, Frisbee Dan, that strange, funny, pitiful man who spent every warm day at Suel Park. He was a great enigma. Who was this middle-aged, pot-bellied, frisbee aficianado with the rawhide skin? We don’t even know if his real name is Dan. We never asked because that was part of our captivation with him. When winter time came around, I was occupied with school, basketball, work, church, school, basketball, work, church, and school. Driving to my next have-to-be-there place, over that same bridge, not by Pepper’s anymore, but by Joe’s crab shack, that steam coming off the river warmed my heart in my unheated 1987 Volvo just as well as the steam coming off a cup of hot coacoa.

I miss a river here in Longview. There’s no central stream that the town is built upon and everything seems disorganized because of it. I suppose I’ll get used to it, but that river will always mean San Marcos to me. It’ll always mean home.

God,
You are my eternal source of confidence.
You will never fail me
I can always draw strength from Your power
to fill the weariness in my heart

Hannah,
Don't rely on anything but God for love.
Only he can love you the way you are thirsting for
-----------not money
-----------------not learning
------not friends
-------------------not men
--------------------------------------------------------not yourself

Trust Him
Let go into the river of His glory
Let it flow over you washing
All the dirt---------------gone
All the calluses--------------------soft
All the tightness-----eased
All the weariness of striving
and not finding because
you're not looking in the right places and
you know that
you'll search forever if
you don't find it because
you need it so much and
you won't be whole until
you do because
you feel so empty------------blown gently away
Not because you found what you were looking for but
Because you have been found
Because GOD has been waiting for you the whole time
When your arms and legs are broken and your heart is crushed and bruised and bleeding
His strong arms full of frightening love grab you and hold you close
Instantly you will be healed
You will be whole

You are whole

In time, you will be able to jump and leap and dance with joy in His power
But for now...


Just rest
He heals your groaning bones
He will hold you forever

Amen

There's a beautiful person locked in a tower
She's no damsel in distress
She isn't sad that she is hidden away because sadness would maim her beauty
She will wait for me to unlock her
I can hear her voice singing out
But I don't always listen
I put her in that tower because I wanted to protect her
I didn't want pain and heartbreak to taint her truth and loveliness
So, I became that for her
I battled through the stinging spiny forest
I became hard and tough and callused and crusty
I grew spines and stings myself
I can no longer show myself to her
Because I’ve become what I wanted to protect her from

Do you ever feel the desire to write about something meaningful but nothing comes out of your pen when you put it to paper? I'm not speaking of lack of ink, but the inability to break through the ancient walls that surround your treasured ideas. I feel like there's this great amount of knowledge, this reservoir of emotions, the treasury of truth amassed in my head. I want to cross the empty space that surrounds it, break through the barrier that holds it in. Not because I think that the world wants to hear my babbling brook of simple ideas. I know that I do not hold the meaning of life in my average mind. But, maybe I hold the meaning of my life. I want to live my life not like it is now, a babbling brook of simple ideas, but I want to open the gates of my soul and understand the rushing flood of revelation about myself, my life, my mind, my heart, my meaning.

LeTourneau has been turned into a fantastical battleground this past week. The slight advancements of early in the week gave a false sense of sanity and decorum. Sides were chosen, platforms established. The activities seemed merely entertaining amusements for academic weary and campus anchored students.

The scene quickly changed. Skirmishes between playing cards and mobsters, flight attendants and samurai, Neanderthals and ducks broke out. The landscape was littered with scrappy slips of paper claiming one group as leader of the rest. The monarchal leaders of these independent insurgent gangs would parade down the highways and byways in full royal garb in futile efforts to usurp to crown.

The war raged on but the zeal died out. Revolutionary students so gung-ho about battle tactics such as the camera caper, or the even more infamous monarch cram, became distracted by the facts of living in a war ravaged campus and began focusing on academic survival. Guerilla groups took the lull in strategic activity to ambush the innocent civilians with mass amounts of chalky propaganda. Other more militant groups took aggressive measures and destroyed or removed crucial documents from the lampposts of their enemies.

Their efforts proved too late. The future king and queen had already been decided in the minds of their future subjects. It would be Erin of Wonderland and TP of Thomas. Their coronation ceremony was at the autumn festival. Not only did it celebrate their ascension to power, but also the peace that would result in the unification of the campus.

Once again, we can return to the drone of professors with out the distraction of white rabbit ears blocking our view. Once again, we can go back to bed at 11 with out the 4am plastering of the sidewalks with more chalky dust. As the rain washes away the desolate landscape, we can begin anew. Our campus is reborn to the same old same old.